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Harvard Law Review Awards $65k Fellowship to Student Charged in Assault of Israeli Classmate: Report

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

The Harvard Law Review is awarding a $65,000 fellowship meant to serve “the public interest” to Ibrahim Bharmal, the Harvard Law School student who faced criminal charges for assaulting an Israeli classmate, according to a new report.

Bharmal is one of this year’s recipients of the Harvard Law Review Fellowship, Ira Stoll of The Editors reported. The program supports “recent Harvard Law School graduates”—Bharmal is set to graduate this month—with “a demonstrated interest in serving the public interest through their work and scholarship.” It comes with a $65,000 stipend that funds each fellow’s work “in a public-interest related role at a government agency or nonprofit organization.” For Bharmal, that work will come at the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s Los Angeles office, according to Stoll.

The move comes at a tumultuous time for both the Harvard Law Review and Harvard Law School. The Trump administration is probing both entities over internal documents, first reported in the Washington Free Beacon, that show editors at Harvard Law Review use race to select both editors and articles for publication. At least one private attorney, former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, plans to sue the journal over the practice, ordering its editors on Friday to preserve documents that he plans to subpoena.

Bharmal, himself a Harvard Law Review editor, attracted the attention of the Trump administration even before it launched the investigations into the prestigious law journal.

In its April 11 letter to Harvard outlining the policy demands necessary to “maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government,” the Trump administration called on the Ivy League institution to permanently expel “the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student,” a reference to Bharmal and his fellow defendant, divinity school graduate student Elom Tettey-Tamaklo.

On that day, in 2023, Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo were shown shoving and accosting their Israeli classmate in a video first reported by the Free Beacon. Keffiyeh-clad individuals, who assembled outside of the business school as part of a “die-in” protest condemning Israel’s days-old retaliatory war on Hamas, surrounded the Israeli student, as he attempted to walk through the crowd. They repeatedly shouted “SHAME!”

Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo were charged with misdemeanor assault months later, in May 2024, one year before their expected graduation dates. As their assault case progressed, both students remained in good standing with Harvard, which did not say whether it would award them degrees if they were convicted or if their proceedings remained active.

Both Harvard Law School and the Harvard Law Review, meanwhile, stood by Bharmal throughout his court appearances.

Last month, on April 10, Harvard Law School published a blog post in which Bharmal fondly reminisced on his time at the “Crimmigration Clinic,” a law school course in which students work on federal immigration cases. Two weeks later, the Harvard Law Review published an anonymous “blog essay” titled, “The Immigrant Rights Resistance Lives.” Bharmal is the author, internal messages obtained by the Free Beacon show.

Bharmal appeared in a Boston court on Monday, five days after publishing that “blog essay.” There, a Suffolk County judge ordered him and Tettey-Tamaklo to perform 80 hours of community service and take an in-person anger management class as part of a pretrial diversion program that will bring an end to the case.

More students may have been charged in relation to the “die-in” protest if not for Harvard. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office asked the university to assist in a follow-up investigation aimed at helping “to identify any additional perpetrators,” the Free Beacon reported. Harvard refused, according to the office. Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight called the school’s behavior “a shock to the Commonwealth.”

Should Bharmal complete the pretrial diversion program—he is due in court on July 25 to update the judge—his record will not contain a criminal conviction. Still, that likely wouldn’t have jeopardized his impending job at CAIR: The group recently sued Columbia University to stop the school from complying with federal records related to anti-Semitic protests, and its leader said he was “happy to see” Gazans “break the siege” during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

The post Harvard Law Review Awards $65k Fellowship to Student Charged in Assault of Israeli Classmate: Report appeared first on .

UCLA Police Arrest Three Anti-Israel Agitators Over Unauthorized Anniversary Screening of Documentary Glorifying Encampments

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Washington Free Beacon

UCLA police arrested three protesters Wednesday, including one who slapped an officer, as they tried to stage an unauthorized screening of a documentary glorifying last spring’s anti-Israel encampments that gripped campuses nationwide.

Around 30 officers in riot gear descended on around 200 protesters gathered to watch The Encampments. School officials warned the organizer, UCLA’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter, three times that it wasn’t allowed to screen the film before law enforcement was sent in.

Police arrested two keffiyeh-clad activists and confiscated their screening equipment. A third protester was arrested earlier in the day after slapping an officer as they blocked her from setting up the film screening. UCLA had deployed additional police officers to campus ahead of the one-year encampment anniversary, the Daily Bruin reported.

The arrests come nearly a week after the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office announced that only 2 of the 205 protesters arrested during last spring’s violent encampment would face criminal charges, citing UCLA’s “failure or inability to assist” in the investigation. The University of California system is also facing a Justice Department investigation into whether it “has engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination based on race, religion and national origin against its professors, staff and other employees by allowing an Antisemitic hostile work environment to exist on its campuses.”

SJP, which helped organize UCLA’s violent anti-Israel encampment and is under suspension for vandalizing a regent’s home, planned to screen The Encampments Wednesday on Royce Quad to commemorate the anniversary of the violent end to UCLA’s encampment at the location where the tents were established.

“This film screening should serve as a reminder that the confrontations with zionist & state violence on UCLA’s campus were a sliver of one Palestinian’s every day reality. That is why we will continue to fight until Palestine is free,” the group wrote on Instagram last week.

But the event wasn’t sanctioned, and campus police closed off the area around 2:30 p.m. They arrested the first protester, who is unaffiliated with the university, and issued her an administrative “stay away” order, barring her from campus, according to the Daily Bruin.

“UCLA is committing genocide and refuses to meet students’ demands to divest from weapons manufacturers,” the protester said while in police custody. “Everyone pull up to the film screening. Fuck these pigs.”

SJP tried moving to two other locations on campus, with around 200 protesters joining in, but both times university officials again told them the screening wasn’t allowed. Police in riot gear swarmed in at 9 p.m. to disperse the crowd, arresting two more activists. The protesters left the area an hour later.

UCLA temporarily suspended SJP in February after its members vandalized the home of University of California regent and United Talent Agency vice chairman Jay Sures. The SJP and Graduate SJP chapters harassed the Jewish chancellor’s family, surrounded a family member’s vehicle, and held a sign that read, “Jonathan Sures you will pay, until you see your final day.”

The group was also pivotal in organizing the encampment at UCLA. The anti-Israel protesters blocked Jewish students from accessing parts of campus for a week. Police were eventually called in and broke up the encampment, arresting hundreds, but only after a violent clash between the agitators and counterprotesters.

UCLA, however, continues to argue that it didn’t have a responsibility to stop the anti-Israel radicals from excluding Jews from parts of campus. Students could only gain access to the occupied area if given clearance and a wristband. The administration didn’t call in police until violence broke out between protesters and counterprotesters. After a tense, hours-long showdown—during which protesters likened officers to the Ku Klux Klan—authorities dismantled the tents.

UCLA and its police department did not respond to requests for comment.

The post UCLA Police Arrest Three Anti-Israel Agitators Over Unauthorized Anniversary Screening of Documentary Glorifying Encampments appeared first on .

Arizona Grand Jury Returns Five-Count Indictment Against Alleged Tesla Arsonist

Filed Under: Gateway Pundit, INVESTIGATIONS

Image: U.S. Department of Justice.

On Wednesday, a federal grand jury in Phoenix returned a five-count indictment against an alleged arsonist who attacked a Tesla dealership in Mesa, Arizona.

The charges against Ian William Moses, 35, include Maliciously Damaging Property and Vehicles in Interstate Commerce by Means of Fire.

The charging documents filed in the case allege that in the early morning on Monday, April 28, Moses, dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt and a black mask, entered the Tesla parking lot carrying a red plastic gas can and a black backpack.

Further, while in the Tesla parking lot, documents say Moses was captured on video as he placed fire starter logs next to the dealership building, poured gasoline onto the starter logs, the building, and three Tesla vehicles, and ignited the starter logs.

Image: U.S. Department of Justice.

A silver Tesla Cybertruck was destroyed in the subsequent fire.

Image: U.S. Department of Justice.

Video shows Moses leaving the dealership on a dark colored bicycle shortly thereafter.

According to reports, Mesa police officers arrested Moses approximately a quarter mile away from the Tesla dealership shortly after the incident while he was still dressed in the same clothes as he was seen wearing at the scene.

After his arrest, officers found a hand-drawn map of the area in Moses’ pocket with the Tesla dealership marked by the letter T.

Attorney General Pamela Bondi remarked, “If you engage in domestic terrorism, this Department of Justice will find you, follow the facts, and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. No negotiating.”

ATF Acting Director Dan Driscoll added, “ATF’s Special Agents and forensic investigators, working with the FBI and local partners, quickly recovered and analyzed critical evidence following this deliberate attack.”

“This attack poses a serious threat to public safety and the ATF remains committed to aggressively pursuing anyone who endangers our communities through violence or destruction.”

“There is nothing American about burning down someone else’s business because you disagree with them politically,” said U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine for the District of Arizona.

“These ongoing attacks against Tesla are not protests, they are acts of violence that have no place in Arizona or anywhere else. If someone targets Tesla with violence, they will be found and confronted with the full force of the law.”

Each count of conviction for Malicious Damage to Property in Interstate Commerce carries a minimum penalty of five years and up to a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

The post Arizona Grand Jury Returns Five-Count Indictment Against Alleged Tesla Arsonist appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Mea Culpa? Big Tech Censors Shamed by Abortion Pill Study

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Newsbusters

Pro-lifers have been warning the public that the abortion pill hurts women for years. Here’s why Big Tech and its fact-checkers have much to answer for. 

A massive study published on Monday found that around 11.2% of 154,554 women underwent a “serious adverse event” after taking the abortion pill. This percentage is 22 times higher than the less than 0.5% statistic pushed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that loosened restrictions on the abortion pill during the Biden administration. The Foundation for the Restoration of America commissioned the study. And while this study is not the first to show that over one in ten women who take the pill are seriously harmed, social media platforms and fact-checkers have censored criticism of the abortion pill for years. 

[Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America] 

WATCH: Border Czar Tom Homan Signals Imminent Arrests for Sanctuary State Officials – “Wait Until You See What’s Coming. I Meant What I Said”

Filed Under: Gateway Pundit, INVESTIGATIONS

Border Czar Tom Homan indicated to The Gateway Pundit on Thursday that criminal charges for sanctuary state and city officials are imminent following the arrest of two judges for attempting to harbor and conceal illegal aliens.

This comes as President Trump indicated he may take harder actions in his fight against illegal immigration, including suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus for illegal aliens to go around radical judges who are attempting to block his border security agenda.

Federal law 8 U.S. Code § 1324 carries penalties of prison time for anybody who “brings to or attempts to bring to,” “moves or attempts to transport or move,” “conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection” illegal aliens. Charges may be enhanced if the alien causes injury or death to another person, which is all too common with the violent criminal aliens. Democrat officials’ sanctuary policies are a clear violation of federal law.

Previously, Homan told The Gateway Pundit, “When they cross the line of harboring and concealing, that’s a felony, and we got Pam Bondi now, who won’t hesitate to take action.”

WATCH: Border Czar Tom Homan Tells TGP Sanctuary Officials “Absolutely” Should be Arrested, Suggests Felony Charges Incoming: “Hold Tight on That One Because it’s Coming”

About one week later, a former New Mexico judge and a Milwaukee County judge were arrested for harboring and concealing illegal aliens in an apparent warning shot to sanctuary officials whose policies and noncompliance with ICE are obstructing justice.

Following the arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) also sent out a memo dated April 18 that lays out explicit steps for state workers to follow and obstruct ICE when agents arrive at government buildings.

Homan told The Gateway Pundit during a press gaggle Thursday to “wait and see what’s coming” for the Democrat officials, like Tony Evers, who are harboring and concealing illegal aliens.

“I meant what I said,” he added. You can not support what we’re doing, and you can support sanctuary cities if that’s what you want to do. But if you cross that line of impidement or knowingly harboring and concealing illegal aliens, that is a felony, and we will treat it as such.“

WATCH:

Conradson: The President signed an executive order just this week threatening to defund sanctuary cities. Why not just arrest the leaders who are harboring and shielding illegal aliens, actually terrorists, from deportation?

Homan: Wait until you see what’s coming.

Conradson: Your comment on the Wisconsin Governor sending directives to state agencies to not comply with ICE and actually stop your deportation efforts?

Homan: Wait until you see what’s coming. I meant what I said. You can not support what we’re doing, and you can support sanctuary cities if that’s what you want to do. But if you cross that line of impidement or knowingly harboring and concealing illegal aliens, that is a felony, and we will treat it as such.

The post WATCH: Border Czar Tom Homan Signals Imminent Arrests for Sanctuary State Officials – “Wait Until You See What’s Coming. I Meant What I Said” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

CBS’s King After Colleague’s Noem Interview: Deportations Are ‘Scaring and Off-Putting’

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, Newsbusters

After having taped on Monday and a small excerpt shown Tuesday about two illegal immigrants being the alleged suspects in her purse having been stolen, Wednesday’s CBS Mornings finally unspooled co-host Tony Dokoupil’s interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and, while the interview itself wasn’t as hostile as, say, ABC’s Terry Moran with President Trump, it had plenty of bias with analysis afterward.

Most notably, there was this from co-host Gayle King:

To make sure things ended on a positive note, Dokoupil quickly interjected that he wanted to “thank the Secretary for bringing us down there” for “an interesting conversation.” King dropped her pathetic high horse bit and admitted Noem “was very candid with you” and “answered everything you asked her.”

Going back to the beginning, Dokoupil started with a largely positive picture for Trump, a rare move in the liberal media:

President Trump won back the White House promising tighter border security and a crackdown on illegal immigration, and those things have happened. Border Patrol apprehended nearly 138,000 people at the southern border illegally in March of last year, and that number fell to 7,000 just a year later, it’s a decrease of about 95 percent in 12 months. Deportation numbers, though, have been slower to change.

The voice-overs started off positive as well with the ATV vehicles convoy to the border that, along with being “shadowed by Mexican forces across the Rio Grande,” they saw “little more than sunshine and dust in a region where federal data shows more than 55,000 people cross the border illegally in just one month under the Biden administration.”

He first asked her about her forward-facing strategy of going on ride-alongs with immigration officials and going down to the El Salvadoran prison CECOT and if those are all meant to convey a message of “self-deport now or this could be you.”

 

 

Next, he posed to her the case of the Honduran illegal immigrant who chose to take her American child with her.

Noem said she rejects the notion the administration deported an American citizen. In a follow-up Dokoupil wondered if this is “hardness” of America on display (click “expand”):

NOEM: I fundamentally disagree with that. I’m sure that these judges will continue to challenge every single thing that this administration does. We have several activist judges across the country that have made claims such as this, but that mother made a choice for her child and wanted to keep her child with her, so —

DOKOUPIL: So, if a relative here in the U.S. wants that child back, and the mother agrees, the child will come back.

NOEM: — yes, absolutely, and that’s the process. You know, this mother gave us documentation and fully said she wanted her child with her, and we honored that.

DOKOUPIL: Is harshness part of the message when it comes to the removal of mothers who have American children?

NOEM: No, I think that with that, with families, we recognize that families can stay together, and so these mothers get the option to take their children with them, which I think is absolutely where President Trump’s heart is.

DOKOUPIL: Should those non-American mothers have that option, or should the American children have a right to stay here?

NOEM: I think the mothers should have the option to have their children with them, and then if those mothers do leave and choose to register and self-deport, them and their children can come back, or if they want to have their child cared for by somebody else in the United States, that’s an option that they can pursue, too.

Following some training footage of Border Patrol special operations forces, Dokoupil insisted to Noem no one is opposed to deporting bad hombres:

Nobody wants would-be terrorists or gang members in the country or violent criminals of any kind. Nobody — nobody forgets or discounts the pain of families who have lost loved ones to those people. How do they know that those people on the flights in the chains are actually terrorists and gang members?

Noem calmly hit back that “[w]e have spent hours and hours building cases against them” with “the victims that speak up that they have perpetuated crimes against.”

Dokoupil continued to belabor the point with the liberal media’s beloved buzzword of “due process.”

The rest the show aired consisted of — wait for it — Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Dokoupil wondered “what have you done…to help facilitate his return to the U.S.” and, if not, why not.

 

 

Back live, Dokoupil claimed unaired portions made him “wonder, actually, about whether there was any softer side to the Secretary and the administration” (click “expand”):

DOKOUPIL: So you can hear what’s tough to discern, because on the one hand, she says it’s President Trump’s decision what to do with Garcia, but on the other hand, she’s saying that they’re listening to the courts, but those statements can’t both be true —

NATE BURLESON: Because there’s some confliction there.

DOKOUPIL: They’re in conflict. Yes, the courts are asking the Trump administration to do some things that they’ve yet to do or yet to talk about doing. So, you know, all of this tough talk made me wonder, actually, about whether there was any softer side to the Secretary and to the administration. I did ask about the role of heart in all of this, and it was interesting what she said.

KING: And she said what?

DOKOUPIL: She said, “There’s heart in all of our immigration conversation. It’s about families and it’s about people,” I followed up by wondering, are we still a welcoming country for legal immigration? And her message was yes, absolutely. The idea that the administration has is they have to get through this tough period now, clean up what they see as a big mess from years gone by, and then the door will open again.

CBS Mornings Plus featured more of the interview. After Dokoupil made sure to reiterate the administration’s 95 percent drop in crossings from the same time last year under Joe Biden, he asked her about comments from the acting director of ICE that he said showed the comparison being made between deportations and delivering Amazon packages. 

Noem disputed this, saying she “wouldn’t do that,” but DHS and its agencies are nonetheless “a professional organization that upholds the law and law enforcement officers and — but we do need to make sure that we don’t want people to be here and be in detention centers for long periods of time.”

Back live, Dokoupil told co-host Adriana Diaz that what the administration wants is “make things feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, and insecure for people here illegally or who crossed illegally and here without documentation, because their hope is that they will self-deport rather than wait to get rounded up in some sort of raid.”

Asked what else surprised him among topics that didn’t make the air, Dokoupil opined he was “surpris[ed]” by “the degree to which they realize they don’t have the resources for deportations to find, detain, and then go through the process of pushing people out.”

To see the relevant CBS transcript from April 30, click here (for CBS Mornings) and here (for CBS Mornings Plus).

DeSantis Offers to Fly Illegal Aliens to El Salvador — Says He’s Ready to Round Up 10,000 Within 72 Hours If DHS Approves Plan (VIDEO)

Filed Under: Gateway Pundit, INVESTIGATIONS

Screenshot: Fox News

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is doubling down on his stance against illegal immigration, announcing plans to deport 10,000 illegal aliens to El Salvador within 72 hours if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants approval.

In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, DeSantis detailed his state’s unprecedented efforts to curb illegal immigration and called for federal support to escalate deportations.

DeSantis revealed that Florida’s Operation Tidal Wave has already resulted in over 800 arrests of illegal aliens, with more expected as the operation progresses.

“I can set up, at a moment’s notice—within 72 hours—10,000 beds for illegals so they can be processed and deported,” DeSantis told Ingraham. “We can run flights to El Salvador, wherever they need to go. We’re doing more than any other state—but we could do a lot more. We’re just waiting on DHS approval.”

The comments came during a discussion of Operation Tidal Wave, a multi-agency crackdown initiated by DeSantis that has already led to the arrest of over 800 illegal aliens, with more expected. But the governor made clear: this isn’t even scratching the surface.

“And the numbers, I think, are going to end up being much higher than 800. We’re going to have an update on that tomorrow. Those are the types of numbers you need to really be able to put a dent in what Biden did,” he said.

“I mean, Biden let in millions and millions, and there were already millions and millions of illegal aliens. You’ve got to get those numbers up. So, we’re proud of doing that. We’re the only state that’s doing it at that level. However, we’re ready to do more. We want DHS to approve some of our plans. We have the best emergency response and problem-solving units in the country.”

Florida, unlike blue sanctuary states, banned sanctuary cities and has aligned its state and local law enforcement agencies to work hand-in-hand with federal immigration authorities—at least under the Trump administration.

But under Biden? DeSantis says ICE stopped showing up. State troopers would pull over an illegal alien for drunk driving and get ghosted by federal agents.

“When Biden was president, if our highway patrol pulled over an illegal for driving drunk, they would call ICE. ICE wouldn’t come get them, and then we weren’t allowed to do anything beyond that in terms of immigration enforcement. Now we’re deputies under President Trump’s administration. Our guys can just take them and get them into processing for deportation,” DeSantis said.

Still, even with this progress, DeSantis says his state is being held back.

Ingraham:
I’m confused. What can’t you do specifically?

Ron DeSantis:
Well, if we’re going to launch a unilateral operation, we would need DHS’s blessing. I mean, we will go in—we won’t even need DHS to necessarily be there—we will go in and find tens of thousands of illegals in Florida who are already on deportation orders.

You hear all this about due process—these people have already been processed and have been ordered to be removed. We can go in and get those. What we can do is provide more manpower, more space, and we even have the ability to process. But we need that to be blessed, and we need that to be in tandem. If we can get that done, I think those numbers—800 to 1,000 in a sweep—will go up dramatically more in Florida.

And if red states—just the red states—did even a fraction of what we’re doing in Florida, you would see those numbers go up across the country in a way that would really be meaningful.

Ingraham:
Are you not getting your calls returned? I mean, you have a great relationship with all these guys—Kristi Noem, President Trump—so…

Ron DeSantis:
Well, I think it’s a couple of things. I mean, I think one is that Biden decimated the agency, so they’re really working to stand things back up. I do think they probably need Congress to provide more financial support.

I have personally talked to Tom Homan about our capabilities. We want to do more. We have put our National Guard in—they requested that—so we’ve got our National Guard helping them as well. Part of it is that they’ve got a lot of stuff they have to do, given what Biden left them.

But we’re ready. I know they’ve seen some of the plans that we’ve offered. We’re going to finish up this Tidal Wave and then hopefully take it to the next level after that.

WATCH:

The post DeSantis Offers to Fly Illegal Aliens to El Salvador — Says He’s Ready to Round Up 10,000 Within 72 Hours If DHS Approves Plan (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

DeSantis: Statewide operation arresting over 1,000 illegal aliens is just the beginning

Filed Under: INVESTIGATIONS, The Blaze

MIRAMAR, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis (R) touted the success of Operation Tidal Wave on Thursday, alongside federal and state law enforcement, highlighting that the joint effort resulted in the arrest of 1,120 illegal aliens within four days. With Operation Tidal Wave being the largest 287(g) operation in history, DeSantis and the other officials said this is only the start.

The 287(g) program certifies local law enforcement to bolster the number of officers who can arrest and detain illegal immigrants. Florida law now requires police departments and sheriff offices to have a certain percentage of their personnel to be certified in the program, making it a point to say there will be no sanctuary cities or counties.

‘Our first op was a warm-up. It was a test run.’

“This is the largest immigration enforcement operation that we’ve seen in quite some time, throughout the entire country. … That is a really significant impact, and we’re demonstrating why we’re going to lead on this issue,” DeSantis vowed, noting that some apprehended criminals were gang members or had been previously deported.

“It sends the message going forward: The United States is serious about enforcing its immigration laws. So whereas under the previous president, you could pay coyotes and come to the border knowing that you’d be home free once you got there, there’s a new sheriff in town,” he added.

DeSantis further floated the idea of using the Judge Advocate General’s Corps within the state’s National Guard to up the number of immigration judges and thereby increase the number of deportations.

Larry Keefe, the executive director for Florida’s Board of Immigration Enforcement, said Operation Tidal Wave is an example of how state officials want to use their resources to go in and do the work themselves. Keefe said the arrests are only a small part of the removal procedures, as there are logistical needs that would “make Amazon, Federal Express blush.”

“I knew [Operation Tidal Wave] would be a success. … Our first op was a warm-up. It was a test run, was just to kinda see how things work out after months of planning,” he added.

When asked by Blaze Media if he has concerns about federal lawsuits and injunctions hindering Florida’s efforts to arrest and deport illegal aliens, DeSantis said, “Of course, I think we’ve already seen it.”

DeSantis also expressed frustration that the judiciary seems to have flip-flopped on the issue. DeSantis noted that a federal judge previously told Texas not to enforce immigration laws, claiming it was the job of the federal government, like during the Biden-Harris border crisis.

“Now we’re in the situation where the federal government is enforcing the law, and the courts are saying, ‘No, you really can’t do that. People need to have some O.J. Simpson-type trial.’ It’s nuts!”

Blaze Media also asked DeSantis to respond to accusations from immigration advocates and lawyers who claim Operation Tidal Wave encourages racial profiling of Latinos.

“There’s no racial profiling. If you’re here illegally, then you’re [in] violation of the law. There’s not only one people of one shade. … If you’re illegal, you’re illegal, and we’re going to hold you accountable,” DeSantis replied.

The countries of origin of those arrested in Operation Tidal Wave include:

  • 437 from Guatemala,
  • 280 from Mexico,
  • 153 from Honduras,
  • 48 from Venezuela,
  • 24 from El Salvador, and
  • 178 from other countries.

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