Stop, collaborate, and listen: Amazon's complicit in ICE's extraditions (plus other abuses of human rights enabled by that agency's authoritarian agenda)

That's why hundreds of musicians—nearly 500, at the time of this writing, though it was just over 100 when news broke Thursday morning—have signed onto an open letter pledging to boycott Amazon festivals, events, and other exclusive deals until the tech giant stops enabling the systematic abuses of Immigration Customs Enforcement. The list of signatories includes Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, as well as Ted Leo, Immortal Technique, Downtown Boys, Thursday, WHY?, Jeff Rosenstock, the Mowglis, War on Women, Diet Cig, Tim Kasher (of Cursive/The Good Life), and many more.

These are the demands for Amazon, directly from that open letter:

Terminate existing contracts with military, law enforcement, and government agencies (ICE, CBP, ORR) that commit human rights abuses

Stop providing Cloud services & tools to organizations (such as Palantir) that power the US government's deportation machine

End projects that encourage racial profiling and discrimination, such as Amazon's facial recognition product

Reject future engagements w/ aforementioned bad actors.

I signed my own band onto the list earlier this week, after catching wind of the movement on Twitter. (I tried to pull our songs from all Amazon-affiliated services, but our distro service makes that difficult to do.) My friends in the Kominas mentioned something about it, and then I noticed Deerhoof interacting with Sadie Dupois of Speedy Ortiz and Sad13, following up on the recent op-ed by Tom Morello and Evan Greer of Fight For The Future (both musicians and activists in their own rights). Read the rest

Several injured when black pickup truck drove into protesters at Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility on Wednesday night.

A Federal appeals court today upheld an order that requires Trump immigration authorities with the US Customs and Border Patrol to provide detained migrant kids with the humane basics: food, water, bedding, toothbrushes, soap, and conditions in which children can be expected to sleep.

“Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep-deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety,” said the court.

A lot of ICE agents are gonna haz a sad tonight, as will Donald Trump's White House concentration camp advocate Stephen Miller. Read the rest

Amazon is a major federal contractor. AWS powers ICE raids and detention camps.

The largest single-state worksite immigration raid in American history took place today. Under orders from openly racist U.S. president Donald Trump, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 680 Latinx people who worked at numerous food processing plants throughout the state of Mississippi. Read the rest

• The change is expected to be a massive expansion of the government's power to seize, detain, and abruptly deport.

• Previously, “expedited removal” was limited to undocumented immigrants caught within 100 miles of the U.S. border who had been in the U.S. for less than two weeks.

The Trump administration's extrajudicial 'Expedited Removal' of undocumented immigrants will be radically expanded to apply everywhere within the United States, not just within 100 miles of the Mexico border, after the new rule is published in the Federal Register on Tuesday. Read the rest

“The Palantir user guide shows that police can start with almost no information about a person of interest and instantly know extremely intimate details about their lives.”

Peek inside this corporate report to see how private prison companies make money from migrants in ICE concentration camps.

Here are the 10 U.S. cities where ICE, CBP, DHS, and other agencies plan to execute mass raids. Read the rest

The Immigrant Resource Legal Center offers multilingual, printable templates for "red cards": bust cards adapted for use by immigrants being targeted by ICE squads. Read the rest

Newly obtained documents show that under the administration of Donald Trump, thousands of ICE detainees who are mostly from Central America are “sometimes forced into extended periods of solitary confinement for reasons that have nothing to do with rule violations.” Read the rest

The cruelty is the point.

A youth pastor threatened to call federal immigration authorities on an underage girl and her family while he was coercing the girl into non-consensual sexual acts, say Florida police. Read the rest

For the first time in our nation's history, the United States government is detaining over 50,000 people it claims to be undocumented immigrants in jails, prisons, and makeshift detention camps across America. Read the rest

The attorney for detained performing artist 21 Savage blasts ICE in a statement the day after his client was arrested: "This is a civil law violation, and the continued detention of Mr. Abraham-Joseph serves no other purpose than to unnecessarily punish him and try to intimidate him into giving up his right to fight to remain in the US." Read the rest

Another child has died in the custody of U.S. immigration officials. Felipe Alonzo-Gomez was taken to a hospital in New Mexico on Monday and released after treatment for a cold and fever. He was given antibiotics and ibuprofen. He was brought back to the hospital Monday night and died a few hours later. This is the second Guatemalan child to die in U.S. custody in December. Jakelin Caal, a 7-year-old girl died earlier this month.

Merry fucking Christmas.

CBP: 8-year-old Guatemalan child apprehended by CBP dies Christmas Day (Kelsie Blazier/ABC15.com) (Photo: CBPPhotos/Flickr) Read the rest

Government procurement data reveals that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Agency have each spent tens of thousands of dollars on products from Houston's Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC, which specializes in fake streetlight housings designed to conceal surveillance cameras. Read the rest