Why Did ICE Agents Arrest and Detain a 71-Year-Old U.S. Citizen?

Earlier this week—in a story that reads as a perfect encapsulation of abuses by Trump’s immigration enforcement—masked ICE agents roughed up and detained a 71-year-old U.S. citizen volunteering as a legal observer to monitor them at a federal courthouse in San Diego.

Grandmother Barbara Stone says she was documenting the detention of asylum-seekers with the group “Detention Resistance” at San Diego’s immigration court when she was baselessly accused of pushing an officer. Multiple masked agents then pursued Stone, grabbed and handcuffed her (leaving bruises), confiscated her phone and purse, and detained her for over eight hours, she says.

Once Stone was released, ICE returned her bag but kept possession of her phone. Why? Stone says an ICE agent compared the situation to “a drug bust where they keep a drug dealer’s phone because I had used it in the crime.”

But the only “crime” of which Stone says she’s guilty is documenting immigration enforcement. If this is true, the episode would track with other apparent attempts by ICE agents to avoid accountability of late, for instance, by wearing masks so they can conduct raids and arrests anonymously.

In a statement to a local outlet, ICE accused Stone of assaulting an officer, citing “a 700% increase in assaults” against its agents over the last year (a statistic the agency uses to justify agents concealing their identities, as well).

That 700 percent increase, it should be noted, is a somewhat misleading way to say there have been 79 alleged assaults against ICE agents this year, compared to 10 in the same timeframe last year. Meanwhile, ICE interactions have become dramatically more frequent and aggressive.

ICE’s numbers unfortunately deserve further scrutiny, as the agency has been defining “assault” quite loosely. In another high-profile arrest of a U.S. citizen, for example, ICE last month detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander for assault—an accusation not unlike when a schoolyard bully accuses his victim of getting in the way of his fist, as Washington Post columnist Philip Bump put it.

One might add, to this list of questionable ICE allegations, its new claims about Stone.

Anti-woke podcaster Andrew Schultz is coming to the same realization as thousands of other American voters over the last six months: President Trump lied to them.

“Everything [Trump] campaigned on I believe he wanted to do. And now he’s doing the exact opposite thing of every single fuckin’ thing,” Schultz said on his “Flagarant” podcast Thursday. “There’ll be people that like, they’ll DM me and be like, ‘You see what your boy’s doing? You voted for this.’ I’m like, I voted for none of this!”

Schultz has been an ardent supporter of Trump for some time now, even having him on his podcast as a guest during his presidential campaign. He continued on.

“He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for. I want him to stop the wars; he’s funding them. I want him to shrink spending, reduce the budget. He’s increasing it. It’s like everything that he’s said he’s gonna do, except sending immigrants back—and now he’s even flip-flopped on that … ‘Maybe he will stop these wars.’ No. ‘Maybe we will see what’s up with this Epstein shit.’ No.”

Strangely, Schultz isn’t the only one surprised by the gap between Trump’s campaign promises and his actions as president. Fellow Trump supporters like Elon Musk are baffled by Trump’s wanton spending on the budget bill, while Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is dismayed at Trump continuing the endless wars. And MAGA members far and wide are shocked and upset over the administration’s effective dropping of the Epstein case. It seems like a shift is coming, but it may be all too late.

The Trump administration’s complete dismissal of the Jeffrey Epstein case continues to backfire as some of the most intense, involved members of his voting base think they’ve lost him to the “deep state.” 

As the Student Action Summit conference hosted by Charlie Kirk’s right-wing Turning Point USA group kicked off on Friday, multiple MAGA loyalists expressed anger and exasperation with President Trump’s handling of the case that has dominated much of the conspiratorial far-right.   

“It’s not about just a pedophile ring and all that. It’s about who governs us, right? And that’s why [the Epstein case] is not gonna go away,” MAGA godfather Steve Bannon yelled from the conference stage. He then went on to detail just how important the case is to the deep base. “For this to go away, you’re gonna lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement. If we lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement right now, we’re gonna lose 40 seats in [20]26, we’re gonna lose the presidency, they won’t even have to steal it … because [the Trump administration] will have disheartened the hardest core populist …”

Trump supporters who felt that the president was the answer to years of liberal and neoconservative deep state corruption are now reeling, feeling lost and confused as their knight in shining armor turns his back on one of their most important issues. 

Bannon turned to three young conference attendees and asked them for their take on the situation. 

“We need to, we need to enforce the laws of this country and you know, like you said, Steve, there’s no better question than who rules America. It’s not the people. So we need to obviously have the declassification of the Epstein files,” one said before Bannon chimed in. 

“You don’t think Donald Trump as president — you would tell Donald Trump in the Oval Office that you think there’s an open question, with him as commander-in-chief and doing all he’s doing, you would actually tell Trump you don’t know, you question who rules this country?”

“I definitely would because it’s a blackmail ring and anybody who wouldn’t is not paying attention. Simply put, Epstein himself said that he was best friends, on the stand, with Donald Trump. So anybody who thought that these files were going to get just declassified because we pressured him enough or you voted harder enough is just lying to yourself frankly.” 

The young man continued on. 

“In 2016, we trusted the plan with Trump, but now Trump has become the deep state. The exact thing he we voted him in—” 

‘Why do you say he’s become the deep state?” Bannon asked.

“What is more deep state than covering up for pedophiles? Why would you go to that island? Why? Tell me why would you go to that island? Why would you go on the plane? … Why his top donors—why are his top donors neighbors with Epstein?”

It seems that Trump’s most ardent supporters are finally asking the important questions. And while some in the MAGAsphere zero in on Attorney General Pam Bondi, others grasp that the one person with the most power over the case, the one person who could even come close to validating any of their theories, is Trump. And he has expressed no interest whatsoever in doing that. In fact, he can’t even believe that his base is still talking about it. And as we approach one full week of uproar, it’s clear that the Epstein thing won’t be going away anytime soon. 

“The only way this Epstein firestorm passes is if the 5 to 10 to maybe 15 percent of the Trump movement, the Pepes and the hardcores, many of whom are in this audience, just say, ‘I’ve had enough of it,’” Bannon later proclaimed. “The Epstein situation gets down to one basic question: Who governs this country? Is it a shadowy network of intelligence, MI6 Saudi intelligence, the Mossad, CIA … or do the people of the United States govern?” 

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino may be planning to resign amid major MAGA backlash over the Department of Justice’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation according to one of Donald Trump’s slimiest allies. 

Laura Loomer, a prominent MAGA influencer in the president’s circle posted on X Friday declaring that Bongino was “seriously thinking about RESIGNING” in response to Attorney  General Pam Bondi’s “mishandling” of the Epstein file release. Axios confirmed that the two had sparred on Wednesday.

“Source tells me it’s very likely that Bongino resigns from the FBI unless Pam Blondi is FIRED by President Trump or resigns from the DOJ,” Loomer wrote. 

Earlier Friday, Loomer said that Bongino had played hooky Friday to consider his options, as a stark schism opened up between Trump and his MAGA acolytes to whom he spoon-fed conspiracies.

It’s important to keep in mind that Loomer has her own agenda when she “reports” on the Trump administration, and is desperate for any job that will keep her in close to the Oval Office. 

After the DOJ’s memo declaring that the alleged sex trafficker kept no “incriminating ‘client list’” was released, Loomer had immediately called for Bondi to be fired. This isn’t the first time that the far-right activist has attempted to get involved with personnel decisions at the White House. In April, a meeting she had with Trump led directly to the dismissal of three Pentagon officials, and has repeatedly attacked administration officials she deems to be disloyal to the president.

Now, Loomer could find herself near the epicenter of yet another major shake up. 

Before Tuesday, a district court had barred the Trump administration from firing federal employees en masse as his executive order calling for “large-scale reductions in force” undergoes legal challenges. Then, the Supreme Court granted Trump’s emergency request to lift the injunction.

In the Trump administration’s first batch of firings since getting the Supreme Court’s green light, Marco Rubio’s State Department axed more than 1,300 employees—1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service personnel—as part of a reduction in force affecting 3,000 employees. (The other 1,600 personnel apparently already made incentivized voluntary departures.)

This is seemingly just the beginning for the State Department, as Rubio aims to shrink the department’s domestic workforce of 18,000 by 18 percent.

The American Foreign Service Association issued a statement skewering the cuts as misguided and ill-timed.

“At a moment of great global instability—with war raging in Ukraine, conflict between Israel and Iran, and authoritarian regimes testing the boundaries of international order—the United States has chosen to gut its frontline diplomatic workforce. We oppose this decision in the strongest terms,” the statement said. “In less than six months, the U.S. has shed at least 20 percent of its diplomatic workforce through shuttering of institutions and forced resignations. Losing more diplomatic expertise at this critical global moment is a catastrophic blow to our national interests.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday filed a dissent slamming the Supreme Court decision for helping Trump unleash a “wrecking ball.” That wrecking ball has now made its first impact, but many more are on the way, as the president continues his demolition job on the federal government, imperiling hundreds of thousands of government workers’ livelihoods, not to mention the countless Americans who rely on them.