ICE Hired an Army of Sex Offenders Under Trump

The Pentagon invented new category to hide Iran war deaths, Trump's boat strikes killed 221 without affecting cocaine supply, and $7.5B in grants were cut by how states voted

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

A new study logged 25 ICE and Border Patrol officers charged or convicted of sex or violent crimes in 2025 and 2026 alone, most involving children. The Pentagon quietly invented a new casualty category to avoid admitting 18 US troops have died in the Iran war. A DEA assessment found Trump’s boat strikes that have killed 221 people haven’t dented cocaine supply or price at all. And the Trump administration told a federal court that it canceled $7.5 billion in clean energy grants “based solely” on whether a state voted for Kamala Harris.

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ICE Hired an Army of Sex Offenders

Good news: ICE is finally deporting dangerous predators. Bad news: they’re being deported from its own payroll.

A new report from the Ohio Immigrant Alliance logged 59 ICE and Border Patrol officers charged or convicted of sexual or violent offenses since 2006. Fifty of those cases were sex crimes. Thirty-seven involved child victims.

Twenty-five of the cases date from 2025 and 2026 alone. The previous annual peak was six, set in 2020, which was also a Trump year.

One of the agents is David Brouillette, who shot and killed 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán in Biddeford, Maine. Two of his ex-wives had accused him of choking, threats, and violence.

The report blames the hiring blitz and training cuts made under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. It asks Congress to freeze both agencies’ budgets and rescreen every officer.

Your mom warned you about the guy in the van with candy. She didn’t warn you he’d have a badge.

Pentagon Quietly Adds 600 Casualties to Iran War Toll

Have you tried turning the war off and back on again? The Pentagon has.

Over the weekend, the Pentagon quietly added a new casualty category labeled “Overseas Operations” for personnel killed and wounded “starting July 7.” The official toll for the earlier phase, named Operation Epic Fury, now sits at 14 killed and more than 400 wounded.

Combined, that means 18 US troops have died and 624 have been wounded since the war against Iran began on February 28. The administration would very much prefer you count those as two separate ledgers.

The reason is the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires the president to end military operations within 60 days without congressional authorization. The administration argues the April ceasefire paused the clock, and that the fighting since July 7 is a fresh conflict.

The Pentagon’s official list of the dead omitted the four soldiers killed in renewed fighting over the weekend. Their names only appeared in a press release announcing the transfer of their remains.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky was not impressed. “The Pentagon is pretending there have been two Iran wars separated by a brief cease-fire,” he wrote, adding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “IS BREAKING THE LAW.”

The entire point of splitting one war into two spreadsheets is that most people will never hear about it. The entire point of this newsletter is that you just did. That only keeps happening if readers pay for it. Upgrade your subscription today.

Trump’s Boat Strikes Killed 221 People and Zero Percent of Cocaine

The only institution less effective at stopping drugs than D.A.R.E. has cruise missiles.

A previously unreported DEA assessment found the Trump administration’s military strikes on alleged drug boats have not affected the supply or price of cocaine entering the United States. Pentagon officials told lawmakers last month the seized cocaine’s purity hadn’t dropped either, which means supply is holding steady.

The strikes have killed at least 221 people since September. Legal analysts call them executions without trials.

Traffickers simply adapted. They switched to larger commercial ships, hugged coastlines where US forces are less likely to fire, and moved more product by air along the Colombian-Venezuelan border. On Colombia’s La Guajira peninsula, smugglers pay officials to reveal where US ships are, then launch once the ships leave.

The strikes also wrecked the actual investigations. Informants who feed intelligence on routes and bosses are being pulled from the field to keep them from being killed in US attacks.

Trump has claimed at least 15 times that the strikes stopped 97 or 98 percent of maritime trafficking. “98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea have STOPPED!” he wrote in April.

Global cocaine production just hit an all-time high. In Florida, cocaine now sells for roughly half what it did five years ago. Add drugs to the list of things he’s made worse and cheaper.

Trump’s Energy Department Admits It Canceled Grants by Party

Most corruption requires a FOIA request. This came with a tweet.

The Trump administration admitted in court documents that it scrapped more than $7.5 billion in clean energy grants “based solely” on whether a state voted for Trump in 2024. Its lawyers conceded the decision rested on “the political identity of the grant recipient’s state,” meaning whether it was a “Blue State or a non-Blue State.”

The Energy Department had reviewed its awards and recommended canceling more than 600 grants in states represented by both parties. In October, Russ Vought’s budget office terminated only 284 of them.

With one exception, every one of those 284 grants was in a state that gave its electoral votes to Kamala Harris and has two Democratic senators. The recommended cuts in Trump states were quietly left in place.

Vought announced the cancellations on X as “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding,” then helpfully listed the 16 blue states affected.

The department now insists none of this was political. A spokesperson claimed the court filing’s reference to political considerations “was referring to the timing of the announcement, not of the decisions themselves.” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told a House committee last month under oath, “No decisions were made on politics.”

Sure, and O.J. was just looking for the real killer.

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Trump’s Own Team Is Telling Republicans to Run Away From Him. With midterms approaching, the president’s own allies are reportedly urging Republican candidates to break from Trump’s rhetoric on the Iran war to protect their odds. Operatives said that polling shows most voters don’t agree with his handling of the war or the economy, and that his approval has plummeted even among his base. The war has killed at least 18 US service members, wounded more than 600, and driven up the cost of nearly everything as shipping firms absorb higher oil costs. The golden goose is now something the party would rather not be photographed holding.

Venezuelan Men Sent to CECOT Are Suing the Airlines That Flew Them There. A federal lawsuit filed this month in Washington DC accuses aviation firms CSI Aviation and GlobalX of civil rights violations, false imprisonment, and negligence for flying three planes of Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot terrorism prison in March 2025. The suit says the companies transported the men despite a federal judge ordering the flights to return, and despite knowing the men would likely be tortured. CSI is the single highest-value recipient of ICE contracts, with 2025 revenue from the agency totaling $1.23 billion.

UC Doctors Launch a Campaign to Unionize 10,000 Colleagues. At Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital on Thursday, physicians announced plans to organize with SEIU Doctors United, a partnership that already represents more than 45,000 doctors nationwide. Attending physicians cited unsustainable patient loads, understaffing, and shrinking clinical autonomy inside an increasingly consolidated and profit-driven industry. UC’s six academic health centers brought in about $24 billion last year, nearly 40% of the university’s total revenue. The university just reached a tentative deal with 6,400 resident physicians that includes an 18% raise.

Mamdani’s Grocery Stores Will Offer 30 Percent Discount on Some Products. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced today that his five planned city-owned grocery stores will sell produce, meat, and pantry staples at 30 percent below retail prices, saving families roughly a thousand dollars a year. The stores won’t sell beer, cigarettes, or hot food, specifically to avoid competing with local bodegas and corner stores. Critics immediately called it communism, which is a fun thing to say about a 30 percent discount on chicken thighs in a city where grocery prices have risen 33 percent since 2019.