What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.
This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.
“It will always be possible to get ChatGPT to produce hate speech at volume. Other ML systems will have algorithmic bias, too, as long as there’s biased input. The problem is that these systems are being used as if they are unbiased, and that just reinforces existing power structures and exacerbates inequality. The same kind of flawed facial recognition technology Gebru warned about is used regularly by police departments, leading to mistaken arrests of Black people and even worse racial disparities in arrest rates. 118 Police also use predictive policing algorithms to determine what areas to patrol, disproportionately impacting Black, Latino, and low-income communities. 119 Nor is law enforcement the only problem. Algorithms are used to mete out credit scores and weigh the risk of a loan; like criminal risk assessment, these algorithms discriminate against Black people and other minorities. 120 Getting a good credit score can determine your ability to buy a car or house, get hired for a new job—or afford chemotherapy. Algorithmic bias is literally a matter of life and death, especially if you’re not a white man. Yet despite the severity of these problems,”
— More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker
“A Guardian analysis of government records reveals that 77% of people who entered deportation proceedings for the first time in 2025 had no criminal conviction. The analysis, based on data from nearly 140,000 I-213 forms, contradicts the Trump administration’s claims that its deportation campaign targets violent criminals. Instead, the data shows that the majority of convictions are for non-violent offenses, such as traffic violations and immigration offenses.
A Guardian analysis finds the vast majority of people who entered deportation proceedings for the first time from January to August last year had no criminal convictions
The analysis exposes a stark gap between the Trump administration’s rhetoric and reality. Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images
A Guardian analysis of government records has found that the vast majority – 77% – of people who entered deportation proceedings for the first time in 2025 had no criminal conviction, exposing a stark gap between the Trump administration’s rhetoric and reality.
Within days of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) trotted out a phrase that his surrogates would come to use over and over again: “the worst of the worst.”
The term has become a shorthand justification for the administration’s unprecedented overhaul of immigration enforcement – a relentless campaign the administration claims is focused on arresting and deporting violent criminals.
However, a review of records obtained by the Guardian and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against DHS, raises questions about those claims.
The findings come from little-known documents known as I-213 forms. DHS uses these forms in court to prove that a person is in the country illegally. The documents are filed when a person first encounters ICE, and DHS begins the deportation process, which is often when they are arrested. The documents contain biographical details about the person, including their criminal history, as well as any information that DHS feels is relevant to the immigration court case.
The documents released to the Guardian do not cover every arrest since Trump took office, but do cover everyone that DHS started deportation proceedings during most of 2025.
The Guardian analyzed data extracted from nearly 140,000 I-213 forms, from January 2025 through mid-August 2025, and found that the surge in arrests under Trump is driven by the apprehension of people who have never been convicted of a crime.
The analysis also reveals:
Fewer than half of the people in the data (40%) had any criminal charge against them, and only 23% had a conviction.
Of those who did have a criminal conviction, nearly half were for non-violent traffic and immigration offenses.
Traffic offenses alone made up nearly 30% of the convictions, the largest category by far.
Some 9% of criminal convictions were for assault, while only 1% were for sexual assault and just 0.5% were for homicide.
The findings offer one of the most granular pictures yet of the criminal records of the tens of thousands of people swept up in DHS’s massive deportation campaign, building on reporting by the Guardian and others that show most of the people targeted for arrest and deportation are not violent criminals.
The expansion of immigration enforcement to broad, sweeping arrests, experts say, has led to a massive expansion of immigration detention, with the highest number of people held in US history.
“What is being conducted is dragnet enforcement with the goal of ensnaring as many people as possible in the detention and deportation process, despite all the public claims of the administration that they’re going up for the worst,” said Phil Neff, research coordinator with the University of Washington Center for Human Rights.
The documents reveal a different picture, Neff said. “It really represents a cross-section of society at large in the United States, of people who have been here for many years and who have close ties to communities.”
The Guardian reached out to DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for comment on the findings but did not receive a response before publication.
‘Worst of the worst’
DHS secretary Kristi Noem first used the phrase “worst of the worst” shortly after being confirmed by the Senate in January 2025, telling Sean Hannity that DHS was “picking up the worst of the worst in this country”. By the end of 2025, it was the administration’s go-to line, appearing in hundreds of press releases about its mass deportation efforts. DHS even launched a “worst of the worst” website complete with people’s blurry mugshots and the crimes DHS says they’ve been convicted of.
But the I-213 forms, also known as “Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien” forms, undercut those arguments.
The forms are one of the first things filled out after the government initiates deportation proceedings, said Chris Opila, staff attorney for transparency at the American Immigration Council, and are the key piece of evidence the government uses to prove that a person is eligible for deportation.
“It’s the record that ICE will produce in immigration court to substantiate its claims that this person is present in the United States unlawfully,” Opila said.
There are groups of people not included in the data release, such as immigrants who had deportation proceedings initiated before 2025 but who were arrested in 2025. The Guardian compared the data in the I-213 form release to other datasets released by ICE and found that it covers approximately 80% of the total arrests in 2025 covered in other datasets.
The documents do, however, include every person whom ICE apprehended for the first time in 2025 and show clearly whom the administration targeted during Trump’s second term in office.
The Guardian, working with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, sued DHS and received spreadsheets with data extracted from I-213 forms.
Each form represents a person that the administration is trying to deport. The data contains details of more than 138,000 people swept up in the administration’s deportation pipeline in 2025. Each form contains a person’s name, how they entered the country, the number of children and each child’s citizenship, and detailed information about their criminal history. It is some of the most detailed data yet available on the people that the administration is trying to remove from the country.
The forms have each person’s criminal history, taken from the National Crime Information Center, an FBI database that tracks criminal justice data. The charges are tracked in broad categories, such as “sexual assault” and “immigration”, and sometimes less useful categories such as “general crimes”.
The Trump administration has apprehended people with criminal convictions, but the I-213 forms show that most convictions are for either traffic or immigration offenses, not violent crimes.
A Guardian analysis of the crimes people were convicted of found that only 1% of convictions were for sexual assault and only 400 – less than 1% of all convictions – were for homicide.
“This is not about removing the worst of the worst,” Opila said. “Enforcement is about removing whoever they can to feed a quota, regardless of how long these people have been in their communities, regardless of whether they have stable employment, regardless of what their family situation is in the United States. They’ve decided that they need to remove everyone possible.”
“If there was data that supported the administration’s position that it is only deporting the worst of the worst, the administration would publicize the data,” Opila added. “And they’re not doing that because the data doesn’t support it. We’d have something better than the memes.”
This is a major case which could overturn the last sections of the ”Voting Rights Act of 1965” which are still in effect. This is incredibly dangerous for voting rights. We see what is happening in Georgia.
“The FDA announced it will allow food companies to label products as “no artificial colors” even if they contain potentially harmful substances like titanium dioxide. This decision, criticized by health experts, is seen as a retreat from a previous pledge to ban artificial dyes and could mislead consumers. While some naturally derived dyes are safer, others, like titanium dioxide, pose health risks and are banned in the EU.
Experts say new labeling could deceive consumers as dangerous substances still allowed under new rules
Robert F Kennedy Jr with Trump at the White House last year. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
In a further retreat from its pledge to ban artificial dyes from food, Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it would loosen labeling requirements to allow companies to state “no artificial colors”, even though products may contain some dangerous substances such as titanium dioxide.
The FDA in early February announced it would allow food makers to claim “no artificial colors” as long as the dyes are not petroleum-based, but health experts say even some naturally based additives present health risks, and the labeling would deceive consumers.
The move comes after the agency in 2025 began pressuring companies to phase out petroleum-based dyes, but stopped short of putting in place a ban. Removing toxins from food is a cornerstone of the Robert F Kennedy led Maha movement. Kennedy is the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which holds the FDA, and he quickly zeroed in on dye upon taking office last year.
The FDA agreed to what critics label a “handshake” with big food to stop using the dyes, though Kennedy framed it as “an understanding”. Some candy makers still are refusing to fully stop using artificial dyes.
The latest decision around labeling “is going to cause confusion and allow some companies to mislead folks about the colors that are present in their foods”, said Thomas Galligan, principal scientist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which researches food dyes.
“It’s frustrating, especially when the rhetoric suggests they are solving the problem, but in practice they’re just letting industry do whatever they want,” Galligan continued, adding that the rules were already so loophole-ridden that there were other ways that companies could deceive consumers. The most effective measure to protect consumers is a ban, he said.
Kennedy defended the move in a statement: “This is real progress. We are making it easier for companies to move away from petroleum-based synthetic colors and adopt safer, naturally derived alternatives. This momentum advances our broader effort to help Americans eat real food and Make America Healthy Again.”
Consumer Brands, a trade group for packaged foods, applauded the move, stating that it “is a positive example of the FDA taking the lead on ingredient safety and transparency”.
Kelly Ryerson, Maha advocate and author, praised the FDA for taking the first step to pressure industry to move away from dyes, calling it “enormous”. But she told the Guardian she is concerned about confusion over the labeling, and added: “I would like to see these things banned permanently.”
Synthetic dyes are linked to ADHD and hyperactivity in children, among other health harms. The FDA banned Red Dye 3 in January 2025, before Kennedy took over the agency, because studies found it likely caused cancer in lab rats.
West Virginia has since banned some synthetic dyes, and Texas passed a law to require warning labels. More than 25 states are considering new bans on synthetic food dyes and other food chemical additives.
Among naturally derived dyes are beet juice, beet powder, algae and butterfly pea flower. While most naturally derived dyes are generally safer than petroleum-based, some can be dangerous.
“As a foundational concept, natural doesn’t mean safe,” Galligan said, which contradicts the average consumers’ assumptions.
He noted that lead and arsenic, two of the planet’s most toxic substances, are naturally occurring, though they are not used in food dyes.
Among natural dyes used in foods that advocates find most concerning is titanium dioxide nanoparticles added to brighten whites, or effectively serve as a primer for other colors. The toxic substance is banned in the European Union for use in food because regulators could not conclude that it is safe, and raised concern that it damages genes.
It is a potential carcinogen that accumulates in organs and is linked toneurotoxicity, intestinal inflammation, reproductive damage, birth defects and other health impacts.
Titanium dioxide is widely used across the US food system. The Environmental Working Group nonprofit has found nearly 2,000 products in which the chemical may be used, though some estimates are as high as 11,000. The largest subgroups included candy, cakes, cookies, and desserts or dessert toppings.
The FDA so far has ignored a petition filed in 2023 by five major US public health advocacy groups that asks it to withdraw its approval of titanium dioxide for use in food.
Meanwhile, naturally derived caramel color can contain 4-MEI, an impurity linked to cancer that is produced during processing. Food companies will be able to state that products that contain these ingredients have “no artificial flavors”.
EWG co-founder Ken Cook said the shift ultimately represents “another broken promise” from Kennedy and Trump.
“They pledged outright bans on dangerous food chemical additives to their Make America Healthy Again base,” Cook said.
“Instead, states are doing the hard work to protect families, while Kennedy settles for handshake deals with big food and chemical companies – agreements with no real accountability and no guarantee they’ll be honored.”
“The Trump administration plans to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, spanning over 350 acres, as part of the International Stabilization Force (ISF). The ISF, authorized by the UN Security Council, aims to secure Gaza’s borders, maintain peace, and support Palestinian police forces. The base’s construction, including bunkers and watch towers, is detailed in a Board of Peace contracting document, raising concerns about its legality and funding.
Exclusive: approximately 350-acre compound planned as base for multinational force, according to records reviewed by the Guardian
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) delegation on a field visit in Gaza City, on 16 February. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
The Trump administration is planning to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, sprawling more than 350 acres, according to Board of Peace contracting records reviewed by the Guardian.
The site is envisioned as a military operating base for a future International Stabilization Force (ISF), planned as a multinational military force composed of pledged troops. The ISF is part of the newly created Board of Peace which is meant to govern Gaza. The Board of Peace is chaired by Donald Trump and led in part by his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The plans reviewed by the Guardian call for the phased construction of a military outpost that will eventually have a footprint of 1,400 metres by 1,100 metres, ringed by 26 trailer-mounted armored watch towers, a small arms range, bunkers, and a warehouse for military equipment for operations. The entire base will be encircled with barbed wire.
The fortification is planned for an arid stretch of flatlands in southern Gazastrewn with saltbush and white broom shrubs, and littered with twisted metal from years of Israeli bombardment. The Guardian has reviewed video of the area. A source close to the planning tells the Guardian that a small group of bidders – international construction companies with experience in war zones – have already been shown the area in a site visit.
The Indonesian government has reportedly offered to send up to 8,000 troops. Indonesia’s president was one of four south-east Asian leaders scheduled to attend an inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington DC on Thursday.
The UN security council authorized the Board of Peace to establish a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza. The ISF, according to the UN, will be tasked with securing Gaza’s border and maintaining peace within the area. It’s also supposed to protect civilians, and train and support “vetted Palestinian police forces”.
It is unclear what the ISF’s rules of engagement would be if there is combat, renewed bombing by Israel, or attacks by Hamas. Nor is it clear what role the ISF is meant to play in disarming Hamas, an Israeli condition to proceed with Gaza’s reconstruction.
While more than 20 countries have signed up as members of the Board of Peace, much of the world has stayed away. Although it was set up with the UN’s approval, the organization’s charter appears to grant Trump permanent leadership and control.
“The Board of Peace is a kind of legal fiction, nominally with its own international legal personality separate from both the UN and the United States, but in reality it’s just an empty shell for the United States to use as it sees fit,” said Adil Haque, a professor of law at Rutgers University.
Experts say the funding and governance structures are murky, and several contractors have told the Guardian that conversations with US officials are often conducted on Signal rather than over government email.
The military base contracting document was issued by the Board of Peace, according to a person familiar with the process, and prepared with the help of US contracting officials.
The plans say there is to be a network of bunkers each 6 metres by 4 metres and 2.5 metres tall, with elaborate ventilation systems where soldiers can go for protection.
“The Contractor,” says the document, “shallconduct a geophysical survey of the site to identify any subterranean voids, tunnels, or large cavities per phase.” This provision is likely referencing the large network of tunnels Hamas has built in Gaza.
One section of the document describes a “Human Remains Protocol”. “If suspected human remains or cultural artifacts are discovered, all work in the immediate area must cease immediately, the area must be secured, and the Contracting Officer must be notified immediately for direction,” it says. The bodies of about 10,000 Palestinians are believed to be buried under the rubble in Gaza, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
It is unclear who owns the land where the military compound is set to be built, but much of the south Gaza area is currently under Israeli control. The UN estimates that at least 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced during the war.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former peace negotiator, called building a military base on Palestinian land without the government’s approval an act of occupation. “Whose permission did they get to build that military base?”
Officials from US Central Command referred all questions about the military base to the Board of Peace.
A Trump administration official declined to discuss the military base contract: “As the President has said, no US boots will be on the ground. We’re not going to discuss leaked documents.”
“Despite a cease-fire, Gaza remains devastated, with 600 Palestinians killed since October and 60 million tons of debris to clear. While President Trump’s “Board of Peace” plans for Gaza’s reconstruction, the reality is stark, with ongoing Israeli strikes, a fragmented territory, and a reluctant Hamas. The path to peace hinges on complex issues like Hamas disarmament, demilitarization, and Israeli withdrawal, with no clear resolution in sight.
Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed about 600 people since a cease-fire began, according to health officials in the territory. Many displaced Palestinians are still living in tents. And there are some 60 million tons of war debris to be cleared.
Gaza City last week.
As President Trump prepares for the inaugural gathering of his “Board of Peace” in Washington on Thursday, there are detailed proposals encompassing hopes and dreams for a gleaming new postwar Gaza.
Then there is reality.
“Trump is trying to make things rosy, but as a matter of fact, the situation is still catastrophic,” said Prof. Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political analyst from Gaza City who was displaced from his home during the Israel-Hamas war and now resides in Cairo.
A fragile cease-fire came into force in October, two years after the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel that ignited the war. But the path forward is uncharted, labyrinthine and strewed with obstacles.
“The Trump cease-fire plan is struggling to succeed,” Professor Abusada said, blaming both Hamas and Israel.
Member states of the new international body tasked with rebuilding Gaza have pledged more than $5 billion for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in the enclave, according to Mr. Trump. But that is only a fraction of what is needed. The United Nations has estimated the cost of rebuilding the territory at more than $50 billion.
Countries have also committed thousands of troops and personnel, laying the ground work for an International Stabilization Force meant to “maintain Security,” Mr. Trump said.
American officials are discussing plans to build a military base for peacekeepers in an Israeli-controlled area of southern Gaza, according to several Western diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information publicly.
The first night of the holy month of Ramadan at Al-Kanz Mosque in Gaza City on Tuesday.
Slick Power Point presentations paint a picture of a futuristic seaside metropolis. But for now, the Israeli military and private contractors are removing unexploded ordnance and rubble from patches of the Israeli-controlled part of Gaza. There are an estimated 60 million tons of war debris to be cleared away.
Gaza barely has the basics. Experts have produced a comprehensive paper on waste management, according to internal planning documents viewed by The New York Times.
While the war is over, no one would call Gaza safe. Even under the cease-fire, Israeli strikes have killed about 600 Palestinians there, according to local health officials. Their data does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Israel says its near daily strikes are retaliation against militants who violated the truce or to eliminate imminent threats. But children are among the dead.
In all, 72,000 people have been killed since the start of the war, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel says thousands of militants were among those killed.
Israeli forces now control about half the coastal territory, where anti-Hamas militias have taken up arms and looted aid. A weakened but resilient Hamas prevails for now in the other half, where most of the population of two million is living, many still displaced and in tents.
Hamas has pledged to give up the administration of Gaza, but its gunmen are still manning checkpoints, detaining and questioning people, and collecting some fees.
Any real progress in Gaza hinges upon the thorniest issues in Mr. Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. They include disarming Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza and ensuring a withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Hamas is reluctant to part with its weapons. The militants rely on them to control the population, and they are also core to its identity as a fighting force against Israel.
After being caught off-guard by the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead, according to Israeli officials, Israel is deeply skeptical of the group’s intentions.
For this reason, Israel is still barring the entry into Gaza of many so-called “dual use” items, saying they could be used by Hamas for military purposes. The list changes, but now includes wide-diameter steel tent poles, according to several officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
The severe food shortages of the war have eased, but Western officials and aid workers accuse Israel, which strictly controls the flow of all goods into Gaza, of slow-walking other kinds of assistance.
About 80 percent of the buildings in Gaza were damaged or destroyed during the war, according to the United Nations. But Israel has largely limited or delayed the entry of caravans and temporary homes, despite some harsh winter weather, according to the Shelter Cluster, a group of U.N. and humanitarian agencies working on housing solutions.
About 4,000 emergency temporary housing units are either now available or in the pipeline, according to the United Nations. About 200,000 prefab relief housing units are needed to support displaced families, according to Alexander De Croo, a U.N. development official who visited Gaza this week.
The Israeli military unit that oversees the entry of aid to Gaza, known as COGAT, rejected accusations that Israel was preventing or delaying assistance.
“The reality is completely opposite,” it said in a statement, adding that Israel was meeting its commitment under the cease-fire agreement.
The sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt recently reopened for people on foot after being closed for most of the past 20 months. Only a trickle of Gazans, mainly people seeking medical treatment abroad and their caregivers, or residents returning to the enclave from abroad, have been able to cross it.
Making headway is complicated because the main players are reluctant to take risks or make concessions before the other.
“All the structures are ready, but on the ground nothing has changed because one thing is dependent on another,” said Shira Efron, chair of Israel policy at the RAND Corporation, a U.S.-based research institute.
“Reconstruction and Israeli military withdrawal are contingent on disarmament and the deployment of the International Stabilization Force,” she added.
After nearly 20 years of dominating Gaza, Hamas has been trying to tighten its hold on the territory, rather than giving it up, Ms. Efron said. “They are the ones enforcing law and order,” she said.
“Even the seemingly simple challenge of Hamas handing over the civilian rule of Gaza — which they said they’d agree to do — will be complicated,” she said.
Hamas will not be eager to forfeit tax revenues, and it is hard to imagine an orderly transition, she said, noting that the group’s own governance of Gaza was “poor and partial at best.”
The Board of Peace has appointed a committee of Palestinian technocrats as a transitional government to replace Hamas, but they are still based in Cairo.
The committee members are waiting for a safer environment and a loosening of Israeli restrictions on goods that would improve residents’ lives and give them some credibility as they begin to operate in the territory, according to officials and people briefed on their thinking.
“They need to go back with something in their hands to win the hearts and minds of people in Gaza,” Professor Abusada said.
For now, committee members have been attending governance training workshops run by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, according to people briefed on their activities.
Over it all, the threat looms of a return to war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is facing an election this year, says he will give the cease-fire plan a chance. But if Hamas does not agree to disarm, he says, it will be done “the hard way,” with a new Israeli military offensive.
The Trump administration and mediators have been drafting a phased disarmament deal that would see Hamas surrender all weapons capable of striking Israel, but would allow the group to keep some small arms, at least initially, according to officials and people familiar with the proposal.
Mr. Netanyahu appeared to reject that phased approach to disarmament which prioritizes heavy weapons such as rockets. The weapons that Hamas used during the October 2023 attack were Kalashnikov assault rifles, he said, demanding that the group hand over 60,000 of them.
In any case, it’s unclear whether Hamas would even agree to this. Nickolay Mladenov, a former U.N. official now serving as the Board of Peace “high representative” for Gaza, met Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, in Cairo this month to press the group on disarmament. Mr. al-Hayya refused to discuss the issue with him, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about a sensitive matter.
Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
Adam Rasgon is a reporter for The Times in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
Natan Odenheimeris a Times reporter in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.“
