TV News LIES

The Department of Homeland Security is closing an office responsible for investigating misconduct and abuse in the immigration detention system, according to an internal email to DHS employees obtained by HuffPost.

The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman is in the process of removing all its public signage and ending its inspections, according to the email.

The office’s public-facing website, which advised the families and attorneys of detainees on how to file complaints, was down as of Monday afternoon. Even basic informational webpages explaining the office’s responsibilities appeared to have been taken offline.

The email attributed the closure to a lack of funding in the Homeland Security appropriations bill that ended the recent shutdown, though the text of that bill does not require the closure of the ombudsman’s office.

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When you hear about a massive human trafficking and prostitution sting — 266 arrests in one Florida county — you expect disturbing details. But what stands out here isn’t just the scale. It’s who some of these people are, and what that says about a bigger pattern.

Among those arrested: Craig Long, a self-described MAGA influencer with more than half a million followers. Someone who built a platform around political commentary and proximity to power.

“He’s an influencer. He moves in big circles even with the president. This is a photograph of him with the president and his son not long ago.” That’s Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. He didn’t stop there: “Well there you go, you got arrested in a human trafficking sting. Influence that for a while.”

And he’s not the only one raising eyebrows.

Another man highlighted by investigators, in the same sting operation, Ryan Yates, has a history that connects to something much bigger: the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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An Israeli court has extended by two days the detention of two activists arrested aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters, their lawyer said on Sunday.

Saif Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Thiago Avila, a Brazilian national, were detained by Israeli authorities late on Wednesday and brought to Israel, while more than 100 other pro-Palestine activists aboard the Global Sumud flotilla were taken to the Greek island of Crete.

According to the Brazilian embassy, Avila said he had been subjected to torture, beatings and mistreatment in Israeli detention.

During a monitored visit in which he was separated by glass and unable to communicate freely, embassy officials observed visible marks on his face. He also reported significant pain, particularly in his shoulder.

Abu Keshek was "subjected to torture and severe abuse while detained aboard the military vessel prior to transfer", the Global Sumud flotilla said, citing eyewitness testimony.

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For decades, two irreconciliable narratives about Israel and its motivations have existed in parallel. 

On the one side, an official western narrative portrays a plucky, besieged "Jewish" state of Israel, desperate to make peace with its hostile Arab neighbours. Even to this day, that story dominates the political, media and academic landscape. 

Time and again, or so we are told, Israel has held out an olive branch to "the Arabs", seeking acceptance, but is always rebuffed. 

A largely unspoken subtext suggests that supposedly irrational, bloodthirsty, Jew-hating regimes across the region would have completed the Nazis’ exterminationist agenda but for the West’s humane protection of a vulnerable minority.

It presents Israel as an ethnic supremacist, highly militaristic state - armed by the US and Europe - bent on expansion, mass expulsions and land theft.

On this view, the West implanted Israel as a colonial military outpost, there to subdue the native Palestinian population, and terrorise neighbouring states into submission through relentless and overwhelming displays of force. 

Palestinians cannot make peace, or reach any kind of accommodation, because Israel pursues only conquest, domination and erasure. No middle ground is possible.

The proof, note Palestinians, is Israel’s long-standing refusal to define its borders. As its military power has grown decade after decade, ever more extreme political agendas have surfaced, demanding not just Israel’s takeover of the last remnants of the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies but expansion into neighbouring states like Lebanon and Syria.

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Amy Nash-Kille knows that not everyone would choose a polyamorous family like hers. But she called it the “greatest blessing” of her life.

Nash-Kille said she has spent the last 17 years in a committed relationship with “two gentle, loving men”, sharing the costs and responsibilities of raising four kids.

But she’s concealed her family arrangement from her graduate school adviser, co-workers and even her hairdresser. She said someone harassed her family for more than a year, and she took out a restraining order to stop it before moving her family from a Colorado suburb to Portland, Oregon, in 2011.

In March, the city became the largest in the US to pass an ordinance protecting polyamorous people and multipartnered households from discrimination in housing, jobs and public accommodation. For Nash-Kille and her partners, it was “one of the greatest relief moments of our lives”.

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In April, a new flotilla set off for Gaza, once again attempting to break the Israeli siege. Late Thursday, Israeli forces intercepted 22 vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla. More than 170 participants were detained before being taken to the Greek island of Crete. Two participants were taken to Israel for questioning.

Journalist Noa Avishag Schnall covered last year’s flotilla for Drop Site, before it was illegally boarded in international waters, all participants were abducted by Israeli forces, and Noa was abused in Israeli detention. On board the Conscience, she met German journalist Anna Liedtke. Liedtke, too, was abducted by Israeli forces and raped by female guards during her time in Israeli custody, abuse she first made public in December 2025 via the women’s organization ZORA.

The brutal treatment came despite—or, perhaps, because of—the fact that Liedtke is from Germany, a country unapologetically supportive of Israel no matter what it does to Palestinians or even to Germans, and Schnall is American and Jewish, a fluent Hebrew speaker of Yemeni descent who had renounced her Israeli citizenship. The detention of those aboard the Conscience straddled negotiations over the so-called ceasefire, likely also contributing to the increasingly violent mood of the Israeli guards.

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