The organization that has kidnapped tens of thousands of people, killed scores, lied publicly more times than we can count, and terrorized millions across the world, wants you to refer to them as “NICE.”

Trump apparently floated the renaming last week, but in the meantime, official Department of Homeland Security accounts have embraced the rebranding in a flurry of public statements and social media posts.

It’s the latest PR pivot to put a less fascist face on controversial policies that inspired uprisings across the nation after Minneapolis residents stymied a DHS crackdown in the city last year during protests in which DHS agents shot three people to death, including two US citizens.

The popular rebellion was too much even for some Trump allies who support his draconian migration policies, and led to the forced resignation of then-chief Gregory Bovino as acting head of operations for the department.

Secretary Markwayne Mullin. who has since taken over the masked US police force, pledged during his March confirmation hearing to lower the DHS’s public profile, stating that his goal was for the agency to no longer be “in the lead story every day” as it recalibrates its enforcement approach.

But though splashy public round-ups have largely ceased, ICE, which is under DHS control, has largely carried on business as usual — averaging 1,286 removals a day in March. Nearly 70,000 people are currently in DHS custody. The vast majority have no criminal record.

Crackdowns on migrants more broadly have continued, including on DACA recipients. More than 6,000 children have also been detained by DHS since Trump assumed office.

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The agency has also continued stepping up its mass surveillance on US citizens and non-citizens alike.

The administration is reacting to recent polling, in which only 35% of people in the US say they support Trump’s migration policy, compared with more than 60% who “disapprove” or “strongly disapprove.”

The abysmal polling has worried many of Trump’s Republican allies as midterm elections approach. They have called for a softer public tone, worried that all the murder, racism, and kidnappings might affect their re-election chances among Latinos.

The PR charge, however, remains just that. Despite no longer conducting highly-publicized random sweeps in which they invite sympathetic journalists, as DHS did for all of 2025, Border Patrol and ICE operations have quietly continued without the fanfare.

The administration has also quietly continued tightening laws against migrants who entered the country “legally”, stacked migration courts with sympathetic judges, and stepped up other strategies for ICE to detain suspected migrants.

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As the DHS “shutdown” fails to shut down anything, Trump allies move to fund the agency for 10 more years

As we have previously reported, DHS core operations are largely unaffected by a Democratic “shutdown” that has been ongoing for weeks (TSA being the one occasional exception.) Now Republicans are using an archaic funding procedure to push a measure that would fully fund the agency for ten years through both US legislative chambers.

The bill would authorize $70 billion dollars in funding for DHS as part of reconciliation processes in a simple up-down vote that could pass with a simple majority.

The Senate has already approved the bill. It now moves to the House, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.

The procedure is the latest in moves in which Republicans have simply side-stepped tepid Democratic efforts to offer token opposition to Trump’s migration policies.

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The Round-Up

• The ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good after calling her a “dyke bitch” — Jonathan Ross —has been quietly relocated to a different state and allowed to resume work with DHS, according to internal documents from the organization.

• DHS is increasingly sending migrants, including asylum seekers who entered the US formally, to third countries with which they have no relationship, including dozens of Colombians and Ecuadorians who have been deported to the Congo with no way to return home.

• DHS is increasingly forcing local police to work with ICE. Louisiana now makes it a crime for police to refuse ICE cooperation. Florida created a board to punish officials who don’t comply with ICE. Texas forced nearly all sheriffs to become immigration enforcers. And the crackdown on resisting ICE is spreading.

• California’s mask law, which lawmakers knew would not affect ICE using masks, has predictably been struck down by courts. The majority of Democratic lawmakers continue to engage in theatrics and symbolic actions rather than active opposition against DHS.

• US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were told verbally by superiors weeks ago to stop entering homes without judicial warrants, marking a shift away from some of the agency’s most aggressive enforcement tactics, according to a report from Bloomberg.

• Florida may ban undocumented students from public colleges, according to reporting from the Miami Herald.

• If you want to learn about all the different field agents that DHS employs, from ICE, to CPB, to HSI, the Guardian has a great visual breakdown that also describes DHS command structure.

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Political news website La Silla Vacia has been linked to a far-right propaganda campaign that has been paid for by some of Colombia’s most reactionary corporations.

The campaign, “Project Jupiter,” has been organizing “democracy workshops” for tens of thousands of workers and has been publishing content online to generate “fear / indignation / uncertainty” among voters ahead of the presidential vote.

Among Project Jupiter’s “digital agencies” is La Silla Vacia, according to a flyer that was made public by Raya magazine and the investigative journalism program of public television network RTVC.

In an audio, the director of the propaganda campaign, former Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez, said that “we have digital agencies—namely [libertarian think tank] Libertank and La Silla Vacia—which are enabling us to scale up at an incredible rate.”

Project Jupiter was able to reach 17 million people in all of Colombia’s 32 provinces because of the collaboration of the digital platforms, which also included several public relations firms, Bermudez said.

When asked about the collaboration with La Silla Vacia, the former foreign minister told Raya that Project Jupiter was allowed to publish their content on platforms owned by the political news website.

In a response, La Silla Vacia denied being a part of the propaganda efforts that seek to promote libertarian ideals and dissuade people from voting for the leftist frontrunner in the elections, Ivan Cepeda, and his far-right opponent Abelardo de la Espriella.

According to the website, “these so-called journalistic exposés are part of a smear campaign.”

The scandal broke days after the campaign of far-right candidate Paloma Valencia published images of a meeting between campaign managers and investor of Banco Santander, including La Silla Vacia founder Juanita Leon.

In response to those images, Leon said that she accidentally ended up at the campaign meeting.

La Silla Vacia had already come under fire after Cepeda accused them of being part of an opposition campaign to smear him, a claim also denied by Leon and her influential website.

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Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa this week hiked tariffs on Colombian imports to 100%. It is the latest escalation in an ongoing and bitter trade war with neighbor Colombia.

But as gangs fueled by cocaine from Colombia spread inland into previously safe areas of Ecuador, and homicides shatter already high records, many see the border dispute as less about retaliation over a perceived lack of security efforts by Colombia and more about Noboa deflecting from his failing “iron fist” policies.

Noboa’s aggressive policies include military raids, U.S.-backed bombings, crackdowns on civil society, and labelling cartels as terrorist organizations. Naboa has loudly and publicly vowed to crush organized crime. Instead, reports show violence spreading into Ecuador’s interior, including into areas once spared from the coastal bloodshed, far from infamous port-cities like Guayaquil.

In recent years, cocaine from Colombia and Peru —the world’s top producers— has flooded across Ecuador’s borders and towards its port, which has become a key hub in international smuggling. The dynamic caused a surge in criminality in Ecuador, which was once among the safest countries in the region, but now holds one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America.

Noboa blames the rise in violence on Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro for “lax borders” that dump “narco-terrorists” on Ecuador.

Noboa claims Petro has “handed the border over to the mafia.”

In a recent interview with Semana, an ultra-right-wing tabloid in Colombia, Noboa claimed that Petro maintains communication with criminal leaders in Ecuador.

Noboa accused Petro of indirect connections with accused Ecuadorian narco Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito.” Naboa claims that Petro communicates with members of the Ecuadorian opposition, who in turn pass on those communications to Fico.

He offered no proof for his accusations.

Petro’s leftist party, Pacto Histórico, has in turn accused Noboa of making false claims in an attempt to interfere in Colombian presidential elections, which begin next month.

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In recent months, Naboa has ratcheted up more than just rhetoric. He is conducting military actions in the borderlands in cooperation with US military forces as part of “Operation Total Extermination,” that have at times veered into Colombian territory.

Petro, for his part, however, is doing little to calm the situation. Last week, the Colombian president labeled the former vice-president Jorge Glas, who is currently jailed by Ecuador, a “political prisoner,” and demanded his release.

Glas is a close ally of former President Rafael Correa, who fled the country after being formally charged with corruption. Glas is currently serving out a jail sentence after a corruption conviction of his own.

The comments sparked Naboa’s latest tariff increase last week.

President Petro promptly responded in comments, saying that the Colombian government will respond according to the “principles of reciprocity” and announced similar Colombian tariffs on Ecuadorian goods.

Many experts, however, believe Naboa is trying to reframe Ecuador’s security challenges in external terms, pointing to actors beyond his borders even as he strengthens ties with Washington, including his recent alignment with President Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” initiative.

Sebastián Hurtado, founder and president of Profitas, a leading political risk consultancy based in Quito, calls Noboa’s rhetoric a gamble. Noboa is “weaponizing trade and tying it to security policy,” Hurtado told PWS. Noboa “argues that Colombian inaction was bleeding Ecuador dry, forcing Quito to bear the financial burden of a war against organized crime that originates next door.”

Noboa has gone all in on promises to restore security, but as violence keeps rising in Ecuador, his efforts are beginning to look increasingly shaky.

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Petro’s focus on negotiating and communicating with armed groups in return for their eventual disarmament presents Noboa with a useful foil for his own more draconian security policies. Naboa has called Colombia’s “Total Peace” strategy “soft,” claiming it has allowed criminal networks and cocaine flows to expand across the region.

Hurtado says that both Noboa and Petro are leveraging the border crisis to shift blame and stir nationalist support as their domestic positions weaken. Noboa isn’t only on his back heels over setbacks on security, but is also fresh off a failed campaign over a voter referendum on allowing US military bases in the country and permanent increased police powers.

Noboa also faces mounting criticism of human and civil rights violations by military and police as part of his crackdowns — and a recent conviction of 11 Ecuadorian soldiers for kidnapping and murdering a group of Afro-Ecuadorian children last year in a case that outraged the country.

Petro, meanwhile, is carrying his party towards elections amidst mounting governance challenges, including rising conflict in rural regions of Colombia.

It’s not the first time Noboa has tried to shift blame for Ecuador’s security woes to foreign entities. In March, Noboa claimed that Hamas and Hezbollah have ties to Ecuadorian gangs and maintain an active presence in the country. He has also repeatedly blamed “Tren de Aragua” for rises in homicide in the country. There is no evidence for either claim.

As Ecuador’s homicide count climbs past 1,200 this year, a 200% surge since Noboa took office, the effectiveness of his “mano dura” security strategy is being questioned even by his supporters.

Human rights groups have also reported increased allegations of abuses tied to expanded military and police operations — including killings, arbitrary detentions, and forced disappearances.

Meanwhile, the tighter border controls and tariffs along the Ecuador-Colombia frontier have had unintended consequences. Merchant groups say informal and illicit cross-border trade has grown as businesses and criminal networks seek to avoid paying tariffs by crossing the border informally. The increased traffic is presenting opportunities for criminal groups to camouflage their own smuggling of cocaine, cash, and weapons across an already porous border.

Noboa’s tariff escalation is a gambit meant to distract from failing policies at home but deepening tensions with Colombia, which has often cooperated on security issues with Ecuador, risks exacerbating the security crisis. As coordinated actions on trafficking routes and organized crime in the regions cease, both countries are reinforcing the insecurity that sparked the dispute in the first place.

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Ecuadorian-Colombian border dispute continues to escalate: Petro threatens legal action

As elections approach in Colombia, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is ratcheting up attacks on his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro. Following Ecuador raising tariffs on Colombian imports into the country to 100%, Naboa has now accused Petro of indirect connections to the accused Ecuadorian narco Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito.”

Naboa claims that Petro knows members of the Ecuadorian opposition, who in turn know Fico. He presented no proof for his admittedly somewhat childish accusation.

Petro has denied the claims and threatened to sue Noboa for libel. Under Ecuadorian law, libel is illegal and punishable by up to a 6-month jail term, though it is unlikely prosecutors would go after a sitting president.

Colombia has imposed retaliatory sanctions on Ecuador.

Meanwhile, the trade war between the two countries is increasing clandestine smuggling of goods across the border as transporters and merchants try to avoid the sanctions.

Residents in the borderlands say the increased traffic of irregular crossings is aiding cocaine smugglers who operate in the region. Noboa and Petro have both accused each other of aiding criminality on their respective frontiers.

The story bears watching as Ecuador conducts aggressive military operations that have at times spilled over into Colombia and violated the human rights of Ecuadorians. They have also not resulted in security gains within Ecuador.

US eases sanctions on Venezuela as IMF and World Bank say they will open up credit lines

The United States has eased sanctions on Venezuela’s central bank that the country imposed in 2019. The moves allow for formal financing between the two countries as well as increased US dollar flows for trade.

Now that Venezuela is effectively a US protectorate, The US treasury department issued a licence authorizing commercial links with the Venezuelan state-run central bank and a number of other major state-run Venezuelan financial institutions.

The sanctions had put considerable pressure on Venezuelan international finance, forcing the country to find ways to import US dollars. They also greatly exacerbated the country’s ongoing financial crisis.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced Thursday that they would also resume business with the country in an announcement that was followed shortly by the World Bank as well.

Acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who was installed by the US after former president Nicolas Maduro was captured in an attack on Caracas by US forces, hailed the announcements as “a grand diplomatic victory for Venezuela.”

It would seem that the US has formally decided Venezuela is open for business.

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Peruvian election update: it ain’t over yet

After challenges by candidates, balloting problems in Lima, and the arrest of at least election officials, Peru’s electoral authority has announced that presidential election results will not be finalized until at least mid-May.

With 93 percent of ballots counted, right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori leads with 17 percent, according to officials.

The second-place position, however, has been fraught with dramatic turns as well as dramatic accusations. Left-wing candidate, Roberto Sanchez, on 12 percent, and ultra-conservative Rafael Lopez Aliaga close behind on 11.98 percent — they are separated in the latest count by a mere 13,000 votes.

There are currently 15,000 ballots being challenged.

Aliaga, the ultra-right former mayor of the capital Lima, has been the most vocal critic of the delay. He has alleged fraud without presenting evidence and called for the election to be annulled.

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Vote count in the Peruvian elections is moving at a glacial pace, but that isn’t stopping the sense of drama from heightening.

Two days after the first round of the presidential election, it is still unclear who will face Keiko Fujimori, Alberto Fujimori, in the runoff on June 7.

Fujimori’s daughter is the only one with a guaranteed spot in the runoff. With 89.9% of the votes counted, she leads with 16.8% in a field of 35 candidates.

The race for second place, however, is a nail-biter, and has been held, at various times, by three different candidates.

The ultra-right Rafael López Aliaga (Renovación Popular), with 12.2%, was inched out late last night by leftist Roberto Sánchez. Sanchez has benefited from the late counting of rural votes, and has risen steadily and moved from sixth to third place on

In 6th place early Monday morning, with 11.5%, Sánchez (as of this writing) is now holding a razor-thin 7000 vote lead over López Aliaga, meaning he would face off against Fujimori in the second round.

Aliaga has declared the process, which was marred by delays and failure to deliver ballots to polling centers in the capital, Lima, a “fraud,” and promised a “civil rebellion” if elections are not annulled.

About 50,000 people were unable to vote, forcing the authorities to extend balloting in Lima on Monday.

In a speech to supporters Tuesday night Aliaga accused Sánchez of “stealing” elections, even referring to him as “la bestia,” meaning “the beast” or “devil.”

Sánchez is a leftist candidate, and the protege of former President Pedro Castillo, who is currently jailed after an attempted autogolpe in 2022.

Sánchez, a 57-year-old psychologist, has stated that he is committed to “a new Constitution” and a “plurinational state” that shares power with indigenous peoples.

“There is a tremendous desire for change” among marginalized communities, said the congressman and former minister who served under the government of Pedro Castillo.

The European Union Election Observation Mission, which deployed 150 observers across the country, has stated that there is no evidence of irregularities. “The mission has not received sufficient evidence to suggest that the narrative of fraud has any basis,” said the head of the mission, Annalisa Corrado.

The Peruvian election is so close that the two leading polling firms (Ipsos and Datum) have reported different results in their exit polls. While Ipsos placed Roberto Sánchez in second place, Datum placed Rafael López Aliaga in that position. Datum published these figures on Sunday night, disregarding the National Elections Board’s request not to release poll results.

The European Union Election Observation Mission, which deployed 150 observers across the country, criticized delays in Lima but has stated that there is no evidence of irregularities. “The mission has not received sufficient evidence to suggest that the narrative of fraud has any basis,” the head of the mission, Annalisa Corrado, told Spanish newspaper El Pais.

The Peruvian election is so close that the two leading polling firms (Ipsos and Datum) have reported different results in their exit polls. While Ipsos placed Roberto Sánchez in second place, Datum placed Rafael López Aliaga in that position. Datum published these figures on Sunday night, disregarding the National Elections Board’s request not to release poll results.

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It’s the quarterly PWS subscription drive! Help us help you by supporting Independent journalism!

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In an era where most news is filtered through editors beholden to corporate boardrooms, billionaire owners, or algorithmic storms, real independent journalism supported by readers could not be more crucial for your understanding of the world.

And it couldn’t be more precarious for those of us in the field.

That’s why I’m writing to you directly from the helm of the Good Ship Capybara. Pirate Wire Services is a reader-supported independent media platform dedicated to fearless, piratical reporting from the periphery of the Western hemisphere.

No corporate anchors dragging us off course. No political parties at the wheel. Just audience-driven editorial choices based on our subscribers. Our goal is to bring you the clear-eyed investigation, regional expertise, thoughtful analysis, and stories that help you navigate the often-overlooked context of these turbulent times in this already turbulent part of the world.

And that’s why it’s time for our quarterly subscription drive! Our goal for this subscription drive is 40 new paid subscribers, which will put us on course for our goal this year to add 120 total.

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We’ve endured nearly 5 years on the treacherous seas of freelance journalism bringing you the latest scuttlebutt thousands of readers like you decided they were tired of being tossed about by Big Media and wanted journalism they could truly trust to guide them.

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We thank you if you’ve been reading us for free! But every new paid subscriber helps strengthen our hull and keeps us steady as she goes in these choppy seas. So click this subscribe button!

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This isn’t just about supporting one publication — it’s about proving that honest, truth-seeking media can thrive without being swept along by powerful currents. If you value journalism that serves as a reliable lighthouse in the storm, I hope you’ll join us as a paid subscriber and help us chart the way forward.

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After a tumultuous first round, the presidential runoffs in Peru are almost certain to be a race between two far-right candidates. In a quick count, Keiko Fujimori leads the race. Fujimori is the daughter of Peru’s infamous leader during the country’s civil war, who committed grave human rights violations and was later jailed for corruption.

She has promised to bring “security” to Peru, which has seen a rise in homicides over the last decade, as well as crack down on informal migration and deport Venezuelans from the country.

Fujimori holds a 4-point lead in the quick count over ultra-right-wing candidate Rafael Lopez Aliaga, who has adopted the nickname “Porky”, and has been described as “the Bolsonaro of Peru.” Although he ran principally on an anti-crime platform, he has also endorsed sexual abstinence and free-market reforms in the country.

Peru’s more formal slow-count is ongoing.

Peruvians headed to the polls Sunday to elect their 9th president in less than 10 years, and a ballot that contained 35 candidates that included a comedian, a media baron, Fujimori, and Aliaga.

Lima suffered election difficulties when some polling stations did not receive ballots until late in the afternoon. Peru’s elections commission has extended polling at those stations until 6 pm tomorrow evening. Election officials said they estimate 63,000 voters were affected. 

More than 28 million voters were eligible to vote in the Andean country.

The formal results will be published on Monday evening after the polls in Lima close.

This is Fujimori’s fourth presidential campaign.

Aliaga has alleged fraud and intentional tampering in Lima, where he expected strong support. Aliaga is also currently under investigation for money laundering by the Public Ministry regarding alleged political bribes into legitimate business gains.

Narrowly behind Aliaga, in third place before tomorrow’s additional votes, is center liberal candidate Jorge Nieto. Nieto is a former Cultural Minister. He previously ran for President in 2021.

Depending on the results of the slow-count, Monday’s votes could, in theory, affect the second-place position, and thus determine who faces Fujimori in the runoff.

So far, no other candidate has officially questioned the results. 

Peru will head to a second round of presidential elections on June 7th. 

The country has grown increasingly polarized, even as Congress has become more loathed by the population, as well as more powerful as the presidency has weakened. The lawmaker’s body currently has a 3% approval rating.

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DHS is spying on US Citizens with powerful Israeli cyber weapon

DHS is using powerful spyware cyber weapon Graphite to surveil suspected migrants, journalists, activists, and critics, according to an official DHS response to members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform after they requested information on surveillance by ICE.

Graphite is a more modern and powerful version of Pegasus, which is banned in the United States. The app can be deployed remotely, physically, embedded in texts or photos, or installed over networks, and can hide on smartphones and record user activity, including within encrypted apps, and then delete itself.

His letter, dated April 1, was a belated response to an October inquiry from three Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressing concern about the agency’s potential use of the spyware Graphite, which was created by Israeli company Paragon Solutions.

According to NPR, which reviewed the documents, DHS wrote that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is using various tools as part of its mission to disrupt and dismantle foreign terrorist organizations, “particularly those involved in the trafficking of fentanyl.”

Justifying the decision to spy on US citizens, the agency stated ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is using various tools as part of its mission to disrupt and dismantle foreign terrorist organizations, “particularly those involved in the trafficking of fentanyl.”

DHS has used false claims about gang affiliations, terrorism, and fentanyl to justify surveillance of both activists and migrants in the past. Perhaps most worryingly, however, the agency is deploying the tool through the use of administrative warrants, which do not require a judge to sign off, but rather can be approved by low-level officials within the agency.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., one of the authors of the request for information about ICE’s use of spyware, told NPR in a statement, “The response I received from ICE makes one thing clear. They are moving forward with invasive spyware technology inside the United States.

“The people most at risk, including immigrants, Black and brown communities, journalists, organizers, and anyone speaking out against government abuse, deserve more than secrecy and deflection from an agency with a long record of overreach and abuse,” Lee’s statement said.

The news follows confirmation that DHS has been assembling a database of activists and critics, with help from infamous tech company Palantir, as part of a list of “potential terrorists.”

The agency has also been using data harvested from other government agencies to identify critics and migrants, as well as private data brokers.

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ICE shoots another man. They swear this time they’re telling the truth about it

ICE shot another man last week in Stanislaus County, California. Carlos Ivan Mendoza was in critical condition at the hospital after a shooting involving federal agents Tuesday morning in Stanislaus County, the sheriff’s office said.

Federal agents claimed the man tried to “weaponize” his vehicle and run them over. It is a claim DHS has made often over the last two years. Often, they are lying.

DHS agents have shot 14 people since Trump took office, killing at least 4. Agents claimed that all of their victims but one tried to run them over, but dashcam and body camera footage have often disproven their claims.

In related news, new surveillance camera footage released by Minneapolis officials shows that DHS lied about the shooting of a Venezuelan man in the city earlier this year.

DHS agents claimed that Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and his cousin ambushed agents, and they were forced to shoot him in self-defense. Newly released footage showed that DHS officers and higher-ups “gave false testimony,” according to Minneapolis officials.

The video directly contradicts claims that DHS agents were “violently beaten” by Sosa-Celis and his cousin.

We at PWS have lost track of how many lies we have caught DHS in. Maybe we should start a weekly infographic documenting that.

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The Round-UP

• The United States has admitted 4,499 refugees into the country since October — all but three were South African. Asylum has been effectively dismantled within the US.

• ICE is attempting to force Reddit to reveal the identity of an anonymous user who has criticized the agency. The Intercept obtained a subpoena issued by federal prosecutors to the management of Reddi. Representatives of the site have been ordered to appear before a grand jury with an April 14 deadline set in an attempt to compel Reddit to volunteer personal data and the identity of a user who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the platform. It is entirely unclear what “illegal” activity this specific user is supposed to have engaged in, other than simply expressing opinion and repeating information that had already been widely published.

• We’ve already reported that DHS is taking a softer approach after their decisive defeat by activists in Minneapolis resulted in national outrage, but the new DHS director confirmed as much in internal comments this week. NPR has more details.

• A group of 36 House Democrats has accused ICE of “disappearing“ people in their custody, as information on their whereabouts is often unavailable to their attorneys or loved ones, much less the public. DHS has responded that they cannot update their localizer software for detainees as long as the “shutdown” is in effect. All of their other activities, miraculously, are unaffected by the symbolic block.

• Migrants of irregular status are dying rather than seeking medical care and risking detention by ICE. The family of Jesús Juárez Cruz told the story of the slow death of the Mexican national, likely by alcohol poisoning, to El País. His family blames US President Donald Trump for his lack of ability to seek care.

• ICE is withdrawing from airports. They didn’t accomplish anything, but they are declaring “mission accomplished” and going home. The “shutdown”, which absolutely did not affect them, continues. More than 800 migrants were detained at airports during their deployment.

• Information continues to emerge about DHS plans to buy and rent warehouses across the country to be used as impromptu detention centers. Human Rights Watch put out a long report this week about the risks these centers pose to the rights of detainees. Meanwhile, some communities are blocking DHS from opening the concentration camps.

Resistance Photo of the Week

A DHS bid to rent a warehouse near Hagerstown, MD was fallen cancelled after tribal opposition to the project. Protests lasted for weeks before the city cancelled building permits.

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But mining in Latin America has long been fraught with problems, from ecological disaster to the empowerment of non-state actors. Some communities, long ignored by the states in which they live, say the benefits of foreign investment by international conglomerates outweigh the negative consequences.

But even in the best of cases, the lions share of mining profits leave the country along with the companies running operations, and inflict a sharp environment cost.

This week we spoke with Peter Wood, a gold mining researcher in Colombia, about the details of how it all works, new markets in Venezuela, and the criminal armed groups profiting from informal mining and gold laundering across the continent.

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Lately I’ve been writing a lot of security analysis for a risk-assessment media company. It’s much different from journalism. I’m not really telling stories in the sense journalists usually think of them.

Journalism is often, unfortunately, explaining bad news to good people, but these stories can often be told in a way that focuses on solutions or ways to change course.

Risk assessment is about everything that is going horribly wrong in the world, as well as anything one can imagine that potentially could go wrong in the world. It involves deep dives into data, long reports few people read, and a lot of time smoking cigarettes and staring off into the distance while thinking about truly awful shit.

Lately, I spend all my time studying criminal armed groups, brutal security crackdowns on civil society by authoritarian governments, military operations, and political instability across all the regions I cover.

It’s great. Haha.

I’m exaggerating a bit for narrative purposes, of course. But, after months of reading long, often very dry, reports, and formulating hypotheses for various outcomes in response to developments in the region, I have come to only one indisputable conclusion.

The Western Hemisphere is moving decidedly, and perhaps permanently, towards authoritarianism.

As El Salvador holds mass video trials that include youths arrested for playing video games they claim “show gang affiliation,” Ecuador is bombing dairy farms in joint operations with US special forces and torturing the workers.

“Reports of security force abuses such as arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings are stacking up,” reports International Crisis Group in an overview of recent Ecuadorian actions, “while the government proclaims its proximity to the U.S. President Donald Trump and faith in military-led law enforcement.”

Venezuela is opening up blood-gold markets to US investors, who will be directly financing groups considered terrorist organizations by the US government.

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Aggressive militarized operations in Mexico, such as in the case of the capture of “El Mencho,” are being hailed in Washington, D.C., as successes. The truth on the ground for the people who live in the communities where the New Generation Jalisco Cartel is striking back is much more complex, and that complexity isn’t making international headlines.

Chile’s new president, imitating the migration policies of US President Donald Trump, is starting plans to remove 100,000 undocumented Venezuelans from the country.

As Peru prepares to elect its fifth president in as many years, more than half of the lawmakers in Congress are facing investigations for corruption or other crimes. In response, lawmakers have grossly restricted the ability of prosecutors to bring cases against politicians in the country.

In the US, masked government agents kidnap tens of thousands of migrants from their homes, from schoolhouses, courts, and workplaces.

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In the last six months, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve written some variation of the following sentence: “State security forces are often unable to distinguish between criminal groups and non-state armed actors, and the civil populations in which they operate.”

Human rights abuses, consolidation of power among armed forces, and the hardening and militarization of borders are phenomena growing across the continent.

Which brings me back to my journalism beat. For nearly a decade now, I’ve covered conflict and migration in Colombia — a beat that has meant I’ve seen the results of these policies before.

Militarized actions in Colombia, for decades, have failed to stop the growth of cocaine production or the growth of non-state armed groups. They have, however, resulted in security forces killing thousands of innocent people, and then claiming those killed were rebel fighters.

They have also resulted in government forces intentionally bombing children, multiple times in fact. Most recently in November.

Perhaps most worryingly, the politicians imposing these policies are winning elections despite the fact that in every country outside of El Salvador, the policies aren’t lowering crime rates, or even slowing the growth of organized crime.

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Despite the failure of these policies to deliver results, politicians continue to successfully sell them to their respective electorates. Voters are led to believe migrants, growing insecurity, or organized crime are a threat grave enough to merit policies that strip them of basic civil rights.

Migrants especially make an excellent scapegoat. The vast majority of them can’t vote, and citizens who can are often all too happy to vote their rights away first.

But it goes beyond just border enforcement, though that is indeed a common entry point to rising authoritarianism. Politicians, across the political spectrum, are seizing power in a way that is going to be very difficult to reverse.

In the language of risk assessment, it is “very likely” that many of these power grabs across the Americas are irreversible. In the US, Democrats have made it clear that they do not intend to impose any real reform on the Department of Homeland Security, which controls ICE.

They merely promise more training and that it will be different when they are in control once again.

El Salvador has greenlighted President Nayib Bukele holding the office for life, and the “temporary” security emergency that allows for the broad dismantling of civil rights shows no signs of going anywhere

“Operation Total Extermination” in Ecuador, carried out in conjunction with US forces, is yielding no results in terms of lowered crime rates or the growth of armed groups and organized crime. But it is still being praised in Quito and D.C.

Venezuela, well, is Venezuela, a dynamic that all sides have made clear isn’t going to change anytime soon. And Mexico seems completely determined to continue down the road of militarization started by AMLO, and now being championed by Sheinbaum.

The thing about institutions that seize power is that once they have it, they do not give it up willingly. This trend carries across ideologies and political parties.

The outlook, regionally, is not good. But there is resistance. By and large, it isn’t coming from institutions. It is happening in rural areas of Cauca, Colombia, among communities that have long been ignored by wealthy elites in Bogota.

It is happening in El Salvador, as journalists, even as they are persecuted by an emerging dictatorship, continue to investigate the abuses of a President drunk on power who governs via meme.

It is happening in Minneapolis, where grass-roots organizers defeated DHS tactically, strategically, politically, and in terms of optics. And they saved thousands of people from being kidnapped in the meantime.

As opposition parties across the region sit on the sidelines, grassroots movements from North to South America are pushing back. I often wonder if this was always the inevitable endpoint of the systems we’ve built.

The incremental power creep has been going on for decades. The police states are not new. Latin America has clawed its way out of dictatorships before, but they were always replaced by a model imposed by the rest of the world instead of a new vision.

Perhaps it is finally time for something new.

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Cuba releases political prisoners as oil blockade continues: Russian tankers make deliveries

The Cuban government has begun releasing what it says will be 2,010 prisoners in a move that comes while the Trump administration puts extreme pressure on the island’s government with a suffocating oil blockade that has caused shortages and blackouts.

The Cuban announcement said the pardons were a “humanitarian gesture” in connection with Holy Week and didn’t mention mounting pressures with the U.S.

The US has been pressuring Cuba with an oil blockade that has paralyzed large sections of the country and created a humanitarian emergency.

As the US faces rising oil prices domestically, while it wages war with Iran, however, Trump has ended sanctions on Russian oil vessels in Latin America.

Russia has sent two oil tankers to Cuba in recent days to alleviate the ongoing energy crisis.

The US has been unclear about its intentions in Cuba in recent months. In mid-March, Trump stated he would “have the honor of taking the island.” Trump has threatened to remove the current leadership in Cuba. But he has also suggested he could work with the current government if the island opens itself to US investment and reforms.

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US lifts sanctions on Venezuelan interim President

The US has ended sanctions on Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodriguez.

Rodriguez assumed office after the US captured former President Nicolas Maduro in January.

In comments to the press shortly after the announcement, US President Donald Trump said that Rodriguez is “doing a great job and is working with the United States very well.”

The lifting of sanctions is the latest sign of warming relations between the Trump administration and Rodríguez’s team.

Her government has been largely subservient to US requests and interests since January, and has initiated efforts to open the mining and oil industries to US companies.

The US last month formally resumed diplomatic relations with Venezuela, reopening the US embassy in Caracas.

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Peru heads to elections, and Peruvians hate all the candidates

Peru will vote for a new president on April 12, amid a deep political and institutional crisis.

The Andean country held its last presidential elections in 2021, in which Pedro Castillo won. However, Castillo remained in power for only a year and a half. Since then, Peru has had three presidents, two of them chosen by Congress.

Current leader José María Balcázar is not eligible to run, as presidents need to have completed a full 5-year term to be reelected.

Peru’s crisis of representation is reflected in the highly fragmented field of candidates in the election: an unprecedented number of 35 contenders will compete. A 36th candidate died in a car crash on March 15.

None of the candidates surpass 13% of vote intention. A presidential candidate needs at least 50% of the vote to win, so there will likely be a runoff in June.

Keiko Fujimori, former congresswoman and daughter of the controversial late president Alberto Fujimori, leads the crowded field. This is her fourth presidential run.

As Peru runs through presidents, however, Congress has grown in power and become more corrupt.

The legislature has actively protected illicit economies by enacting a series of dubious reforms between 2023 and 2025. Colloquially known as the “pro-crime laws,” these have severely curtailed the investigative capacity of Peru’s Attorney General’s Office.

Congress holds a 3% approval rating in the country.

Other stories in LATAM

• The US is continuing military operations in Ecuador, despite accusations that Ecuadorian forces bombed a dairy farm and tortured workers there. Last week SOUTHCOM announced a joint land operation, presumably against narcotraffickers on the northern coast. These claims should be taken with skepticism.

• Residents in Central Mexico are blaming state owned oil company PEMEX for a massive oil spill off the coast which has killed sealife in the region. They accuse the government of lying about the origin of oil which has destroyed fishing and contaminated beaches. The spill of off the coast of the southern Veracruz state has spread more than 373 miles and into seven nature reserves.

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The United States “repatriated” $100 million in Venezuelan gold bars following an official visit by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, according to statements by Burgum on March 23. The announcement follows weeks of public statements by US President Donald Trump in which he expressed interest in both gold reserves and rare earth mineral deposits in the country.

Moving in parallel with US officials, Venezuela’s National Assembly has approved a draft bill that would facilitate US mining in the country, as well as encourage foreign investment and liberalize restrictions on mineral exports.

The US frames the mining initiatives as a way to stimulate economic development in Venezuela following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife on January 3, and instalation of Delcy Rodriguez as acting president.

The truth about Venezuelan gold production, however, is much more complicated than the press releases from either country let on.

Venezuela has vast precious mineral reserves, especially in the south of the country. In addition to considerable gold reserves, Venezuelan deposits also include rare earth minerals.

The US views securing viable deposits of these minerals, used in aerospace, AI, satellite, and radar systems, as a critical national security matter. But securing the deposits in Venezuela presents substantial security risks. The majority exist in areas that are effectively controlled by Colombian criminal armed groups.

Segunda Marquetalia and the ELN have a strong presence in Amazonian and Colombian-Venezuelan border areas. They incorporate indigenous and local communities into prospecting and strip-mining efforts in the regions they control. According to field reporting from the Orinoco region by journalistic consortium Amazon Underworld, these illegal operations launder their yields into legal production streams, either by bribing Venezuelan officials, who have then sold the minerals to Chinese buyers, or by smuggling ore into Colombia, where it becomes indistinguishable from legal production chains.

In a comprehensive report from late 2025, Amazon Underworld reports that “these extraction operations involve summary executions, child labor, sexual violence, and torture,” and occur with full knowledge of Venezuelan military officials.

Gold mining in Venezuela is also carried out by state-owned company Minerven, but mineral flows in the country are saturated by gold from illegal mining operations that has been laundered into licit markets, often with the help of corrupt Venezuelan officials.

Both extraction industries, licit and illicit, wreak incredible environmental destruction in the heart of one of the earth’s most delicate ecosystems — the Amazon rainforest.

Venezuelan researchers and NGOs recently released a report that states the mining bill currently winding its way through the National Assembly would “provide a veneer of legality to the ongoing systematic plundering of the Amazon and the Guiana Shield,” the groups said, warning it could worsen environmental destruction and abuses in mineral-rich regions of southern Venezuela.

The group estimated in early 2025 that more than 3.2 million acres of undisturbed or minimally disturbed rainforest would be destroyed by current mining activities in the country, with the total devastation projected to surpass 3.7 million acres by 2030.

Expansion of the mining industry and an entrance by US firms would dramatically increase the ecological devastation.

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Furthermore, any company attempting to operate in the region would almost certainly face extortion efforts by Colombian armed groups.

These payments are often hidden via contracts with private contractors and third-party companies. All of this is to say, any company operating in Venezuela will be directly financing armed groups that the US government considers terrorist organizations.

Both Seguna Marquetalia and the ELN have historically attacked oil and mining infrastructure in Colombia when private companies resist paying them to operate in their territories.

In fact, some of the “blood gold” from their mines is almost certainly part of the shipment that the US “repatriated” this week.

Any buyer doing business in Venezuela runs a very strong chance of buying illegally mined deposits, knowingly or otherwise, and thus indirectly financing Colombian groups that the US has designated as international terrorist organizations.

Entities attempting to organize extraction projects in southern Venezuela face even more serious security risks. Mining operations in the regions in Colombia where the ELN or Segunda Marquetalia operate, such as southern Chocó, northern Antioquia, and Putumayo in the Amazon basin, are some of the most conflict-prone in the country.

International companies operating in those zones are often subjected to extreme pressure to pay off the armed groups who control the regions, often through indirect means, which makes them more difficult to trace.

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Further complicating the dynamic, the ELN and Segunda Marquetalia have publicly vowed to oppose US interests in Venezuela, which they view as a critical field of operations that allows them to evade Colombian security forces, act as a critical smuggling corridor, and allow them to diversify their income streams.

It is highly unlikely that Venezuelan security forces have the capability to confront either group, both of whom have decades of experience resisting a highly capable military in Colombia.

But that is likely irrelevant. The interim government in Caracas almost certainly does not have the will or the political capital to start a serious conflict in the heart of the country with groups that have been previously tolerant of Venezuelan security forces.

Fighting between the ELN and Segunda Marquetalia also complicates the security situation. In contested areas of Colombia, Non-state armed groups (NSAGs) often attack the infrastructure of state or private entities perceived as cooperating with enemy groups, correctly or not.

Conflict regions firmly controlled by one NSAG are considerably less dangerous than disputed zones. Neither the ELN nor Segunda Marquetalia has hegemonic control of southern Venezuela, though both operate with relative impunity.

How the US plans to secure these areas is unclear. The use of US ground forces is highly unlikely. Would they relegate the task to private security contractors (read mercenaries)?

The US sees profits in the big print in Venezuela, but what it doesn’t see is the complexity and the blood likely to follow those profits.

Or perhaps they simply don’t care.

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National Blackouts in Cuba as aid flotilla arrives

Cuba suffered an island-wide blackout on Sunday for the second time in a week on Saturday night. A US-imposed oil blockade has prevented the Caribbean nation from running generators which help support Cuba’s power grid and created a humanitarian crisis.

A coalition of international socialist groups also arrived in Cuba over the weekend, bringing with them solar panels, food supplies, and basic medicines. A flotilla carrying a larger shipment of humanitarian aid from Mexico is set to arrive in the following days.

The collapse of the electric grid also inspired protests, and some frustrated residents attacked Communist Party headquarters in the town of Morón, eventually setting fire to the building.

US President Donald Trump last week suggested there could be a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, and confirmed reports that the two countries have been holding bilateral talks.

The Cuban government has announced that they are preparing “to defend” the country from any potential US attack.

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More details emerge in DEA investigation into Petro in Colombia

The US Drug Enforcement Agency leaked information about two investigations into Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Documents sent to the Associated Press state that the DEA considers Petro a “priority target” in ongoing drug trafficking investigations.

The DEA has provided no evidence to support the allegations. Petro’s party meanwhile claims the leak is an attempt at campaign interference by the US ahead of Colombian Presidential elections which begin in May.

We broke down the details of the accusations, and the history of drug accusations against Petro by right-wing opposition politicians in Colombia, in this week’s Pirate Wire Radio episode.

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Mexican teen in DHS custody found dead

A 19-year-old Mexican national died while being held in detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency has confirmed.

DHS claimed that Royer Perez-Jimenez was found “unconscious and unresponsive” on Monday at the Glades County Detention Center in Florida.

“He died of a presumed suicide; however, the official cause of his death remains under investigation,” the statement adds. DHS has lied about the circumstances of deaths of people in their custody before.

Perez-Jimenez is the youngest prisoner to die in ICE custody since Donald Trump returned to office.

Perez-Jimenez was found in his cell at 02:34 on 16 March, according to ICE, which added that prison staff “immediately” began life-saving efforts.

The Mexican government denounced the death, and the deaths of other Mexican citizens, and demanded a full investigation.

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The accusations come two months before Presidential elections in Colombia, and from an administration that has routinely lied about narco-trafficking in Latin America to further its foreign policy goals.

We speak with Adriaan Alsema, executive editor of Colombia Reports about what the allegations mean moving forward, claims by Petro’s party that the leaks amount to election interference, and the context of Trump’s “War on Drugs as Foreign Policy” more broadly in the region.

In short, some elements of the accusations simply don’t add up, and others are presented without proof.

Learn more in this week’s podcast at Pirate Wire Radio!

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This piece is republished from our sister org Colombia Reports

At least two US federal prosecutors have opened preliminary investigations into Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Friday.

According to the US newspaper, the criminal investigations were being conducted by the US attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and would be supported by agents of Homeland Security Investigations and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The investigations have been trying to establish, among other things, if Petro has met with drug traffickers and if his campaign sought mafia campaign donations, three anonymous sources told the NYT.

The investigations would be in their early stages, according to the US newspaper.

It is unclear if the investigations will result in criminal charges, the NYT added.

The criminal investigations followed unsubstantiated claims of US President Donald Trump, who called his Colombian counterpart a “drug trafficking leader” amid tensions over the US involvement in the Gaza genocide and US air strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The Trump administration subsequently put Petro on a blacklist for drug traffickers, claiming that the Colombian president “has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity.”

Petro has arguably been the most active Colombian politician when it comes to fighting the influence of organized crime in politics.

In response to allegations made by the president when he was a senator, more than 80 congressmen and governors were sent to prison because of their ties to paramilitary groups that controlled Colombia’s cocaine exports at the time.

The Truth Commission that was set up as part of a peace process with the now-defunct guerrilla group FARC confirmed that these paramilitary organizations and their drug trafficking associates worked together with US intelligence agencies like the CIA and the DEA.

The Trump administration has tried to undermine the war crimes tribunal that came with the peace process since taking office for the first time in 2017.

Supporters of Petro have framed the investigation as an attempt by the US to meddle in upcoming Colombian presidential elections.

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At a televised cabinet meeting Monday evening, Colombian President Gustavo Petro revealed the discovery of a 250 kilogram (552 pound) bomb in the municipality of Ipiales, Colombia, near the Ecuadorian border.

“We’re being bombed,” he said, explaining that the explosive artifact was Ecuadorian in origin, and linked to recent bombings Ecuador has carried out near the Colombian border in cooperation with the US military.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa denied the accusations repeatedly even as photos of the bomb circulated in the press and social media.

The bomb was discovered by a resident of Ipiales, who told AFP that he discovered the unexploded ordinance “50 or 60 meters” from his home after seeing Ecuadorian aircraft conduct a bombing near the border on March 3.

Since Monday, Petro has insisted that the bomb is from Ecuador, and continued to provide new information to support those claims, even as Noboa doubled down on his denials.

Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been strained since late last year, when Ecuador imposed tariffs on all Colombian goods as Noboa blamed Colombia for recent increases in crime in Ecuador.

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High-level meeting presents new hypothesis

In an effort to defuse the conflict, Colombia’s Defense Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Ecuador’s Defense Minister, Gian Carlo Loffredo, held a 90-minute discussion about the incident on Wednesday evening, according to statements from both governments.

Following the meeting, Colombian Minister of Defense Pedro Sanchez said the explosive was the same as explosives used by Ecuador in a military action on March 3 near the Colombian border.

Sanchez wrote that “the leading theory suggests that the bomb did not enter Colombian territory deliberately.”

Sanchez and Ecuadorian officials said their preliminary theory is that the bomb was dropped on the Ecuadorian side of the border, just a few meters from Colombia, and after it failed to detonate “bounced” into Colombian territory.

“When (the bomb) fails to explode, it continues on its trajectory due to the laws of physics.” That could explain why “it strayed several meters into Colombian territory,” said Carlos Fernando Silva, commander of the Colombian Air Force, at a press conference following the meeting.

“We do not believe anyone did this deliberately, but rather that it was due to a physical effect,” he added, explaining that the device weighs 250 kilograms and measures approximately 1.50 meters.

Although Ecuador did not specifically admit that the explosive device originated from their military forces, they did not deny statements made by Colombian officials following the meeting.

Both countries have agreed to a full investigation, with details to be made public in upcoming days.

Noboa has promised more bombings against non-state armed actors and organized crime groups in the borderlands in operations carried out in cooperation with US military forces.

The device was detonated in a controlled manner by explosives experts, Sánchez reported.

“The investigation is ongoing to determine how and why that explosive device ended up on Colombian territory,” he added on X.

In 2008, Ecuador and Colombia experienced a similar diplomatic crisis following a bombing ordered by then-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Ecuadorian soil, where one of the commanders of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla group was killed.

Amid statements about the bomb, Petro mentioned the existence of “27 charred bodies,” raising questions about whether the two incidents were related.

Minister Sánchez clarified that the president was referring to another incident in January, when three explosions at cocaine laboratories killed at least 14 people in a border area.

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US convicts 9 in “Antifa trial.” It’s a grave violation of the 1st amendment

The first US federal case involving protesters designated as “terrorists” by the administration wrapped up this week. It was a mixed verdict, but overall a victory for the government against a group of left-wing protesters that prosecutors claimed were “an antifa terror cell.”

Nine protesters at a “noise protest” outside of an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas faced 65 charges ranging from providing material support for terrorists to attempted murder. An Alvarado police officer was shot in the neck while responding to the protest. The officer survived.

Benjamin Song, who shot the responding officer, was convicted for attempted murder and the illegal discharge of a firearm. But that isn’t what raises eyebrows about the case.

Prosecutors alleged a conspiracy between the nine defendants, one of whom was not even at the nighttime protests. The administration classification of “antifa” as a “domestic terror organization” is an informal designation that carries no legal weight.

The right of dissent is clearly protected by the 1st amendment in the US. Nonetheless, the government framed defendants as a “dangerous terrorist cell” who “planned an ambush” of DHS personnel and police.

Defendants say the demonstration was meant to be peaceful, and that 8 of the protesters were completely uninvolved in the shooting.

Eight defendants were convicted of rioting, providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and use and carry of an explosive — the explosive being fireworks deployed during the protest.

The defendant who was not at the protest, Daniel Sanchez Estrada was convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record. Estrada was moving “zines”, pamphlets about social organizing and leftist ideas — documents whose publication and possession are clearly protected by the 1st amendment as well, at least in theory.

He and his wife, Rueda, were also convicted of conspiracy to conceal documents, and providing material aid to a terrorist organization.

The government has called it the first domestic terrorism case targeting antifa since President Trump declared the ideology a domestic terrorist threat last year. Experts say the outcome could determine the playbook for how the Trump administration targets left-wing movements.

“Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization that has been allowed to flourish in Democrat-led cities — not under President Trump,” read a statement from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”

Antifa is neither an organization nor “terrorists”. It is simply an orientation: being willing to resist fascism. That is clearly considered threatening to the United States.

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ICE has been racially profiling: a trend that has led to the detainment of US citizens, finds Oregon judge

ICE agents testifying in court in Oregon as part of a class-action lawsuit against the agency for detaining people without warrants admitted to the court that the agency imposes arrest quotas on its agents.

The lawsuit was filed by immigration non-profit Innovation Law Lab. The group claims that warrantless arrests form part of a pattern of racial profiling and unconstitutional arrests. The judge sided with plaintiffs, ordering ICE to end the practice.

Testimony in a December hearing in the case provided a remarkable acknowledgment by an ICE officer of how daily target arrest numbers played out at the local level, and appeared to contradict the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials’ repeated claims that officers didn’t have quotas. Trump adviser Stephen Miller has publicly said the administration’s target was 3,000 daily arrests. The hearing also appeared to be the first time that ICE disclosed in court its use of an app called Elite for operations.

According to court testimony of ICE officials obtained by the Guardian, the Elite app is “kind of like Google Maps” and shows how many individuals with an “immigration nexus” are believed to be in a certain area. Another officer testified that a “nexus” could mean any history of contact with immigration officials, which could include a naturalized US citizen.

Elite, JB said, helped officers identify areas with a more “dense population”, meaning a higher likelihood of finding people to detain. Another agent described the Woodburn complex as a “target-rich” area. JB said he did not know how Elite “leads” were generated, saying the app “pulls from all kinds of sources”.

Officials also added that the app is often inaccurate and that mistaken arrests were made often, especially for Spanish speakers.

According to a report by 404 Media, a tech news site, the app was built by Palantir, the data analytics firm that has contracts with the DHS and the Department of Defense. The app is one of many that have reportedly been used by DHS which collects information not merely on potential targets but also on activists and protesters.

Accusations of racial profiling by DHS has become commonplace. A district judge in Minnesota recently ruled that the practice was widespread there as well.

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The Round-Up

• Eleven people have died in DHS custody since January, meaning 2026 is on track to beat 2025 as the deadliest year for detainees in the agency’s custody in its existence. Two died last week: Emmanuel Damasm a 56-year-old asylum seeker from Haiti, and Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, a veteran of the Afghan war. Damasm died in U.S. ICE custody after staff allegedly denied him treatment for a tooth infection.Paktiawal’s death is currently under investigation.

• Before DHS officers killed two US citizens in Minnesota, they killed Ruben Ray Martinez, a San Antonio man that DHS claimed attacked officers with his car. New video of the incident shows that DHs, as in many previous cases, are lying liars. The newly released video shows that DHS are blatantly false, surprising exactly no one.

• The administration of Donald Trump has toned down migration rhetoric in recent weeks, as we have reported before. Last week, they sent a memo to lawmakers in Washington suggesting that Republicans stop speaking of mass deportations and instead focus their rhetoric on ICE detentions of convicted criminals.

• Department of Homeland Security leaders removed top privacy officers who objected to mislabeling government records to block their public release, according to a new report by WIRED.

• New details emerged in how DHS is investing in mass-surveillance software and equipment thanks to documents the government claimed were “hacked.”

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Despite declaring an internal “war” on organized crime, the designation of several non-state armed groups as “terrorist organizations”, military strikes in cooperation with US forces, and “iron fist” policies, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is failing to stem the growth of organized crime in the country.

Instead, his policies are having the opposite effect as armed groups push into new territories that were previously relatively unaffected by rising homicide rates in the country.

The causes of Ecuador’s transformation from one of the safest countries in the region to one of the most dangerous in the world are many, but prime among them has been the explosion of cocaine trafficking from Peru and Colombia — the two biggest cocaine producers in the world.

Smuggling routes from the borders to port cities within the country led to the rise of armed groups operating along Ecuador’s coast and in the port cities such as Guayaquil.

As a result, violence in Ecuador in recent years had been largely concentrated along the coast and near the country’s northern border with Colombia.

But a report by a coalition of NGOs within the country, using information from civil organizations, crime monitoring groups, and data from the US embassy and Ecuadorian government, has shown a recent strong upsurge in criminal activity inland in the interior of the country as well.

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Criminal groups are diversifying their income streams and moving inland

As armed groups such as Los Choneros and Los Lobos gained power within the country from narco-trafficking in recent years, they built logistical relationships with hybrid organizations in Ecuador’s port cities.

Logistical networks in cities like Guayaquil were run by actors who maintain footprints in both the legal private sector as well as illicit activities, such as international smuggling and money laundering.

Principally through these hybrid actors, but also at times directly, armed groups in the country formed relationships with international criminal organizations in northern and eastern Europe, as well as Mexican organizations like the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG).

However, groups such as the Choneros, which originally enjoyed a near monopoly along cocaine smuggling routes, fractured or were attacked by new armed groups as the astronomical profits from cocaine smuggling grew.

Ecuadorian military strikes worsened this dynamic by killing or capturing the leadership of some of those armed groups, which led to more destabilization and fighting among them.

As a result, many newer groups were forced out of coastal regions and into previously relatively safe rural zones away from smuggling routes.

At the same time, both established larger armed groups and smaller challengers began to look for new activities to fund their operations. Since 2024, Ecuador has experienced sharp growth in illegal mining, particularly in the north of the country near the Colombian border, extortion, kidnappings, and fights over territory controlled by armed groups in regions that were previously relatively unscathed by the rise of criminality in the country.

Data from 2025 also shows a diversification of financial activities carried out by these same armed groups, as well as collaboration with organized crime groups that have deep ties to the private sector in the country.

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Noboa wants to bomb, but military actions alone are very unlikely to be successful

Noboa wants to double down on iron fist policies, which have led to severe human rights violations of civilians, but haven’t made much progress towards stemming criminality.

As part of those efforts, he has announced partnerships with the US military and the FBI. In the past, he has blamed the Venezuelan gang “Tren de Aragua” for the rise in crime. That claim was false. Shortly after the US launched a war against Iran, Noboa also claimed that Hezbollah has an organized presence in the country. There is no evidence to support that assertion.

If Noboa is serious about stemming crime in the country, he is going to have to address its root causes. It remains to be seen whether he has the political will to do so.

According to the most recent available data from Ecuadorian census efforts in 2025, more than 21% of the country’s population lives in “poverty or extreme poverty.” In the rural areas, where criminal organizations are currently expanding most rapidly, that rate jumps to 37.6%.

The lack of legal economic opportunities allows for easier recruitment of armed groups as well as civil support for the activities of hybrid legal/illegal organizations that have been tied to their actions.

Systemic corruption within both Ecuadorian political structures, as well as within security forces, are also significant barriers to combating criminality in the country.

“Anti-corruption” efforts over decades, and across administrations, have often served merely as a tool to prosecute political opponents. In simpler words, the party in power has rarely prosecuted members of its own ranks, meaning that many prosecution efforts have served to cement corruption rather than reduce it.

Relative impunity for the ruling party, with a few notable exceptions such as former President Rafael Correa, has been the rule rather than the exception, particularly on a rank-and-file level.

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The ‘Bukele method’ has clearly failed, so what will work?

In the early 2000s, Colombia was in a similar position as Ecuador is now regarding state infiltration by criminal structures. It was also the most dangerous country in the world as measured by homicide rates.

Colombia continues to suffer greatly from internal conflict, narco-trafficking, and fighting among non-state criminal actors, but has made great strides from the darkest days of the civil war.

Many of those gains were made by purging the Prosecutor’s Office of systemic corruption and allowing deep investigations into politicians from all parties that had been effectively co-opted by organized crime and non-state armed groups.

Although the parallels are not perfect — Ecuador is not embroiled in a civil war — the capture of state institutions in Ecuador is very similar to Colombia in that period.

If the country is serious about combating decaying security and rising criminality, it will need to strengthen professionalism and purge corrupt prosecutors from their positions and focus anti-corruption efforts on all parties, not merely political rivals.

However, the diversification of criminality in the country also presents strategic weaknesses for criminal organizations.

Illegal mining, particularly in the north of the country, has evolved from a small-scale operation carried out by a few workers with basic tools into a “structured, organized crime operation that requires a complex supply chain and logistics network” to function, according to the same security report by Ecuadorian NGOs.

The dependence upon that supply chain, which includes heavy machinery and logistical chains both into and out of the regions where illegal mining is being carried out, presents an opportunity for both prosecutors and security forces to learn who is behind hybrid organized crime groups as well as to disrupt them.

Criminal organizations that operate in the private sector have also left a considerable financial footprint that could be investigated. But it is unlikely that Noboa has the political will to investigate financial elites who have become entangled in criminal structures. Many of them are his political allies.

Ecuador will also need to address rampant poverty and inequality rates to slow the rate of growth of armed groups. That requires actual reform, and perhaps a step away from the market-friendly policies that Noboa favors, however.

Labor or land reform are very unlikely to be priorities for elites in the country.

Noboa would prefer to blow up huts in the jungle and impose crackdowns on civil society. But without other steps to address the root causes of criminality, military actions alone will be ineffective.

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Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” summit advocates for military actions in Latin America

One day after US forces assisted with a land strike on a compound in Ecuador allegedly used as a training facility for non-state armed group Comandos de la Frontera, US President Donald Trump launched his “Shield of the Americas” summit with right-wing leaders in the region. At the event, Trump stressed further military actions against organized crime groups, which he compared to terrorists. He also announced the creation of the “Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition,” a group of 12 signatory nations from Latin America and the Caribbean which signed a pledge to take aggressive measures against narcotrafficking.

“The only way to defeat these enemies is by unleashing the power of our military. So we have to use our military. You have to use your military,” Trump told the audience of Latin American leaders.

Trump promised further use of the US military in the region. “We’ll use missiles. If you want us to use a missile, they’re extremely accurate — pew! — right into the living room, and that’s the end of that cartel person,” Trump said.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has strongly advocated for the use of US military power in Ecuador since he assumed office in 2023.

The summit seems designed to normalize US military attacks in Latin America, such as those being carried out on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific oceans, which have now claimed at least 158 lives.

Combined with the ground strikes in Ecuador, the US is clearly ushering in a new age of violent military attacks in the region.

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US wants Venezuelan gold and rare earth minerals

Both US officials and Venezuelan lawmakers have given a green light to gold extraction in the country by US private companies.

The US also removed sanctions on the Venezuelan state-owned mining company Minervan, which, in theory, will allow Venezuela to sell gold in US markets.

The decision follows high-level visits by US officials to Venezuela. Trump and other US officials have also spoken of mining rare earth minerals in Venezuela.

The US has been desperate to find viable new sources of rare earth minerals that are vital for industries ranging from defence to aerospace and artificial intelligence, including building precision-guided missiles, radars, sensors, and satellite systems.

China currently controls more than 90% of viable rare earth mineral deposits in the world, a situation that the US views as a security threat.

Mining the minerals in Venezuela, however, would be fraught with grave security risks. Many of the regions where mineral deposits lie are controlled by armed groups, including the National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian left-wing rebel group that would resist any incursion into their territory vigorously.

The US is unlikely to put “boots on the ground” in southern Venezuela, and Venezuelan security forces are clearly not up to the task of a head-to-head fight with ELN. Will the US greenlight private military contractors in the fight?

What would that look like? This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen to the crew at PWS, and for more reasons than we can count. This story bears close watching in the coming weeks and months.

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Congressional elections in Colombia reflect growing polarization in the country

Moderate and centrist parties lost significantly in Congressional elections as left-wing far-right parties made big gains in Colombia’s elections on Sunday.

The change in the legislature occurs just before presidential elections in May, and will likely complicate incoming administration efforts, no matter who wins. An increased number of seats from radical parties makes compromise on any agenda much less likely and reflects growing polarization in the country, as the administration of Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president in Colombia’s history.

Our friends at Colombia Reports have all the details, including how this affects ongoing presidential primaries.

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The other big headlines in LATAM

• In addition to mining agreements, the US and Venezuela formally agreed to renew diplomatic ties this week. Venezuela’s diplomatic embassy in Washington was closed in 2019.

• Ecuadorian troops seized a 35m-long ‘narco-sub’ hidden in a nature reserve near the Colombian border. They also found a camp nearby, which they said was being used by criminals as a logistics hub to prepare vessels for smuggling drugs.

• At least 33 people have been injured in a nightclub bombing in the coastal town of Trujillo in northern Peru, with minors among those hurt in the explosion. Authorities say that the attack took place in the early morning hours on Saturday, with an explosion ripping through the club. The bombing is still being investigated.

• Mexico will deploy 100,000 security personnel for the World Cup. Mexico, which hosts alongside the United States and Canada, will stage World Cup fixtures across three cities — including Guadalajara, the capital city of Jalisco, where the violence began last month, and more than 12,000 people are reported missing.

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Although thousands of miles apart, women in Mexico and Colombia face many of the same threats against their lives, and share a long history of resistance against cultures that have often overlooked misogynist violence against them.

As thousands of women take to the streets in both countries on International Women’s Day to demand protection from gender-based violence and state neglect, many are also frustrated by the lack of progress made by their respective progressive presidents in addressing women’s issues.

Both leftist leaders, Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, have faced sharp criticisms from feminist movements for a lack of progress in addressing violence against women.

What little progress has been made is often symbolic. Colombia created a new Ministry of Equality three years ago. The agency is intended to defend the rights of women and ethnic minorities. But in practice, the state has done next to nothing to address the causes of gender based violence. 2025 ended with 621 femicides.

Sheinbaum is Mexico’s first female president, a symbolic step in terms of women’s political participation in the country. Yet, especially for poorer women, that symbolic progress has not translated into safer living conditions.

Sheinbaum herself has been the victim of sexist attacks. Once, while walking through the capital, a man approached her, bypassing her security detail and making sexual advances as he groped her.

In both countries, and indeed across all of the Americas, the causes of violence against women are deep: both structural and cultural. It is a trend that presents a huge challenge for governments across the continent.

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A crisis of Institutions in Colombia

In Colombia, the state does not know how many women are murdered each year for gender-based reasons. There is no single entity that records this data reliably. Instead, civil society NGOs have been responsible for assembling the data through their own means. This gap in the record has made it impossible to gauge the magnitude of a problem or create effective prevention policies.

This difficulty in addressing gender-based violence at the institutional level is one of the enormous challenges to women’s safety in Colombia. Although femicide is the culmination of gender-based violence, it is always preceded by other types of aggression that the state fails to address, leading in many cases to the murder of women and even women and their children. Gender-based violence, defined as an assault in which gender is the motive for the attacker, is not specifically criminalized in Colombia, unlike in countries such as Mexico or Spain.

On several occasions, women who have suffered attempted femicide have demanded protection and government support. Even so, obstacles persist from the moment a complaint is filed with the police, highlighting that this is a structural problem.

In many cases, it is the police themselves who commit gender-based violence against their partners, or women they encounter as part of their duties. This situation is not new.

In 2017, the Constitutional Court, addressing peace-building issues in the country, warned: “The responsibility of administrative and judicial authorities when their actions or omissions cause harm to women who report acts of violence.”

But the barriers go further, even when it comes to justice. In the context of March 8, Pares Foundation, a human rights watchdog organization, released a report that sharply criticizes Colombia’s Prosecutor’s Office. According to the document on reports, only 29.66% of reported cases of femicides in the last seven years resulted in convictions.

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Incessant and insidious disappearances in Mexico

Although disappearances in Mexico are not exclusively gender-based, the task of searching for those who disappear is. This has historically been a feminized task, undertaken by mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. They have been the targets of criminals, but they have also been the ones demanding justice amid the violence.

Added to this are the disappearances of women who, in most cases, end up being victims of femicide and sexual violence. The recent case of Ana Nute, a woman who disappeared after taking a motorcycle taxi in Mexico City, inspired international outrage when civilian-led search efforts later encountered her lifeless body. For many women, the episode highlights the violence or threats of violence that they face daily in the country.

The streets of many of Mexico’s cities are filled with posters of women who have gone missing. “Se Busca” is, sadly, an all too common phrase in the country.

But, in addition, as in Colombia, institutional inefficiency, or outright ignoring women who have been victims of violence, are the biggest barriers to curbing gender violence.

On March 8, the newspaper Milenio published an in-depth analysis that sheds light on machismo in the country. The data points to drug-related violence as a multiplying factor in an already dire situation.

Nineteen women in Mexico disappeared every day between 2022 and 2025. More than 28,000 women were reported missing, half of whom were minors, in three years. At least nine women were killed every day in the country in 2025 alone.

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Insufficient efforts and broken promises

This March 8, women in both countries find themselves facing another bleak scenario. Hundreds of demonstrations have been called in Mexico.

In Colombia, the date coincides with legislative elections, but marches have been scheduled for March 15. In both countries, girls, adolescents, and women continue to be examples of resistance, sisterhood, and struggle. But the marches also highlight the broken promises of governments that marginalize our voices.

And that is why, until our lives are a priority, we will continue to take to the streets.

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Hasta pronto, piratas!