Exclusive: Turning Point student describes ‘total chaos’ after Charlie Kirk shot dead
Before conservative activist Charlie Kirk took the mic at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, 19-year-old Beck Dishman captured a 6-second video of a packed crowd of supporters in red Make America Great Again hats, waving American flags on the sunny afternoon.
Shortly after noon local time, Kirk, the co-founder and CEO of conservative youth organization Turning Point USA was shot in the neck.
Kirk, 31, died after the shooting, according to President Donald Trump and reports.
Dishman, the vice president of the university’s Turning Point USA chapter, told Raw Story in a phone interview he was standing at the back of the audience near a fountain when Kirk was shot.
“People, when you heard the shot, they just kind of trampled through the fountain. There's like a stampede,” Dishman said.
“Obviously traumatic.”
Beck Dishman (provided photo)
Dishman said he didn’t see Kirk get shot himself, but that his 17-year-old sister did, who was at the event with her high school.
“Just a horrific event. I pray for Charlie Kirk and pray for his family and hope they're doing okay,” Dishman said before the news of Kirk’s death was announced.
“The aftermath was just total chaos.”
Dishman said he was able to call and reunite with his sister. Everyone was evacuated from campus, and he witnessed SWAT teams on his way to a friend’s apartment near campus, Dishman said.
“We just regrouped and are just recovering a little bit,” Dishman said.
“Praying and hoping and crossing our fingers.”
Of his involvement with the school’s Turning Point student chapter, Dishman said: “Being involved in the government and in the processes that make our democracy function so well is important to me and just being able to get involved, alone, is a lot more than others in my generation are willing to do,” Dishman said.
“It comes at costs, but we can't let other people scare us.”
Caleb Chilcutt, president of the Turning Point USA chapter, declined to comment when reached by Raw Story.
Dishman sent Raw Story further comment via text message:
“TPUSA UVU has always been committed to spreading American Values,” Dishman said.
“We cherish the constitution. We cherish democracy. And we cherish our families. Today was an attack on all three. We are praying for Charlie and his family and we will never, regardless of the opposition, relent.”
'Like being in a gang': the Jan. 6 rioter who left MAGA and told Trump to shove his pardon
When President Donald Trump issued more than 1,500 pardons to rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, one insurrectionist who spent time in prison for his role in the attack told the president in no uncertain terms he didn’t want forgiveness.
“I don't regret refusing the pardon by any means, but I'm kind of stooping myself to Trump's level when I tell him to shove it up his a–,” Jason Riddle told Raw Story.
“I actually emailed the White House, apologizing for saying that.”
Still, Riddle has been pushing for the White House and the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice to formally acknowledge his refusal of the pardon — because the country is “heading to a real dark place” again under Trump, he said.
“I absolutely want it official that I'm against this because people that support this are going to be complicit with wherever this is going,” Riddle said.
‘Unhealthy obsession’
Riddle knows better than most where Trump has taken America already. He became a Trump supporter after watching him command the crowd during the Republican primary debates for the 2016 election.
In college, after serving in the Navy, Riddle said he and a fellow veteran found following Trump “a way to turn our school experience into just being able to hang out and drink and argue with people.” Together, they traveled to Trump rallies, drinking in the candidate's promise to Make America Great Again.
Riddle and his friend stayed loyal through Trump's first term. On Jan. 6, they both attended Trump’s Stop the Steal event in Washington, where the president and key allies pursued the lie that Joe Biden's 2020 election victory was the result of voter fraud.
Trump told supporters to march on Congress, there to “fight like hell” to block certification of Biden's win.
When Riddle arrived at the Capitol, he joined the second wave of rioters who went inside.
Now, Riddle says formal acknowledgement that he refused a pardon for what he did there — stealing a bottle of wine and a Senate procedure book — would be part of his process of leaving behind the “unhealthy obsession” with Trump that brought him to that point.
Jason Riddle at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (Screen grab from the Department of Justice)
The insurrection failed. Trump faced criminal charges related to his election subversion but never faced trial and returned to power. Riddle was sentenced to 90 days in prison and three years of probation, in addition to paying $754 in restitution.
“You need to be in a state of tension to be a Trump supporter,” Riddle told Raw Story.
“You need to believe in something that’s not healthy to believe in. It’s only a matter of time that either consumes you, or you can free yourself.”
Now, the waiter from New Hampshire has asked members of Congress from his state — Sen. Maggie Hassan and Rep. Maggie Goodlander, both Democrats — for help in getting his refusal recognized.
In late August, Riddle emailed a Hassan staffer, asking for an approach to the pardon office.
“If I can be so bold as to ask if you can possibly pester them again,” he wrote, “I know they’re busy dismantling our democracy, I’d very much like to have this legitimized.”
Riddle said Goodlander and Hassan’s offices contacted the DOJ and pardon office but haven’t received responses.
The White House and DOJ did not respond to Raw Story's requests for comment.
‘That's when I was done’
Riddle is now part of a growing online community of former Trump supporters called Leaving MAGA, alongside members including a former teenage Trumper and a New York mother of four who was a QAnon believer.
While following the MAGA movement, Riddle said, “I didn't have any sort of normal friends."
“My whole family kind of gave up on me. My husband and I, it wasn't going well, and he thankfully stuck it out.”
Riddle said his time in MAGA involved a lot of heavy drinking with his college friend.
“It wasn't illegal, the life we were living, but it felt almost like being in a gang or [being] a gangster,” Riddle said.
“Everywhere we went, we were uninvited. People were upset, and then we started getting used to that and liking it.”
Prison forced sobriety on Riddle, he said, only for him to relapse after release. Having joined Alcoholics Anonymous, he hasn’t “gone back to that lifestyle since — not interested in it.”
“I replaced Trump rallies with Broadway shows and beach excursions, things like that,” Riddle said.
Jason Riddle in 2025 (Photo provided by Jason Riddle)
Years after the insurrection, Riddle was disturbed to learn just how close he had come to some of the people who died in and around the Jan. 6 attack, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who suffered two strokes after being attacked by rioters.
“That's pretty disturbing,” Riddle said.
He recalled learning about the death of Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter shot and killed by a U.S. Capitol police officer during the riot, from the man he said he “hawked” him the stolen Senate procedure book for $40.
“That's when I stopped thinking it was funny. I remember looking up and seeing all these cops barricading us into the Capitol building, and me thinking, ‘They can shoot us right now, legally,” Riddle said.
“I mean that’s the whole point of being a conservative, right? We're always trying to figure out [how] we can get away with legally shooting people, and there we were. Police telling us to, ‘Get back. Get away,’ and we're just ignoring [them]. I've never seen police officers so helpless, literally surrendering at the door where I'd entered.”
In April 2022, Riddle pleaded guilty to theft of government property and illegally protesting in the Capitol. When he reported to prison that summer, he said “correctional officers treated me better,” knowing he had participated in the Jan. 6 riot.
“My identity was, ‘I was the Capitol rioter,’” Riddle said. “It was actually positive attention, but it was in prison, so is that really positive attention?”
Riddle didn’t leave the Republican party. In fact, he declared his intention to run in the GOP primary for New Hampshire’s second congressional district, in both 2022 and 2024.
He wasn’t officially on the ballot in 2022 — because he was in prison. In a 2023 Ballotpedia survey, he called himself a “recently released January 6th political prisoner.”
When Trump asked supporters in 2023 to protest his indictment for falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, Riddle said: “That's when I was done.”
Trump ultimately was found guilty of 34 felonies at the New York trial.
“I'm like ‘You're going to get another Ashli Babbitt killed.'”
Riddle said he then abandoned his political aspirations and deleted social media accounts where he’d amassed a following.
“I thought I was a politician on social media,” he said. “I tried to drop out of the Congress race that I signed up for and really showed my expertise in politics there. You can't.”
‘We’ve gone back’
Riddle said he supported former Vice President Kamala Harris' run against Trump in the 2024 presidential election, first because she was the “anti-Trump” candidate, then because she won him over with her messaging, specifically: “We are not going back.”
But that's exactly what’s happened since Trump was re-elected, Riddle said.
“We've gone back. We're back,” Riddle said.
“Look at D.C. It's under occupation. The FBI is raiding [Trump’s] former security adviser [John Bolton]. It's pretty dystopian.”
Members of the National Guard walk near the White House on the National Mall. REUTERS/Al Drago
Riddle found his own recent interaction with the FBI concerning. After Trump's pardons were announced, he was contacted about retrieving his belongings.
“The FBI agents, basically, they didn't apologize, but [they] might as well have apologized,” Riddle said.
One “did say, ‘Sorry you had to go through this ordeal, and you will not be investigated anymore.’ He said that to me, and that's supposed to make me feel better? It doesn't. It's scary. It's a law enforcement agency choosing a political side.”
Another attack in Washington won't be out of the question at the end of Trump’s second term, Riddle said, “especially if he's forced to be removed.”
“I don't see him going peacefully,” Riddle said.
“It looks like Trump's literally setting the stage for it to happen, with the putting in the military in D.C.”
Leaving MAGA: NY mom who fell for anti-vaxxers, QAnon and Trump describes painful escape
Long before “crunchy” moms championed the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Erica Roach found a Facebook group of women who homeschooled their kids and embraced wellness.
As some moms today who seek more natural lifestyles for their families are also anti-vaccine, so were some of Roach’s Facebook friends.
By the time her fourth child was born, Roach said, she was “pretty anti-vax,” declining vaccines in her baby’s first year after initial shots at the hospital.
“I was just kind of in [the Facebook group], slowly getting radicalized to different things,” Roach told Raw Story.
Roach said her beliefs soon became more extreme, and she ended up following a path that led to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy movement whose “outrageous” premise revolved around Donald Trump waging war on Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles among supposed Democratic elites in Hollywood and the federal government.
Coming out of the “extremism group” took months, Roach said, and led to her being doxxed — seeing private information shared online.
“My house was attempted to be broken into. Somebody had called the sheriffs and [Child Protective Services] and anonymously said I was in a pedophile ring,” Roach said.
“As much as it scared me, all those things, it emboldened me. It’s like I want nothing to do with people who will do this to me.”
Roach has now joined communities of “former-something extremists,” among them Leaving MAGA, a growing online community of former Trump supporters.
“It's remarkable how much happier I am,” Roach said, noting that her relationships and physical health have improved since she left QAnon and MAGA.
‘Mortifying’
Roach’s path to extremism started when her ex-boyfriend began sending her “Q-drops,” messages from the anonymous figurehead of QAnon.
“He kept telling me that Trump was going to save the world,” said Roach.
Erica Roach (Provided photo)
Initially she was skeptical — after all, she had disliked both candidates in the 2016 election, Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
But in her early 20s, Roach had dabbled in conspiracy theories, “getting into the Alex Jones type of craziness,” referring to the InfoWars host, and once considering herself a “9/11 truther,” convinced the terror attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 were an “inside job.”
“It's so mortifying to admit out loud, but that's what kind of started me on this path,” Roach said.
Between her history and the moms’ Facebook group, when COVID-19 hit, Roach said she was “primed” to embrace QAnon. Soon she was spending between 18 to 24 hours a day as an administrator of a “pretty big Q-influencers channel” on Telegram, a platform popular with right-wing extremists.
“I listened to [Trump’s] pressers every day, religiously, at my dinner table with my kids because I wanted to know what was going on, and I was scared of COVID,” Roach said.
“I had believed that COVID was the tool that was supposed to enact this depopulation agenda.”
When Trump announced Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to accelerate development of the COVID-19 vaccine, Roach said “it was confusing.”
“All the people that I trusted, all the people I communicated with every day, were saying this vaccine is going to kill us all,” Roach said.
With Trump as the hero of the QAnon movement, reconciling vaccine conspiracies with his actions required “mental gymnastics,” Roach said.
But “it was just enough to make me start questioning things because I was like, ‘This doesn't make any sense,’” she said.
Roach monitored Telegram channels for anyone posting negatively about “Q” or Q supporters, such as former Trump adviser Michael Flynn and pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood.
In a channel critical of Wood, Roach began noticing “inconsistencies” with beliefs she held and also articles questioning Trump’s “gross abuse of power” and millions of dollars made during his first term.
“It was enough to be like, there's something wrong with me, not them,” she said.
Roach said she reached out to the channel administrator, who met her “with nothing but kindness and empathy and genuine caring.”
“When you're anonymous, and you're in an extremist group, you don't know what's on the other side waiting for you because you're under the impression that they're going to eat you alive for believing in this stuff,” Roach said.
Through the administrator, Roach connected with someone who debunked QAnon conspiracies. Still, Roach wasn’t fully out of her QAnon world by the time of the 2020 election and wished there was “some magical way for Trump to stay” in office when Joe Biden won, she said.
A friend offered to pay for Roach’s travel from New York state to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, but she wasn’t able to arrange childcare.
“I watched it live all day, knowing that people who represented the cause I believed in … were there, and I was horrified, completely horrified,” Roach said.
“Watching them attack the Capitol, attack police officers, the things that they were saying, it stopped me on a dime. I've never wanted to distance myself so much from something because I realized this isn't peaceful. This is violence. This is an attempted coup.”
‘Fighting back’
Roach extracted herself from QAnon via four to five months of “re-educating” herself, she said.
A restaurant worker, she went back to college to study medical billing and coding. Last month, she self-published a book, “Leaving The Mirror World,” about her departure from QAnon.
She voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and was disappointed the US did not elect its first female president.
“I voted down-ballot blue, and I will till the day I die,” Roach said.
“I know the destruction that's in the minds of the Republican Party, and I could never support that again.”
Roach said her former QAnon friends were “cheering on” Trump’s second presidency, particularly the building of detention camps for migrants and the deployment of the National Guard in major cities, which she found “disgusting” and “sadistic.”
“Everything that's happened so far was outlined in Project 2025,” Roach said of the right-wing policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation, a far-right think tank.
“It is a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream that this is all happening to their enemies.”
Nonetheless Roach said watching “hundreds” of neighbors protest against Trump on a bridge in her town every Saturday made her optimistic.
“That's something uniquely American, I think,” she said. “That we're not going to destroy everything without fighting back.”
'Comes like a wave': Sandy Hook teacher on trauma now hitting Minneapolis shooting victims
The mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis on Wednesday in which two children were killed and 17 people injured was simply yet another product of too-lax gun laws, said a teacher who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting nearly 13 years ago.
Abbey Clements, now executive director of Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence, spoke to Raw Story the day after a 23-year-old shooter fired into the church at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.
The children at the Pre-K-through-eighth-grade school were attending mass.
“Every other country has folks who have mental health issues. Every country has issues that we have,” Clements said.
“We just allow easy access to firearms and ammunition, and that's why we have this problem.”
On Dec. 14, 2012, Clements was a second grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School when a gunman killed 20 children and six adults. Shootings like Tuesday's remind Clements of “just the level of horror and tragedy and what it does to a community,” she said.
Screen grab of Abbey Clements interview with Raw Story via Zoom
“It comes over like a wave,” Clements said.
“It's very visceral for me. It's like 13 years, but it was five minutes ago.”
Wednesday’s mass shooting was far from the first in 2025. Forty-four school shootings have occurred in the United States this year, killing 18 people and injuring at least 74, according to CNN.
“We can't wait around for any kind of federal change,” Clements said.
“What we're calling for is a seat at the table when it comes to local, district, state policies, protocols. We know our kids. We know what's best for kids, and there are things that we could be doing.”
Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence has nearly 30,000 members, including school shooting survivors, retired teachers, administrators and advocates.
One action the group is pushing for is for schools to distribute educational materials, ideally at least three times per year, about safely securing firearms in the home.
“We have allowed this issue to become partisan,” Clements said.
“It's not a political issue. It's a public health crisis. We as educators have a place in this fight.”
‘Brace ourselves’
The Minneapolis shooter, Robin Westman, was armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol, purchased lawfully, and died at the scene by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A name change application for a Robert Westman, with the same birthday as Robin Westman, was filed in 2020, explaining Westman "identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification,” outlets including ABC News reported.
Shortly after shots were fired through the windows of the church at Annunciation, prominent conservatives such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) began to push anti-trans messaging.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel both said Westman was male.
Clements said: “In this movement, we brace ourselves for the details because we know that the other side will hang on to anything — I say on the other side, it doesn't even make any sense.
“This is about saving lives. It's about children living, and people being able to go [to the] grocery store and to the movies and to a concert without getting killed — we brace ourselves to hear these details because we know that that's going to fall prey to whatever theory that they're going to concoct to blame.”
Right-wing commentators have falsely claimed a rise in transgender mass shooters, particularly after 28-year-old Audrey Hale opened fire at The Covenant School in Nashville in March 2023, killing three teachers and three 9-year-olds.
A police spokesperson told ABC at the time Hale was assigned female at birth and used he/him pronouns.
Clements said the fundamental problem was that it is “too easy to get a gun and too easy to get ammunition.”
“The [Minneapolis] shooter left a footprint of trouble, of crisis, and there are people who saw that, and there are things that could have been done,” Clements said.
‘Just horrible’
When news of the shooting in Minneapolis broke, Clements said she received a text from one of her students who survived the Sandy Hook shooting and is now in her 20s.
“They're forever changed, and it's not fair,” Clements said.
Clements recalled the day of the shooting.
Shortly after she entered her classroom following a check-in with Principal Dawn Hochsprung, Clements said, she heard “what sounded like metal folding chairs falling.”
She said she pulled two kids into her classroom.
“We huddled into the coats that were hanging on the side of the wall and listened to 154 shots blaring through the loudspeaker. I knew that this was traumatizing for them," Clements said.
“I wish I could protect them from the sound, and I tried to distract them. I sang songs to them and read books to them, but it was a long five minutes.”
Clements remembers a knock at the classroom door and eventually leading the kids to a firehouse where they were reunited with their parents, which was “just pure hell,” she said.
“It's difficult for me to talk about that because it was just rumors, and you’re starting to realize what's happening, and parents picking up their kids, and people couldn't find theirs, and it was just horrible,” Clements said.
Hochsprung was one of the 26 people killed.
Clements returned to teaching her students at an empty intermediate school nearby.
“I did that with kids who were traumatized,” she said. “We ran out of a building together, and they lost friends.
“I didn't want anybody to leave, go anywhere by themselves, so I would take everybody to the bathroom with me if anybody had to go.”
Following the Sandy Hook shooting, Clements said, she reached out to teachers who survived the shooting at Columbine High School in April 1999. There, two 12th-graders murdered 13 students and one teacher before killing themselves.
Those survivors told her the Sandy Hook shooting would stick with her “forever,” and the trauma would be “lifelong.”
“One of them said to me, ‘You'll think about it every day,’” Clements said.
To teachers, students and others traumatized by the Minneapolis mass shooting, Clements said: “I think what I would say is that I'm so, so sorry and that you are not alone, that there is a community of us out there, here to offer support in any way we can.”
I was a teenage Trumper: How a first-gen immigrant fell out of love with MAGA
At 21, Steve Vilchez is much like any other senior at Illinois State University. Studying biology teacher education, he aspires to teach high school science.
But, Vilchez has an unusual story to tell. From 2016 until the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, he was a passionate teenage Donald Trump fan.
Breaking with Trump and the Republican party he dominates was a slow and challenging process, Vilchez said, particularly since Trump surged back to power this year.
Vilchez has found support in Leaving MAGA, an online community of former Trump supporters of which, he said, he’s by far the youngest member.
Setting out to tell others about his experiences, Vilchez told Raw Story: “I'm doing much better now than I was when I was in MAGA.”
‘The other side’
Back in 2016, while classmates played video games, Vilchez obsessed over politics and the U.S. presidential election.
He couldn’t vote. Just 13, he was still a middle-schooler in Berwyn, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. But he saw himself as a “very staunch Democrat,” all the same.
He called himself a “Bernie bro,” backing Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, for the Democratic presidential nomination. When the party nominated the former New York senator and U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Vilchez swallowed his disappointment, excited to witness the anticipated election of the first female U.S. president.
History had other ideas, so when Trump won, Vilchez decided to give him a chance, first by learning more about “the other side.”
“I was a little bit concerned about how my future was going to be, how my parents’ future was going to be,” said Vilchez, who says he is a "Hispanic, first-generation immigrant.”
Steve Vilchez (Photo courtesy of Steve Vilchez)
“But … I wanted to see if maybe Donald Trump really isn't as bad as the Clinton campaign would say.”
Vilchez decided to do some research. That led him down a rabbit hole, lined with YouTube videos and social media posts.
Drawn to younger conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens, he also found Tucker Carlson, then a primetime Fox News star.
“Very quickly,” Vilchez “abandoned” his previous news diet of NBC, ABC, Vice, Vox and CNN, in favor of Fox News, One American News Network and Breitbart.
“It quickly became like an echo chamber for myself. I was only willing to hear things that supported Trump and Trump only,” Vilchez said.
“It was kind of like a downward spiral from there.”
As Vilchez became a “very, very hardcore Trump supporter,” some friends stopped talking to him.
Still, he found half-a-dozen other Trump fans to eat lunch with at school.
“Each day we would all talk about Trump, saying how he's this great person, and just repeating the same things over and over, just parroting each other and saying like a bunch of ‘what ifs’, and ‘Trump's gonna drain the swamp. He's gonna find the corruption,’” Vilchez said.
Vilchez listened to the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. He came to believe some “conspiracies that MAGA was saying.”
“If someone says a lie enough, people are going to believe it, and this lie was propagated so many times that I bought into it,” Vilchez said.
“I bought into this lie that there was this somehow a deep state that Trump was going to expose, and Trump keeps talking about it to this day that there's a deep state, but he hasn't done anything about it.”
‘Question my allegiance’
Vilchez stayed on the MAGA bandwagon throughout Trump's first term.
But in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged, he began to “really question my actual allegiance to Trump.
“Seeing Donald Trump practically downplay it, and in a sense calling it ‘Kung Flu,’ ‘the China virus,’ and ultimately, when he reached a point where he was telling people to inject bleach in the body, [advising taking] hydroxychloroquine [and other medicines not proven against COVID], [and saying,] ‘You could shine a light through the body,’ that made me very upset.”
“Even though I didn't know much about immunology and disease prevention, I knew that these things were dangerous. I knew that some people might get hurt, and in rare cases, they might die.”
Vilchez said he started to further “question my faith with MAGA” when he considered the movement’s climate change denialism.
Despite such doubts, Vilchez remained a supporter through the 2020 election and at first “bought into” Trump’s claims the election was stolen by former vice president Joe Biden, the victorious Democratic nominee.
Vilchez liked a thousand tweets in three days, as “so-called evidence,” he said.
Now, he wants to “unlike those, so that I don't have to remind myself of those, but also I kind of do like seeing those in my memories because it reminds me of the change I've made.”
A “seed began to plant” in terms of doubts about MAGA, Vilchez said, and “as the days got closer to the insurrection, more water was being added to that plant.”
Watching the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, on live news coverage shown in his high-school English class, Vilchez said he was struck by the hypocrisy of Trump and his supporters.
Both said they “back the blue, blue lives matter,” Vilchez said, but “at the same time, they were completely complacent and tolerating many rioters and insurrectionists violently attacking and ultimately causing the death of Capitol police officers, so I was very taken aback by that.”
After that, Vilchez “made a vow to myself to not support Trump, but I still remained a pretty firm conservative.”
He didn’t fully leave the Republican party until the 2022 midterms.
“I was seeing the evidence happen real time, and as much as it pained for me to realize that maybe Trump was wrong, I had to take that pill,” Vilchez said.
“Very reluctantly, I made that choice to realize Trump isn't this godly figure that people claim him to be.”
‘I’m done’
Vilchez said the last straw was continued false claims of election fraud.
“Seeing [Trump Senior Adviser] Kari Lake kind of go back to that 2020 tactic of, ‘Oh, I lost, so it must be rigged.’ At that point, I was like ‘I'm done with the Republican Party,’” Vilchez said.
“This is what you're going to keep doing? You guys lost 2020, just admit that as much as it sucks, you guys lost.”
Lake lost her runs for Arizona governor and the U.S. Senate. Still a fervent Trump supporter, she is now overseeing the attempted closure of Voice of America.
Vilchez voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in his first presidential election and considers himself a “center left-leaning” voter.
But he retains some “conservative-ish” beliefs.
He’s a “big supporter of guns,” and “pro-life,” but he also wouldn’t “force my opinion” if his future wife wanted an abortion, he said.
He believes in health care for all, the need to meet the challenge of climate change and the benefits of giving children free school lunch.
“As much as people might call that socialist, I disagree,” Vilchez said. “I think it's called being a good person.
“In MAGA, we were all kind of living in fear of other people. That's the way that MAGA seems to operate is they like to run by fear … Donald Trump knows how to weaponize fear very, very well. It's very scary that he knows how to do it.”
Under the second Trump administration, Vilchez said, raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have prompted tough conversations with his parents.
“It reached a point where my parents sat me and my brothers down and talked to us, saying, ‘Hey, if we get deported, this is what's going to happen,’” Vilchez said.
“I never thought that I’d have to have that conversation, but given that it's a reality from any point until Trump's term ends, it's kind of grim.”
His previous support for Trump, he said, “goes to prove that very young minds are very impressionable, and if they're not guided correctly, then these things can happen.
“Since I'm trying to become a teacher, I should make sure that I teach students how to check their sources.”
'Something needs to change': Anti-Trump vendors flood Bernie Sanders resistance rally
CHICAGO — From crude to punny, rebellious to pleading, outside of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” rally in Chicago on Sunday, dozens of vendors sold a colorful array of shirts, hats and buttons slamming President Donald Trump.
Stan Sinberg traveled from San Francisco with a blue wagon he dubbed the “The Roving Anti-Trump ‘Save Democracy Tour!’ Band-Wagon.”
“Now in its 9th WTF Year!” read a sign Sinberg affixed atop an array of buttons he created and sold for $5.
Their slogans: “Non-Felon for President”
“Deport ICE”
“Don’t Drink the Bleach!”
“Border Personality Disorder" with a frowning photo of Trump.
Buttons on Stan Sinberg's wagon dubbed “The Roving Anti-Trump ‘Save Democracy Tour!’ Band-Wagon.” (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
For seven years, Sinberg has traveled with his “band-wagon” to protests across the country.
“When [Trump] lost in 2020, I had a banner that said ‘happily going out of business sale,’ but he didn’t leave,” Sinberg said.
“He tried to steal the election, and then he just kept being a presence.”
Sinberg has been protesting against Trump since he secured the Republican nomination for president the first time in 2016.
“I wanted to do what I could to prevent him from foisting himself on the rest of the country,” said Sinberg, who was living in Trump’s native New York at the time.
Sinberg wasn’t the only vendor to travel thousands of miles to sell merchandise outside the University of Illinois Chicago Isadore and Sadie Dorin Forum.
Bobby Murray from Alabama sold T-shirts and hats with JR Concessions featuring a range of rallying cries from “MAGA More Are Getting Arrested” to simply “F— Trump."
“I like old Bernie,” Murray said.
“Something needs to change, that’s for sure.”
Bobby Murray sells T-shirts outside Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Fighting Oligarchy" rally. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
Terrill Leathers sold black “Rage Against the Machine” shirts showing Sanders resisting arrest at a Chicago civil rights protest in 1963.
“It should be important for all Americans to come out because the things that’s going on right now is outrageous,” Leathers said.
Terrill Leathers sells "Rage Against the Machine" shirts in Chicago. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
A button vendor, Sunshine Tea, who uses a “stage” last name, lives on the South Side of Chicago but spent years in Vermont and once met Sanders.
“When I met him, he was in the grocery store,” Tea said. “He was sick, and he was a senator. He was buying his own groceries, so I know for a fact he’s the only congressperson that knows what a gallon of milk costs.”
Sunshine Tea sells buttons outside the "Fighting Oligarchy" rally in Chicago. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
Tajh Pordos from St. Louis sold T-shirts featuring the "Fight Oligarchy" slogan with photos of Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has shown up at some of Sanders' events on the tour.
“I really feel like this is a very good hustle,” Pordos said. “Overall, it’s a good thing.”
Tajh Pordos sells "Fight Oligarchy" shirts in Chicago. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
Sanders, an independent from Vermont, spoke alongside Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), a member of the progressive "Squad" with Ocasio-Cortez, and Illinois Sen. Robert Peters, who is running for Congress in Illinois' 2nd Congressional District.
Sanders called Trump "the most dangerous president in perhaps the history of this country" at the Chicago event.
"This is a demagogue whose function in life is to serve the oligarchy and to try to divide us up," Sanders said.
'Culture of fear': College records reveal campus ICE panic
A quick Walgreens trip near campus turned into an interrogation about foreign travel. Uniformed officers demanded citizenship papers from students. The FBI searched for a professor in the Center of African Studies. Department heads advised biology labs to lock their doors after U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) agents were allegedly spotted nearby.
Such stories ricocheted around the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign last spring, ratcheting up anxiety, internal emails obtained by Raw Story show.
Police chief Matt Ballinger wrote there was no evidence ICE had carried out any such operations but also explained the problem: ICE doesn’t notify local police when making inquiries.
The emails show how fear cascaded across Illinois’ flagship campus, where more than 12,000 international students — around 20 percent of the student body — suddenly felt at risk.
The panic unfolded amid high-profile national cases, as ICE detained student visa holders who had spoken out in support of Palestine. At Illinois, professors and administrators scrambled to respond: how should students handle being stopped by officers? Could they report crimes without drawing unwanted attention? Was it safe to attend graduation or even walk across campus?
As the Trump administration cracks down even on immigrants with green cards and visas, such panic amid the second-largest international student population at any U.S. public university is emblematic of the higher education landscape.
‘It’s going to be like this a long time’
“Another day, another rumor,” Martin McFarlane, director of International Student and Scholar Services, wrote on April 17 to Chief Ballinger and two associate chancellors.
“It’s going to be like this for a long time, isn’t it…”
Rumors persisted. But by mid-August, the university had “no confirmed reports” of ICE on campus, Patrick Wade, a UIUC spokesperson, told Raw Story.
Wade called incidents of panic “certainly concerning,” given “international diversity is one of the things that makes Illinois special.”
Megan Eagen-Jones, an assistant professor of musicology and director of undergraduate studies, said academic leaders sought guidance on “appropriate allyship and advocacy that's not breaking the law but is also standing by students who have these concerns.”
“We understand the anxiety and concern that students — and faculty and staff, for that matter — are feeling,” Wade said.
Wade said the university informed the campus community about “what to do if they encounter a federal agent” and “proactively communicated” that local and campus police “do not enforce immigration law, nor do they provide resources to federal law enforcement to do so.”
At other colleges, particularly in Florida, campus police departments have voluntary agreements with ICE that deputize campus officers for immigration enforcement duties.
“The past months have been unsettling and frightening for many members of our campus community, and we appreciate the work of all those involved in supporting our students and scholars,” Wade said.
‘Another universe’
Since Trump took office for a second term, the climate has changed at the University of Illinois, especially for international students “fearful of being deported all of a sudden, having their academic studies disrupted,” Eagen-Jones said.
“It tethers to every aspect of their life. The fears are pretty real and pretty raw.”
Eagen-Jones wrote to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on April 17, asking how to advise international students who want to file a police report but “are concerned about how that may draw ICE attention to them.”
“It sort of feels like living in another universe,” Eagen-Jones said.
“Five years ago. I wouldn't have imagined that I would be having the kinds of conversations with students that I'm having today and last semester.”
Eagen-Jones said international students were “worried … because if they express any political views whatsoever that might be seen as minor critiques … that would be foundation for some disastrous thing happening to them.”
Detention by ICE is the primary concern — stoked by the fates of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University, and Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia, both detained in March over views expressed in public forums.
A Raw Story investigation revealed a university in Florida flagging for police all negative commentary about the school’s partnership with ICE, raising free speech concerns.
“I want my students … not to be worried about being deported because they had a minor traffic violation, or they said the wrong thing in the wrong context,” Eagen-Jones said.
Eagen-Jones has participated in training sessions to learn more about international students’ rights.
“I'm in a college that really, really deeply values global connections and global creativity and is very much indebted to global partnerships,” Eagen-Jones said. “Rhetoric that demonizes international students and migrants, it's hard to process."
‘Distressing’
In an April 15 email, Supriya Prasanth, professor and head of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, wrote to academic leaders to report the Walgreens incident involving a student of “Indian origin” who was left “quite shaken.” The similar incident at Target involved a student of “Chinese origin.”
Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate College, responded, “It is disheartening to hear that one of our graduate students had an unsettling experience while simply trying to complete an everyday task.
“Even when an encounter appears polite, being unexpectedly approached and questioned can be distressing, particularly for international students who may already be under significant stress in the current moment.”
Alejandro Lleras, professor of psychology and associate dean for inclusive excellence, reminded James Imlay, professor and associate head of microbiology, that “in any interaction with a federal officer (ICE, FBI, DHS), it is of paramount importance that people do not lie.”
“Lying to a federal officer can be taken as a reason to cancel someone’s legal status in the US. But, I would say that students are not necessarily required to answer questions either,” Lleras wrote.
Lleras noted that spaces requiring an ID swipe for access, such as dorms and labs, are considered private and “safe.” ICE agents would be permitted in public spaces, including classrooms.
Lleras asked Imlay if he had any evidence ICE agents were in town, as reported by students, adding: “This is important because there is also a fear that some people might be impersonating agents, in which case there are legal repercussions for this.”
Ballinger, the chief of police, told leaders charges would likely be brought if an impersonator was located, but police found no indication of agents or impersonators.
“We continue to try and identify anyone that may be impersonating ICE, but it is like chasing our tails at this point with third-hand information that is incorrect,” Ballinger wrote on April 17 in an email chain involving “pressing questions about ICE agents.”
McFarlane, director of ISSS, noted that “rumors were flying,” and a black car parked with a “secure, contain, protect” decal “may have been misinterpreted as ICE.”
“Very frustrating but it’s going to continue as long as people are scared,” said Robin Kaler, associate chancellor in strategic communications and marketing.
Nearly a month later, Ballinger forwarded to campus police leaders an FBI contact who could answer questions about ICE operations.
“This is a serious safety issue,” Ballinger said.
Universal fears
As ICE agents continue to raid locations from Home Depots to farms and food markets, a nationwide Campus Defense Network has grown from a group in North Carolina.
Siembra NC provides “ICE Watch” training to at least 40 schools in 20 states, said Andrew Willis Garcés, a senior strategist.
Rumors of ICE sightings on the Illinois campus are similar to concerns at campuses across the country, Garcés said.
Siembra NC gathers at North Carolina State University (Photo courtesy of Siembra NC)
Florida Atlantic Faculty union leader Chris Robe said such fear is cultivated as a means of control.
“I think the point is the fear … to make people wary, to shut them up,” Robe said.
“How are they going to do [campus raids]? Practically, they're not. But they’re going to create the illusion that they can, and for a lot of people, that illusion is enough to stay quiet.”
He added that the impact of that strategy is unmistakable: “There’s a culture of fear this time around, of people not willing to speak on the record or just be public.”
Siembra NC has supported students setting up watch alert networks while some students are showing up to support international students at court, Garcés said.
“The concerns are related to what they've seen in the news — a student goes to a regular ICE check-in and is detained without warning, or students on campus who have valid visa work permits, green cards, getting detained, just getting abducted in broad daylight.
“International students are very understandably worried about any contact with law enforcement, with federal agencies.
“It really has, I think, changed just so much about it with what it means to be someone studying in the U.S.”
'Skeevy' Epstein gave us the creeps: AI experts recall bizarre island visit
Twenty-three years ago, pioneers in artificial intelligence received an invitation to a Caribbean conference funded by “some rich guy.”
Now there is dismay among those who attended the three-day St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium in the U.S. Virgin Islands in April 2002 — because that “rich guy” was Jeffrey Epstein, the financier later convicted as a child sex offender who faced federal sex trafficking charges when he killed himself in 2019.
Amid swirling scandal, as President Donald Trump resists calls to release FBI files on his former close friend, two participants in the St. Thomas symposium told Raw Story what they remembered, having never before discussed the event with the media.
Another two attendees shared memories of the symposium via email.
“It was very disturbing when I first discovered that there was that connection, and I wish it had never happened,” said Benjamin Kuipers, a computer scientist who retired from the University of Michigan last year.
Symposium attendees said they did not witness illegal activity or have concerns about children in Epstein’s presence.
“When the Epstein thing all hit the fan, people would say … ‘Everybody had to know,’” said Mary Shepherd, 75, an owner of machine-reasoning AI company Cycorp who attended the meeting with her late husband and cofounder, Doug Lenat.
‘And I'm like, No, everybody didn't have to know, because I didn't know that this was going on.”
‘Really strange vibe’
The symposium took place on St. Thomas, but Shepherd and Kuipers recalled visiting Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, two miles away.
Kuipers remembered a banquet on the beach. An attendee who declined to be named said via email they remembered being “taken by boat to a beach on [Epstein’s] island for a bbq. We were not taken to any buildings on the island.”
Kuipers said: “As far as I know, being on Jeffrey Epstein's Island was a one-off. We were brought there for the banquet, and then brought back.”
Shepherd remembered going to the island on a boat sent by Epstein for her and Lenat, and MIT cognitive and computer scientist Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016, and his wife, Gloria Rudisch Minsky.
“Because the sea was a little rough, as soon as I got there, I needed to use the ladies room, so I went inside to use it, and Ghislaine Maxwell [Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend] was in the room that I had to walk through to get to the bathroom, and there were two girls there who I assumed were her children,” Shepherd told Raw Story.
Shepherd said she thought the teenage girls were Maxwell’s children “because of the way they were interacting,” which Shepherd compared to when “your mom was giving you instructions.”
In 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for sex trafficking and other charges related to Epstein’s abuse of teenage girls.
Amid the current Epstein scandal, Maxwell is at the center of considerable attention. Last Friday, after giving a prison interview to Todd Blanche, Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, Maxwell was transferred from Florida to a minimum security facility in Texas.
“Things just did not seem right,” Shepherd said. “There was a lot of security. There was just a really strange vibe when I was there.”
Shepherd said she told her husband she was “not comfortable here,” and they left with Minsky and his wife to return to St. Thomas.
Shepherd said she didn’t report anything from her visit because “it was just a feeling.”
She and Lenat declined a Cycorp investment from Epstein. She did not recall the amount.
“Epstein had been considering investing in our company, and I said, ‘Doug, I don't like him. There's something wrong with him. I don't like him. He's a wheeler-dealer, and he's not the kind of person we want to be representing our technology,’ so we decided not to take his money.”
Shepherd recalled a conversation with her husband after Epstein was arrested in July 2019.
“It's like, ‘Wow, we really dodged that bullet,’” Shepherd said. “I'm really glad we got that feeling that he was skeevy because that would have been terrible. Terrible.”
‘That's rich guys for you’
During the symposium, Epstein “walk[ed] around like any sponsor of one of those things would,” Shepherd said.
Kuipers said: “It was clear he had a number of attractive young women around. Aside from just noticing that and thinking, ‘Well, that's rich guys for you,’ I really didn't have any sense that any of them were underage. Now, what that really means is it didn't occur to me to think about it.”
In August 2019, Slate reported that the AI theorist Roger Schank recalled Epstein walking into the symposium “with two girls on his arm.”
“[Epstein] was in the back, on a couch, hugging and kissing these girls,” said Schank, who died in 2023.
Neither Shepherd nor Kuipers remembered seeing Epstein hugging or kissing girls.
“I guess I had the impression that he had a number of assistants, and so they were functioning as assistants to him as he sort of hosted the conference,” Kuipers said.
“They were both at the conference itself in St. Thomas, and they were on the island. But, I mean, they were helping out, doing various things.”
An undated photo shows Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The photo was entered into evidence during the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, accused of sex trafficking, in New York City. Courtesy via U.S. Attorney's Office/Handout via REUTERS
“At the time, there were a variety of rich people who were interested in AI and would spend money to make this happen,” Kuipers said.
Epstein paid for accommodations and travel, offering rides on his jet, two attendees said.
Kuipers declined the ride since he was teaching at the University of Texas, Austin, so flying from New York “didn't make any sense at all.”
Aaron Sloman, 88, a philosopher and AI and cognitive researcher, attended the conference and co-authored a paper on the discussions. He told Raw Story via email Epstein paid for his travel from the U.K. He traveled on “a private plane owned by Epstein” to the island, he wrote.
“I think the accommodation provided by Epstein was lavish, though I can't remember details now,” said Sloman, citing memories “partly restricted by my slowly but steadily worsening dementia.”
The attendee who requested anonymity recalled staying in a “nice hotel” on St. Thomas.
Kuipers said: “Here was this rich guy, and he wanted to hold a conference … bringing together a whole bunch of people that I knew quite well, and we were talking about interesting things, and it was in the Virgin Islands ... so I figured, why not?
“Of course, a couple decades later, it became clear why not, but that was way in the future.”
‘Completely clueless’
Kuipers said the conference’s small size, with about 20 attendees, was appealing.
“The little ones tend to be particularly exciting because if you've got a bunch of people who are working on the same kind of stuff, then you can really spend a lot of time together, so I kind of felt like that was this,” Kuipers said.
“Clearly, news these days makes it pretty clear that there was a subtext going on. I was completely clueless.”
Kuipers said he didn’t remember spending time on St. Thomas beyond the conference days.
“We all spent a lot of time talking about how to solve these AI problems, and we had very compatible views,” Kuipers said. “We did go swimming. There’s a visual image of being on the beach and swimming in the water and enjoying that.”
Shepherd said she thought she and Lenat arrived a day early and stayed a day after the symposium.
“It's a beautiful island, and it’s almost like, ‘Oh, come to paradise for a meeting,’” she said.
Kuipers, Sloman and Shepherd all said the symposium did not have a significant impact on their work.
“I was actually somewhat disappointed because it had been built up as being this big deal, and it really wasn't,” Shepherd said.
Sloman said he didn’t remember if Epstein himself presented about AI or cognitive science.
“I think he was hoping to be able to use the new AI technology to extend/enhance his financial activities, though I don't recall that aspect being discussed,” Sloman wrote. “It could explain his motivation for spending so much money to bring people to the symposium.”
The attendee who requested anonymity described Epstein as “like an ADHD curious kid.”
“He was eccentric. If he had an interesting conversation with a scientist or liked them, he’d ask them what they would do if they had more funding,” the attendee wrote.
“Sometimes he’d ask a scientist a technical question, then would follow with a personal question, which I always found odd."
The same attendee said “Epstein had an interest in AI, believed it would grow in importance, and was very fond of Marvin Minsky.”
In a May 2016 deposition, unsealed in 2019, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre — who killed herself in April this year — alleged Maxwell directed her to have sex with Minsky, The Verge reported. Minsky’s widow told the New York Post Minsky did not have sex with any girls.
“We were always together,” Rudisch said. “We didn’t stay at [Epstein’s] house or anything.”
Rudisch told the Post “none of” the girls at Epstein’s residences “seemed very young.”
“I’m a pediatrician, I think I would have noticed,” Rudisch said.
'DeSantis is the black hole': Florida hides records of college cooperation with ICE
At least 15 Florida universities have quietly signed agreements to voluntarily cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — but how those partnerships are being implemented remains largely hidden from view.
Among the first to formalize such a partnership was New College of Florida, a small public liberal arts college whose board of trustees got a conservative makeover by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023.
In April, New College’s campus police signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with ICE, but more than three months later the school has not reported any immigration enforcement activity or provided further details on its partnership with the agency.
When Raw Story asked the school for email communications about ICE, immigrants and undocumented students from its chief of police, Jennifer Coley, the Florida public records request yielded just over 2,000 responsive documents.
But nearly 1,500 pages of emails sent were entirely covered with black boxes. The rest were heavily redacted.
One of nearly 1,500 blacked out pages sent to Raw Story in response to a public records request about ICE at New College of Florida
“I've been doing open government law in Florida since 1991, and just as I've not seen an abuse of power like you see with Ron DeSantis, I haven't seen this animosity towards open government and access to public records ever,” Barbara Petersen, executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, told Raw Story.
“We used to think [Republican governor turned U.S. senator] Rick Scott was bad.
“Ron DeSantis is the black hole where sunshine goes to die because they're so difficult about everything.”
Among visible information shared with Raw Story — hundreds of pages of mostly police training advertisements and newsletter blasts — few specifics could be ascertained about the execution of New College’s agreement with ICE, which grants state and local law enforcement the “authority to perform certain immigration enforcement functions” as part of Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“We were one of the first institutions in the state university system to sign the MOA with ICE,” Jamie Miller, vice president of communications and chief marketing officer of New College of Florida, told Raw Story.
“We are proud partners with a variety of law enforcement agencies, and we stand ready, willing and able to assist our partner agencies in their efforts to keep Floridians safe and follow the law.”
As of July 29, according to the ICE website, ICE had signed 868 memoranda of agreement with programs across 40 states.
A federal database of participating agencies shows New College’s 14-page agreement, signed by Coley, that allows selected school law enforcement personnel to “perform certain functions of an immigration officer under the direction and supervision of ICE.”
Raw Story did not receive a response from ICE or Coley. The Executive Office of the Governor referred questions to the Board of Governors for the State University System of Florida, which recommended "contacting individual universities for specific information about the partnerships."
"Several police departments at universities within the State University System of Florida are partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement," Cassandra Edwards, director of communications for the State University System of Florida, said via email.
"Our university police departments are always encouraged to collaborate with other law enforcement entities to enforce state and federal law."
Asked about the redactions in Raw Story’s public records request, New College’s Office of General Counsel, cited exemptions for cybersecurity and active criminal intelligence.
“I don't understand how information about ICE activities and undocumented students on campus could be considered active criminal investigative information,” Petersen said.
“I don't understand how this is active in any way since they're just complying with ICE.”
‘Red alert’
Coley sent New College’s signed MOA to ICE on March 12, according to emails obtained by Raw Story.
But more than two months later, Coley reported the college had not “received any communication from ICE,” according to an email sent to David Brickhouse, New College’s vice president for legal affairs.
In the same message, Coley said ICE had incorrectly listed the school as a “municipality instead of a state agency.”
Around the same time, Coley received communications that appeared to ready local law enforcement for federal coordination. On May 6, Coley received a “red alert” bulletin from Jennifer “Cookie” Pritt, executive director of the Florida Police Chiefs Association, about ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). The message outlined how state and local agencies could contact ICE for support during immigration-related encounters, including routine traffic stops.
“ERO has established a response center for fielding calls from our state and local partners when encountering immigration-related matters,” the May 6 email said.
“ERO will assist state and local law enforcement partners who may encounter individuals during their normal routine vehicle stops with determining alienage and inadmissibility/removability.”
The email provided contact information for Krome Detention Center in Miami.
Shortly after New College’s memorandum of agreement was signed on April 15, Coley forwarded an email from Rachel Kamoutsas, chief of staff for the Board of Governors, that included a letter from state Attorney General James Uthmeier.
The letter concerned the temporary restraining order granted in the Florida Immigration Coalition’s lawsuit against Uthmeier, blocking the enforcement of a new immigration law, Florida Senate Bill 4-C.
Uthmeier, former chief of staff for DeSantis, last week appealed a federal judge’s ruling holding him in contempt of court for a letter he sent arguing law enforcement agencies are not bound to the restraining order.
Internal emails reveal extensive cooperation between New College police and Florida’s network of fusion centers: multi-agency hubs combining data from local, state, tribal, federal and other partners to analyze and disseminate threat-related intelligence.
Emails show New College police specifically working with the Southwest Florida Fusion Center (Region 6), overseen by the Collier County Sheriff's Office, and the Tampa Bay Regional Intelligence Center (TBRIC).
The college appears to be expanding its law enforcement capabilities. A June 2 email to Coley from Jean Harris, assistant vice president and chief procurement officer, shows New College police considering a quote and agreement with Axon, a company known for creating TASERs, dash cams and body-worn cameras.
In 2020, Axon announced a $13 million contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to equip nearly 4,000 border patrol agents with body cams.
The agreement and quote details were not shared with Raw Story, so it is unknown if the agreement involves the partnership with ICE.
‘Profound betrayal’
When Florida universities began signing formal agreements with ICE, the United Faculty of Florida union issued a sharp rebuke.
“These agreements, conducted without meaningful transparency or community input, represent a profound betrayal of the core values of higher education and an alarming escalation in the ongoing erosion of democratic norms in our state,” the April 22 statement said.
“Our campuses must be institutions of learning, critical inquiry, and inclusion — not instruments of surveillance and state-sponsored oppression. The presence and involvement of ICE on our campuses sows fear among students, staff and faculty, particularly those from immigrant, undocumented or international communities.”
The United Faculty of Florida did not provide comment in response to Raw Story's inquiry, nor did its New College chapter president.
But Talat Rahman, union faculty president at the University of Central Florida, told Raw Story when the ICE agreements were first signed, “there was a lot of panic, where people were not sure what was going on.”
The uncertainty, she said, created fear among students, particularly those who may be undocumented or have undocumented family members.
“If the students are afraid that somebody can walk in and arrest them, they're not going to be able to focus on what they're there for,” Rahman said. “And with the number of people who have been deported under wrong identification or without any reason, the concern is real.”
While the Trump administration has framed its immigration enforcement as targeting “criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, gangbangers and other violent criminals,” Raw Story investigations have documented detentions and deportations of everyday people — a breastfeeding mother, recent high school graduates, a newlywed and a construction worker.
In March, New College welcomed U.S. “border czar” Tom Homan to campus, to discuss immigration policies with DeSantis, who appointed a slew of rightwing trustees in 2023 as part of a crusade against the “woke mob” at the school known for being a safe haven for progressive and LGBTQ+ students. Some students and politicians labeled DeSantis’ appointments a “hostile takeover.”
Activists protest against an immigration policy event featuring Ron DeSantis in Sarasota. REUTERS/Octavio Jones
“Majority of the people who are Board of Trustees members were appointed by the governor — they've been hand-placing and picking people that are loyalists to the governor and are going to do whatever the governor wants,” said immigration advocate Gaby Pacheco, president of TheDream.US, a national college and career success program for undocumented immigrant youth.
Rahman said colleges like her school, the University of Central Florida, have yet to answer key questions, including whether ICE officers will be permitted in classrooms.
“We have asked that, a) the agreement be spelled out and b) that the university not participate in it, but we haven't gotten any responses to that,” she said.
For now, Rahman said faculty and students are left waiting.
“I think what has happened here is that we are waiting for what is going to happen next, and probably there'll be a lot more activity in the beginning of the year.”
As faculty and students await clarity, immigration advocates like Pacheco are raising alarms about how ICE agreements could create workarounds to federal privacy protections.
She warned that these agreements may allow campus police to access records that could be used to identify students' immigration status, effectively creating a loophole to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
FERPA, she said, “protects students’ data and doesn’t allow colleges or universities to use that data to inform ICE or another agency about a student’s immigration status.”
Pacheco added that such agreements raise serious questions: “What is the coordination that’s going to happen? Will there be data sharing? Which there shouldn’t be.”
- Rachel Heimann Mercader is a freelance investigative journalist based in Chicago. She is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where she was selected as a SESP/Medill Education Journalism fellow, partnering with Raw Story Investigative Reporter Alexandria Jacobson.
Fury at ICE sees Americans funnel millions of dollars to help detainees
Though the Trump administration has declared a crusade to remove “criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, gangbangers, and other violent criminals” from the United States, immigrants who are farm workers, expectant parents, recent high school graduates and newlyweds have found themselves swept up in raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Families and friends have increasingly turned to fundraising platforms such as GoFundMe, looking for help with legal fees, living expenses, travel costs and medical bills as loved ones — often primary breadwinners — are detained, deported or await immigration hearings, sometimes hundreds of miles from home.
“I've been working in the refugee immigrant space for the last 20 years [and have] been watching things escalate,” said Luma Mufleh, founder of Fugees Family, a nonprofit school network for refugees, who started her own fundraiser for an 18-year-old recent graduate detained by ICE, despite his Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.
“You're hearing these stories of people being arrested that are not supposed to be the target profile, but it hit really differently when it was one of our own.”
A spokesperson for GoFundMe said the company didn't have a specific fundraiser count or a calculation of money raised related to immigration raids. But hundreds of ICE-related fundraisers currently appear on the site.
A Raw Story review of 60 randomly selected GoFundMe fundraisers — just a fraction of the fundraisers on the website — showed more than $1.7 million donated to families across the U.S.
Fundraiser titles included:
- “Support Maria Laura, Henry, and their unborn baby”
- “Single Mom Needs Help After Husband's Deportation”
- “Stand with Nacho: Urgent Family Support After ICE Abduction”
- “Support for a Family Torn Apart by ICE”
Fundraiser organizers who spoke with Raw Story expressed gratitude for donations received but detailed ongoing trauma for themselves and loved ones often taken unexpectedly to experience allegedly inhumane treatment. Some said they had experienced online harassment in response to fundraisers.
Last week, Raw Story reported the case of two brothers, Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez.
Two months after deportation to El Salvador, despite their pending Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petition, the brothers were diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression following their detention experience where their lawyer says they were “treated inhumanely,” Raw Story reported.
A fundraiser for the brothers, “Jose & Josue: Stranded and Seeking Hope,” raised nearly $35,000 toward a $50,000 goal.
‘Treat you like animals’: Deported brothers ask Trump for help with ICE 'trauma' Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez speak with Raw Story via Zoom
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Raw Story: "Why does the media continue to fall for the sob stories of illegal aliens in detention and villainize ICE law enforcement?"
Asked about potential fundraiser fraud, a GoFundMe spokesperson who declined to be named, “given the sensitivity of the topic,” said verified fundraisers undergo an “enhanced due diligence review process,” which includes “human review” and “technical tools designed to catch misuse.”
All personal information is verified before funds are transferred, the spokesperson said.
“GoFundMe also has the first and only donor protection guarantee in the crowdfunding industry. We guarantee donors a full refund in the rare case something isn’t right,” the spokesperson said.
‘When will it happen again?’
Joanna Martinez, a 22-year-old daycare worker in Charlotte, N.C, started a GoFundMe fundraiser in May after her father, Jose Martinez, was pulled over by immigration agents on his way to work, in what she called an instance of “racial profiling.”
“They basically threatened him. It was like, ‘If you don't get out the vehicle, you and your coworkers, we will take you guys out by force by breaking the windows,’” Joanna told Raw Story.
Jose, a construction worker, is not a U.S. citizen but is working with a lawyer to “see if there's any way that he could get papers,” Joanna said, adding that her father has lived in the U.S. for 20 years and all of his children are citizens.
Jose was detained for two days in his home state then spent 26 days at a detention facility in Lumpkin, Ga. before being released on $4,000 bond, Joanna said.
“We're, of course, happy my dad was able to get out, but just the trauma and not knowing when will it happen again, or will it happen to someone else in our family? That's what we're worried about,” Joanna said.
Joanna said she twice visited her father while he was detained six hours away in Georgia. She said he told her he witnessed two deaths while detained. At least one 45-year-old man died in ICE custody at the facility, according to news reports.
“People were sleeping on the floors. The food that they were feeding them, most of it was either spoiled, or it had maggots inside,” Martinez said.
“He said that they had him in really, really cold temperatures in there.”
The Department of Homeland Security denies any mistreatment of detainees.
"Any claim [of[ subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers," McLaughlin said.
"Ensuring the safety, security and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE."
Joanna had raised $3,665 toward a $5,500 goal for help with her father’s bond payment, lawyer fees and living expenses, since “he can't work as much as he was because of the worry,” she said.
‘He’s lucky’
Mufleh said one of her network’s students, Ernesto Manuel-Andres, was recently taken by ICE while eating lunch at his home in Bowling Green, K.Y.
“I really wasn't panicked when that happened. I was like, ‘He just got caught up. It was a mistake. He shouldn't be in detention. They'll release him the next day,” Mufleh told Raw Story. “That didn't happen.”
Manuel-Andres, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala as a minor, spent three weeks in “very crowded” detention facilities, moved through two facilities in Kentucky and was transferred to Monroe, La., Mufleh said.
“It's an 18-year-old kid that has status,” Mufleh said. “There was no warrant for his arrest. He's not a criminal.”
Mufleh said she launched a GoFundMe partly as a way to inform community members about Manuel-Andres’ situation and to get “some pressure out to get him out.”
When Manuel-Andres was released on bond three weeks later, Mufleh and his school principal traveled to Louisiana to pick him up. His next hearing is in January.
“I think he's lucky. He had attorneys already in place that were familiar with his case. He had a community ready to advocate for him and raise funds for him,” Mufleh said.
“How many thousands of kids in the same situation are in detention right now that we're not hearing their story? That's what's scary, is there are lots of them.”
‘Swarmed us’
A 34-year-old teacher, who declined to be named after receiving harassing messages in response to her fundraiser, started a GoFundMe for her husband after he was detained following a hearing related to an application for a spousal visa.
“He absolutely did not think anything was going to happen,” she said.
“But, I, as an American citizen, having seen how things went with the first Trump administration, I took the day off. I wanted to know exactly what happened when he went to the courthouse.”
When the teacher and her husband were leaving the courthouse, ICE officers “just swarmed us,” she said, adding: “As we turned the corner, I heard the handcuffs get put on him, my husband, and it felt completely surreal.”
“I knew it was a possibility that this could happen, but all the emotions that came with it, I did not expect.”
The teacher, from San Leandro, Calif., said at one point that day she was told her husband, who came from Colombia and “entered at a legal point of entry” seeking asylum, would be released with monitoring.
But as they prepared to leave again, they were chased down and her husband was detained again, she said. He has since been in a detention facility four hours from home, and is considering self-deporting.
“We're at a point of just whatever gets him out of that facility, even if it means him going back to Colombia, and if that's the case, there's definitely some fears there, but at least he would be free,” the teacher said.
“It's just limbo, and it's all so incredibly frustrating, because even the lawyer, she cannot figure out why he's actually being detained, like a legal reason why.”
The teacher had raised a little over $10,000, which she said was being used for gas to visit her husband, vending machine purchases at the detention facility, legal expenses, and living costs while on just her teacher's salary.
EXCLUSIVE: Trump fans say brothers' El Salvador deportation 'not right'
When Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez landed in El Salvador after their deportation flight in May, they had no idea who would meet them or where they would live.
The brothers, 20 and 19, respectively, said they know no one in the country they left as children nearly a decade before to escape gang violence, coming to the U.S. to seek asylum with their mother, who entered the country illegally.
“When we got to the [U.S.], we were little guys,” Jose told Raw Story via Zoom from El Salvador, where the brothers have been staying for two months with a 69-year-old man, a childhood friend of their grandmother.
“We didn't [know] exactly what was going on. Some people might say, yes, we knew, but in reality, we were child[ren]. We didn't understand exactly what was happening.”
Like others across the U.S., the brothers showed up to a routine check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only to end up detained and deported, which was “completely shocking,” Jose said.
Now, the brothers are waiting on a decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals regarding a motion based on “ineffective assistance” from prior counsel in Georgia, who never told the brothers for seven years they might qualify for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a path to lawful permanent residency “enacted to protect kids who were children under the age of 21 who have been abused, neglected or abandoned by one or both of their parents,” said their attorney, Ala Amoachi, based in East Islip, N.Y.
The brothers’ father abandoned them at ages 1 and 2, Amoachi told Raw Story. They attended an ICE check-in in New York on March 14 while living in Long Island with their legal guardian, their stepfather, Juan Carlos Mendoza Henriquez, to pursue their case for relief.
They were were deported to El Salvador May 7.
Josue Trejo Lopez in El Salvador (Photo provided by the Law Offices of Ala Amoachi & Associates)
Jose and Josue now are hoping the U.S. courts, or even President Donald Trump, will give them an opportunity to be reunited with their mother and 8-year-old U.S. citizen brother, who has a seizure disorder and rare congenital neurological condition.
“If I had a chance to talk to President Donald Trump … I would ask for ourselves, my brother and I, that if we can get a second chance to go back to the country that we call our home,” Jose said.
“I would tell him that to consider the kids, basically the dreamers … this is not our fault that this is happening.”
'We are not bad guys'
Since taking office, Trump has taken a hardline approach to cracking down on illegal immigration. This week, the White House said it is targeting the “worst of the worst — criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, gangbangers and other violent criminals.”
In reality, only 35 percent of individuals booked into ICE facilities between Oct. 1, 2024 and May 31, 2025 had criminal convictions, most of which are immigration or traffic violations, and only 6 percent of known immigrant murderers have been arrested, according to NBC News.
Even alleged nonviolent misdemeanor offenders have been swept up in increased ICE detention efforts, including a breastfeeding mother, Raw Story exclusively reported.
Last week Trump signed into law his “Big Beautiful Bill” spending package, which includes the largest congressional infusion of funds into immigration enforcement and border security: $170 billion, including $75 billion for ICE.
“I understand that there might be criminals, and those guys need to be locked up or get deported because they're damaging the country,” Jose said.
“We are not bad guys. We never committed a crime. We didn't have a charge of anything, neither at school, neither with the law.”
The boys said they don’t even have traffic violations. Josue, who missed his high school graduation in May despite his lawyer’s efforts to secure his release in order to attend, said he only drove a car once with his learner’s permit.
“I think people need to hear those stories because they need to face the realities of what kind of people these policies really affect and not all the PR that [ICE] is pushing that they're arresting only people with criminal records and all these violent individuals,” Amoachi said.
“I've only seen people picked up in extremely sympathetic situations among my clientele.”
Amoachi, who helped set up a GoFundMe for the family and created a Change.org petition which received nearly 17,000 signatures, said she’s heard from unexpected people moved by the “exceptional” case.
“There have been a lot of people who are Trump supporters, and generally in favor of his policies, where their stories still affect those people,'” Amoachi said.
“People are saying, ‘that's not right. This crosses the boundary,' which I think is really special.”
The White House forwarded Raw Story's questions to the Department of Homeland Security.
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Raw Story in an emailed statement: “Both Jose and Josue Trejo-Lopez illegally entered country under the Obama administration in 2016. They have had a final order of removal since 2018, and even went through the appeals process which was dismissed.”
In response, Amoachi told Raw Story the DHS statement “misrepresents both the facts and the law."
"Jose and Josue entered the United States as minors in 2016 and consistently complied with ICE check-ins over the years. Enforcement action was not taken until this administration — precisely as they were actively pursuing viable legal relief," Amoachi said.
Amoachi said the brothers' removal "disregarded" their petition for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.
"Had they received competent legal guidance, they likely would have secured lawful permanent residency by now," she said. "Deporting them while these remedies were pending constitutes a clear denial of due process."
Amoachi said DHS references to "legal" and "illegal" citizens are "reductive and misleading" because "immigration status exists along a continuum," with many obtaining lawful status through asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status or other humanitarian protections.
"To treat them as devoid of rights while they actively pursue those remedies is both legally inaccurate and morally indefensible," she said.
‘Nightmare’
Amoachi said she coordinated psychological evaluations for Jose and Josue, and “they were both diagnosed with PTSD and depression as a result of their detention and removal."
The brothers spent nearly half their lives in the U.S. and were "suddenly torn from the only community and family they’ve ever known," she said.
“It just gives you an idea of how much trauma we're creating in the United States on all of these young people, children, even adults, just from the mere fact of them being detained when they had absolutely no mental health concerns prior to that,” Amoachi said.
The brothers confirmed their diagnoses. Jose said he had experienced nightmares about his mother and himself being arrested by ICE at Home Depot, and Josue said his guardian in El Salvador told him to be careful after someone flashed a “gang salute” his way.
Jose said he and his brother don’t go outside or talk to others.
“I'm thinking about, ‘Hey, when am I going to go back to my family? When am I going to have the opportunity to go back to the country that I call our home?'’” Jose said.
Jose Trejo Lopez in El Salvador (Photo provided by the Law Offices of Ala Amoachi & Associates)
“All the time you're thinking about what the future is going to look like for you … We don't have moments to feel basically not stressed."
The brothers said they were first sent to a federal detention facility in Buffalo, N.Y., then were transferred to Alexandria, La., where “they were being treated inhumanely,” Amoachi said.
Jose and Amoachi told Raw Story officers at the Alexandria facility never allowed their underwear to be laundered, and they did not get a change of clothes for five days. Only after Amoachi complained were their shirts and pants washed, but they were left without clothes “in freezing cold temperatures” during that time, she said.
Amoachi shared with Raw Story a phone call recording of an ICE representative who said "this is a staging facility, and we don't do the changing of clothing."
Jose said the “nightmare” started on the flight to Louisiana where he alleges he and his brother were shackled and not allowed to use the bathroom. When they arrived, Jose said, he went for hours without water, eventually drinking from a fountain with “algae” that led him to have diarrhea.
The food was “cold” and “nasty,” and they were subjected to racist comments, Jose said.
“Treatment in there is really awful,” Jose said.
“They treat you like animals, basically, and that's how they see you.”
Amoachi said at one point the boys were separated, and Josue was “threatened by other detainees” when he was put in a mixed population with individuals with criminal records.
“If you try to complain about something in the detention facilities, they're gonna send you to a place that they call a ‘shoe,'” Jose said, referring to solitary confinement.
The Department of Homeland Security denied any mistreatment of detainees.
"Any claim that there is a subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers," McLaughlin said.
"Ensuring the safety, security and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE."
McLaughlin said the Alexandria facility was "just given [a] superior rating after an inspection in February."
"Why does the media continue to fall for the sob stories of illegal aliens in detention and villainize ICE law enforcement?" McLaughlin added.
Amoachi pushed back, saying: "As an immigration attorney with 15 years of experience, I have represented countless individuals who have endured inhumane conditions in ICE custody: prolonged deprivation of food and water, denial of medical care, dangerously cold 'hieleras,' constant fluorescent lighting, and abusive or discriminatory treatment."
"These are not isolated incidents — they reflect systemic failures for which ICE must be held accountable. In Jose and Josue’s case, the psychological harm has been profound," she added.
McLaughlin encouraged the use of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app to participate in a financial and travel assistance program announced in May, which allows illegal immigrants who self-deport to receive a flight to their home country and a $1,000 completion stipend after arrival.
"We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream,” McLaughlin said. “If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return."
The American Immigration Lawyers Association called the program a "trap" in a May statement. Amoachi said McLaughlin's reference to the program was "legally incorrect."
"Noncitizens who depart under a removal order — regardless of the app used — often remain subject to harsh bars to reentry, including five- to 20-year bars," she said.
"Those who depart even without a removal order may face three- and 10-year bars for unlawful presence. In many cases, this so-called 'voluntary' departure forecloses the possibility of ever lawfully returning to the United States.
"Government agencies have a duty to inform the public — not to weaponize misinformation or stigmatize vulnerable populations. The true victims here are not ICE officers, but young people like Jose and Josue — whose lives, futures and families have been shattered by unjust policies.
The time is long overdue for truth, accountability, and meaningful reform."
‘Mentally destructive’
Josue and Jose said they are concerned about their mother and their brother with special needs. Josue said what he misses most is cooking with his little brother and carrying him around.
“Hopefully they give us, me and my brother, a second chance because we're not criminals. We did nothing bad, and we still have dreams,” Josue told Raw Story.
"We are dreamers, so we want to complete those dreams.”
Josue said his first-ever job was working in the kitchen in the detention facility. He aspires to go to welding school. Jose wants to become a trader on Wall Street, to “make money and help my mom out, and basically my family, and then have my own family.”
Josue Trejo Lopez (Photo provided by the Law Offices of Ala Amoachi & Associates)
The brothers’ legal guardian, Juan Carlos Mendoza Henriquez, 49, told Raw Story through an interpreter arranged by the Amoachi’s law office, that the brothers' mother called him as soon as the brothers were detained.
“There was just a lot of mental commotion, and we tried to do things according to the law," said Mendoza Henriquez, a restaurant worker.
“It's really sad to see that things went wrong.”
For Jose and Josue’s mother, their deportation has been “mentally destructive to her, and she says she doesn't know how much longer she can go through this because of the separation,” Mendoza Henriquez said.
Mendoza Henriquez said the brothers are “really good people,” and the situation has also been “very difficult” for him.
“This has also been hard for me mentally,” he said. “You can't get over it overnight."
Still, the brothers and their family members remain optimistic Amoachi will help them reunite.
“That's the last thing I can lose, my hope,” Mendoza Hernandez said.
Amoachi said Josue and Jose were her clients prior to their detention, but she is now representing them pro-bono because “I couldn't give up on this fight.”