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I Just SUED TRUMP’S ICE –EXCLUSIVE DETAILS! | The Breakdown
00:12:05
ICE officer raided children's dormitories at the Dilley concentration camp and confiscated their letters. I'm suing to get them back. I'm also demanding the ICE memo authorizing searches without a warrant.
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Hi, I'm Frances Collier. And I'm Angela V. Shelton. And we're Frangela. You know what you mean in your life. The Final Word podcast. Yes, you do. That's right. It is the final word on all things political and pop cultural, where we make real news, real funny, where we inspire you so you can resist. Subscribe and get a new episode of the Final Word podcast each week. It's the news we think you need to hear. That's right. We think you need to hear it. Okay. Yeah. It's what we say. So. That's right. And because all we do is give. Every Thursday, you can listen to our hysterical podcast, Idiot of the Week. We round up the stupid. Because you know what? Somebody has to.
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Okay? All we do is give. Hey, everybody, it's Allison Gill. You know me as Mueller. She wrote on social media. Thank you for watching the breakdown. Thanks to the Midas Touch Network for the platform. I really appreciate it. I have some exclusive breaking news for you today. You are the first to hear about this. We haven't put this out anywhere yet. Just a moment ago, my network, MSW Media, filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia against the Department of Homeland Security. More specifically, a request for records about ICE misconduct under the Freedom of Information Act. So MSW Media, Inc. Which is my podcast network, is seeking two things from this lawsuit related to ICE misconduct. The first has to do with letters written by children being detained at the Dilley concentration camp, the detention center in Texas. You may recall ProPublica's heart wrenching story, the expose featuring some of these letters and how shortly after they received these letters and published them, ICE agents then raided the Dilley facility and confiscated any letters and papers and communications written by these children. So I'm suing to get those letters back. The second thing is the super secret Department of Homeland Security Office of General Counsel memo that gave the legal theory behind allowing ICE and ICE agents and Customs and Border Protection agents to ignore the law, ignore longstanding policy at DHS and ignore the Constitution and just trample all over the Fourth Amendment and enter people's homes without a judicial warrant. So these actions by ICE cannot stand. And I'll give you the first glimpse of our lawsuit just hit the docket on today's episode of the Breakdown. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Breakdown. I'm your host, Alison Gill. So just a few minutes ago, my independent media network, MSW Media, Inc. We filed a lawsuit demanding documents related to ICE misconduct in a Freedom of Information act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland security. So on February 9th of this year, ProPublica reported, quote, a rainbow, a family portrait, a heart. These are the drawings found in handwritten letters from the children detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing center in South Texas. In early February, there were more than 750 families, nearly half of them including children, as well as some 370 single adult women being held at this facility. It is just one of many immigration centers across the country, but the only one holding families. Since the start of the Trump administration, the number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention has skyrocketed, increasing sixfold. Now, just nine days later, Pablo Manriquez from Migrant Insider reported this quote, update. Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in Response to the ACE reporting by Micah Rosenberg et al for ProPublica. Now, the same day our lawyer, MSW Media Inc. S lawyer, Kel McClanahan of National Security Counselors filed a Freedom of Information act request on the online portal. Having received no response, we filed our lawsuit just a few Moments ago. On 17th February 2026, MSW Media submitted to ICE a FOIA request via the DHS online portal, citing the relevant media coverage and requesting, quote, cop of all papers seized, confiscated or otherwise collected from detainees at the Dilley Immigration processing center between 9 February 2026 and the date that the search for responsive records is conducted and specifically not the date this request was submitted. MSW Media requested expedited processing stating given the intense public and media interest in the conditions at the Dilley Center Best Exemplified ProPublica and heavily reported on both before and since, these records will significantly increase public understanding of government operations. There is an urgent need exemplified by the ProPublica story to report on these letters and ICE's reported seizure to prohibit their disclosure is of significant public concern. So that is the very. That's the first part of our lawsuit. After ICE raided these dormitories and confiscated letters written by children and papers and their families, we, we want those, we want those documents. So we filed a Freedom of Information act request. We waited the requisite amount of time, they didn't respond and so now we're suing in federal court. Now, the second part of our lawsuit is something different but related. You'll recall back in January that two DHS whistleblowers contacted Congress through whistleblower aid with information that the Department of Homeland Security officials instructed ICE agents to ignore. Longstanding DHS policy and the Constitution and enter our homes by any means necessary without a judicial warrant, not an administrative warrant, without a judicial warrant. According to the secret DHS memo shared by the whistleblowers with Congress, the Department of Homeland Security Office of General Counsel drew a legal conclusion and wrote up a memo that judicial warrants are no longer required to conduct such searches. Get into their homes however you want. Though we have the Todd Lyons memoir from these whistleblowers, that Office of General Counsel determination that he's referencing in the memo has remained a secret. I want to see it and I think we all should see it. Quote On May 12, 2025, Lions issued a memo authorizing ICE agents to forcibly enter certain homes without a warrant, consent or an emergency. The Lyons memo states, quote, although the U.S. department of Homeland Security has not historically relied on administrative warran alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. constitution, the immigration and Nationality act and the Immigration Regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose. The Lyons memo itself has not been widely shared within the Agency, but but its contents have been used to train new ICE officers. They actually kept that memo a secret. They didn't distribute it widely. They brought it in and told instructors to read it and then go and teach this to people. They seem to be, you know, clearly trying to hide a paper trail for this because probably they know it's illegal, but yet they have in hand somewhere an Office of General Counsel memo that says it's totally legal and totally cool. It goes on. On 21 January 2026, MSW Media submitted to DHS a request via the DHS online portal citing the Lyons Memo and requesting, quote, all OGC records describing or memorializing this determination by the DHS Office of General Counsel. MSW Media further explained that this OGC determination has been officially adopted by DHS and ICE as working law and that any otherwise applicable privilege has accordingly been waived. MSW Media requested expedited processing stating, quote, the ongoing story of the excesses of ICE agents is one of the most newsworthy and fast developing topics in the news today. MSW Media has a pressing need to report on these records and shed light on the legal justifications given by DHS OGC in this matter, which raise significant questions of government misconduct. And that privilege assertion there is important because by adopting a working law, by adopting a policy like entering people's homes on an administrative warrant without a judicial warrant, when those are adopted into working law or policy, then you waive the privilege to keep that Office of General Counsel memo a secret. So we want that too. But we never heard back on that Freedom of Information act request or the first one. We haven't heard back on either of them. So now we're suing for both the children's letters seized by ICE when they raided children's dormitories at Dilley and then the Office of General Counsel memo providing legal guidance, legal support, legal justification to train ICE agents and Customs and Border Protection agents that they don't need a judicial warrant to enter our homes. Now, I want to let you know that Our lawyer, Cal McClanahan works with National Security Counselors. That's a nonprofit organization and they do all this work. He does all this work for MSW Media. This is what our fifth FOIA request. He does all of this pro bono. But you can support them National Security Counselors directly if you want. It's tax deductible donation@nationalsecuritylaw.org donate so just want to give you that option if you want to support their work. Thank you all so much for watching. I just want to let you know that this Tuesday is Trans Day of Visibility and Dana Goldberg and I are going to be interviewing Jay, a 16 year old Indian American trans man and the Youth Voices ambassador for an organization called It Gets Better. This is an incredible young man. I hope you check it out on this Tuesday's episode of the Daily Beans podcast. It's free wherever you get them. And thank you so much again to Midas for giving us this platform here and thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. I'm Allison Gill and I'll see you next week on the Breakdown. Sam.
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