The Department of Homeland Security promptly issued its standard denial, used to excuse other, comparable killings like that of Renée Goode. It claimed that Araujo had “weaponized his vehicle” and tried to hit an ICE agent with it, “resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”

The three other men who were in the van with Araujo—the only full witnesses to the shooting—remain in custody, reportedly under pressure to self-deport. But from behind bars they were able to reach Araujo’s family’s lawyer. They disputed the official account.

“That is a lie,” wrote Jose Trinidad Rojas in a handwritten statement to the lawyer, obtained by the Washington Post. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”

Araujo’s family, too, were outraged by the official explanation. His sons said that their father knew exactly the consequences of resisting ICE. They’re certain, they said, that their father thought he was being carjacked during the incident—it had happened before, and the van contained expensive tools. How was he to know that his assailants, likely masked in an unmarked vehicle, were law enforcement officers?

States have reacted by passing laws to require federal agents to reveal their identity. The Trump administration has sued to have these laws overturned. Its latest target is New York.

In another incident from the same week, in the Chicago suburbs, masked agents slammed a man’s head into the ground, then menacingly jabbed a Taser towards another man who was filming them. When faces are covered, and in the absence of other identifying features, it’s unclear how victims of abuse might seek recourse.

Around the country, states have reacted by passing laws to require federal agents to clearly reveal their identity, rather than hide behind masks and unmarked vehicles. The Trump administration has sued to have these laws overturned. Its latest target in the courts is New York State, which recently passed a statute forbidding state and federal law enforcement agents from concealing their faces. 

The Trump administration sued New York on June 23. The state countersued, to defend its new law, later that day.

“By hiding their faces and refusing to wear identification, federal immigration officers endanger New Yorkers and intentionally evade accountability,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “Our communities should not have to live in fear of being disappeared by unidentified masked agents. If the federal government wants to brazenly defy our laws, then we will fight tooth and nail in court to ensure transparency and keep all New Yorkers safe.”

Earlier that month, White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan had threatened Governor Kathy Hochul (D) with a surge in ICE activity. “I made her a promise: you’re going to see more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” he said.

The federal government’s lawsuit claims New York is threatening the officers’ safety. “Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in an accompanying press release. “New York’s anti-law enforcement policies regulate the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand.”

“When you look at the history, public servants had to be accountable … But hiding behind masks? This is the kind of policing that occurs in coercive, authoritarian regimes.”

The Trump administration’s apparent outrage runs counter to the fact that law enforcement officers have, until recently, been expected to reveal their identities in all but very narrow scenarios, such as undercover work. That’s been the case since the start of modern policing.

“When you look at the history, public servants had to be accountable and revealing their identity is critical to accountability,” Josh Parker, deputy director of  policy for the Policing Project at the NYU School of Law, told Filter.

Not long ago, Parker pointed out, an officer hiding their badge number during an encounter was considered scandalous. “But hiding behind masks? This is the kind of policing that occurs in coercive, authoritarian regimes: the KGB, Nazi Germany, the Stasi,” he said.

“It’s clearly just an intimidation tactic,” Parker continued. “It’s sowing fear, having someone in plain clothes, masked, aggressively approaching people.”

Law enforcement masking additionally seems to have facilitated a spike in people impersonating federal officers, for example to commit robberies. “In 2025 alone there were 31 cases of people posing as federal agents,” Parker said. “There had been five [on average] the years before.”

He also noted that no other branch of work in the criminal-legal system allows for anonymity. “Imagine if a judge or legislator remained anonymous. Public servants with so much power over people’s lives cannot hide their identity.”

“The Houston shooting, it’s predictable. This is the lack of accountability and transparency, with the masking and the intimidation.”

Lieutenant Diane Goldstein (Ret.) served with the Redondo Beach Police Department in California for 21 years, and is now the executive director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), which advocates for drug-policy and justice-system reform. She said that officers who hide their identity violate basic tenets of accountable policing.

“First and foremost, accountability and transparency, they undergird the entire legitimacy of the criminal justice system, not just policing,” Goldstein told Filter. “Policing requires accountability and transparency. Period.”

One of the reasons officers shouldn’t hide behind masks or “investigations” that conceal the truth, she continued, is that work such as preventing and investigating acts of violence is radically undermined when the public doesn’t trust authorities.

“In standard policing, even if the officer’s name isn’t obvious, there’s a badge number. That’s how you can file a complaint,” Goldstein said. “The Houston shooting, it’s predictable. This is the lack of accountability and transparency, with the masking and the intimidation. And it’s absolutely crazy they continue to say, Our officers need to be masked so they don’t get doxxed.” 

Photograph (cropped) of ICE agents in Minneapolis in January 2026 by Chad Davis via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0

Lt. Diane Goldstein serves on the board of directors of The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter. LEAP was formerly the fiscal sponsor of The Influence Foundation. Filter’s Editorial Independence Policy applies.

The post “Sowing Fear”—The Legal Battle Over Masked ICE Agents appeared first on Filter.

“I am going to do everything for our country to save our nation. From danger,” de la Espriella yelled at the audience. “And that danger has a name … narcoterrorism!”

He’s expected to defeat Iván Cepeda, the left-wing candidate endorsed by Colombia’s current president, Gustavo Petro, in the June 21 runoff. He also recently received the endorsement of United States President Donald Trump.

“The results of this Election are very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “Because of his tremendous accomplishments in life, and his political support for me, personally, it is my Honor to give Abelardo my Complete and Total Endorsement.”

De la Espriella has dual citizenship with the US. He also has a line of somewhat unusual branded products, reminiscent of Trump’s own line of products. He’s marketed rum, menswear products and music albums of him singing hits in “de la Esperiella style.”

While Colombia has collaborated with US efforts to counter the drug trade, President Petro has denounced Trump’s boat strikes in the Caribbean. So far more than 200 people have been killed in the attacks. De la Espriella has promised to add to that number. He’s called Petro a “criminal” and “drug addict.” 

His platform is a libertarian economic agenda—he promises to take a “chainsaw” to government spending, except the armed forces—coupled with an aggressive, militarized crackdown on the drug trade. De la Espriella’s ascendance represents yet another instance of right-wing ideology surging in Latin America.

A former defense attorney, de la Espriella once represented wealthy businessmen known for drug trafficking. He’s pledged a range of militarized crackdowns if elected, including a vast expansion of private prisons to hold “cockroaches and rats.” 

Trump has called Cepeda a “Radical Left Marxist.”

Inspired by El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who has dubbed himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” de la Espriella plans to build 10 mega-prisons modeled after El Salvador’s infamous CECOT. He’s also promised to deport immigrants who engage in criminal activity; almost all of the approximately 3 million immigrants living in Colombia are Venezuelan. 

“It’s a similar script. A lot of Latin American countries are being overtaken by right-wing forces,” Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Filter. “He’s very Trumpian. And models himself after Bukele. It’s a return to the bad old days.”

Tree noted a historical parallel with former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. 

“He was a strongman,” Tree said. “In the aughts, the country was dominated by paramilitary narco traffickers. It was a horrible human rights environment.”

In the 2000s, Uribe’s military lured thousands of impoverished young men into remote areas, executed them and dressed them in Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fatigues to falsely boost their body count. De la Espriella has called the former president a patriot. His father coordinated a regional campaign for Uribe, and the families remain close.

Mass incarceration of people who use or sell drugs has never brought the drug trade to an end. Whenever someone is imprisoned, or killed in government air strikes, someone else will take their place. Taking out leadership of transnational drug-trafficking groups just creates a temporary power vacuum, and increases violence between groups and against civilians.

Left-wing rival Cepeda often speaks of the drug war as a failure, and advocates instead for investment in disenfranchised neighborhoods. Trump has called Cepeda a “Radical Left Marxist.”

Image via Wikipedia/Creative Commons 3.0/Trump White House Archives

The post Trump-Endorsed de la Espriella Pulls Ahead in Colombia Presidential Race appeared first on Filter.

Jones was sentenced to five days in jail. Shortly after being booked into Kent County Correctional Facility, he began to suffer acute alcohol withdrawal, reported Prison Legal News. The next day it was worse, as he banged on the door while appearing to hallucinate, among other signs of delirium tremens. He had stopped drinking water, a nurse noted, and kept stripping off his clothing.

But for days, medical staff—overseen by Corizon Health, one of the largest prison health providers in the country—failed to provide treatment.

After a few days, as Jones’s symptoms worsened, he was transferred to a special medical unit in the jail. He needed oxygen, but the oxygen tank wasn’t working. A nurse couldn’t resuscitate him because the defibrillator’s battery was low. Jones was eventually taken to a hospital emergency room, where he died.

Jones’s family sued Corizon for violating his constitutional protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and in 2022 a jury ruled that the company must pay his estate $6.4 million.

“It’s called the ‘Texas two-step,’ and it’s so blatantly in order to not pay folks.”

Jones’s lawsuit was one of hundreds of medical malpractice lawsuits against Corizon. But as victims and their families awaited payment, the company made other plans. Executives moved liabilities, such as settlement payments, to a new company, Tehum Care Services—which then declared bankruptcy, further stalling payouts. They then created another new company, YesCare, which provided services until this May, when it too declared bankruptcy.

“It’s called the ‘Texas two-step,’” Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, a nonprofit advocacy group that tracks the private prison industry, told Filter, “and it’s so blatantly in order to not pay folks.”

Tylek observed that “Tehum” bears a striking resemblance to the Hebrew word for “abyss”—an apt symbol of the moral depravity on display.

YesCare filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy following a $307 million jury verdict against the company in Michigan. The case stemmed from the denial of a simple medical procedure that might have spared a detainee under Corizon’s care two years of pain and misery.

Kohchise Jackson suffered from a perforated intestine. Instead of getting the procedure that would have fixed the problem, he was forced to live with a defective colonoscopy bag for two years. Feces seeped into his bladder and urine. He was in severe pain and suffered abuse from other men who were not happy to be in close quarters with a leaking colonoscopy bag.

The cost of the operation was a little over $900. The company refused to greenlight the procedure. “It was a horrible experience for me,” Jackson, 44, told Local 4. “Shame on you,” he added, “I’m still a human being at the end of the day.”

“A lot of people who should be compensated for harm, it’s unclear what’s going to happen to them.”

YesCare’s efforts to evade responsibility to wronged patients have thrown the industry into turmoil, according to Tylek, with the verdict bound to be challenged in courts. A potential liquidation of the company’s assets will leave huge gaps in health care services in prisons and jails.

“Everyone is nervous. Prisons and jails have to provide health care. They don’t know if they’ll have to shift to other providers and to who,” Tylek said.

Adding to the chaos, other private prison health care providers have also recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to evade lawsuits. Wellpath filed for bankruptcy in 2024, claiming the company could not sustain medical malpractice payouts. Armor Correctional Health filed that same year.

The first group most harshly impacted are people on the inside, Tylek noted, who already face dangerous, substandard care.

“They weren’t paying people for a while, so people weren’t showing up for work,” she said of YesCare. The company is currently seeing if it can use some of its cash on hand, earmarked for creditors, for people to work through the bankruptcy, she added, but it’s unclear how much and for how long.

Once again left hanging are victims of prior neglect and abuse who are owed compensation for their suffering.

“A lot of people who should be compensated for harm, it’s unclear what’s going to happen to them,” Tylek said.

Whoever ends up replacing YesCare after all the disruption and litigation is not likely to be much better, she noted. It’s a constant in the industry. “They take money and then they don’t provide services. It’s what they do.” 

Photograph via Picryl

The post Carceral Health Care Profiteers Keep Evading Responsibility for Harms appeared first on Filter.

The strike came a few days after the release of the National Drug Control Strategy, a sprawling, 195-page document, which—besides some bizarre fear-mongering about marijuana—praises these “kinetic strikes against narcoterrorists,” and promises to expand crackdowns along trafficking routes and within countries that produce or ship drugs.

“There is literally zero evidence that the ‘kinetic strikes against narcoterrorists’ are working,” Dr. David Herzberg, a Buffalo University history professor and drug policy expert, told Filter. “I don’t think it’s useful to try to discern reality based on what the administration says about anything.”

Drug use “can be dangerous,” and the issue is “something we need to be serious about,” he added, “But you can’t be playing cowboy, walking around blowing up boats. It’s how a toddler would handle things.”  

“At best … a few years of a supply chain being disrupted at a massive cost, often only to be replaced by something worse. You’d think at some point that lesson would sink in.”

The Strategy pledges to broaden the fight against trafficking abroad and at the border using artificial intelligence, though despite its length the report does not provide much detail on what AI drug-route tracking would look like. The Department of War is also set to play a bigger role at the border, suggesting further militarization in the drug war.

“Maybe a particular supply chain can be disrupted but at best what you have is winning a few years of a supply chain being disrupted at a massive cost, often only to be replaced by something worse,” Herzberg commented. “You’d think at some point that lesson would sink in.”

He characterized the administration’s plans for more violations of other nations’ sovereignty in pursuit of the drug war as “visiting violence on countries where business enterprises are located that happen to send this product.”

The plan also claims to help people experiencing substance use disorder in the US, primarily through programs that tap into the “healing power of faith.” Although the report also cites science-based approaches to recovery like medications for opioid use disorder, its emphasis is squarely on religious groups and approaches.

“It’s concerning because it involves a belief there’s only one way to be healthy, to ‘salvation’—and we have to be pragmatists about drug use.”

“The United States is, and will always be, one nation under God,” it states. “Over two-thirds of Americans affiliate with a religion, and for the first time, the Strategy is grounded in the healing power of faith for those suffering from drug addiction.”

“Some people are helped by religion,” Herzberg noted. “It should be all hands on deck; I’m not opposed if it works. But, the emphasis on religion above other methods, especially in the context of other comments made by the Trump administration, including RFK, there’s real concern about what they think people who use drugs need,” he continued. “It’s concerning because it involves a belief there’s only one way to be healthy, to ‘salvation’—and we have to be pragmatists about drug use.” 

Pragmatism about drug use means harm reduction, which acknowledges the reality that many people will continue to use drugs, and the need to protect them from associated risks.

Harm reduction also stands against the stigmatization of drug use—not an approach favored by the administration. “The Strategy is a road map for the United States to defeat the scourge of illicit drugs and achieve a safe and healthy America, where a drug-free life is the prevailing norm,” states a White House “Fact Sheet.”

To spread the message that drug use is bad, the administration plans to use influencers and launch what sounds like a revamp of the DARE program. “Prevention in school settings is particularly important, as it helps ensure youth are receiving appropriate and positive messaging to make them more resilient to pressures that can increase the likelihood of drug use,” the document reads.

“This knowledge, you have to think about how it works and who it works for.”

Besides increased use of AI—both to pursue the drug war and to scan medical records to identify people at risk for overdose—one of the few things in the Strategy that hasn’t already been tried and shown to have failed is a plan to test wastewater for drug residue on a national scale.

Herzberg said that in theory, novel ways of gathering information about the drug supply can be used for good—such as for monitoring national and local trends, and being able to warn people and service providers about emerging risks.

“The more information you have, the better,” he said. “But that’s if it’s used to make drug use safer.” 

Given what he’s seen from the administration, he envisions the tech elements as yet more ways to surveil and punish. “This knowledge, you have to think about how it works and who it works for.” 

Herzberg suspects AI will be used to tag travellers as suspicious based on profiling. And the surveillance of medical records could have extremely negative consequences for people who use drugs, like being denied jobs and housing.

“This kind of surveillance is going to most heavily come down on people it always lands on: the most vulnerable,” he said. “The harm caused in the community will come not just from drugs but drug policy.”

Photograph (cropped) via PublicDomainPictures.net

The post Trump Admin Plans More Drug War, AI Surveillance, Wastewater Testing appeared first on Filter.

Convictions could be penalized with up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $500. The bill originally proposed incarceration for up to two years on subsequent convictions, but this was removed during the Senate committee review.

Modeled after coercive drug courts, the Homelessness Court Program purports to offer eligible defendants the so-called choice of treatment plus 12 months of probation as an alternative to incarceration—and charge them for the costs of their participation. If they can’t pay, a judge could waive the costs; attempt to assign them to a publicly funded treatment program; or force them into unpaid labor to work off the debt.

“‘Streets to Success?’” Jesse Rabinowitz, Campaign and Communications Director at the National Homelessness Law Center, told Filter. “That’s not success, that’s Jim Crow … they’re not really interested in getting people help, they’re using the unhoused to build more camps, to normalize forced labor. [That’s] authoritarianism.” 

Rabinowitz likened the bill to forced prison labor, which remains legal in Louisiana.

If a participant “fails” treatment, a judge could extend their probation even longer, or impose a new sentence, or send them into the state’s “intensive incarceration” for six months—after which they return to the Homelessness Court Program.

“I have no idea where they would get the money,” Rabinowitz said. “It’s so out of touch when more and more people are struggling to afford housing.”

“Cicero has been lobbying states all over the country.”

“Streets to Success” is being promoted by the Cicero Institute, the right-wing think tank behind the proliferation of public camping bans and other anti-homelessness legislation across the United States.

“Cicero has been lobbying states all over the country,” Rabinowitz said. “And you have right-wing governors trying to appease the Trump administration … it’s all connected. They’re not interested in addressing things. Not in making housing affordable. They’re making more people homeless that they then want to force into detention camps.” 

In 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” which pressed for the forced institutionalization of unhoused people. The order explicitly rejected the evidence-based “Housing First” approach, which recognizes the ineffectiveness of requiring preconditions like abstinence or employment. Rabinowitz pointed out that we do need more behavioral health care services across the country, but that local governments are following the Trump administration’s lead by defunding them.

“Trump is hell-bent on making it worse,” Rabinowitz said. “We need to fight for a country where everybody, regardless of where they’re from, what they do, what they look like, who they love—they’ve got a safe place to call home.”

The bill is currently with the Legislative Bureau. Melanie Bray, director of legal programs and advocacy for Disability Rights Louisiana, is fairly certain it will pass; the state has a long history of warehousing its most vulnerable residents. Bray recalled that in 2025 when New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl, unhoused people were “rounded up like cattle” and temporarily sequestered in a warehouse. 

“What gets lost is the human component,” Bray told Filter. “The loud part is, ‘This is a problem for business, it’s about fentanyl addiction, crime, property prices.’ What’s pushed aside is the human component—the people sleeping in the street.”

During the committee hearing, bill sponsor Rep. Debbie Villio (R) claimed that “external pressure”  offers unhoused people the option to break the cycle of criminalization.

“Quite frankly, I believe and others believe that it’s cruel to allow these people to not provide them the tools to help themselves,” Villio said, according to Nola.com. “And we’re dealing with the population sometimes that doesn’t want the tools.”

Image (cropped) via Washington State House Republicans

The post Louisiana “Homelessness Court” Would Offer Treatment, Forced Labor appeared first on Filter.

“I’ve never cried so hard in my life,” his brother, Ron Lee, told Filter.

Far from the “criminal” stereotype, Lee said, Cozart was a community leader who owned two barbershops and performed stand-up comedy. The family is now waiting for the toxicology report—Lee said his brother wasn’t using drugs—and worrying about potentially sinister findings. 

“My brother is dead. Shut. It. Down.”

“They’re killing people left and right,” Lee said.

Just a few days after Cozart’s death, 49-year-old John Price, another man in Rikers, who was being held on drug charges without bail, was pronounced dead at a hospital, where he’d been taken after requiring medical attention.

“My brother is dead. Shut. It. Down,” Lee said of Rikers.

The deaths of Cozart and Price were the first among Rikers detainees since New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) took office in January. They’ve thrown more focus on longstanding efforts to shut down the jail complex, which stalled—or were actively thwarted—under Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams.

On April 7, Mamdani announced the opening of a 104-bed health facility to house current Rikers detainees with serious medical needs, which are not met there. It’s a first, concrete step in moving some of the population, which numbered more than 7,000 in 2025, off of the island. The new unit, associated with Bellevue Hospital, is slated to be one of three; the other two will primarily house people with serious mental health needs.

“Opening this new clinical facility is how we begin to close Rikers Island—not with promises, but with action,” Mamdani stated.

“Opening this new clinical facility at Bellevue Hospital is how we begin to close Rikers Island—not with promises, but with action,” Mamdani stated. “For too long, people with serious medical needs have been left to suffer in a system that was never designed to care for them. Today, we are building something different: a system that delivers real care, treats people with dignity and makes our city safer for everyone—incarcerated people, corrections officers and all New Yorkers.”

Mamdani has kept the jail complex visibly in the news. He observed Ramadan with Muslims in Rikers, and on Passover penned a letter to Jewish people detained there. “Like the Jewish people in Egypt, you too hold fast to your faith in the face of the unknown.”

The city council voted to close Rikers back in 2019—so long ago that Mamdani was still pursuing a rap career. The plan was to build new jails in different boroughs in order to empty out the sprawling jail complex, which for decades has been overcrowded, violent, lacking in adequate medical services and fatal: Forty-eight people died in city jails (most of which are on Rikers Island) or immediately upon release during Adams’ tenure.

Despite the council vote and the campaign to close the facility, Adams—who won the 2021 mayoral election as a “law-and-order” candidate, during the backlash to Black Lives Matter—proved an obstacle.

“The fact that Mandami is prioritizing this in his first 100 days is a really good sign.”

“When the administration changed, Adams, a former police officer, was not in support of closing Rikers,” Deanna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA, told Filter. “He stalled progress. Not a single borough-based facility was built.”

Hoskins is now hopeful. “The fact that Mandami is prioritizing this in his first 100 days is a really good sign,” she said. She pointed to his appointment of Stanley Richards as DOC commissioner; Richards, formerly incarcerated, is seen as a strong signal that there will be a serious effort to end the Rikers abuses.

Mamdani, Hoskins said, is paying attention to the pain of New Yorkers. “He’s actively working to address the harms entrenched into the walls of Rikers Island.”

She brought up the horrific story of Kalief Browder, whose case helped galvanize the movement to end cash bail and close Rikers.

Browder was arrested and sent to Rikers at the age of 16 after he was (wrongly) accused of stealing a backpack. He refused to take a plea deal, maintaining his innocence. He spent roughly three years in the facility, where he was subjected to violence by guards and other detainees. He was placed in solitary confinement for long stretches.

“Think about all the people experiencing that pain that we haven’t heard about.”

After his release, Browder became a symbol for the reform movement. But according to his family, he couldn’t get past his experience in the prison complex—he’d pace around his room for hours, likely a trauma response to being forced into solitary. He hung himself in his family’s home at the age of 22. 

“Here’s this kid, arrested for a book bag. The trauma he acquired, he couldn’t handle,” Hoskins said. “We criminalized him for being poor. That’s one case that got our attention. Think about all the people experiencing that pain that we haven’t heard about.”

Darren Mack, co-director at Freedom Agenda, is personally familiar. He was sent to Rikers in the early 1990s when he was 17. He spent 19 months there.

“At the time Rikers was out of sight, out of mind. It was as dysfunctional, as horrible, as it is today,” Mack told Filter. He recalled what he described as the worst thing he saw: a man experiencing a mental health crisis who did not get help. “He had feces smeared all over himself, banged all night on the walls. He was not getting the care he should have gotten.”

“The system has been failing people for too long. It’s a new day.”

Like Hoskins, Mack is hopeful about the mayor’s first step of opening a health care facility for medically vulnerable Rikers detainees. “This is something we’ve been advocating for,” he said. “An alternative to incarceration. We need to fast-track more facilities like this.”

As for right-wing opposition—unsurprisingly, the New York Post is not ecstatic about the plan to close Rikers—Mack thinks it represents just a small fraction of New Yorkers who want to maintain the violent status quo.

“We believe every life has value,” he said. “The system has been failing people for too long. It’s a new day, and new administration, and we’re moving forward, moving forward.”

Photograph by Doc Searls via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Hopes of Shutting Rikers Grow Under Mamdani, as Deaths Continue appeared first on Filter.

“He hasn’t stopped talking about it for the past 24+ hrs,” the account added. “It is the single most traumatizing thing that’s happened to him in nyc.”

The post went viral, generating 5.8 million views and fueling cycles of online outrage. Many of the initial responses derided the couple as whiny weaklings who should move to the suburbs (or “i hate you both. you should be put in the town stocks.”) Others—including progressive-minded writers like Jill Filipovic and Mindy Isser—voiced frustration at what they saw as the left’s counterproductive downplaying of such incidents. Right-wing accounts duly accused “woke” progressives of turning cities into hellscapes; the forced institutionalization of people who are unhoused or use drugs in public came up more than once.

Though the moment may have registered only for the extremely online, its running themes—many people’s fear or disgust at witnessing poverty, drug use or mental illness, and the resulting politicized crackdowns to “clean up” cities—have been percolating and shaping culture and policy for decades.

Social media tales should be taken with large grains of salt. This incident allegedly took place on a crowded train, and although the story went viral, no corroboration from other witnesses is readily visible.

Only 973 public restrooms are operational in New York City, in a population of 8.6 million. Over 350,000 people are unhoused.

But if the story is true—if an unhoused woman boarded a train and relieved herself—it reflects, among other things, a lack of suitable places to do so.

There are very few public restrooms in New York and most other cities in the United States. Research suggests that US cities have, on average, 13 public restrooms per 100,000 residents. And in big cities the number is lower: 10 restrooms per 100,000 residents. Many US cities experiencing homelessness crises do even worse: Philadelphia has only 4.1 public restrooms per 100,000. Houston and Dallas, respectively, have 7.7 and 4.4. That’s far behind much of Europe, for instance.

According to an analysis by the New York City Council, there are 1,064 public restrooms across all five boroughs. Only 973 are operational, in a population of 8.6 million. Over 350,000 people are unhoused in the city, including thousands sleeping unsheltered. They all have to go to the bathroom somewhere.

To Harvey Molotch, emeritus professor of sociology at New York York University with a specialization in urban development, it’s a familiar problem.

“Since the beginning of urban development, the first formations of towns and cities, a primary issue is: Where are people going to go?” he told Filter.

“The notion that crowding causes disease after mass pandemics … it’s brought to a head in the 19th century,” Dr. Molotch added. “There’s a confluence of factors: urbanization, population density, disease and early notions of what causes communicable disease.”

According to Bryant Simon, professor of history at Temple University, there was a nationwide effort to build public bathrooms from the late 19th century through to the First World War. “Mayors of each city would show up and host events where they would be bragging about their public restrooms, and it is such a stark comparison to what we have now,” he wrote. The temperance movement also lobbied for public toilets—they hoped access to outdoor bathrooms would keep people out of the saloons, where they might be tempted to imbibe.

“You have a classic moral panic. Fear of disease, fear of crime. And sex. There’s a fear people are shooting up in restrooms.”

Building on this momentum, another 2 million public bathrooms were built across the US as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal public works programs. But by the 1970s and ‘80s, cities across the country started closing public bathrooms, driven by sentiments that would be a comfortable fit on today’s social media.

“You have a classic moral panic,” Molotch said. “Fear of disease, fear of crime. And sex. Drug use. Any disorder in general. It’s a time of the breakout of sexual freedom—heterosexual, homosexual—and drug use. So … there’s a fear people are shooting up in restrooms.”

At the same time as depriving unhoused people of safe spaces to relieve themselves, officials cracked down on public urination. Budget cuts dovetailed with the perception that a city public bathroom was an undesirable and dangerous place: A functional, safe, clean toilet requires regular cleaning and oversight.

“To have a functioning restroom you need to invest a good amount of money and invest in maintaining them,” Molotch said. “Otherwise it becomes a humiliating disaster, where the bathroom becomes dirtier and dirtier.”

Molotch is scathing about the attitudes that have left the country with completely inadequate provision. “It’s American selfishness and unwillingness to invest in the public realm,” he said. “It’s disregard for the homeless and their earthly needs. You put it all together in a martini shaker and the outcome is there’s nowhere to go. For anyone.”

“We know people do use public restrooms as consumption spaces, so we have to increase options for folks and use the spaces to inform people of their options.”

Of course public bathrooms are also places where people, particularly those without housing, may seek to use drugs privately, and that can pose issues—in terms of the safety of a person using drugs alone, and also for bathroom attendants who might discover someone overdosing or dead. But that’s a reason to mitigate the risks, as some have already sought to do—not to deny people an essential resource.

“There are a variety of options,” Trevor Goodyear, assistant professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia, told Filter. “First, we know people do use public restrooms as consumption spaces, so we have to increase options for folks and use the spaces to inform people of their options in terms of safer consumption sites.”

Dr. Goodyear suggested building public toilets with motion censors. “So if someone stops moving, you can have someone check in.” Other low-cost, low-tech features he mentioned include cubicle doors that swing outwards—so an unconscious person wouldn’t block access—rather than inwards. And often, it’s very simple: “Have staff routinely check bathrooms, just a quick knock on the door, ask, ‘Are you ok?”

Building facilities with more space would also help, he said. “That way people aren’t falling and getting wedged between the toilet and wall, which could be a problem.”

“And these innovations benefit everyone, not just people who use drugs,” Goodyear pointed out. “Everyone could use a clean, safe bathroom.”

The post Lack of Public Bathrooms Makes Cities More Hostile appeared first on Filter.

Up to 20 men in military uniform hurry toward a waiting helicopter. The helicopter speeds across black-and-white terrain. Tense movie music plays. A fiery explosion engulfs a small building by a river, on the edge of a lush jungle. Smoke billows from the rubble, filmed from multiple angles on the ground and in the air. Besides the theatrics, it’s unclear why so many soldiers were deployed by helicopter for an air strike.

Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa claimed the target was a training facility run by Mono Tole —an alias used by the head of Comandos de la Frontera, a dissident Colombian FARC faction operating in Ecuador—and a “training area for drug traffickers.” Casualty numbers have not been released. 

President Noboa has enthusiastically welcomed the Trump administration’s violent interventions.

“We will find them. Wherever they hide, we will be there,” Noboa posted with dramatic flourish befitting a Department of War partner. “Our borders will not be bases for drug trafficking.”

Unlike other leaders in the region, who’ve vehemently protested the Trump administration’s violent interventions—including the boat bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific that claimed their six latest victims on March 8, raising the known death toll to 156—Noboa has enthusiastically welcomed them.

Noboa sees a strong political incentive to embrace the Trump administration’s “tough-on-crime” swagger against so-called “narco-terrorists.” The right-wing president was reportedly shocked by a tie with his left-wing opponent, Luisa Gonzáles, in the first round of Ecuador’s presidential election on February 9, 2025. 

Noboa responded by hiring US mercenary Erik Prince and putting “meat on the fire” —or stoking public fear of violent crime. That, and he happened to declare a “state of exception”—suspending the right to freedom of assembly, and authorizing searches without warrants—in key electoral areas just ahead of the April 13 runoff vote. 

Noboa also had a private visit with President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago right before that election, which he won by a surprising 11-point margin. His opponent claimed the election was rigged. 

“The affinity can be explained by a shared conservative narrative that frames organized crime primarily as a threat that must be addressed through military and security strategies.”

The two presidents have a mutual hardline agenda, explained Dr. Carla Álvarez Velasco, a professor at the School of Security and Defense at the Universidad de Posgrado del Estado in Quito, Ecuador. 

“The affinity between President Noboa and Donald Trump can be explained by a shared conservative narrative that frames organized crime primarily as a threat that must be addressed through military and security strategies, with strong military and police cooperation and, in some cases, economic pressure,” she told Filter.

“This contrasts with the position of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has promoted a more critical perspective on the traditional ‘war on drugs’ approach,” she noted. “These differences have generated regional tensions, particularly because some of the policies adopted by Ecuador—such as tariff increases on Colombian products—are beginning to affect populations on both sides of the border without necessarily improving the security situation in either country.” 

Violence has increased in Ecuador in recent years. In 2020, the country reportedly suffered 1,372 homicides. By 2025, that number had surged to 9,125. 

Glaeldys González Calanche, an analyst with the International Crisis group based in Bogotá, Colombia, explained that Colombia’s peace deal with the FARC guerillas had the effect of ramping up cocaine production, while violent power struggles between trafficking groups spilled over into Ecuador. 

“A lot of Mexican gangs began to vie for territory in Ecuador,” she told Filter. “And internally, you have the murder of  Jorge Luis Zambrano, or ‘Rasquiña,’ the head of Los Choneros, in 2020.” 

“After, you see these violent clashes between rival groups,” she continued. “There are outbursts of violence in prison and that explodes into the street. Last year was the most violent in history. The country has not seen that before.”

“It’s serving to reproduce cycles of violence.”

The whole situation can be seen in cause-and-effect terms: Drug prohibition generates lucrative illicit markets, fostering violence as different factions vie for control, which is only worsened by drug enforcement. Violence gives rise to public fear, which is exploited by authoritarian politicians, who then engage in yet more dramatic drug-war violence.

Both experts agree that the new Ecuador-US military crackdown won’t disrupt the drug trade in any meaningful, long-term way.

“Drug trafficking is a highly adaptable economic activity,” Velasco said. “Joint maritime operations can certainly disrupt trafficking routes temporarily, particularly in the Pacific. However, international experience shows that criminal networks are extremely flexible. They can quickly change routes, ports, transportation methods and even personnel.”

Calanche said she understands the cosmetic reasons for the military action in Ecuador. “It’s part of the political narrative, of pushing hard with the crackdown. It’s a message to the public that they’re addressing these issues.”

Being seen to be doing something is one thing, but, “It doesn’t affect the markets and it doesn’t affect the groups,” she continued. “They adapt.” 

Worse than having no effect at all, killing leaders or forcing trafficking groups into different territory can easily lead to more violence impacting local communities amid the ensuing power struggles. 

“What’s needed is to tackle and address corruption and collusion between the cartels and the government, it’s serving to reproduce cycles of violence,” Calanche said. “A military crackdown doesn’t do anything, unless it leads to a group fragmenting, [then] there’s more violence, and the operation continues with others in charge.”

Screenshot via US government film

The post Why Ecuador Is Partnering in US Drug-War Strikes appeared first on Filter.

At least 73 people were killed in the initial raid and retaliatory attacks around the country, as vehicles and businesses were set on fire, roads were barricaded, and residents and tourists in several regions were told to shelter in place. 

Though that initial violence has now calmed, all signs point to the operation leading to longer-term strife—due to a power vacuum within El Mencho’s organization, known as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), and the prospect of other groups looking to seize CJNG turf. 

Oseguera Cervantes’ son is in prison in the US, and he reportedly has no clear successor. So we can expect both an internal struggle for control of CGNJ and other groups seeking to take advantage, as everyone fights (or bribes) police and the military. Such battles within and among Mexico’s major drug trafficking organizations are characterized by extreme brutality. Whoever comes out on top and takes El Mencho’s spot will hardly be a humanitarian. 

As the Institute for Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) describes, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel has been heavily militarized and territorially aggressive in cornering a large chunk of the market to export fentanyl and methamphetamine to the US.  

“The breakdown of an alliance between the CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel in 2017 marked the beginning of a steep rise in cartel conflict deaths nationwide,” the IEP states. “Between 2015 and 2019, the national homicide rate climbed from 15.1 to 28.2 deaths per 100,000 people. This period overlapped directly with the CJNG’s expansion across Mexico.”

“This kind of action doesn’t serve its stated purpose of eradicating drugs from society and instead creates infighting within and between violent groups jockeying for market control.”

By the early 2020s, however, the IEP notes that CJNG and the Sinaloa group had largely consolidated their respective areas of control, leading to more stability in some regions as murders began falling.

“Where criminal hegemony is firmly established, open confrontation may decline, even if criminal governance deepens,”  the report observes. “Jalisco and Sinaloa —strongholds of the CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel—have at times seen comparatively infrequent incidents of political violence, suggesting that entrenched control can reduce overt conflict.”

Decades of violent drug-war enforcement in Mexico and the US have unquestionably failed to stem the flow of drugs. What’s equally clear is that “decapitating” trafficking organizations invites turf wars. 

“This kind of action, just like the war on drugs more broadly, doesn’t serve its stated purpose of eradicating drugs from society and instead creates infighting within and between violent groups jockeying for market control,” Catherine Cook, acting executive director of Harm Reduction International, told Filter. 

One fear is that a vicious circle will see more enforcement in response to more violence, sidelining any prospects of Mexico adopting a different approach to the drug trade. 

“The impact of this in Mexico is being felt widely,” Cook said. “Necessary discussions on drug policy reform, investing in communities and health, must be prioritized over the war-on-drugs approach.”

“In addition to violence, fractures among non-state actors can lead to the takeover of other markets.”

Zara Snapp, a drug policy expert based in Veracruz and cofounder of Instituto RIA, a civil society organization conducting research and advocacy, doesn’t think the government of Mexico has a drug policy—instead, she told Filter, it merely enforces US drug policy. 

This should be considered in light of implicit and explicit US threats—most obviously, those from President Donald Trump to bomb Mexico or conduct ground operations in an attempt to stop the drug trade. 

Snapp also explained why cutting off the head of an organization will do nothing but sow chaos without disrupting drug markets in any meaningful way. 

“The kingpin method has had little-to-no impact on the flow of drugs in the region and abroad,” she said. “If we take the case of El Chapo in prison in the United States, we can see it’s had little-to-no impact on fentanyl flows. 

Former Sinaloa boss Joaquín Guzmán Loera, once considered the world’s most powerful drug trafficker, was captured in Mexico in 2016, before being extradited to the US the following year and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019. US overdose deaths continued to rise to unprecedented levels until 2023.

“So we know that this strategy does not work,” Snapp continued. ”What it does do is generate brutal violence. In addition to violence, fractures among non-state actors can lead to the takeover of other markets.” 

Nicotine vapes, sales of which are now completely banned in Mexico, are one example of such an expansion entrenching those actors’ power in recent years. In addition to selling fentanyl and meth, CJNG is in the avocado business.

“If you squeeze one part, it only increases in another part. That’s true of actors and the people who are involved in drug production, transportation and distribution.”

“And this kingpin method doesn’t change anything because there’s always someone there to take up their role,” Snapp added. “Because demand pushes supply … there’s always going to be folks who are willing to step up. So this idea that you get rid of a powerful person, it’ll all go away, we know that’s not true.” 

Snapp also described the “balloon effect” so familiar to observers of the global drug war.  

“If you squeeze one part, it only increases in another part. That’s true of actors and the people who are involved in drug production, transportation and distribution,” she said. “That’s where we don’t see any difference, except for this period of adjustment, and violence is necessary for folks to establish their role in the altered landscape.”

We mustn’t forget how governments and prohibition foster this dynamic, she urged. “We have to talk about the role of the US government, Mexican government. This is something that just continues happening without any governments trying something new.”  

Posing the question, “Who’s winning in this drug war?” Snapp pointed to industries—from weapons manufacturers to the prison-industrial complex—that do very nicely out of it, thank you. 

“And it’s the US and global demand that makes it all happen,” she concluded, “and then all the incentives to maintain the status quo and always have us in states of war.”

Photograph (cropped) by Adrian Balasoiu on Unsplash

The post The Kingpin Effect: Violence From “El Mencho” Killing Far From Over appeared first on Filter.

There were 32 deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2025—an unconscionable number that looks very likely to be surpassed in 2026.

As of February 11, alongside ICE agents’ fatal shootings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis, another six people had already died in ICE custody.

The agency’s go-to response is to lie. As Popular Information detailed, a January 9 ICE press release following Campos’s death said he had died “after experiencing medical distress” in segregation, where he’d been placed for being  “disruptive while in line for medication.” An ICE statement to the Washington Post later claimed that Campos had tried to kill himself, “violently resisted the security staff” and “stopped breathing and lost consciousness.”

The witness said they saw one of the guards choke Campos as the others held him down. And the autopsy report released on January 21 by the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s office found abrasions to his chest and knees, hemorrhages on his neck and burst capillaries in his eyes. The cause of death was determined to be asphyxia.

“The Trump administration is ruthlessly pursuing a multi-layered detention expansion plan … Looming large is the imminent threat of using warehouses to detain up to 80,000 people.”

Besides brutality, another reason deaths are likely to rise is the unprecedented surge in the total number of people being held by ICE under President Donald Trump’s war on immigrants. When he took office in January 2025, about 40,000 people were in ICE custody. A year later, that number had reached a record 73,000—up 75 percent.

Flush with $45 billion for detention capacity expansion under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” ICE plans to deal with this ongoing influx in part by reopening shuttered jails around the United States, including facilities particularly notorious for past abuses and dire conditions.

But all those jails still won’t be enough to realize the full extent of the administration’s sadistic plans.  

“The Trump administration is ruthlessly pursuing a multi-layered detention expansion plan, skyrocketing the number of people in detention,” Stacy Suh, program director at Detention Watch Network, told Filter. “Looming large is the imminent threat of using warehouses to detain up to 80,000 people across the country.”

As the Atlanta Journal–Constitution recently reported, ICE is looking to buy up industrial warehouses in Missouri, Arizona, Louisiana, Texas and Virginia. Between 5,000 and 10,000 people would be detained in each of these vast facilities, while smaller warehouses—another 16 all over the country—would hold 1,500 each.

“All immigration detention is inherently inhumane and rife with abuse, and yet the warehouse model currently being pursued is particularly horrifying.”  

Jails, however appalling, at least have some infrastructure like toilets, bunks, kitchens and outrageously overpriced commissaries. It’s not clear how ICE is planning the day-to-day logistics of literally warehousing people.

“All immigration detention is inherently inhumane and rife with abuse,” Suh said, “and yet the warehouse model currently being pursued is particularly horrifying.”  

Warehouses are designed to store inanimate objects that don’t need bathrooms or food. There’s little prospect that ICE will furnish them at the level required to meet even the most basic human rights standards, and the sheer size of these buildings adds to an anticipated nightmare. 

“People are not commodities to be shipped, discarded, and profited off of,” Suh said. “Subjecting people to large-scale, makeshift warehouse detention camps will exponentially increase the likelihood for abuse and death in ICE custody, as ICE cuts people off from their loved ones and support networks, and subjects them to inhumane conditions.”

As for likely outcomes at the jails ICE plans to reopen, those facilities already have track records.

A lawsuit initiated by the ACLU of Virginia and North Carolina, after their FOIA request was denied, led to the January release of documents concerning eight facilities ICE plans to take over. Two former jails among them include the Augusta Correctional Center in Craigsville, Virginia, where detainees were subjected to sexual assaults and guards smuggled drugs. And the Rivers Correctional Facility in Winton, North Carolina, formerly operated by the GEO Group, which lost a federal contract after evidence of violence and sexual assault. There, too, former guards were found to have engaged in smuggling contraband and bribery, according to the ACLU.

“It’s a deliberate strategy … to make it so people leave the US instead of protesting their cases.”

Detention everywhere will be in atrocious conditions. And the scale of the plans ensures that more and more people will be forced to endure it.

“The major threat of converting jails into detention facilities is ICE’s increased efficiency in terms of the deportation project,” Eunice Hyunhye Cho, senior counsel with the ACLU National Prison Project, told Filter. “These facilities will house hundreds if not thousands of people.”  

“ICE is detaining thousands of people every day, who in the past would never have been detained: with work permits, having lived in the community for many years, many medically vulnerable,” she added. “ICE is choosing to grab people and putting them in jail for a civil offense. It makes it harder for them to make bond and be released while their immigration case proceeds.”

“It’s a deliberate strategy to expand detention beds to make it so people leave the US instead of protesting their cases,” Cho concluded.

Photograph of dorm room at the ICE Farmville Detention Center via NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive

The post Already Killing People, ICE to Scale Up With Warehouse Detention appeared first on Filter.