Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled with President Donald Trump on his state visit to China this week and played a significant role in the negotiations — despite China banning Rubio from the country in 2020 under sanctions for his public criticism of the country when he was a senator.
China never actually lifted those sanctions.
But, according to The Washington Post, China created a bizarre loophole that let Rubio enter the country anyway — and it has to do with the transliteration of his name.
"Chinese state media and official records began using a different transliterated character for the 'Ru' or 'Lu' in Rubio’s name after Trump named him secretary of state in 2025," said the report. "Beijing made the tweak without fanfare. But this week, it has been a buzzy topic on Chinese social media, with Rubio in Beijing as one of the top officials in the U.S. delegation. During the elaborate welcome ceremony, he stood in the first row of the group of American visitors and shook hands with Xi."
The way that Chinese transliteration of English works involves phonetically matching the pronunciation of the name to the most similar-sounding characters, and sometimes this results in multiple possible spellings for the same name, the report noted. "In Rubio’s case, the change may be a clever diplomatic tool. Because Beijing placed sanctions on him under a different spelling, the new name allowed the U.S. and China to avoid conflict over his entry ahead of the high-stakes summit."
All of this is occurring as Trump left JD Vance behind to guard the home front and announce his new "anti-fraud" measures — which many pundits saw as a humiliation of the vice president.
A right-wing conspiracist who joined the Department of Justice to punish Jan. 6 prosecutors is making explosive allegations about its current acting head.
Jonathan Gross, a political appointee who left the DOJ earlier this year after a turbulent tenure in the civil rights division, has gone public with allegations that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche engaged in "sabotage" by purposely holding back high-profile indictments while Pam Bondi was attorney general, waiting until she was gone to unleash them and claim credit, reported NPR.
"Todd Blanche was in charge for over a year and sabotaged Pam Bondi so he could swoop in and take her job," Gross wrote on X. "Nothing stopped Blanche from dropping these indictments while Bondi was there."
Blanche, who had been deputy attorney general until he was elevated after Bondi was fired, has recently overseen a flurry of headline-grabbing actions at DOJ, including the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the criminal charge against former FBI Director James Comey over an Instagram post.
"He's auditioning for AG," Gross posted on X. "Don't be fooled."
Blanche has publicly denied that allegation.
"I don't audition for this job," he told CBS News. "I've been the deputy attorney general for over a year, okay? This is not an audition."
But Gross isn't stopping there – he has also questioned the legal quality of Blanche's splashy new cases, calling the SPLC indictment "a very sloppy job" and predicting the charges will ultimately be thrown out.
Gross, a former rabbi, joined the DOJ's civil rights division last summer after representing Jan. 6 rioters despite having no criminal defense experience, and he won fans among MAGA allies like former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene after comparing those prosecutions to the Holocaust.
"These prosecutors are evil people," Gross said in January 2025, prior to joining the Trump administration. "They will put you on a cattle car to Auschwitz without batting an eye."
He soon became disillusioned with the working group, which included former FBI agent-turned-Jan. 6 defendant Jared Wise, and Gross has publicly complained the operation had no budget or staff, but now he fears his former colleagues might seek to punish him for speaking out.
"I just think it would be very ironic if they came after me," he said. "But I'm willing to do it."
CNN chief Trump apologist Scott Jennings got a blistering tear-down for his pandering to the president — from a man who used to be the president's biggest fan.
Andrew Schulz, a pro-Donald Trump comedian and podcaster who hosted Donald Trump before the 2024 election, unloaded on CNN conservative commentator Jennings this week, mocking him for what Schulz called the impossible task of defending the president — no matter what.
On Wednesday's episode of his Flagrant podcast, Schulz, 42, went after Jennings after a discussion about Fox News pastor Robert Jeffress claiming Trump understands the Bible's teachings on government better than the Pope.
"That's a hard job, to just cap for that m----------- all the time," Schulz said in the podcast, which was reported on by The Daily Beast. "Yo, just let it go man, he's [messing] up everything, just call it what it is. You don't have to ... cap for this dude."
Schulz then zeroed in on Jennings specifically, taking a shot at the CNN commentator's appearance.
"I see that guy Scott Jennings, he's losing hair," Schulz said. "Do you know that guy who's on CNN and his job is just to be like 'Everything Trump is doing is right?' You can tell he is stressed."
Schulz also referenced Jennings' on-air meltdown earlier this month, when the 48-year-old former Bush strategist exploded at 23-year-old Democratic commentator Adam Mockler, yelling expletives as they argued.
"He's cursing at little teenagers they got out there arguing with him," Schulz said, mimicking the confrontation. "It's like a 14-year-old putting his finger in his face — 'Get your ... hands out of my face!' Like, he's stressed."
Schulz has grown increasingly critical of Trump since the election. In a July podcast episode, he said the president had done the opposite of everything he'd voted for.
"There'll be people that, they'll DM me like, 'You see what your boy's doing? You voted for this,'" Schulz said. "I'm like, 'I voted for none of this. He's doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for.'"
Jennings' outburst at Mockler has drawn calls for his firing from former CNN colleagues, including anchor Jim Acosta, who wrote on Substack, "Lighten up, Scott! Mockler is almost a kid. And a nice one at that. Either way, Jennings should be fired."
CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Democrats in Congress are warning that President Donald Trump is on the verge of “stealing” billions of dollars from American taxpayers in the coming days as his Department of Justice reportedly considers settling his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
The New York Timesreported on Tuesday that the DOJ, headed by the Trump loyalist acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, was holding internal discussions about whether to settle the suit that was brought by Trump and his sons, as well as the family’s business empire, in January.
The case centers on the IRS’s leak of Trump’s tax returns during his first term, which occurred after he broke decades of precedent by refusing to release them. The lawsuit alleges that the IRS failed to prevent former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn from unlawfully disclosing tax information to media outlets, for which he pleaded guilty in 2024.
The leaks, reported by The New York Times and ProPublica, revealed that Trump had engaged in what was described as “outright fraud” and other “dubious” schemes to avoid taxation, and that he paid no federal income taxes in many of the years leading up to his presidency.
The Trumps are seeking a payout of at least $10 billion from the IRS, which is currently being headed by Trump’s handpicked Social Security Administration head, Frank J. Bisignano, who reports to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
This creates an extraordinary legal situation widely described as a blatant conflict of interest, since Trump is suing an IRS that he effectively controls, which is being represented by a DOJ he also effectively controls.
For a case to be valid, however, the parties must demonstrate that they are actually on opposite sides; otherwise, the case can be thrown out of court.
US District Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Southern District of Florida, who is overseeing the case, questioned its constitutionality last month and required the parties to file briefs by May 20 demonstrating whether there is an actual conflict between them.
According to the Times, however, the DOJ is considering settling the case with Trump before that happens, and there’d be little Williams could do to stop it.
Not only could Trump walk away with a payout of several billion dollars—if not the full $10 billion he asked for—according to the Times, the White House and DOJ have also discussed a deal for the IRS to drop all audits into Trump, his family, and his businesses.
Presidents and vice presidents are required under IRS to undergo audits of their annual tax returns, and a 2024 Times report found that if Trump failed an audit, it could cost him more than $100 million.
Trump’s presidency has been defined by him and his family profiting from their positions of influence. According to a live tracker from the Center for American Progress, Trump and his family have used the White House to rake in more than $2.6 billion worth of cash and gifts.
In addition to about $1.5 billion from their cryptocurrency ventures, which they’ve used the White House to promote, they have received direct gifts—like a $400 million luxury jet from the government of Qatar—and legal cash settlements from media and tech companies worth over $90 million. On top of the IRS lawsuit, Trump has also demanded that the DOJ pay him $230 million over past criminal investigations into him.
But if Trump received even a fraction of what he demanded in a payout from the IRS, it could make the graft from the first year and a half of his presidency look like pocket change, potentially netting him several billion more dollars and possibly even doubling his net worth.
“Trump is considering stealing billions of dollars from the American people,” said Rep. Don Beyer (Va.), the ranking House Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee. “He’s already the most corrupt president ever by a wide margin, but this would be fraud and theft on a scale even he has never attempted. The largest single act of grand larceny in American history.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking member on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, added that for the DOJ to hand Trump a settlement “before a court rules” would be a “massive, unprecedented scandal.”
“Congress must stop him,” the senator added, noting that she had introduced a bill last month that would bar presidents, vice presidents, and their families from collecting settlement payments from the federal government while in office. If they file administrative claims, Warren’s bill would also require that the agencies be represented by independent counsels appointed by the court. However, her bill has gotten little traction in a Republican-controlled Congress.
Bharat Ramamurti, who served as the deputy director of the White House National Economic Council under former President Joe Biden, said the IRS lawsuit was a “massive scam” that was “much worse” than Trump’s proposal for Congress to provide $1 billion in taxpayer money to pay for his White House ballroom project.
Of the IRS lawsuit, he said, “Democrats should raise hell over it.”
A judge appointed by President Donald Trump just put the president's immigration regime on ice with a major rebuke, according to one lawyer.
Recently, a federal appeals court in New York ruled that the Trump administration's policy of detaining suspected illegal immigrants without bond is illegal. The judge in the case, Joseph F. Bianco, who was appointed to the bench by Trump during his first administration, ruled that the administration's "government’s novel interpretation of the immigration statute defies their plain text" and ordered the administration to provide bond hearings for the detainees.
Shant Karnikian, a lawyer and host of the "Civil Action" podcast on the Legal AF Network, said in a new episode that the ruling is a "major loss" for the administration.
"When your own nominee writes the majority opinion rejecting your policy as the broadest mass deportation without bond mandate in American history, that's not just a legal setback. It's a major, major loss for the Trump administration," Karnikian said.
The Trump administration has faced mounting legal challenges over its immigration detention practices, including holding U.S. citizens and legal residents without due process, deporting individuals to third countries without notice, and circumventing habeas corpus protections.
Federal courts have repeatedly ruled against the administration, which has defied or slow-walked several judicial orders.
The case in New York stemmed from a Trump administration policy that reclassified long-term residents who entered without being screened as being eligible for deportation. In turn, they were detained without a bond hearing.
However, that plan relied on what Karnikian described as "legal fiction" that long-term residents are still "seeking admission" to the country. That ruling could be used to squash future detentions of a similar kind.
"It's a fiction," he said. "I mean, you can't do that. You can't have it like kind of retroactively treat them, look at their history, and go, 'Well, he was seeking admission at one point.'"
The full breadth of President Donald Trump's entourage of American business leaders and dignitaries was unveiled during a welcoming ceremony in China early Thursday morning, which included an appearance of one individual who incensed a political analyst.
Ana Navarro, a CNN commentator, noted that Brett Ratner, who directed Melania Trump's eponymous documentary on Amazon, was among those selected by Trump to travel with his delegation. Ratner's travel to China on the U.S. taxpayers' dime incensed Navarro because of his sordid history in Hollywood and the harm he's caused to some women.
"There is also another person who is in this official delegation, and that was on Air Force One, and that's Brett Ratner, who was the director and producer of the 'Melania' movie," Navarro said on CNN's "NewsNight." "But let us remember, Brett Ratner had been basically banished from Hollywood in 2017 because there were very serious sexual predatory allegations against him."
"His name is all over the Epstein file because of his association with Epstein," she continued. And so, because he volunteered to do that documentary on Melania, that Amazon allegedly paid $40 million for, he is now being brought back and rehabilitated by Donald Trump."
"I find itappalling, appalling, and I urgepeople to go look up the women," she added. "Some of the biggest names in Hollywood who spoke up against the sexual harassment and sexual acts of Brett Ratner, which included things like masturbating in front of them. And there he is aspart of the official U.S.delegation flying on Air Force One on our dime. I find thatappalling."
A hypothetical plot to remove President Donald Trump from office stunned a political analyst on Wednesday.
The plot, concocted by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, involved Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio teaming up to push Trump out of office under the 25th Amendment. Reich hypothesized in a recent op-ed for Alternet that Vance would approach Rubio and offer him the vice presidency after Trump leaves office. Then the two men would go to Capitol Hill to get the blessings of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). The two men would also enlist the help of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to "make the 25th Amendment stick," Reich argued.
The plan stunned David Pakman, a liberal political commentator and host of "The David Pakman Show" on YouTube, who reacted to it in a new video.
"There are a lot of ways that this can go wrong, and there are people who would be very afraid of how they will suffer if it doesn't go well after they say 'I'm involved and I'm interested,'" Pakman said.
For instance, Pakman noted that Reich gave the hypothetical a 30% chance of success. He also noted that Vance and Rubio have a lot to lose if the plan doesn't work out, and would likely face the wrath of Trump's base in the meantime.
There are also questions about whether Vance or Rubio would be willing to go through with the plan in the first place, since both men are seen as the frontrunners for the 2028 presidential nomination, Pakman added.
One factor working in the plan's favor is that Americans are still unhappy with how the war in Iran is playing out, and its related economic impacts, Pakman said.
"The odds continue to rise as Americans are increasingly unhappy with Trump and MAGA, and the current Republican leadership," he said.
The Trump administration's effort to silence a United Nations expert hit a major snag, with a judge ruling it violated her right to free speech.
A federal judge temporarily blocked sanctions against Italian lawyer Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the Palestinian territories, according to reporting by the Guardian on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon wrote in his opinion that "Albanese has done nothing more than speak!"
Albanese recommended that the International Criminal Court prosecute United States and Israeli nationals for war crimes in Gaza, The Guardian reported. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded by sanctioning Albanese last year and barred her from entering the U.S. or banking there, according to the Guardian.
Family members of Albanese with U.S. citizenship sued the Trump administration in February and alleged that the sanctions were "effectively debanking her and making it nearly impossible to meet the needs of her daily life," according to reporting by the Guardian.
Leon wrote that the Trump administration wanted to regulate her speech because of the "idea or message expressed," which is protected by the First Amendment, the Guardian wrote.
"It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC's actions - they are nothing more than her opinion."
"JD Vance is desperately trying to remind dad he's still his most special boy," Psaki quipped on her show, mocking the announcement as political theater designed to keep Vance relevant while Secretary of State Marco Rubio accompanied President Donald Trump to China. "He's still doing his homework, even though dad's away on his big work trip."
Vance himself joked about the seeming disconnect, comparing himself to Macaulay Culkin's character in "Home Alone."
The Trump administration's Medicaid cuts, which California's attorney general said will gut programs that help seniors and people with disabilities remain in their homes, were unveiled with what Psaki described as unusual fanfare — "tons of pomp and circumstance."
The timing was no accident, she argued. Vance made the announcement the day before California Gov. Gavin Newsom was scheduled to unveil the state's annual budget, delivering a one-two punch intended to dominate news cycles and put Newsom on defense.
"Politically speaking, today was kind of a twofer," Psaki said. "He got some headlines to stay relevant while Marco got to ride on the big plane to go do big boy stuff in China. And he got to attack Gavin Newsom."
Newsom is widely considered one of Vance's most formidable potential rivals in the 2028 presidential race, making California a particularly attractive target for the vice president's political maneuvering.
President Donald Trump may be laying the groundwork to deploy secret presidential directives that no court has ever reviewed, no Congress has ever examined, and that any sitting president can rewrite at will to interfere in the midterm elections, a State Department insider warned on Wednesday.
Known as Presidential Emergency Action Documents, or PEADs, the directives were designed to bypass traditional Congressional authorization during national emergencies. They were initially contemplated as a way to ensure continuity of government during a crisis, and documents authorized actions like seizing private property or arresting citizens that would face legal challenge only after they had already been carried out.
Jonathan Winer, a former U.S. special envoy during the Obama administration who reviewed declassified materials at the National Archives, warned during an interview on the podcast "The Court of History" that Trump may try to use them to stifle the upcoming elections.
"The key thing about PEADs is they've never been reviewed by Congress or anyone outside administration," Winer said. "They can be rewritten based on any administration's point of view as to what's necessary in an emergency. And they would be tested legally and constitutionally only after they're used."
Winer pointed to The White House's newly released counterterrorism strategy, which identifies Antifa alongside foreign terrorist groups as a primary domestic threat. When combined with other Trump executive orders, Winer said the framework closely resembles the legal architecture the J. Edgar Hoover FBI used to justify mass surveillance and detention planning six decades ago.
What makes the current moment uniquely dangerous, host Sidney Blumenthal said, is that the officials who would be ordered to implement any such directives — such as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel — have already demonstrated they will comply.
"That history echoes," Winer said, "and those echoes are pretty loud right now."
In the early morning hours of late February, a 911 call was made from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Mesa because a man was having a seizure after immigration agents used pepper spray on a group of 47 detainees in an enclosed room.
“Um, yeah we had, uh, a officer safety issue here,” ICE Ofc. Gene Rivero told a dispatcher with the Mesa Fire and Medical Department, according to a 911 call obtained by the Arizona Mirror through a public records request. “Pepper spray was used and we have a couple subjects that need to be looked at and one subject specifically that appears to be seizing.”
The incident had occurred at the Arizona Removal and Operations Coordination Center housed at the Mesa-Gateway Airport. The facility, first exclusively reported on by the Mirror, is a 25,000-square-foot facility at the airport. It opened in 2010 to little fanfare and can house up to 157 detainees and 79 ICE employees.
But a Mirror analysis of data of ICE detention records that the Deportation Data Project obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that, in some cases, detainees have stayed for longer than the 12 hours ICE has said the facility is meant for.
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And AROCC has regularly held far more detainees than it is supposed to. The day that ICE agents pepper sprayed the inmates as they were housed in a small room — each room has a capacity of no more than two dozen, though nearly 50 were in the room this day — there were a reported 332 detainees being held.
The pepper spray incident happened a week after a congressional oversight visit, prior to which ICE had shuffled around detainees so that AROCC had some of the lowest numbers it had seen all year.
ICE said the officers used pepper spray to quell disruptive behavior in the overcrowded detention room.
“Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) spray was deployed on a group of detainees at the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center in Mesa, AZ, following repeated verbal commands to cease kicking the cell door, banging the windows, and exhibiting aggressive behavior toward officers,” ICE said in a statement to the Mirror. “At approximately 2:15 a.m., an ICE detainee was transported to East Valley Emergency Room (EVER) due to an asthma episode. The detainee was released from EVER at approximately 3:15 a.m.. There is no evidence to suggest that the asthma episode experienced was caused by exposure to OC spray with the detainee’s pre-existing medical condition.”
ICE did not respond to questions asking about the comments made by its own employee about the detainee “seizing,” if any employees of the agency also required treatment or what policies the agency has for the use of pepper spray in confined spaces.
From the 911 call, it’s clear that ICE agents were affected by the spray. As he spoke with the dispatcher, Rivero repeatedly paused to cough, and others can be heard coughing in the background. Rivero told the dispatcher that ICE agents were attempting to “air out” the facility to clear out the chemical agent.
Firefighters said they “found one individual outside with security that was struggling from the exposure to the pepper spray.”
“We also found many people sitting in the breeze way (sic) shackled at the feet. Security was bringing inmates out five at a time and placing them in the breeze way,” according to a fire department report obtained by the Mirror.
“At the beginning we only had the one patient. Eventually we ended up
evaluating a second patient who ended up refusing transport,” the report says.
A report of the incident obtained by the Mirror shows that firefighters said that there was only one patient, but approximately 30 others were “getting out of cells” and that they “may need a lot of ppl wash down” due to the pepper spray.
Both the Queen Creek Fire Department and Gilbert Fire Department helped respond to the call.
Last month, three Arizona Democratic members of Congress showed up at AROCC unannounced for a surprise oversight visit. They said afterward that the holding rooms had roughly double the number of people than the maximum capacity posted outside each room. One said that detainees were packed in the rooms “like sardines.”
One of those lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, told the Mirror in a written statement that the audio from the 911 call made her sick.
“This makes me sick to my stomach. You could hear detainees coughing and struggling to breathe,” Ansari said. “ICE is cruel — I’ve witnessed that cruelty firsthand. I’ve seen my constituent, Yari, coughing up blood while suffering from medical neglect. I’ve seen people packed into small concrete cells at Mesa Gateway, sick and crowded together like sardines.
“Time and time again, I’ve demanded answers from ICE and they’ve failed to show basic humanity or accountability. That’s why I’ll continue to vote NO on any additional funding for ICE.”
An airplane sits on the tarmac at Mesa Gateway Airport on the evening of April 9, 2026, outside of the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center, an ICE facility where detainees are temporarily housed before they are put on a plane to either be deported or moved to a different ICE facility. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
Another one of those lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, said in a statement to the Mirror that she is “deeply concerned” with the increased use of force against ICE detainees.
“People who are simply asking for food, water, and medical care should not be met with force,” Grijalva said. “Equally concerning is the severe overcrowding at this facility, where the population on the day of the incident far exceeded the facility’s maximum capacity. When detention facilities become overcrowded and conditions deteriorate, the risk of escalation and harm increases significantly.”
The Tucson Democrat said she is also troubled by ICE’s response to questions about the incident and is calling for greater transparency on this incident as well as what protocols the agency has on use-of-force “particularly in confined spaces and against medically vulnerable individuals.”
“ICE’s immediate attempt to dismiss any possible connection between the medical emergency and the deployment of pepper spray is equally concerning and reflects a broader pattern of deflecting accountability and gaslighting the public,” she said. “I’m calling on ICE to provide full transparency regarding this incident, including whether proper protocols were followed and what steps are being taken to ensure the health and safety of individuals in custody.”
An internal report, obtained by the Washington Post and published as part of a larger database of use of force incidents at detention centers, gives a little more insight into the incident.
“On February 27, 2026, (Enforcement and Removal Operations) Phoenix reported the use of force on a group of 47 detainees while housed at the AROCC in Mesa, Arizona,” ICE wrote. “No injuries were reported, ERO leadership. (Mesa Fire and Medical Department), and the ICE (Office of Professional Responsibility) Intake Center were notified.”
In late January, the local agency responded to a medical call at AROCC, where it found such severe overcrowding that it gave ICE a list of corrections it needed to make.
ICE told Mesa Fire that the 238 people records show were detained that day was an aberration because of a measles outbreak at another Arizona facility. The agency promised the number of detainees would be back under the listed maximum capacity of 157 within a week.
But the next day, records show the daily population was 646 people. The day after that, it was 526. Within a couple of days, there were 777 people being housed at AROCC. On Feb. 4, the day ICE had said the overcrowding would be resolved, there were 513 people locked in the facility’s detention rooms.
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The use of force incident at AROCC is one of many this year.
In 2024, there were 23 reported use of force incidents for the entire year at detention centers in Arizona. In 2025, that number rose to 34. In just the first two months of 2026, there were 13 incidents, putting ICE on pace to use force on immigrant detainees 78 times.
From the start of January to the end of February in 2024, there were three use of force reports and in 2025, there were five. This year marks a 333% and 160% increase from the same timeframe in previous years.
The majority of use-of-force incidents are taking place at the Eloy Detention Center, and the reports offer little information on what happened.
So far in 2026, the Eloy Detention Center has reported 4 use of force incidents; the narrative supplied in the official database only lists the nationalities of those involved, the date of the incident and that there was a “use of force.”
In 2024, under the administration of President Joe Biden, reports included more information.
For example, a report on Jan. 6, 2024, provides a narrative about how “contract staff” issued verbal commands to a “Senegalese national detainee” to “stop punching and kicking his cell door.”
“The EDC staff deployed a short burst of OC spray into the detainee’s cell to gain compliance. The detainee was extracted and escorted to the shower area for decontamination,” the narrative says. It goes on to say that the detainee was evaluated and later released in “administrative segregation pending a disciplinary hearing.”
Reports since President Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025 have become less transparent. While reports in 2025 continued to include some information about the use of things like pepper spray and why use of force was used, reports on incidents in 2026 have virtually no details.
“ERO Phoenix reported the use of force on a Jamaican national detainee and a Syrian national detainee while housed at the EDC in Eloy, Arizona. No injuries were reported. ERO leadership was notified,” the narrative for one 2026 report states.
“ERO Phoenix reported the use of force on two Mexican national detainees and two Cuban national detainees while housed at the EDC in Eloy, Arizona. No injuries were reported. ERO leadership was notified,” another report says.
None of the 2026 narratives supply information about what force was used or what led up to the use of force.
ICE did not respond to the Mirror’s questions as to why the narrative section of the use of force reports has become less detailed this year.
But getting a glimpse behind the curtain on use of force by ICE has never been simple.
“It’s never been easy to get data on this,” Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Mirror.
Requests for use-of-force data often are withheld as sensitive law enforcement information, and incidents are generally learned about via detainee lawyers.
“It has never been particularly transparent,” Hawkins said.
A detainee boards a 747 that is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Air Operations at Mesa Gateway Airport on Sept. 23, 2025. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
Reporting by the Washington Post has found that, during Trump’s second administration, use of force at ICE detention centers has surged. Their analysis found that detention staff have used force 37% more times than the previous year and a 54% increase from under Biden.
Meanwhile, populations at these centers, like AROCC, are continuing to grow and outpace the size of the facility.
The airport where AROCC is located has raised concerns that conditions there could be a violation of the lease agreement with the private company that sub-leases the space to the federal government.
At AROCC, ICE is detaining more people for longer periods than it ever has. The average length of stay in 2026 is about 36 hours, compared to the same time frame in 2025, when detainees were housed for just about 12 hours on average.
In 2025, the average daily population was approximately 21 people for the same timeframe. So far in 2026, there have been an average of 274 detainees each day. The Mirror found one individual in the data who stayed for 18 days, coinciding with a time when the population of the facility was near its peak of 777 people.
Conditions at the Eloy facility and the Florence Detention Center, where there have been multiple reports of abuse that has led to deaths, have garnered headlines.
Oversight of facilities like AROCC, Eloy and Florence exists in theory, but appears to be minimal, at best. Such oversight generally is done internally by the Office of the Inspector General or internal DHS units that have all been gutted by the Trump administration.
“Accountability has always been very, very limited and in short supply,” Hawkins said, adding that finding people willing to come forward about issues inside can be considerably difficult, as well. “The witnesses may be deported before it can even be investigated.”
Additionally, facilities like the one in Eloy and the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex are run by private companies, meaning that there is a “less clear chain of command for discipline.”
Those facilities are run by CoreCivic who reported a 25% increase in total revenue for the first quarter of this year, largely attributing government contracts with DHS and ICE to their success.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.
President Donald Trump was hit by a devastating takedown on MS NOW from voters on Wednesday after he told reporters that he doesn't care about the economic pain the Iran war is causing.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump said he does not consider Americans' financial situation when considering how to manage the Iran war. Those comments sparked swift backlash from political analysts and observers who argued that Trump had revealed how little he thinks of the average American.
MS NOW played a montage of voters reacting to Trump's comments on Wednesday.
"He doesn't care about our situation. He doesn't. He's just here for pride and ego," one voter said. "He's not lying. And he proves it. Not only that, but also like food stamps and other stuff. He does not care about our financial situation."
"That's ridiculous," another voter chimed in. "He's a pompous idiot."
"You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth," another voter said. "Of course, the Americans' pockets don't mean anything to you."
Trump's comments are just the latest example of how he has shown voters that he does not care about their well-being. Last year, Trump's budget slashed billions in federal spending on public benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, despite his promises not to cut those programs.
MS NOW's Chris Hayes kicked off Wednesday night's edition of "All In" by breaking down the details of President Donald Trump's highly controversial $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for allowing his tax returns to be leaked — effectively, a demand to have his own administration pay him money.
This comes amid reports that President Donald Trump's own Justice Department is considering a possible settlement to the suit, although it is unclear whether that settlement would include a monetary payout and, if so, how much.
"It is hard, dear viewer, to keep track of the very, very long list of shady deals and no-bid contracts and outright corrupt crypto schemes that have been the hallmark of the presidency of Donald Trump, particularly this second version of it," said Hayes. "But I ask you tonight to pay attention to the one that he appears to be about to pull off, because it's got to be the greatest heist in American history, a direct transfer of billions of your taxpayer dollars directly into the bank account, and the pockets of Donald Trump, all dressed up as a settlement of a lawsuit in which Donald Trump is both the plaintiff and also the defendant. It would be a maneuver that could nearly triple his net worth."
"All of this happening as the Trump administration is literally making your life harder and more expensive with wars and tariffs," said Hayes. "None of that has stopped Trump from trying to get his hands on more of your money."
"The president, in effect, sued himself for more than $10 billion, or he sued the government he controls," said Hayes. "$10 billion, by the way, is nearly the entire annual IRS budget. And those dollars have paid out would come from the U.S. Treasury, which he also oversees. Now, this is so novel, I don't really know how you characterize it legally, like we're out past the frontier, whether legal or not. I am of the strong opinion, and I think many would be also that this is an attempt at the largest theft ever by an American politician, plainly, flagrantly. Blatantly, in plain daylight. It is a conflict of interest so enormous the term itself, conflict of interest hardly begins to capture what's happening."
"In fact, get this: last month, a federal judge in the case ... gave them until May 20th to come back and explain how the case isn't a scam to enrich Trump," said Hayes. "She's like, wait a second, wait a second. The constitution requires cases or controversies, but I don't see one here, she writes. 'Although President Trump avers he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is a sitting president and is named adversaries or entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,' she added ... What the judge is saying is, like, I don't think this is actually a real case. It can't be. You're on both sides."
"So the lawyers have one more week to file briefs that would convince the judge to let Trump's $10 billion lawsuit continue," said Hayes. And this, he said, is why the Justice Department is considering settlement talks now, before that deadline: to "shovel tons of cash over to him in return for him dropping the suit. The mob has a word for that: shakedown."
"Think of it again," Hayes continued. "Your taxes may come out of your paycheck every week. Or you wrote a check April 15th. Some part of that is going to end up in Donald Trump's bank account. No one has ever taken as much money in the history of the nation as Donald Trump is attempting to hoover up from the federal government right now, I don't think there's ever been a $10 billion theft, $10 billion. That's the same amount in child care subsidies that Trump froze last year. $10 billion is almost enough to fund federal disaster relief for a year. It is enough to fund the entire National Park Service, one of the great jewels of this nation, for five years. You could fund the Peace Corps for 20 years. It could all go straight into the Trump family coffers."
"I am telling you, there is no scale or precedent for corruption like this in the United States," he added. "It would put every other Trump grift to shame."
