AM Dispatch: Amnesty Finds Torture at Alligator Alcatraz
Plus, Stephen Miller "CREEP"posters back to DC, Texas courts flooded with habeas corpus petitions, ICE vehicles' tires slashed in Staten Island, a rumored deportation flight to Iran, and more!
Amnesty International has released a report documenting torture and enforced disappearances at Florida’s Everglades Detention Facility, the state-owned immigration prison Governor Ron DeSantis built with $360 million in emergency management funds.
The report describes men held in 1,000-square-foot cages, 32 to a pen, under 24-hour stadium lighting with no tracking system—lawyers searching ICE’s detainee locator found “no result.”
Detainees reported being punished in a 2×2-foot “box” cage outdoors, shackled to the ground for hours in the elements. Amnesty concluded the box “constitutes torture” and the overall conditions at the facility “constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and in some instances, amounts to torture or other ill-treatment.”
Why it matters: Florida built the first state-run immigration prison in the country using hurricane relief money, then administratively disappeared people inside it with no federal oversight, no public roster, and no way for families or lawyers to locate them. One detainee: “We were like ghosts there. We were kidnapped.”
Tyson Food investors seek deportation risk study
Tyson Foods is fighting to prevent shareholders from demanding a report on how mass deportations could devastate its workforce—35% of which is immigrants.
The meat giant has moved to block the shareholder resolution, arguing it would force the company to acknowledge the financial exposure created by Trump’s enforcement crackdown.
Why it matters: Corporate America’s immigration dependency is colliding with Trump’s deportation machine. Tyson’s resistance reveals how deeply the food supply chain relies on immigrant labor—and how little companies want investors to know about it.
H-1B visa applicants must make their socials public
Beginning December 15, all H-1B visa applicants and their H-4 dependents must make their social media profiles public for consular officer review, a State Department spokesperson told Business Insider.
The policy marks one of the broadest digital vetting expansions ever applied to foreign workers. Applicants will be instructed to adjust privacy settings to “public” across all platforms so officers can access posts, networks, employment information, and online activity. The move deepens Trump’s H-1B overhaul, which already includes a $100,000 fee on new applications that sent Silicon Valley scrambling.
Why it matters: The government is now demanding total digital surveillance as the price of a work visa—transforming the privilege of labor migration into a tool for monitoring foreign workers’ speech, associations, and political views.
Lawyers flood Texas courts with habeas corpus
Attorneys have filed more than 675 habeas corpus petitions in Texas federal courts this year—over 70% in just the last three months—challenging ICE’s mandatory detention regime.
The surge followed a July policy reinterpretation, upheld in September, that strips bond hearings from anyone who entered without authorization. Lawyers are now using Trump’s own Laken Riley Act to argue the administration has created indefinite detention without judicial review.
Why it matters: Federal courts are becoming the last check on an administration locking people up to force deportations. The litigation wave shows detention has exploded—and advocates know it.
