US agents pounced on two immigrants in the hallway of a New York courthouse Friday, wrestling them to the ground in a forceful display of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on people without papers.The two men had just attended a scheduled hearing when plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, some wearing black face masks, grabbed them.The officers yelled for the men not to move or put up resistance and forced them to lay face-down on the ground as they tied their hands behind their backs and arrested them.The immigrants were then whisked away into an elevator on the 12th floor of the Jacob K Javits Federal Building in Manhattan.The routine appointment they hoped would be a step toward life in America ended in shock and detention.AFP was on hand to witness these events because there was a similar arrest at the same courthouse earlier in the week and the agency suspected more might be imminent.It was not immediately clear exactly why these two men were arrested nor the fate that awaits them.    Trump was elected to a second term largely on a promise to crack down hard on the entry and presence of undocumented migrants and Americans largely support the idea.But polls show they also find tactics like surprise courthouse arrests by agents with black masks to be harsh.In recent weeks ICE agents have intensified operations like this in and around American immigration courts.After Trump swept back into power in January, the Department of Homeland Security revoked regulations that limited agents’ access to protected areas like the courts.One of the men arrested was a 34-year-old Dominican named Joaquin Rosario who arrived in the United States a year ago, registered with authorities as he came in, and had his first immigration hearing Friday, said a relative of his, Julian Rosario, who declined to say how they were related.”He was at ease. He did not think anything was going to happen,” said the relative, who was still visibly upset by what he had witnessed as agents threw the other man to the ground.Rosario was so unworried he did not even bother to have a lawyer with him, the relative said.The other detainee looked to be Asian. He arrived on his own and was accompanied by one of many immigration advocacy group volunteers who walk with such immigrants to and from the courtroom. The idea is to make them feel safe.This time the volunteers screamed out as the agents arrested the two men but this did nothing to halt the raid.Before this arrest other immigrants with appointments, including entire families, came and went with no problem.A pair of Venezuelans who refused to give their names were jubilant because their next appointment is not until 2027 — that’s how backlogged the US immigration court system is.- ‘Sound the alarm’ – Human rights groups are outraged by these operations, arguing that they sap trust in the courts and make immigrants wary of showing up for appointments as they try to gain US residency.”They’re illegal abductions,” said Karen Ortiz, herself a court employee who was demonstrating Friday against these sudden arrests of migrants.”We need to sound the alarm and show the public how serious this is and one way we can do that is actually physically putting ourselves between a masked ICE agent and someone they’re trying to detain and send away,” Ortiz told AFP.Since returning to power Trump has dramatically tested the limits of executive power as he cracked down on foreigners without papers, arguing that the United States is being invaded by criminals and other undesirables.

A divided US Supreme Court on Friday granted President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the social security data of millions of Americans.The decision came after the Trump administration appealed to the top court to lift an April order by a district judge restricting DOGE access to Social Security Administration (SSA) records.”SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work,” the top court said in a brief unsigned order.The three liberal justices on the Supreme Court dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saying the move poses “grave privacy risks for millions of Americans.””Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, bank-account numbers, medical records — all of that, and more, is in the mix,” Jackson said.”The Government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymized information right now — before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is lawful,” she said.In her April ruling, District Judge Ellen Hollander banned DOGE staff from accessing data containing information that could personally identify Americans such as their social security numbers, medical history or bank records.Social security numbers are a key identifier for people in the United States, used to report earnings, establish eligibility for welfare and retirement benefits and other purposes.Hollander said the SSA can only give redacted or anonymized records to DOGE employees who have completed background checks and training on federal laws, regulations and privacy policies.The case before Hollander was brought by a group of unions which argued that the SSA had opened its data systems to unauthorized personnel from DOGE “with disregard for the privacy” of millions of Americans.DOGE, which has been tasked by Trump with slashing billions of dollars of goverment spending, was headed at the time by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who has since had a very public falling out with the president.Trump has been at loggerheads with the judiciary ever since he returned to the White House, venting his fury at court rulings at various levels that have frozen his executive orders on multiple issues.

An ex-girlfriend of Sean Combs testified Friday of sex with a network of paid male escorts at the music mogul’s behest and that he asked her to transport drugs for him.The woman speaking under the pseudonym Jane took the stand for a second day in the sex trafficking and racketeering trial, delivering emotional, graphic testimony in the federal criminal proceedings against Combs, the 55-year-old superstar known as “Diddy.”He faces life in prison if convicted in the case, and has denied all charges.Jane told jurors in the Manhattan courtroom that she, assistants of Combs or the artist himself would book travel for the escorts, who would frequently be paid by Combs in the thousands of dollars in cash or via apps.The payment was in exchange for choreographed sexual encounters that would sometimes last days, “hotel nights” that Jane described in lurid detail.Her description closely tracked with the testimony of a previous star witness, Casandra Ventura, who said the encounters were called “freak-offs.”Jane, who was identified as a social media influencer and single mother, spoke through tears as she recounted instances that she told Combs she did not like having sex with the escorts while he watched.The encounters virtually always left her sore and in pain and she suffered frequent infections, Jane testified. But when she protested or said she only wanted to be with him, Jane said Combs was “dismissive” and “belittling.”Evidence read in court included lengthy text exchanges between Jane and Combs, as well as diaristic notes Jane had taken for herself on her phone that corroborate her testimony.Among the tranche of texts was one message in which she described the pattern of hotel nights as a “Pandora’s box” she couldn’t shut.”I’m so much more than being loved in the dark in hotel rooms doing things that make me feel disgusted,” she texted Combs. “I don’t want to play this role in your life anymore.””It’s dark, sleazy and makes me feel disgusted with myself,” she continued, saying that she felt he was paying her rent in exchange for the sex parties. “I don’t want to feel obligated to perform these nights with you in fear of losing the roof over my head,” Jane wrote.”Girl stop,” Combs wrote back.Her feeling of obligation had escalated in 2023, when the pair made a verbal “love contract” stipulating that while so-called hotel nights would feature into their relationship, so would a $10,000 monthly payment from Combs to Jane.She told jurors Friday that Combs continues to make her that payment, which she uses for rent, even as he is incarcerated.- Flying with drugs -Jane’s testimony of paying for the travel of escorts is key to the prosecution’s argument that Combs trafficked men and women across state lines with the intent of prostitution.She also told jurors that she transported illegal drugs for Combs on two occasions.When she expressed to a high-ranking staff member of Combs that it felt “unsafe” to fly with drugs from Los Angeles to Miami, the staffer replied that “it’s fine” and “I do it all the time.”In their opening statements, the defense insisted that Combs’s relationship with Jane was consensual.But she described struggling to get through the hotel nights without the aid of drugs, namely Ecstasy. She recounted one instance when she attempted to stay sober while complying with Combs’s demands that she have sex with multiple men for hours, to the point that she threw up, saying she was “repulsed.””Sean came in and I told him I had just thrown up and he was like, ‘that’s good then you’ll feel better.'”‘”Let’s go because the guy is here, the third guy,'” Jane said he told her.Jane previously told jurors that her relationship with Combs continued up until his arrest in September 2024.Prosecutors say he ran a criminal enterprise of employees and bodyguards who enforced his power and fulfilled his desires with illicit acts including trafficking, kidnapping, bribery and arson. Along with Ventura — whose testimony included harrowing accounts of physical and psychological abuse — and Jane, witnesses have included former employees of Bad Boy Enterprises, Combs’s company.Jane’s testimony could last days, with court proceedings expected to continue at least another month.