I Can’t Sell It, So I Can’t Win

Denver Post Doxxes Citizens For Sharing Pictures And Public Records About Crime

On Aug. 1, The Denver Post exposed the names, locations, voter registrations, and employment of three private citizens who legally obtained public information and sent some to the popular social media account Do Better Denver. On Aug. 7, a Denver Post columnist defended the paper’s decision to dox the three women for sharing public information.

“People who claim to be citizen journalists must stand by their work with a byline and endure the negative comments and threats that come with the job,” wrote Denver Post columnist Krista Kafer.

The Post identified the three people it doxxed by doing a public records request for those women’s public records requests: “The Post filed open records requests to obtain copies of requests tied to DoBetterDNVR,” wrote The Post’s crime reporter Shelly Bradbury in her Aug. 1 article. On Aug. 5, the Denver Gazette confirmed the three doxxed women are not the account administrator. The public records they shared with the accountholder comprise less than 1 percent of Do Better Denver posts.

Do Better Denver alleged the Post did this at the behest of local government officials angry about public disclosures of their activities. One public record one of the women discovered, for example, showed the city paid $2.1 million for vacant rooms for illegal immigrants

“That particular post by DoBetterDNVR is emblematic of the type of misinformation they push,” wrote Denver Post Editor Lee Ann Colacioppo in an email response to a Federalist request for comment. “The mayor’s office played no role whatsoever in our decision to pursue the story and it was entirely the idea of the reporter to submit the CORAs. It was an obvious course of action given DoBetter has posted extensive information about their CORAs, including when they filed them, the exact words they used in their requests, the costs, the responsive records, etc.”

The anonymous Do Better Denver administrator said the account receives death threats for posting public records about people with criminal records that include kidnapping, battery, and work for terrorist gangs such as Tren de Aragua (TDA). The administrator uses a “burner phone,” stays anonymous, and takes other preventative measures because of those threats.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/12/denver-post-doxxes-citizens-for-sharing-pictures-and-public-records-about-crime/

A lot more at the link including the mayors significant bum industry ties.

Las Vegas sees drop in tourism

For the sixth consecutive month this year, Las Vegas experienced a decline in the number of visitors year-over-year — with June seeing nearly 400,000 fewer visitors, or an 11.3% drop, compared to the same time last year, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA).

Both the hotel occupancy rate and convention attendance in Las Vegas fell several percentage points this June compared to the same period last year, according to the LVCVA.

The city’s Harry Reid International Airport also reported a decrease of roughly 318,000 passengers in June compared to last year — with drops in both domestic and international travel.

For those spending cautiously, Las Vegas may not be in their cards, according to Oliver Lovat, CEO of the Denstone Group and a casino-industry consultant. He explained that the city has become more expensive in response to rising labor and food costs.

“If you’re looking for a bargain, because of the way that Las Vegas has changed, it’s no longer a bargain destination,” he said.

He added that while Vegas has been enjoying a tourism high since the end of the pandemic, it was not expected to last indefinitely.

“I always said, the post-pandemic boom was not sustainable,” Lovat said.

https://laist.com/news/las-vegas-sees-drop-in-tourism-hinting-at-broader-economic-woes-facing-the-u-s

People in ICE Custody Complain of Long Waits for Deportation

After Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent a Cuban man to a detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, from Miami, he gave up fighting his case.

The Cuban man and others still in immigration custody asked not to be identified because of retaliation concerns.

The man said he had a lawyer in Miami, but a judge hearing his case at Northwest ICE Processing Center told him that the lawyer would have to come to Tacoma. The man and his partner didn’t have the money to pay for the attorney’s travel, so he asked to be deported.

Months later, he is still in ICE custody with no end in sight.

“I can’t stand this anymore,” the Cuban man said in Spanish. “It’s a lot of suffering.”

He is among many who are in custody and have waited months to be deported after agreeing, often under pressure from ICE, to deportation. Capital & Main spoke with people from many countries, including India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mexico, in addition to Cuba, who said they had waited months in detention centers for deportation.

The man and other Cubans at Northwest ICE Processing Center, a facility owned and operated by private prison company GEO Group, told Capital & Main that ICE said they would be detained indefinitely because they can’t be deported. They said both Cuba and Mexico have refused to take them.

“I don’t know what they will do with us,” the Cuban man said. “If they can’t send me to any country, and my country won’t accept me, they have to set me free.”

According to immigration attorney Ginger Jacobs, deportations often take months.

When ICE deports people by plane, the agency either charters a flight to send a group of deportees to a specific country or region, or it sends the person with guards on a commercial flight.

ICE chartered 207 planes to deport people in July, according to a report from Witness at the Border, which monitors both domestic and international ICE flights. About 60% of those flights went to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Cuba received one flight.

Deportation requires cooperation and negotiation between the U.S. and the receiving country. The receiving country has to confirm the citizenship of the person in question and provide travel documents. Some countries refuse to take back deportees.

Jacobs said it doesn’t matter which detention center someone is in. The six-month countdown begins when someone in custody receives a deportation order if there is no pending appeal.

But to the detainees interviewed by Capital & Main, the wait feels indefinite.

“When you know that you did something wrong and you’re in jail, that’s something different, but doing time without a release date, that’s like a torture, and that’s what we’re doing here,” said a man from India who has been in custody for over two years.

He said his case was on appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but he gave up so that he could leave to get treatment for a tumor behind his ear and because he felt he had already spent too much time away from his young children. His family plans to join him in India after his deportation.

The man said he asked a supervisor about the delay and learned that the officer who was supposed to be working on his deportation documents had been on vacation for weeks. He told Capital & Main that he was still waiting to have his picture taken and start the process for his travel documents. He said ICE told him it would take another six or seven months to deport him.

“There’s a lot of people who want to leave, but I think they want to set an example like this is how we’re going to torture you guys,” he said.

A man from Ecuador detained at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego asked a judge to deport him about a month ago. He’s still in custody. “They just say have patience, have patience,” he said in Spanish.

He said the treatment at the facility makes him feel depressed and made him decide to leave. He said the facility is overcrowded and that guards yell often at the people in custody.

Some of the men waiting to be deported believed that ICE had bungled their deportations. One said he’d been waiting about two and a half months for ICE to deport him to his home country of Mexico. Usually, deportations to Mexico happen quickly.

“They don’t come often, and they don’t give answers, just whatever excuse,” the man from Mexico said in Spanish about ICE officers. “Last time they told me I was lost in the system.”

Kulimba Nyembo, who gave Capital & Main permission to use his full name, said he’d already been waiting at the Tacoma facility for about six months for deportation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo when he spoke to Capital & Main in June.

He said he had a deportation order from mid-December, and he had provided his travel documents to the deportation officer.

“Every single document that needs to be brought in has already been brought in,” he said. “Either it’s a money game situation where they’re farming me for more money on my head every month, or they know I have all my documents in order and I become less of a priority because it’s like we’ll get to you when we get to you. Now I’m spending every day here for absolutely nothing.”

Nyembo said he’d grown up in the U.S., and an assault charge landed him in prison. When he finished serving his sentence in early 2024, he rebuilt his life, he said, and didn’t get into any more trouble. But ICE arrested him in December, and Nyembo decided not to fight the case.

He said officers tried to deport him in May, but the guards who were supposed to escort him didn’t have the right visas.

“Everything that has prolonged my stay here has nothing to do with me,” Nyembo said. “It has to do with someone not being efficient enough or proficient enough in their work.”

At the time of publication, Nyembo no longer showed up in an ICE database that tracks people in the agency’s custody.

Meanwhile, the Cuban man’s partner, who is a U.S. citizen, said she hasn’t seen him since last year, when ICE arrested him while he was waiting for her to do laundry.

She said she is struggling to pay rent, send money for him to call her and take care of their son by herself. She sold many of their belongings to try to pay for his attorney. She said she takes as much overtime work as she can get to try to make ends meet.

The partner and mother said she is exhausted. “Sometimes I only have $1 in my account,” she said in Spanish. “I sit in my bed and cry.”

She said both she and her partner are afraid to go to Cuba because of the political and economic situation there, but that if he gets deported, she will go wherever the U.S. sends him. The most important thing, she said, is for them to be able to be together as a family.

“Why don’t they let him out already?” she said.

https://capitalandmain.com/people-in-ice-custody-complain-of-long-waits-for-deportation

Charlotte DACA recipient faces deportation amid wave of reopened cases

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – When “Oscar” first stepped foot in Charlotte with his parents when he was 11 years old, his strongest impression was that he could leave his house without fear of being shot.

Now nearly 20 years later, he pays taxes and works full time, thanks to his ongoing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, status. As a graduate of Garinger High School, English sounds like his native language.

But he could soon face deportation back to El Salvador, anyway. “The first thing I went through my mind is, why? Like? Seriously, why?” Oscar reflected.

WBTV is not identifying Oscar by his real name, due to newly-active immigration removal proceedings. But his case reflects what could be thousands of newly-reopened immigration cases across the country, according to multiple immigration attorneys.

In July, Oscar’s attorney—who WBTV is also not identifying—received a notice that Oscar’s immigration case and numerous others had been put back on the court calendar years after a judge had administratively closed the case. Nothing had changed in Oscar’s life or status – he hadn’t, for instance, had a recent run-in with police.

A judge had administratively closed Oscar’s case more than a decade earlier, a court function that does not equal a dismissal but rather a de-prioritization by the U.S. government to help manage massive case backlogs.

It was part of a wave of “recalendaring” notifications multiple attorneys told WBTV they received that month.

Jeremy McKinney, a different immigration attorney and former president of the American Immigrations Lawyers Association, told WBTV that his Greensboro firm received roughly two dozen cases.

“Almost all the cases are over 10 years old,” McKinney said.

Cases that were administratively closed often meant the people were being handled by a different agency: McKinney’s cases include people who are in line for U visas (available to victims of crime) and other types of waivers. Typically, they’re stuck in years-long queues.

In Oscar’s case, he received DACA. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is an immigration policy set in place under former President Barack Obama. It allows people who were brought to the United States as children by undocumented parents a way to work in the U.S.

DACA is not a pathway to citizenship, and the policy’s status under current President Donald Trump’s administration remains uncertain. DACA recipients, known as “dreamers,” must reapply for the status every two years and have a clean criminal record for felonies and most misdemeanor charges.

“It does not serve public safety for us to go about handling immigration enforcement in this way,” McKinney said of the reopened cases. “We should not be going after brick layers and grandmas. We should be going after hardened criminals and national security threats.”

Many of the notices that arrived alerting McKinney to cases back on the docket didn’t include a timestamp on the envelope of when they were sent, according to documents reviewed by WBTV.

That’s important: The letters themselves were all dated on July 11. Many of them, however, didn’t arrive until just before or after the required 10-day period ended for an attorney’s response, McKinney said. “We’re having to suddenly turn around and file what appears to be late opposition to the motion,” McKinney said.

But an April memo from the DOJ rescinded previous guidance on administrative closures, offering a clue to the new federal policy. “What is asleep can be awakened,” McKinney said. “That’s what’s happening right now.”

Oscar, meanwhile, braces for a country he barely knows as his case moves back into removal proceedings. “I’m terrified of the future,” he said. “It’s knocking on my door. I’m just not really trying to look at look, you know, look at [it] in the eye.”

https://www.wbtv.com/2025/08/12/charlotte-daca-recipient-faces-deportation-amid-wave-reopened-cases/