Top DHS Official Resigns, Cites Trump's ‘Brazen Corruption’

CBS quietly deleted a fake claim about 9/11 families and Mamdani, a couple deported by ICE was found murdered in Guatemala, and a Kansas teacher was arrested for clapping at a town hall

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

The top statistician at the DHS resigned over the weekend, citing Trump’s “war on immigrants” and “brazen corruption.” Bari Weiss’s CBS News New York quietly deleted a line claiming “thousands of 9/11 victims’ families” wanted Mamdani banned, because no such list existed. An Overland couple deported by ICE was found bound and shot dead in a Guatemalan sugarcane field. And a Kansas physics teacher was carried out of a public meeting in handcuffs for clapping.

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Top DHS Official Resigns Citing ‘Brazen Corruption’

Most people use LinkedIn to announce a new job, not to list five separate wars their boss started.

Marc Rosenblum, the executive director of the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics, resigned over the weekend. On LinkedIn, he listed his reasons plainly: “the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts,” plus “the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption.”

Rosenblum spent a decade building the office, growing his team from 11 people to 45 under Biden. Under both the first Trump administration and Biden, he pushed to publish the most transparent immigration data ever released, including monthly ICE and CBP arrest and removal figures that had never been public before.

That data has not appeared since the first days of Trump’s second term. During that time, federal agents arrested more than 10,000 people in a single five-day span and killed at least 11 people during enforcement operations.

A right-wing outlet, America First Post, responded to the resignation by suggesting Rosenblum “easily could’ve been underreporting deportations.” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council called it an “outrageous lie,” noting Rosenblum spent his whole career trying to get DHS to share more.

Meanwhile, the agency’s own “Worst of the Worst” database listed fewer than 10,000 people with criminal records out of 220,000 detained, making it more of a “Worst of the Roughly Four Percent” database.

Bari Weiss’ CBS Forced to Retract Smear of Zohran Mamdani

Bari Weiss’s CBS News New York had to quietly remove a line from its Mamdani coverage after one guy with a Substack did what their entire editorial staff didn’t.

The outlet had claimed “thousands of 9/11 victims’ families” were asking Mamdani, who is Muslim, to skip the 25th anniversary remembrance ceremony. The claim traced back to a petition launched by Giovanni Galante, whose husband died in the attacks. By Tuesday morning it had more than 24,000 signatures.

The New York Post ran it first, with a headline blaring “Thousands of 9/11 families.” The body of the Post’s own story then said “at least 300 victims’ families.” Galante admitted there was no list of how many signatories were actually victims’ families and that the 300 figure was a guess.

“We all know each other, so…think about it,” Galante explained. “If you know 10 people and they give it to 10 more people they know that lost. That’s how we got the 300 number. I don’t go through the list and look at the names.”

After Legum reached out, CBS quietly revised the piece to say “some victims’ families.” Its Facebook caption was edited the same night from “thousands” to “some.”

Stories like this get corrected because someone actually reads the article and does the math. That’s what independent journalism does, and it only works if readers fund it. Become a paid subscriber to keep it going.

Couple Deported by ICE Murdered in Guatemala

Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz, 43, and Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz, 25, of Overland, Missouri were found gagged, bound, and shot to death weeks after they reunited in Guatemala. Their 14-month-old daughter was discovered crying beside her mother’s body, dehydrated, and taken to a medical center.

Pérez Paz was deported by ICE last year after agents in an unmarked vehicle swarmed his white work van as he drove to a roofing job. Agents told his brother there was no warrant, but arrested them for being in the country illegally. González de la Cruz later self-deported to be with her husband, growing fearful she would be detained and separated from her children despite an active asylum case.

ICE claimed Pérez Paz had two Missouri DUI convictions and four years of probation. No records in the Missouri court database support that account. The agency also cited a 2010 open-container charge in Palm Beach, an ordinance violation prosecutors dropped.

“If immigration hadn’t picked up my brother, my sister-in-law would still be alive,” said Rolando Pérez Paz, who is now raising the three girls. “Unfortunately, immigration — the government — doesn’t see that. It makes no difference to them.”

A candlelight vigil is planned at Overland City Hall on August 2.

Kansas Teacher Arrested for Clapping at Town Hall

The First Amendment now apparently covers speech, religion, press, and assembly, but not applause.

High school physics teacher Lux Claridge was carried out of a public meeting in handcuffs in Lyon County, Kansas last week for clapping. The Emporia City Commission was holding a zoning meeting on the proposed 1,000-acre, gigawatt-scale Flint Hills Digital Campus data center.

Attendees — the majority of whom opposed the project — had been warned against “clapping” and “snapping.” After one speaker ended with “we are the people, and the table belongs to us,” Claridge clapped five or six times.

The presiding officer instructed the police chief, “Chief, will you take the next person out that claps or anything.” Video shows Claridge insisting he had the right to clap before officers swarmed him and carried him out.

The First Amendment Coalition notes that applause can justify removal only when it “actually” disrupts a meeting, and that officials cannot simply label harmless clapping a breach of decorum, especially when they allow applause for views they like.

Claridge told KWCH he was “glad to be out” and undeterred. “It’s not really deterring me from speaking out or I guess, clapping.”

The city approved the zoning change anyway, which makes you wonder why they even held a meeting.

Stand Up and Fight Back Against Billionaires

These four stories all underscore one major point: American democracy can only survive if powerful people are held accountable. ICE just got the power to investigate its own shootings. A congressman’s toddler turned up with a fractured clavicle and a bruise shaped like a handprint, and the case was ruled ‘unsubstantiated.’ In both cases, the systems that were supposed to protect people failed. The only reason you know about any of it is because journalists did the work those systems wouldn’t.

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Talarico Opens a 5-Point Lead Over Ken Paxton in Texas. A new Texas Public Opinion Research poll released July 28 shows Democratic state Rep. James Talarico leading Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton 45% to 40% in the race to replace Sen. John Cornyn, a 2-point gain since May. The survey of 1,048 likely voters found Talarico winning moderates and independents, and trusted more on affordability by 9 points. He leads among Black voters by 63 points and Latino voters by 46. The poll landed weeks after a Texas Tribune and ProPublica investigation alleged Paxton voted in six elections using a former address, a bold platform for the state’s top law enforcement officer.

Citizens Bank Cuts Ties With CoreCivic and GEO Group After a Pressure. After providing more than $2.5 billion in financing to the two private prison companies that run immigration detention for ICE, Citizens Bank announced this month it is ending both relationships. The De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition had protested for months, escalating in April with a demonstration outside the bank’s Providence headquarters during its annual shareholders’ meeting. Every major bank in the country has now dropped CoreCivic and GEO Group. Citizens insisted the move was based on “changed commercial circumstances” and had nothing to do with the protests, which is exactly what you say when the protests worked.

Gen Z Adults Are Staying Away From Churches Because of Trump. Nearly half of Gen Z adults say Christians’ support of Trump has made them less likely to go to church, according to a new poll from the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. This is not exactly shocking news from the least religious generation in American history, but it does confirm that the evangelical strategy of going all-in on MAGA is working exactly as well as you’d expect with anyone under 30. The one exception: young Republican men, who have gotten more religious recently, reportedly drawn to churches that elevate white male authority. Meanwhile, the media keeps publishing trend pieces about a youth religious revival based on vibes and anecdotes.

The First 100%-Effective HIV Prevention Drug Is Approved and Going Global. The FDA approved lenacapavir, sold as Yeztugo, a twice-yearly injection that offers roughly 99% protection against HIV infection. Gilead Sciences, the pharmaceutical company behind most of the world’s HIV prevention drugs, signed licensing deals with six generic manufacturers and partnered with the Global Fund to get doses out at no profit across 120 low- and lower-middle-income countries. They’re trying to reach two million people in three years. About 1.3 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2023 alone. Decades of prevention campaigns never came close to stopping that.