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Trump's legal evasion regarding Iran reveals the rotten state of constitutional war powers.
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We get an update on protests at Newark, New Jersey's Delaney Hall, an ICE facility owned and operated by the private prison company GEO Group, where hundreds of immigrant detainees have been on a hunger and labor strike for the past week demanding their immediate release. New Jersey Congressmember Analilia Mejía recently toured the facility and spoke to people who described being arrested and detained after attending routine ICE check-ins, being held for months in appalling conditions even after signing voluntary deportation orders, and being hospitalized after they were beaten and pepper-sprayed by armed ICE agents. "What we need to understand is that this is a for-profit model, and they are failing human beings," she says. "The reality is that this is a rogue administration that has handed undue power to agencies, to ICE agents and to entities like GEO Group [that] are now acting with impunity."
Meanwhile, says Li Adorno, a community organizer with the immigrant rights group Movimiento Cosecha, protests outside the facility in solidarity with the strike have grown increasingly contentious. Local investigative journalist Bob Hennelly explains that the Trump administration's targeting of Newark for immigration enforcement has escalated since federal agents arrested and charged Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and New Jersey Congressmember LaMonica McIver with trespassing after inviting them into Delaney Hall last May. Hennelly says "there's a much broader implosion of the administration of law in New Jersey … [and] a collapse of federal law enforcement in Newark."
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The Justice Department is said to be examining the funding of lawsuits brought by E. Jean Carroll, an author who has never sought a public role, political power or governmental authority.
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Protesters and immigration agents clashed outside Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, where activists have gathered for days to denounce conditions inside.
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Around 300 immigrants detained at the Delaney Hall ICE jail in Newark, New Jersey, have been on a hunger and work strike since Friday to protest inhumane conditions and due process violations. Delaney Hall is operated by the private prison company GEO Group. Since the hunger strike was launched, immigration advocates have been staging a solidarity protest outside Delaney Hall to promote the detainees' demands for freedom. Protesters and ICE agents have clashed outside the jail, and three people have been arrested. Tensions escalated on Sunday when ICE removed a hunger strike organizer, Martín Soto, prompting protesters outside the ICE jail to block a van being used to transport him. Masked ICE agents responded by firing tear gas and pushing people to the ground. Soto was ultimately transferred to an ICE jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and is now facing criminal charges for allegedly assaulting an ICE officer.
We speak to Gabriela Soto, Martín Soto's wife, and Li Adorno, an organizer with the group Movimiento Cosecha. Both have helped lead the protest outside Delaney Hall.
Gabriela Soto says that she started the protest in conjunction with the detainees' strike so that the media could see how ICE is "destroying families and separating them." Soto says that when she was blocked from seeing her husband during visiting hours on Saturday, a guard asked her why she was "spreading lies" and talking to the press. "He said, 'Why are you telling people that we're feeding them worms? Why are you telling people that we don't give them medical care?' I said, 'Because it's true.'"
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U.S. President Donald Trump is in Beijing for a highly anticipated summit with his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping. It is the first U.S. state visit to China since 2017, during Trump's first administration. Trade, the Iran war, artificial intelligence and the fate of Taiwan are some of the issues being discussed, although it's not clear if any new agreements are likely. Trump traveled to China with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, along with a delegation of top U.S. executives including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Elon Musk of Tesla and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
The summit comes after years of rising hostility between the two superpowers, but leaders recognize the importance of improving the bilateral relationship, says Zhao Hai, director of international political studies at the Institute of World Economics and Politics in Beijing. "This is a very critical historical moment [at] a crossroad, and both sides now are working together to establish a stable relationship that will have a global ramification," he says.
We also speak with Jake Werner, a historian of modern China and director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He says the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and the resulting economic chaos have strengthened China's position.
"China has ties to all the countries in the region. It has acted in the past to help broker the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran," says Werner. "So it has some experience in this realm, sort of acting as a broker towards peace."
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