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The Trump administration's appointment of Elias Irizarry, who was 19 at the time of the Capitol attack, has alarmed some in the Defense Department.
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A federal jury last week convicted three people on felony conspiracy charges over their involvement in an anti-ICE protest in Spokane, Washington, last June. The "Spokane Three" are awaiting sentencing and face up to six years in prison for conspiracy to impede or injure ICE officers. They had attempted to block the transfer of a group of detained immigrants by sitting in front of a bus. Six of the nine protesters originally charged took plea deals, but the Spokane Three decided to fight the charges.
"If I had taken a plea deal, it would have essentially been me lying and saying that I did something that I didn't do. I didn't assault anybody," says Bajun Mavalwalla, a U.S. military veteran and one of the Spokane Three.
"What we have here is a really large reach of the conspiracy statute," adds journalist and author Aaron Glantz, highlighting that no officers were hurt in the June protest. "What happened was a relatively minor demonstration."
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An estimated 300 immigrants detained at the Delaney Hall ICE jail in Newark, New Jersey, are continuing a hunger and labor strike to demand their freedom. Amid ongoing protests, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill has deployed state police, who erected a barricade around the facility and have reportedly brutalized activists. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has also imposed a nightly curfew around Delaney Hall until further notice.
Local investigative journalist Bob Hennelly joins Democracy Now! to talk about the ongoing hunger and labor strike, launched on May 22, and its historical implications in Newark and the rest of the country. In letters at the outset of their strike detailing the conditions in the ICE jail, detainees have "written something that I think historians will say is equivalent to the Declaration of Independence," says Hennelly, "because they so vividly describe the way they've been deprived of all the basic human rights that we've come to associate with this nation."
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