There's something rotten in Denmark

 

As I mentioned in my past of September 14, the Supreme Court has made a number of questionable rulings recently, including the fact that a fair number of decisions were made using the “shadow docket”

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2025/09/here-comes-judge.html

The most recent questionable ruling was when the court decided it was OK for ICE to arrest people “if they looked suspicious”

 https://www.npr.org/2025/09/13/nx-s1-5507125/the-supreme-court-clears-the-way-for-ice-agents-to-treat-race-as-grounds-for-immigration-stops

This ruling is contrary what a federal district court ruled in 2013

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/joes-law-gets-boot-lawyer-plaintiffs

Plaintiffs have established that the MCSO had sufficient intent to discriminate against Latino occupants of motor vehicles. Further, the Court concludes that the MCSO had and continues to have a facially discriminatory policy of considering Hispanic appearance probative of whether a person is legally present in the country in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The MCSO is thus permanently enjoined from using race, or allowing its deputies and other agents to use race as a criteria in making law enforcement decisions with respect to Latino occupants of vehicles in Maricopa County.

 Federal immigration raids are getting more and more common across the country. On Monday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for federal immigration enforcement agents in Los Angeles to use race and other profiling factors in deciding who to stop and potentially detain. At the same time, ICE has expanded operations in Massachusetts and Illinois, and it remains active in Washington, D.C.

With the backing of the federal government and the courts, ICE is moving quickly to carry out the White House's deportation agenda. 

ICE recently raided a Hyundai plant in Alabama.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hyundai-georigia-ice-raid-450-detained-electric-vehicles-batteries/

In a large-scale immigration enforcement raid at a huge Hyundai facility in Georgia on Thursday, 475 immigrants suspected of living and working in the U.S. illegally were detained, federal authorities announced. 

Steven Schrank, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Georgia and Alabama, told reporters Friday that the majority of those detained were Korean nationals, but he didn't know exactly how many. They worked for a variety of different companies at the site, including subcontractors, he said.

South Korea's Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Saturday that more than 300 South Koreans were among the 475 people detained.

 No criminal charges were announced during Friday's news conference. The sweep was conducted as part of a month-long investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other federal crimes, Schrank said. He described Thursday's raid as the largest enforcement operation at a single site in the history of Homeland Security Investigations, which is a unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"This operation underscores our commitment to protecting jobs for Georgians and Americans, ensuring a level playing field for businesses that comply with the law, safeguarding the integrity of our economy and protecting workers from exploitation," Schrank said.

The sweep targeted one of Georgia's largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, touted by Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials as the biggest economic development project in the state's history. Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea's biggest automaker, began manufacturing electric vehicles a year ago at the $7.6 billion plant, which employs about 1,200 people, and has partnered with LG Energy Solution to build an adjacent battery plant, slated to open next year.

The search shut down construction on the battery plant.

 As the article below points out, the raid will cripple further Korean investments in America.

https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/09/south-korea-visas-immigration-us-investment-hyundai-lg?lang=en

The timing compounds Korean frustration. Lee’s August White House visit just a week prior was widely seen in Seoul and Washington as an important step in alliance management—though light on policy substance, it was heavy on rapport-building, with Trump explicitly praising Korean investment commitments. For Korean officials and industrial leaders who had spent years repositioning away from China and toward deeper U.S. economic integration, enforcement actions targeting their flagship investment projects created strategic whiplash.

 Korean companies are now reconsidering these projects. LG Energy Solution paused construction work at the battery plant, while at least twenty-two other Korean factory sites across automotive, shipbuilding, steel, and electrical equipment sectors have been halted, as major conglomerates grapple with precautions about U.S. travel and urgently verify visa statuses.

 The shipbuilding initiative that Trump and Lee celebrated also faces potential stalling, with Seoul warning that ongoing funding negotiations could derail Korea’s commitments without resolution of the worker visa issues. Industry insiders worry about delays to ongoing projects requiring hundreds of Korean technical personnel, from shipbuilding to steel mill construction.

 This hesitation reflects broader Korean concerns about mixed signals from Washington. Their shock and opprobrium, particularly on the ICE images, centered on dignified treatment rather than legal exemptions, suggesting their strategic contributions might not ensure the respectful partnership they had anticipated.

ICE is also doing damage in other areas:

According to the New York Daily News, ICE has confirmed that it will patrol Bad Bunny’s show at the 2026 Superbowl, looking for “suspicious people” The main performer (Bad Bunny) is from Puerto, so he will probably look suspicious to ICE

Earlier this summer, the San Diego Padres told ICE that they could not come in.

Host city San Francisco (which has a large migrant population) should do exactly the same thing.

The Senate has passed a bill making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the United States' largest interior law enforcement agency, with funding for Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda higher than most of the world's militaries, including Israel's.

Pending its passage in the House of Representatives, Trump's bill could mean a massive increase in ICE funding as part of an immigration enforcement agenda worth $150 billion over four years.

A revised version of Trump's bill was narrowly voted through the Senate on Tuesday. The estimated price tag of the legislation is around $150 billion between now and 2029—an annual average of $37.5 billion, which is higher than the military expenditure of all but 15 countries.

Here is where it gets interesting:

Stephen Miller (the Nazi in the White House) is the driving force behind Trump’s immigration policy. He was the man behind the separation of families during Trump’s first term.

Miller owns stock in Palintar, which provides personal information to ICE so that they can more easily identify vulnerable people.

Miller owns anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 in Palantir stock, according to newly released financial disclosure forms posted online and first reported by the Project on Government Oversight. Federal financial disclosure forms only require ranges to be given rather than exact holdings.

Palantir won a $30 million contract in April to deliver something called the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (ImmigrationOS) by September, which is supposed to give the U.S. government “near real-time visibility” on immigrants to manage deportations, according to Wired. Palantir also has lucrative contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, with the firm chalking up more than $1 billion in new federal contracts since Trump took power again in January, according to the New York Times. And it’s those contracts that will raise plenty of eyebrows among people who still care when government employees potentially benefit financially from their positions.

https://gizmodo.com/stephen-miller-owns-stock-in-notorious-ice-collaborator-palantir-2000619547

 “Border czar” Tom Homan was recently caught on tape accepting a $50,000 bribe from companies vying for government contracts.

One of the top architects of Donald Trump’s immigration agenda previously received thousands of dollars from a company raking in millions from deportations.

But the White House says that there's nothing wrong with this situation.

What's more, border czar Tom Homan is just the most recent official in his administration who we have learned was paid by the private prison company Geo Group in the past. According to federal disclosure forms, Attorney General Pam Bondi previously earned money as a lobbyist for the company in Trump's first term.

The Washington Post was the first to publish disclosure forms filed last week showing Homan earned at least $5,000 as a consultant for Geo Group over the two years before he joined Trump’s second administration.

Geo Group also gave $1 million dollars to the Make America Great Again PAC which backed Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Last year, after Trump was elected, the company’s CEO, Brian Evans, estimated that Geo Group could make an additional $400 million annually as a result of Trump’s planned deportations. And indeed, the company is one of multiple private prison companies making a profit from locking up immigrants for the administration. So much so, that on a conference call earlier this year, the company’s executive chairman said “we’ve never seen anything like this before” while referencing the speed with which the Trump administration has sought to procure contracts with Geo Group.

So the order of events is as follows: Tom Homan and Pam Bondi consult and lobby for Geo Group, Geo Group helps elect Trump in 2024, Homan and Bondi join Trump's administration in 2025, and then Trump’s administration helps Geo Group make profits. At a minimum, that raises questions about a conflict of interest.

But the White House says there’s nothing to see here.

 

 

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-border-tom-homan-private-prison-immigrants-rcna209544