A Trump-appointed judge was so upset with the living conditions in which ICE detained an immigrant in Long Island, New York, that he threatened to hold the government in contempt.

U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, issued a 24-page ruling Thursday vehemently castigating the Department of Homeland Security for refusing to provide photos of a holding room that illegally held a noncitizen for multiple nights, calling it “putrid and cramped.”

“ICE held them, day after day, without access to bunks, bedding, soap, showers, toothbrushes or clean clothes,” Brown stated in his ruling. “The space is unheated or poorly heated at night, while the outside temperature dropped to as low as 21 degrees.... To the extent they could sleep, they did so, crammed on the filthy floor, while the lights blared 24 hours a day.

“After nearly 35 years of experience with federal law enforcement in this judicial district, encompassing service as a prosecutor and a judge, I have never encountered anything like this,” Brown wrote.

Erron Anthony Clarke, the noncitizen in question, filed a habeas corpus petition with the court after being detained by ICE on December 5. Clarke had entered the U.S. legally on an H-2B work visa in 2018, but ended up overstaying the visa before marrying a U.S. citizen in 2023. He applied for permanent residency this year, but was detained earlier this month and thrown into a small cell with eight other men.

The cell, located in the federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York, had an open toilet and was only “designed to briefly detain a single individual,” Brown wrote, noting that Clarke was held in the crowded cell long beyond ICE’s own internal standards allow. Brown ruled on December 11 that Clarke’s detention violated due process and ordered him released.

Clarke’s ordeal exposed something bigger in Brown’s eyes, particularly “ICE’s horrendous detention practices.”

“This case implicates something more,” Brown said. “There is evidence that the conditions of the detention are substandard, abhorrent and likely unlawful.”

But when Brown asked ICE and DHS for a timeline of Clarke’s location during his detention, and for photos of his holding cell, the government gave “evasive and demonstrably false” information on Clarke’s whereabouts and refused to hand over photographs. The timeline Brown received, for example, claimed that the government moved Clarke between facilities in eight minutes, despite them being separated by about a 35-minute drive.

“These misstatements of fact serve to undermine the information presented and the reliability of the records maintained by ICE,” Brown wrote in his ruling, giving the government until December 30 to argue against being held in contempt.

It’s telling that the White House is going so far in its extreme, and probably unlawful, immigration enforcement that even a judge Trump chose is ruling against the administration. The story of DHS, ICE, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies in Trump’s second term is that of moral bankruptcy, violating laws and basic human rights to enact a racist immigration policy.

The political party that has historically pitched itself as a proponent of “states’ rights” is now advocating for a mass federal seizure of state land.

Speaking with Newsmax on Friday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested that the next course of action to curb immigration across the southern U.S. border should involve transferring “strips” of California to the federal government.

“We have an opportunity to take a strip of land right along the border, transfer it to the military for a three-year period. Which then, if someone crosses into our country and steps on that, they’re stepping on a military installation,” Burgum said. “That gives our troops that are down there working to secure that border more authorities about detaining people. If they step on that land, it helps to improve the security.”

It’s an escalation of a plan that the White House enacted earlier this year, when it took a  60-foot-wide strip of federal land across three states and turned the entire region into a “military installation.” Doing so effectively allowed Donald Trump to sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act, circumventing Congress to wield the military for border control.

The military base designation was supposed to expand the troops’ authority, granting them the ability to “temporarily detain trespassers” and to “conduct cursory searches of trespassers … to ensure the safety of U.S. service members and Department of Defense (DoD) property.”

But even that effort was unsuccessful. In May, a federal judge dismissed charges against nearly 100 immigrants that the administration claimed had entered the “national defense” zone, determining that the government had failed to prove the immigrants were aware they were entering a restricted military area.

Seizing land in California could prove to be an even bigger catastrophe. In the same interview, Burgum—the former governor of North Dakota—suggested that the best location to usurp state land would be “near the Pacific,” on the basis that the region is “an area of high traffic.”

Not even Fox Business can pretend like President Donald Trump isn’t wrecking the economy.

Fox Business anchors Lauren Simonetti and Stuart Varney reported Friday that a University of Michigan survey found that an index of consumer sentiment had sunk even further since mid-December.

There had been a “surprise drop” in consumer sentiment to 52.9 percent confidence in the economy, Simonetti said. That’s down from 53.3 percent just slightly earlier this month, CNBC reported separately.

“Consumers are just worried about the price of things and long-run inflation expectations as well,” Simonetti added.

“But with rather these dull numbers, the market seems to like it. Perhaps implying that we’ll get more Fed rate cuts,” Varney noted.

“The weakness, I think, is attractive. Bad news is actually good news for the market, maybe.”

While it may be good for the market in the short term, consumer confidence is an accurate means of understanding the current economic situation and consumers’ willingness to spend, borrow,........

© New Republic