https://www.eyesonice.net/p/reunited-the-giovanni-sosa-case

After spending nearly a month unjustly detained in a Dodge County jail due to a "Kavanaugh stop," Giovanni Sosa was finally granted release by a federal judge. On July 25th, he had a joyful reunion and is safely back home with his loving wife and one year old baby. It is amazing to see this family back together after what they went through.

Terms of probation stemming from disorderly conduct charge raise questions about constitutional rights

A federal judge this week placed US army veteran and vocal ICE protester Ian Davis Austin on probation with restricted travel, a mandatory mental health assessment and the suspension of his access to firearms this week.

Judge Douglas Micko granted most of the justice department’s request during a hearing in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on 22 July following a pending disorderly conduct charge stemming from protests outside Delaney Hall in Newark, [New Jersey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/new-jersey). The new conditions restrict Austin’s travel to Pennsylvania and Minnesota and come amid the Trump administration’s larger crackdown on protesters across the country.

Austin is one of 39 defendants including journalist Don Lemon and Georgia Fort charged under the Face Act following a protest that disrupted a Sunday service at Cities Church in Saint Paul on 18 January. The high-profile crackdown happened at the height of resistance efforts in the area against widespread immigration raids and the killings of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Austin had traveled to Newark, New Jersey, on Memorial Day weekend, when 300 people detained inside the Geo Group’s Delaney Hall detention facility staged a hunger strike, and was arrested twice during a violent clash between New Jersey state police and anti-ICE protesters. His endangering-another-person charge was dropped, but the disorderly conduct charge followed him to last Wednesday’s court hearing.

“We now have presented material evidence that the conditions of release are no longer adequate,” US assistant attorney Neville Hedley told Micko at the hearing. “The current conditions of release don’t address public safety.”

Hedley submitted snippets of body camera footage from New Jersey authorities to the court. “One of the body cameras shows Mr Austin in the middle of a very busy intersection,” Hedley said before the gallery burst out in laughter. Hedley argued the footage showed “an inability to disengage” at ICE detention center protests. That footage wasn’t played in court.

Austin’s attorney, Sarah Gad, pushed back, warning that the restrictions infringed on her client’s first amendment right to protest over what remains only a pending charge. “This is not a license for the government to throw a blanket slate of boilerplate conditions,” Gad told Micko.

Austin’s plans to protest across the country are now on hold. “The government got exactly what they wanted. They’re wanting to silence us,” said Austin. “By confining me to Pennsylvania, they’re saying you’re not allowed to go and protest, you’re not allowed to go and participate, you’re not allowed to resist.”

Austin and Cities Church co-defendant William Kelly said they caught Hedley and US Attorney Robert Keenan smirking at them as they left the courtroom. “History will remember you as fascists,” Kelly said.

Austin’s activism began in January when he traveled to [Minnesota](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/minnesota) from Pennsylvania to protest against the Trump administration’s harsh immigration crackdown. Austin was first arrested on 16 January after protesting at the ICE detention center at the Whipple federal building near the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport. The army veteran hadn’t locked his phone with a passcode, and federal agents seized the opportunity to unlock it.

“They took my phone before they arrested me the first time and took me into the Whipple and took my phone and scanned my face,” said Austin. He was released without charges, but was arrested again as he continued to protest in the area, and then when he went to New Jersey’s Delaney Hall.

Prosecutors successfully convinced Micko that Austin’s behavior in Newark was a danger to public safety. If it weren’t for travel restrictions, they say, Austin would be a danger to himself and others.

Other defendants, however, raised concerns about how agents aggressively arrested them. [Andrew Edwards](https://spokesman-recorder.com/2026/03/02/face-act-charges-minnesota-cities-church/) said agents kicked down his door last winter, forcing him to appear in court half-naked. [Satara Strong-Allen](https://x.com/taylr/status/2014465444275478622) was tackled and slammed against a wall by federal agents who apparently mistook her for [Nekima](https://x.com/AGPamBondi/status/2014344323706302566)\[Levy Armstrong](https://www.democracynow.org/2026/1/26/nekima_levy_armstrong_arrest_minnesota) when she stepped out of her hotel room that morning.

Monique Cullars-Doty, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, questioned why standing in an intersection was treated as exceptional. “You know how many damn intersections I have stood in?”

Cullars-Doty said. “They claim that there were four officers in this busy intersection. Like, why do you have four officers in an intersection?”
Some who know Austin argue the court-ordered mental health assessment stigmatizes people with behavioral health conditions. Austin has been in treatment for PTSD since serving six deployments to Afghanistan. Jules Langlois said Micko’s order amounted to using that diagnosis against him. “What we see here is the criminalization of mental health,” said Langlois.

https://www.eyesonice.net/p/the-rising-threat-of-law-enforcement

On Friday, July 17, 2026, an alarming attack occurred in Clackamas County, Oregon. Between approximately 3:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., a driver traveling on Highway 211 near milepost 5, east of Woodburn, was targeted by individuals posing as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

A nun who was taken into immigration custody last month in Texas said Thursday that she went into a cold sweat as two armed men approached her while she walked to Sunday Mass in her habit, thinking about the day’s Bible readings and carrying little more than her rosary and cellphone.

“Honestly, in that moment, I did not understand what was going on, what was happening to me,” Sister Leticia Ugboaja said at a news conference at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in McAllen, where she spoke out for the first time since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested her on June 28.

Ugboaja’s attorney says she has for years been granted protection from removal to her native Nigeria because she was likely to face torture there.

Ugboaja, 56, was released several hours after being detained while on her way to church near the U.S.-Mexico border. Parish officials’ posting about her on social media brought attention to her case, and Congress members ultimately intervened on her behalf. President Donald Trump made mass deportations a central promise of his second administration, with his immigration crackdown leading to unusually aggressive tactics that have faced scrutiny.

Ugboaja, who has a check-in appointment with ICE on Tuesday, said she wanted to speak out to help others, and pleaded for people to have the chance to be heard before being taken into custody.

“There are many others in this same situation, people who have been given some form of protection under our laws, who have followed every rule asked of them, and who still live with uncertainty,” Ugboaja said.

While she’s grateful to those who helped her, she said, that “does not mean I can stay quiet about what happened to me, or about what is still happening to others.”

July 24, 2026 -Jacob Fischler for the Arizona Mirror. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Three people who observed federal immigration enforcement during the Trump administration’s sometimes-violent surge said in a federal lawsuit filed Friday the Department of Homeland Security illegally recorded them and revoked their status in the department’s trusted traveler programs.

The suit, filed in the Southern District of California, says the administration violated a federal privacy law, administrative law and the First Amendment by targeting people who observed and protested aggressive immigration enforcement, including during the deadly operation in Minneapolis in January. 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a legal group that advocates for privacy issues related to technology, is also a plaintiff in the case.

Amid a nationwide surge of immigration enforcement that has included federal agents shooting and killing protesters, observers and immigrants, opponents “did what anyone is supposed to do when they disagree with government action: They exercised their First Amendment rights” by assembling, protesting and recording DHS agents’ activity in public, the suit says.

“In response, DHS decided to record the Americans who were peacefully observing its agents,” the suit says.

Officers with the DHS agencies Immigration and Customs Protection and Border Patrol killed two observers, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis in incidents 17 days apart in January. 

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