2026-01-19 06:09:10
As the Trump administration’s deportation campaign continues to bring fear and upheaval to Minneapolis, more immigrants are sharing their stories of detainment and harsh treatment when being apprehended at their homes, while driving, and at work. Tensions continue to rise as federal immigration agents target people who they claim are in the country without legal status, as well as protestors filling the streets to demand accountability for Homeland Security’s often violent tactics, including ICE agent Jonathan Ross’ killing of Renée Good in her car.
This week, according to reporting from the Minnesota Star Tribune, federal agents detained three workers from a family-owned Mexican restaurant hours after the agents themselves dined at the establishment. The agents reportedly followed the workers after the workers closed up for the night and took them into custody. That was not the first time ICE agents have gone to a local business as customers before arresting someone who works there.
“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones,” a man detained by ICE says.
During a Saturday press conference, a recently released man described a different form of callousness by ICE. Garrison Gibson, 38, said that agents showed up to his house multiple times, eventually smashing open the door with a battering ram. After armed agents took him from his home Gibson says, they reveled in his detainment.
“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones,” he said, adding, “like one stood by me on the right side of me. One stood on the left side of me. And they went, like, thumbs up and took pictures with their personal phones.”
According to reporting from Minnesota Public Radio, the federal agents “did not let Gibson change into warm clothing or put on a coat before taking him out into the 16-degree winter air.” Gibson was sent to El Paso, Texas, before being returned to Minnesota, due to a federal judge’s intervention.
He made it back home just in time for his daughter’s birthday, but Gibson is still fighting the government’s efforts to deport him to Liberia, “a country he hasn’t visited since he fled a civil war there when he was 6 years old,” reported MPR.
Another troubling account comes from a husband and wife who were pulled over by federal agents while on the way to the hospital. According to reporting from Sahan Journal, Bonfilia Sanchez Dominguez was experiencing back pain and was being driven to the emergency room by her husband, Liborio Parral Ortiz, when ICE agents stopped the car. The couple’s daughter, who says she was on the phone with Ortiz during the interaction, said that ICE “started opening their doors and pulling them. They were not asking them any questions, they just started grabbing them.”
Ortiz was taken into custody and quickly sent to El Paso, Texas, according to the family and ICE’s detainee locator system. According to the daughter, ICE agents and hospital staff have been restricting access to her mother at the hospital, even turning away the family’s pastor and lawyer.
“They were just racially profiled and picked up and kidnapped without a destination,” the daughter told Sahan Journal.
2026-01-19 04:12:14
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Shannon Bream that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not, nor are they planning to, investigate Jonathan Ross—the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis earlier this month.
“We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody or putting his life in danger,” Blanche, formerly Donald Trump’s personal attorney, said. The Trump administration began asserting immediately after the killing that Good was a “rioter” who committed an “act of domestic terrorism,” continuing a long pattern of responding to deadly tragedies by making baseless and false claims.
“We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate and that is not the case here, it wasn’t the case when it happened, and it’s not the case today,” Blanche insisted. “If circumstances change, and there’s something that we do need to investigate around that shooting or any other shooting, we will,” he said, adding, “but we are not going to bow to pressure from the media, bow to pressure from politicians.”
Blanche used a remarkable rationale. He said that the FBI didn’t need to investigate, in part, because “what happened on that day has been reviewed by millions of Americans because it was recorded on phones when it happened.”
Such footage appears in video investigations, including from the New York Times and Bellingcat, that undercut the administration’s message that Ross was acting in self-defense. The Times found that “the visual evidence shows no indication that the agent who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, had been run over” and “also establishes how Mr. Ross put himself in a dangerous position near her vehicle in the first place.” As Mother Jones reported last week, many Americans do not buy the Trump party line about what eyewitness videos show.
While the Department of Justice and FBI decline to investigate Ross, they have reportedly been investigating Good’s wife, Becca Good, as well as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. And they also shut out state and local law enforcement: The day after Ross killed Good, Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announced that the US attorney’s office was preventing it from participating in any investigation.
The Trump administration’s investigation into Good’s family—and lack thereof into the shooter—prompted the resignation of several federal prosecutors in Minnesota, with more poised to resign soon, according to reporting from my colleague Samantha Michaels.
On Friday, the DOJ announced it is investigating Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, alleging that they are conspiring to impede federal immigration agents.
“This is an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement, and our residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our streets,” Frey said in a statement to CBS News. “I will not be intimidated. My focus will remain where it’s always been: keeping our city safe.”
Days earlier, Blanche had accused the two men of “terrorism.”
“Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It’s disgusting,” he wrote on X on Wednesday. “Walz and Frey – I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It’s a promise.”
On Friday, Walz responded to the DOJ probes into him and Frey: “Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic.”
“The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good,” Walz continued, “is the federal agent who shot her.”
2026-01-18 21:00:00
This story was originally published by Yale e360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Maurice Manishimwe runs a small garage beside a fuel station in Musango village, just outside the Rwandan capital of Kigali, in a nation known as the land of a thousand hills. Sandwiched between one of those hills and the Nyabugogo River, his workshop hums with activity as people arrive with cars and equipment to be tested and repaired.
But this busy location comes at a cost: When rainstorms hit, water running off the hillsides and rising river levels flood the streets and spill into Manishimwe’s workplace. “Our shops were submerged and our goods were destroyed,” says the 30-year-old, speaking about a December 2023 storm that surrounded his garage with knee-high water. He says the flood cost him thousands of dollars in lost inventory and tools.
Manishimwe built a higher step into his workshop to protect his brake pads and taillights, laid new tiles, and replaced his wooden shelves. Still, he worries that heavy rains could once again wreck his shop.
“The project represents a rare, citywide effort to rebuild nature-based infrastructure.
Kigali, a city of 1.7 million, has historically seen an average of nearly 40 inches of rain a year. But rainy seasons in Rwanda are becoming both “shorter and more intense,” according to the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA). Since 2017, East Africa’s spring rains have shown record-breaking extremes as warmer air and ocean surfaces load storms with more moisture.
Forty years ago, Kigali was protected from stormwaters by extensive wetlands at the base of its many hills. The wetlands soaked up rain, slowed floods, and filtered runoff. But decades of degradation, including informal agriculture, sand mining, and industrial dumping in these areas have reduced the wetlands’ ability to perform these essential ecological functions.
Rapid urban growth has placed additional pressure on the wetlands. The city’s population has risen by 4 percent each year since 2020, and open space continues to be replaced with impermeable concrete, which sends ever more runoff downhill. The flooding erodes soil, destroys buildings and infrastructure, and causes tens of millions of dollars’ worth of damage a year, according to Teddy Kaberuka, a Rwandan economist.
Eager to protect its citizens and property, create green space for communities and wildlife, and curb financial losses, Kigali began working nearly a decade ago to restore its natural defenses. In just a three-year period, the city converted a degraded swamp into a functioning wetland—featuring a series of ponds, a riverine forest, and a savanna—that stores carbon, controls floods, filters pollutants, and enhances biodiversity. Building on that success, the city is now reforesting hillsides and restoring an integrated wetland system that will eventually span more than 18,000 acres. The ambitious project will ultimately reshape one of Africa’s fastest growing capitals.
As wetland loss accelerates worldwide, few cities have the space, resources, or political will to restore nature at this scale. Kigali’s project cannot stop floods on its own or reverse climate change, but it represents a rare, citywide effort to rebuild nature-based infrastructure—offering one of the continent’s clearest models for urban areas seeking to boost their resilience.
Kigali sits within what was once an exceptionally soggy and verdant landscape, with 37 interconnected wetlands covering almost 23,000 acres, or 12.5 percent of the city’s land mass. These weren’t small urban ponds with patches of swampland but broad, saturated expanses teeming with vegetation that supported birds, reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals.
The city’s wetlands functioned as a vast natural sponge, soaking up excess water, reducing flooding, trapping sediment, and filtering pollutants before they reached streams and rivers. Wetlands also cool surrounding neighborhoods through moisture release and shading and, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, support a diverse array of wildlife in their reedbeds and grasslands, and store carbon in their soils and vegetation.
But in Kigali, explained Gloriose Umuziranenge, a senior lecturer in the Department of Urban and Environmental Management at Protestant University Rwanda, urban expansion—including the construction of new roads, housing estates, commercial developments, and hillside settlements—as well as the pasturing of livestock and dumping of waste gradually degraded the city’s wetlands.
At least 50 percent of Kigali’s wetlands have lost their ecological character, according to the World Bank, meaning these wetlands have lost their “capacity to absorb and store excess rainwater,” Umuziranenge said. This local trend reflects a global pattern: about 22 percent of the world’s wetlands, around 1 billion acres, have been lost since 1970, and 25 percent of the remainder are degraded.
Eastern Kigali’s Nyandungu wetland is a case in point. The formerly lush area had been despoiled by decades of sand mining, stony quarrying, and cattle grazing. It frequently flooded the nearby roadway, jamming up traffic and endangering lives. In response, REMA—with support from the World Bank, Global Environment Facility, and Rwanda Green Fund—began in 2016 to transform this wasteland, at a cost of $5 million, into a biologically productive landscape.
Today, the 400-acre Nyandungu Eco-Park is alive with marshes, ponds, and more than 200 species of birds. “From the time [the wetland] was restored,” said park manager Ildephonse Kambogo, “there was no more flooding.”
The success of the Nyandungu pilot project reshaped national thinking about other wetlands, said Richard Mind’je, an environmental studies lecturer at the University of Lay Adventists of Kigali. “After having this benefit, Rwanda said, ‘Why can’t we now restore other wetlands from Kigali so that we can keep benefiting from these services?’”
Today, cranes and diggers are working amid the bustle of Kigali’s streets— crowded with buses, moto taxis, shops, and homes—to restore and reshape five more degraded wetlands, covering 1,200 acres. Hundreds of workers are reshaping the land, creating islands, lakes, and ponds, clearing water channels, planting indigenous species, removing invasives, and establishing reed beds.
“If you’re deforesting the catchment, no amount of wetland is going to make much difference.”
By mid-2026, according to the city’s restoration blueprint, the restored sites—Gikondo, Rwamperu, Kibumba, Nyabugogo, and Rugenge-Rwintare—will link up, forming a continuous ribbon of wildlife corridors, parks that contain 36 miles of walkways and bike lanes, and wetlands that guide stormwater safely downstream. With wetlands under threat across the continent, the project has the potential to serve as a model for other African cities, said Julie Mulonga, East Africa director for Wetlands International. Its design, financing, and community engagement are all elements “that can be replicated,” she said.
Yet challenges remain as Kigali expands. The city must balance new green spaces for flood protection and climate resilience with residents’ need for agricultural land. Many of the areas now set aside for restoration have been used informally for generations—to grow food, graze cattle, and fish. According to a 2019 report by the Albertine Rift Conservation Society, 53 percent of Rwanda’s wetlands had, by 2015, been converted to agriculture. The land is government-owned, and its use has, so far, been tolerated, as these wetlands are clearly spaces that people have come to depend on.
The Kigali Master Plan 2050 aims to restore and protect 18,000 acres of wetlands that thread between the city’s hills, said Emma Claudine Ntirenganya, a spokesperson for the City of Kigali, but more than 14,000 farming households could lose access to these areas if the city’s restoration ambitions proceed as planned. Nyandungu, for example, no longer allows agricultural activity, its grounds are fenced, and entry now requires a fee.
Park manager Kambogo acknowledged that informal use has continued in Nyandungu, including illegal fishing and collecting grass for cattle. He said some breaches, such as fence cutting, incurred fines and that it was important to engage with and educate the local community until they “understand the importance of having the wetlands.”
Emphasizing conservation and tourism over agriculture, said Alan Dixon, a professor of sustainable development at the University of Worcester, in the UK, risks creating “spaces of exclusion.” Ultimately, he said, “people have just got to feed themselves. Everywhere else is drying up, the weather is becoming less predictable, so wetlands are the last place in the catchment that people can [use].” The dilemma for governments, planners, and conservationists, he added, is “how do you allow people to use these areas while also retaining the environmental integrity?”
Christian Benimana, a Rwandan architect and the founding director of the African Design Centre, emphasized the importance of monitoring social impacts as Kigali restores its wetlands. So far, among the six wetlands restored to date, he said, displacement hasn’t yet occurred, “but it’s something that might happen.” Gentrification is also a concern. “Before, you were living close to makeshift car shops, and all of a sudden it’s a beautiful park,” he said. “Is it bad that it makes these people’s property more valuable? I don’t think so. Is it bad if it leads to some form of negative gentrification? I think so.”
For some residents, relocating from the wetlands has been a relief rather than a loss. Athanase Segatsinzi, 60, head of Runyonza Village in Nyandungu, spent decades farming and grazing cattle in the flood-prone area.
“When heavy rains came, the wetland overflowed and destroyed our crops,” he recalled. “Even after the water receded, everything was ruined.” In 2019, he says, farmers and herders using the wetland were resettled in Rwanda’s Eastern Province, where the government gave his family 15 acres to farm. “Milk production increased because my cows now graze on a much larger area without the risk of losing pasture to floods,” he said.
But wetlands alone cannot protect the capital from flooding as temperatures rise, rainfall intensifies, and deforestation of the city’s slopes compounds the city’s challenges. “If you’re deforesting the catchment,” Dixon said, “no amount of wetland is going to make much difference.”
In response, the City of Kigali last year launched a community campaign that aims to plant 3 million trees over five years, creating a continuous network of forest that links the restored wetlands.
Gatsata Hill, the steep slope that channels torrents of water into Maurice Manishimwe’s workplace, is currently being reforested, and the wetland in front of his garage is being restored. Together, these interventions will create a buffer that fills him with optimism.
“Once the reforestation is complete and the trees take root, the water that used to rush downhill will slow,” he said. “And when the Nyabugogo wetland restoration is finished, the flooding problem will be solved for good.”
2026-01-18 03:47:25
As President Donald Trump wraps up the first year of his second term—one marked by US aggression abroad and rising political violence at home—a wave of new polls released this week shows him and his policies at remarkably high, and in some cases record, levels of unpopularity. Across nearly every major measure, Trump is generating more backlash than loyalty, deepening distrust as his personal standing continues to slide.
A new CNN poll released Friday found that nearly 60 percent of Americans describe Trump’s first year back in office as a failure. Trump is faltering even on issues that have historically been his strongest, like the economy. A majority of Americans (55 percent) say he has made the economy worse, while just 36 percent believe he has focused on the right priorities—a nine-point drop since the start of his term. CNN also found Trump’s overall job approval rating languishing at 39 percent, down from 48 percent last February. A clear majority say he has gone too far in using presidential power. You can read the full results here.
CNN’s numbers are not outliers. A new Associated Press–NORC poll, released on Thursday, shows erosion even within Trump’s own party. Only 16 percent of Republicans say the president has helped “a lot” with the cost of living, down sharply from 49 percent in April 2024. Trump’s approval on immigration—still one of his strongest issues among Republicans—has slipped as well, falling from 88 percent in March to 76 percent in the latest survey. Overall, just 38 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, a marked decline, while 61 percent disapprove. Across the poll, voters say Trump is focused on the wrong priorities, abusing power, hurting the economy, and leaving the country worse off. The survey marked his lowest approval ratings on the economy reported by AP pollsters during both stints in the White House.
Other surveys this week echoed the same themes. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Trump deeply underwater overall, with 58 percent disapproving of his job performance and just 36 percent approving of his handling of the economy. The poll also found overwhelming opposition to Trump’s foreign adventurism, with 71 percent saying the use of military force against Greenland would be a bad idea. Meanwhile, a Marist poll released Friday found that 56 percent of Americans oppose the United States taking military action in Venezuela.
2026-01-18 03:09:36
Donald Trump promised on Saturday to issue a series of increasing tariffs on European NATO allies until he is permitted to buy Greenland, the latest escalation in his already feverish threats to take over the Arctic country, which is part of Denmark.
Trump announced on Truth Social that starting next month, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland would all be charged a 10 percent tariff on all goods sent to the US. The tariff would rise to 25 percent on June 1.
“These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable,” Trump wrote.
The president continued to assert that acquiring the island was “imperative” for America’s national security and the “survival of our planet” in the face of alleged threats from Russia and China, adding that the US’ “Golden Dome” air and missile defense system made the takeover necessary.
But Trump’s claims are unfounded and don’t require obliterating the US’ relationship with NATO. As I noted earlier this week, the US already has a massive collection of at least 128 military bases in at least 51 countries—all without taking over land—and the US has had a strategic military presence in Greenland since World War II. There is also no evidence of a Russian or Chinese military presence on Greenland’s coast.
Trump’s threats have led European nations to send military personnel to the island at the request of Denmark. Protesters in Denmark and Greenland demonstrated on Saturday, demanding sovereignty.
According to CNN, an estimated 5,000 protesters showed up in Greenland’s capital city of Nuuk—remarkable for an island with a population of approximately 56,000.
Even many Republican lawmakers have voiced strong opposition to buying Greenland.
Trump’s rhetoric risks “incinerating the hard-won trust of loyal allies.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), chair of the Senate defense appropriation subcommittee, labeled Trump’s rhetoric as risking “incinerating the hard-won trust of loyal allies in exchange for no meaningful change in U.S. access to the Arctic.”
“If there was any sort of action that looked like the goal was actually landing in Greenland and doing an illegal taking… there’d be sufficient numbers here to pass a war powers resolution and withstand a veto,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said on Thursday.
A bipartisan delegation of congressional lawmakers visited Copenhagen on Friday to reassure Denmark and Greenland officials that they would not support Trump’s plan to annex or buy Greenland—and especially not any military action against a fellow NATO member.
“Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset, and I think that’s what you’re hearing with this delegation,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said on Friday after meeting with Danish and Greenlandic leaders there.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said on Wednesday that the president’s threats were “utter buffoonery.” “If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency,” he continued. “He hates being told no, but in this case, I think Republicans need to be firm.”
But on Friday, Trump refused to commit to not engaging in attacking a NATO partner.
“I don’t talk about that,” the president replied when questioned by reporters.
2026-01-18 01:04:07
On Friday afternoon, a judge blocked federal agents in Minneapolis from arresting peaceful protesters or using crowd control tools against them, just as news broke that Trump’s justice department desperately launched an investigation into whether Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey impeded immigration enforcement through their public opposition.
US District Judge Kate Menendez ruled that DHS and ICE agents working in Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota must refrain from “using pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.” Menendez also barred federal agents from stopping vehicles from following them if they maintain a safe distance.
Menendez’s order granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by protesters last month that argued that their constitutional rights to exercise free speech and peaceably assemble were violated by federal agents who retaliated with intimidation, force, and detention.
Menendez wrote that protesters and observers “did not forcibly obstruct or impede the agents’ work.”
“The First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly—not rioting,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “We remind the public that rioting is dangerous—obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime and assaulting law enforcement is a felony.”
Menendez’s order comes as the Trump administration began sending about 1,000 more federal agents to Minnesota last week—in addition to the 2,000 others already deployed in the state.
The Justice Department is also intensifying its assault on Minnesota by targeting Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey. Prosecutors reportedly issued grand jury subpoenas to the pair on Friday.
But the investigation into Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey raises similar First Amendment concerns as the lawsuit filed by the protesters—the right to condemn the government without fear of punishment.
“Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic, Gov. Walz wrote Friday in a post on X. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.”
On Friday night, Mayor Frey said on X that the subpoena was an “obvious attempt to intimidate.”
In a Friday night post to X, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote, “A reminder to all those in Minnesota: No one is above the law.”
But the Trump administration’s claim that its escalation of violence is justified against protesters comes as story after story emerges of violent encounters with federal officers, including using tear gas on a six-month-old baby.
While yesterday’s ruling protecting protesters will likely go to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, where 10 of the 11 active judges have been nominated by Republican presidents, the broader picture is becoming clearer: the administration must know protesters are thwarting federal agents; they know their enforcement is being challenged in court; and they know support for their immigration policies is plummeting.
