‘We Were Very Fortunate That Something Much, Much Worse Did Not Happen’

For years, but with increasing ferocity lately, the far-right has been directing its hatred toward Indian Americans and other immigrants of South Asian descent. Some Republican candidates have seized on this strain of bigotry, perhaps hoping a panic over demographic change will fuel voter turnout.

This week, this dark, very American story advanced to its inevitable next chapter, as a young man who police have described as unstable targeted a Hindu temple west of Chicago for a mass shooting.

However, when 19-year-old Alexandros Paporakis showed up at the temple in Aurora, Illinois, his gun jammed, police say.

He texted a colleague at Taco Bell, where he worked, about what he was up to. The colleague called the authorities.

“I think we were very fortunate that something much, much worse did not happen,” Palatine, Illinois’ police chief, Bill Nord, told press. “The seriousness of this alleged threat cannot be overstated,” he said later.

Police found tactical gear and hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the 19-year-old suspect’s home, as well as white nationalist material. They also found a manifesto titled “Why I Fought: A.K.A.: (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto).” The manifesto targeted South Asian, Jewish and Black people, per local reports.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) was at the temple on Sunday when Paporakis turned up, he said, and on Thursday called on the feds to get involved.

“We know this type of hate is coursing thorough social media online, it’s exploded,” Krishnamoorthi told a local news station. “We can’t rely on luck, that’s why we have to condemn the hatred. We can’t stay silent, or worse, condone it or fan the flames.”

“Secondly,” he continued, “we have to redirect the FBI’s focus to domestic violent extremism and trying to uncover these plots.”

The FBI, under Trump, has largely abandoned efforts to track neo-Nazi extremists, in some cases repositioning resources toward targeting the president’s critics and political enemies.

Trump’s Long-Brewing Effort to Oust Ilhan Omar From America

The Trump administration effort to eject Muslim representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the country is the culmination of a years-long fixation.

• Way back in 2019, TPM reporter Christopher Mathias noted this week, attendees at Trump rallies were chanting “send her back” when the president mentioned Omar.
• That year, the Washington Post reported yesterday, a “political appointee in the first Trump administration” demanded that DHS scrub Omar’s immigration records for any indication of fraud. It ultimately did not find what it needed to to move forward with a case.
• In its second term, the Trump administration is increasingly attempting to make use of denaturalization, an extremely difficult outcome to achieve legally. That, however, is the goal with its latest investigation of Omar, per the Wall Street Journal.
• To successfully denaturalize someone, “the government needs to show that there was an omission or falsehood on the naturalization paperwork of such magnitude that it would have prevented the person from getting citizenship had the truth been shared with immigration authorities,” writes TPM’s Josh Kovensky, who has been covering the administration’s denaturalization efforts for us since 2024.
• The administration appears to specifically be looking into whether Omar’s father filed immigration paperwork claiming she was 17 when she was actually 18, a theory that has been pushed on the right for years, most prominently by a QAnon-supporting candidate who once challenged Omar in a primary campaign, Josh reports. A 17-year-old minor naturalizes with their parent when their parent obtains citizenship, while an 18-year-old adult must apply for citizenship independently.
• “I think her citizenship is solid and there wasn’t any fraud there,” one former official involved in the 2019 investigation told the Washington Post.

Tabs

• The White House is denying that Trump himself gave the order to restrict Ukraine’s access to Starlink, Bloomberg reports. But the order came “from inside the White House,” Reuters reports. “The officials said ‌leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed,” the Reuters report says.
• Meanwhile, Ukraine has run out of patriot missiles, CNN reports. The U.S. seems to be withholding them as Trump punishes the country’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, for criticizing his pre-midterms diesel deal with Russia. Patriot missiles, which are used as interceptors, are in extremely short supply more generally thanks in part to the war with Iran. As a result, Russian missiles are more easily striking Ukrainian targets.
• Hunter Walker profiles Bobby Pulido, the Tejano singer who, thanks in part to a GOP Texas gerrymandering effort that appears increasingly to have been misguided, stands a real chance of flipping his district from red to blue.

Man of the Hour

It’s longtime Trump friend and now-former State Department Special Envoy for Arts and Culture Paolo Zampolli, who, Politico recently reported, has been in a bizarre, long-running, sprawling feud with his boss, cc-ing a dozen-plus people as they snap at each other over email. Among other issues, Zampolli blamed said boss, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, for, he thought, being the source of a New York Times article that said Zampolli got his longtime girlfriend deported by ICE as part of a custody battle over their son. (Yes, it’s messy.) The girlfriend, in turn, threatened to reveal details she said she knew about Trump, Melania, and Jeffrey Epstein. (Messy.) Anyway, Trump — who, as Josh Marshall observes, suddenly seems to have no taste for drama — canned Zampolli yesterday

Are We at War?

No, says Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA).

“Right now we are defending U.S. assets there, so there is no war as we speak,” Wittman told HuffPost Thursday.

This article is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

Donald Trump’s ability to jail millions of people without even a bond hearing depends on what the Supreme Court thinks about one man’s case. 

To the degree that a “respectable” or “moderate” right exists today in America, Christopher Rufo is considered part of it. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the tony midtown think tank that holds black-tie galas; he recently enjoyed a polite sit-down interview with Ezra Klein on Klein’s massively popular New York Times podcast; and he has over 120,000 subscribers on Substack, a publishing platform whose owners have celebrated Rufo as one of their “best” political writers who readers can “trust.” 

A proposed change to a key tax form could help the Trump administration achieve new anti-immigrant policy objectives, including preventing undocumented immigrants from receiving federal tax benefits. But it could also be used to accomplish a more sweeping objective: Shifting the balance of power in Congress by excluding many classes of immigrants from apportionment, the process through which power in the House of Representatives is allocated.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue deporting people to countries where they have no ties and where they may face violence without even guaranteeing them a chance to contest the removal. 

A federal judge decried the “cruelty” detainees experienced inside Manhattan’s infamous ICE detention center in a court ruling filed on Thursday. 

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan offered graphic depictions of “overcrowding, sleep deprivation, insufficient food and water, inadequate medical care, and restrictions on access to counsel” at 26 Federal Plaza in his ruling, which permanently limited the number of detainees that can be held at the facility going forward. The scathing assessment and court ordered changes were the conclusion of a class action suit filed against Immigration and Customs Enforcement that originated with a man who had been held in the building. 

Along with detailing holding cells that he described as “anything but sanitary,” Kaplan recounted multiple instances where ICE personnel were found to be “lying” about the conditions inside the building.

“By detaining far more persons in the hold rooms than ever was intended and for far longer than ever was intended, ICE objectively deprived detainees of sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care. ICE prevented detainees from accessing counsel, who might have stood in the way of what it was doing,” Kaplan wrote, adding, “Some of these deprivations impacted detainees immediately; others only after longer periods. ICE knew, or should have known, that how it was treating detainees was wrong, yet it continued to do it anyway. It did so to inflict punishment on detainees and induce them to self-deport.”

The judge’s ruling provided a window inside 26 Federal Plaza, which has been ground zero in New York City for the unprecedented wave of immigration deportations and detentions that have taken place during President Donald Trump’s second term. TPM has previously reported from the halls of the building where migrants have been taken by masked ICE agents as they showed up for court appearances in ongoing immigration legal proceedings. Our prior coverage has noted how activists and members of Congress have previously raised alarms about the conditions inside the facility and the legality of these detentions, many of which were ultimately reversed by court order. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, responded to this reporting from TPM and other news organizations by denying the existence of a “detention center” in the building and insisting migrants were only there for “processing.” 

However, in his ruling Kaplan detailed brutal circumstances in which migrants were held inside the floors occupied by ICE at 26 Federal Plaza. He noted the agency’s space in the building is not supposed to be a detention facility and only has “so-called ‘hold rooms’ that were intended and designed only for very short-term custody – twelve hours or less – of arrested persons pending their transfer to other facilities.” According to the judge, these rooms “have no showers, no beds, no cots, no windows, and lack many other things found in prisons and detention facilities.” In response to Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda, Kaplan said ICE was “misusing” 26 Federal Plaza.

“It has overcrowded severely the 26 Fed hold rooms, subjecting detainees for extended periods to inhumane conditions that violate the Constitution, not to mention any decent concern for the Golden Rule or the demands of humanity,” Kaplan wrote.

TPM reached out to ICE and DHS for a response to the judge’s ruling. Without providing any evidence, an unnamed DHS spokesperson gave TPM  a statement that, essentially, denied many of the judge’s conclusions. 

“DHS complies with all lawful court orders. 26 Federal Plaza is not a long-term detention facility; it is a short term-holding facility. Detainees are only at 26 Federal Plaza for a short period while they are being processed and awaiting transfer,” the spokesperson said. “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in ICE custody remains a top priority.”

The DHS spokesperson further argued that detainees place themselves in this situation by not leaving the country on their own.

“Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App. The United States is offering illegal aliens $3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now,” the spokesperson said, adding, “We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream.”

While self deporting is indeed an option, many of the people who have been placed in immigration detention centers during the second Trump administration are legally requesting asylum and have claimed they would be endangered in their home countries. Others have spent years lawfully living in the United States and have families here. 

Kaplan specifically focused on conditions at the facility last summer, as his ruling came in response to a class action lawsuit that originated in August 2025 with Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado, an immigrant who says he was detained at 26 Federal Plaza while trying to attend his court hearings in conjunction with seeking legal asylum. Mercado’s class action lawsuit included other detainees held at the facility as plaintiffs. Throughout legal proceedings surrounding the case, Kaplan previously ordered changes at the facility, including placing limits on the amount of people who could be  put in “hold rooms” and expanding access to attorneys for detainees. In his final ruling, Kaplan accused ICE of not complying with the court. 

“The facts show that ICE repeatedly has violated this Court’s orders either by intentionally flouting them or by employing so-called ‘best’ efforts that simply have not been good enough,” Kaplan wrote. 

Kaplan’s ruling included images showing just how cramped the hold rooms were inside 26 Federal Plaza. The pictures, which show detainees had no ability to lie down, are eerily reminiscent of similar documentation of slave ships.

Along with sheer overcrowding, Kaplan’s report documented unhealthy conditions, including lack of water, food, medical care, clean clothes and bathroom facilities. He noted that ICE officials attempted to dispute this, however, the judge rejected their denials. In multiple instances, Kaplan referred to statements made by Nancy Zanello, who was the field office’s assistant director between July and October of 2025 as “not credible” based on the evidence.

“While Zanello refused to admit that the hold rooms ever smelled bad, that denial is belied by the fact that she at one point felt that a group of detainees’ complaints regarding the lack of showers had such merit that she personally went out and bought empty water bottles and baby shampoo, filled the bottles with warm tap water, and allowed those detainees to wash themselves one-by-one in an empty hold room,” Kaplan wrote. 

Text messages from Zanello and other officials that were previously exposed during the case revealed they were aware of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, running rampant inside 26 Federal Plaza. 

Along with the physical conditions inside the building, Kaplan decried the lack of access to attorneys given to detainees at 26 Federal Plaza. The judge said the facility “essentially was a black site prior to his initial court orders. He claimed ICE engaged in various tactics including “lying,” “erecting procedural roadblocks,” and failing to update databases with information about detainees’ locations to prevent them from contacting attorneys. And Kaplan said these issues persisted following his initial interventions.

“Even after that point, ICE continued to prevent detainees from making confidential legal calls,” Kaplan wrote, adding, “No legitimate governmental interests could justify so depriving detainees of the ability to obtain timely legal advice, particularly when there are feasible alternatives that would minimize the burden on detainees’ First and Fifth Amendment rights.” 

Kaplan’s ruling includes witness testimony from detainees, including one who said “one guard . . . would sometimes hold a bottle of water up and people would wait to have him squirt some into our mouths, like we were animals and not people” and another who said people “had to drink water from the sinks next to the toilets.” Kaplan said “several” detainees recounted “ICE staff and contractors beating” people held at 26 Federal Plaza. Others claimed food was essentially “slop” that was provided only rarely. Multiple detainees described losing large amounts of weight while being held in the facility. Meanwhile, another witness quoted by the judge said “guards would eat their own food …  like pizza and hamburgers” in front of the detainees as though they were “jeering.”

These accounts from 26 Federal Plaza echo allegations that have surfaced about the conditions inside other ICE facilities around the country. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and his staff on the Judiciary Committee have previously published reports detailing alarming conditions at ICE detention centers in Texas, Florida and Louisiana. 

“And 26 Fed is not unique,” Kaplan wrote in his ruling. “Comparable litigation has been brought in several other locations with respect to several other ICE detention and holding facilities.” 

Kaplan specifically referred to another federal judge who described a situation that “shocks the conscience” involving “chillingly brutal conditions of confinement” inside ICE holding rooms at a courthouse in Central Islip on New York’s Long Island. 

At multiple points in his ruling, Kaplan rejected arguments made by attorneys representing the government, including their attempts to claim the suit was “overbroad” and should not cover present and future detainees in the building regardless of how long they are being held. Along with mandating permanent improvements at 26 Federal Plaza including sufficient space for each detainee, lights being dimmed during overnight hours, sleeping materials, and three meals daily, Kaplan certified the class action suit to cover all present and future detainees. As he did so, Kaplan made clear that, despite all of the serious concerns and allegations, with the mass deportation wave ongoing, the detention facility at 26 Federal Plaza is expected to remain in operation. 

“ICE has detained thousands of individuals at 26 Fed,” Kaplan wrote. “There is little doubt that it will continue to detain thousands more.” 

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.

On the morning of Sunday, September 20, police officers in the Chicago suburb of Evanston responded to a 911 call about a confrontation in the street. When the officers arrived, they found a man on the ground who reported injuries to his head, neck, and teeth. Soon, the officers learned that the injured man was a U.S. citizen, and his assailants were federal immigration agents.

The Department of Homeland Security put out a statement on Tuesday claiming that the beaten man “resembled the target” of an immigration enforcement operation, and that he was “not cooperative” with agents’ investigation. “Once the individual finally identified himself,” said DHS, immigration officers “left the scene without further incident.” 

The state of Missouri early this year sued the Department of Commerce to force something that would have once been considered radical: That the federal government exclude certain immigrants from the population count when apportioning political power and distributing federal funds. 

Less than a year after the lawsuit was filed, however, the Census Bureau has proposed to do just that. 

On Tuesday, a judge granted Missouri’s request to dismiss the case.

A senior judge for the Eastern District of Missouri ordered the case dismissed without prejudice, meaning plaintiffs can renew their suit against the government, on Tuesday afternoon.

Missouri’s notice of dismissal came only after the Census Bureau published its controversial new rule which takes the first steps to exclude millions of immigrants from the census count by changing how the Bureau defines a person’s usual residence and by pitching a future immigration status question. But the rule is far from finalized. It must first undergo a 30-day public comment period which is sure to yield strong opposition to the rule, feedback which federal agencies have previously considered prior to finalizing a new policy. 

Nevertheless, it appears the unfinished Census Bureau rule has satisfied Missouri’s dubious legal argument that undocumented and other classifications of immigrants should not count toward a state’s population to be used for congressional apportionment or for the distribution of federal funds. The rule cites and incorporates legal arguments from Missouri’s suit.

In a statement provided to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office said it dismissed the case in light of the Census Bureau proposed rule.

“The proposed rule agrees with our understanding of the law and even cites our complaint,” Hanaway’s office told the publication in a statement. “Going forward, we will focus on assisting the Trump Administration defend what we anticipate will soon be a final rule. We will continue fighting to ensure citizens’ voices are never diluted in favor of illegal immigrant trespassers.”

In July and September, the Department of Commerce filed a motion to stay court proceedings in the case, suggesting its then-impending rule would address the plaintiff’s issues.

The Census Bureau’s latest moves represent an evolution of President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful first-term attempt to include a citizenship question on the census. Back then, the court found the administration lied about its reasons for wanting to include a citizenship question. The Trump administration maintained at that time that the question would be used to better enforce aspects of the Voting Rights Act.

This time, the mask is off. The Census Bureau in its new residence rule wrote that it found “merit in” legal argument that all immigrants except lawful permanent residents “should not be included in the apportionment count.” 

The rule would also dispense with recording race, ethnicity, and certain gender attributes. Race has been included on every census since 1790. 

Missouri filed its case in January to force the Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants and people with temporary visas from the census population count taken every 10 years. Including certain immigrants in that count, the suit argued, gave blue states with higher immigrant populations more seats in Congress and more Electoral College votes, and took away one congressional seat and an Electoral College vote Missouri would’ve otherwise received in 2020. The same harm, the suit alleged, would be perpetuated in 2030 unless the Census Bureau dramatically altered the way it counts U.S. residents by excluding a large swath of immigrants for the first time in history.

Missouri’s suit blames a 1980 policy by President Jimmy Carter which merely affirmed the historic practice of counting all residents of the country regardless of immigration status. The 1980 census sought to mitigate an undercount of these groups through intentional outreach, but not through the adjustment of any legal standard regarding the counting of all persons, as required by the 14th Amendment.

In moving to dismiss its suit even prior to the finalization of the Census Bureau’s embattled rule, attorneys for Missouri appear to expect that the rule will move forward in time for the 2030 Census.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to TPM requests for comment. The Commerce Department, Census Bureau, and White House also did not immediately respond to TPM requests for comment.

In Church, Merch, and State, Sarah Posner writes about the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. This column is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan delivered a no-holds-barred defense of Trump’s mass deportation regime at the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Victory Dinner in Duluth, Georgia, last week in an event that appeared designed to bolster the campaigns of two major Republican candidates running for U.S. Senate and governor in the state. 

Homan’s speech signaled that an unabashed defense of the administration’s immigration brutality is a key part of its midterm strategy to mobilize right-wing evangelical and Catholic voters to back Republicans. In a surprisingly profanity-laced speech that castigated critics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including Democrats and federal judges, Homan became another administration official to inject himself into midterms campaigning this cycle, this time to lend a Christian imprimatur to Trump’s racist and violent assault on immigrants.