A current pilot project aims to pay former law enforcement and military officers to physically track immigrants and verify their addresses to give to ICE for $300 each. There is no indication that the pilot involves licensed private investigators, and appears to be open to people who are now essentially members of the general public, 404 Media has learned.

The pilot is a dramatic, and potentially dangerous, escalation in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. People without any official role in government would be tasked with tracking down targets for ICE. It appears to be part of ICE’s broader plan to use bounty hunters or skip tracers to confirm immigrant’s addresses through data and physical surveillance. Some potential candidates for the pilot were recruited on LinkedIn and were told they would be given vehicles to monitor the targets.

“The more I listened to it, the more I’m like, something doesn’t sound right,” a person who was briefed on the pilot plans told 404 Media.

The man at the heart of a high-stakes mix-up that rippled through global political journalism in the final days of the New York mayoral campaign was neither “falsely claiming” to be former Mayor Bill de Blasio — as the Times of London suggested — nor, as The New York Times wrote, a “de Blasio impersonator.”

He is, instead, a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio, who merely responded to an email from a journalist seeking his views on Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s policies.

“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio said in an interview conducted Wednesday evening through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida.

“I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor Wednesday evening. “So I just gave him my opinion.”

cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/30283473

The Washington Post joined the New York Times, Newsmax and CNN in refusing to sign the restrictive new policy.

Media across the ideological spectrum said they will not sign the Defense Department’s restrictive new press policy by Tuesday’s afternoon deadline. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press and CNN said they wouldn’t sign, as did Newsmax and the Washington Times.

Rueben Antonio Cruz was sitting with a friend in Rogers Park when ICE agents pulled up onto the street.

The immigration officers stopped their truck and went straight after them on Oct. 9, Cruz told the Tribune.

“They asked us if we have papers. I said I do but I don’t have them on me,” Cruz, a 60-year old man with heart problems originally from El Salvador, recalled in Spanish.

The agents stood Cruz up, put him in their truck, drove around in circles, and asked questions, he said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/52738398

Black swan nicknamed ‘Mr Terminator’ evicted from town after trying to drown local birds

Archive/mirror: https://archive.ph/sghbn

"President Donald Trump said the United States would impose a new tariff of 100% on imports from China “over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying,” starting on Nov. 1.

Trump also said that the U.S. on that same date also would impose export controls on “any and all critical software.”

The move is in retaliation for new export controls that China imposed on rare earths minerals."

I initially posted the source content for this from the Chicago Tribune reporter that recorded the situation but it was removed by automod (?).

"The federal agents reportedly rammed their van into Brockman's car before forcing her to the ground and taking her into custody.

Brockman was seen being placed into the van before the agents got in and sped away, scraping the side of another vehicle and knocking off part of its bumper."