Isabela Dias
Reporter at Mother Jones covering immigration, Latin America, and more. Falo português.
- Steven Tendo is a pastor and asylum seeker from Uganda who has survived unimaginable harm and persecution back home. He has been fighting his case for years and reporting to ICE regularly. Yesterday, he was taken into custody—days before a scheduled check-in—and moved from Vermont to New Hampshire.
- “It’s not at all surprising that this is happening with these ICE [removal] officers being sent out to basically treat people terribly,” a one-time deputy chief counsel with the agency told me, anticipating more escalation of violence. My latest for @motherjones.com:
- “Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers,” Stephen Miller said in late 2023. But as I wrote here before Trump's re-election, researchers estimated that large-scale deportations would result in fewer jobs for Americans, not more.
- The U.S.-Born Unemployment Rate Rose After Trump Reduced Immigration www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
- "We have voted. We have protested. We have been killed. We have been persecuted. We have been imprisoned. We have been tortured. We have done everything in our power to have a path to democracy—and we deserve that opportunity.”
- This year felt like a decade. I wanted to highlight some of the immigration reporting I've done over the past 12 months: In January, I wrote about the big money fueling the right's plot to end birthright citizenship.
- All asylum decisions paused. Naturalization ceremonies canceled. Green card applications on hold. The Trump administration's blanket restrictions on legal immigration "don’t just disrupt paperwork, they derail lives.” My latest for @motherjones.com:
- Reporter @dfriedman.bsky.social asked the Pentagon about Pete Hegseth’s mentor. Then the threats began.
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- Much of the current immigration policymaking—if this rampant clampdown and unleashing of brutalizing force can be called that—seems to be now distilled to a simple modus operandi: we do it because we can. My reflection on a year of hell for immigrants and the Trump administration's casual cruelty:
- After 20 years in the Navy, Buzz Grambo thought he'd spend his retirement playing video games and watching baseball. Instead, he patrols the streets of Baltimore to protect his neighbors from ICE. He even upgraded his scooter to a Segway that reaches 26 mph to keep up with the agents. My latest:
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- Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago spent nearly two months in ICE detention—despite having protection under DACA—until a federal judge ruled that the government had no reason to keep her in custody and ordered her release. DHS is still vowing to "explore every available option to remove" her. My latest:
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- Russ Vought's neighbors have strong feelings about him: "You asked what it is like living near such a man. Frankly, I'd rather not, but this is a wonderful neighborhood and, unlike Mr. Vought himself, we do not want our neighbors (even Mr. Vought) to be traumatized. So we just live with it."
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- Reposted by Isabela DiasIt's the last day of our September fundraiser! Please consider supporting our non-profit newsroom as we double down on fearless reporting—just as corporate media caves to Donald Trump. Your donations will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Thank you so much!
- "It’s a blueprint for authoritarianism wrapped in barbed wire and dressed up as local revival.” ICE has its eyes on an idle Core Civic-owned prison in Walsenburg. Local officials have welcomed the potential influx of money and jobs. But residents are pushing back. My latest for @motherjones.com:
- In another loss in the courts for Trump, a federal judge just blocked the administration from revoking legal status from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians in the United States. Judge Chen ruled that the termination of TPS exceeded the DHS Secretary’s authority and violated the law.
- Today, DHS announced the termination of the 2021 TPS designation for Venezuela, adding to the largest de-legalization push in modern US history: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
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- “There’s no family here, there are no lawyers here, nobody exists here.” For four months, Neri Alvarado, Julio Zambrano, and so many others wondered if they were ever going to leave CECOT alive. Now, they want to clear their names and justice for what they had to endure. With @nlanard.bsky.social:
- “You enter legally, and suddenly, because of someone else’s whim, you’re illegal. It doesn’t make sense.” I wrote about the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan TPS holders losing legal status overnight as a result of the Trump administration's mass deportation push.
- "The female guards would count to 20 as they administered the beatings, and if the prisoners complained or cried out, they would start again...Tito Martínez, one of the inmates, recalled that a prison nurse was watching. 'Hit the piñata,' she cheered."
- Late last night, Julio Zambrano's sister sent me this photo of him home with his mother in Venezuela.
- Earlier today, the mother of Julio Zambrano, one of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT, was told to go to Caracas for some "good news." She's at the airport in anticipation of her son's arrival after four long months. @nlanard.bsky.social and I are in touch with other families as they wait for more news.
- Today, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate a legal representation program for detained immigrants with mental health issues who are deemed unfit to represent themselves in court. I wrote about how critical this government-appointed counsel service is here:
- Maria Quevedo, the mother of Eddie Adolfo Hurtado Quevedo, told us she was feeling relieved but still scared. “Happy because God gave me the gift of seeing my son free on my birthday. Scared because my son is going to Venezuela, where he was threatened by the [paramilitary group] colectivos.”
- "The bitterness is still there. The anger about what happened to him is still there.” After four months, more than 200 men sent to El Salvador have been released from CECOT and returned to Venezuela. @nlanard.bsky.social and I spoke with family members and friends waiting to be reunited with them.
- "The bitterness is still there. The anger about what happened to him is still there.” After four months, more than 200 men sent to El Salvador have been released from CECOT and returned to Venezuela. @nlanard.bsky.social and I spoke with family members and friends waiting to be reunited with them.
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- Earlier today, the mother of Julio Zambrano, one of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT, was told to go to Caracas for some "good news." She's at the airport in anticipation of her son's arrival after four long months. @nlanard.bsky.social and I are in touch with other families as they wait for more news.
- “It was a perfect storm.” In Milford, MA, a town where 30 percent of the population is foreign-born, the arrest of 18-year-old Marcelo Gomes da Silva set off a chain reaction unlike anything the community had seen before. My latest for @motherjones.com:
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- NEW: Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar was among the 238 Venezuelans removed to El Salvador without due process in mid-March. He has no criminal history or a final order of deportation. On Friday, a US immigration judge terminated his asylum case, effectively ejecting him from the legal system.
- Reposted by Isabela DiasNEW: We obtained DHS data that shows the US knew only 32 of the 238 Venezuelans deported to a prison in El Salvador in March were convicted of US crimes, only 6 of those violent. Trump called them “savages,” “monsters” and "the worst of the worst.” www.propublica.org/article/trum...
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- “This is not about sending this man or a group of men to another country because of their criminal backgrounds...This is about the executive branch violating fundamental due process and constitutionally protected rights and breaking the law.”
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- Ahead of SCOTUS hearing on Trump's executive order attacking birthright citizenship, here are a few articles I've written that help understand how we got here—and where we could be headed. The conservative effort to undermine birthright citizenship has been a long time in the making:
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- "No trial can be fair that leaves a person with mental illness alone before a court." A counsel-appointed program for detained immigrants with mental health needs and cognitive disabilities has been gutted. Providers say people will languish in detention and be deported without a fighting chance.
- NEW: A DOJ notice encouraging immigrants to "self-deport' is being posted in immigration courts across the country and sent to lawyers, including when their clients have won asylum. Attorneys say the notice is misleading and a "scare tactic" that could lead to people skipping proceedings.
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- “I can’t remember a situation that was this urgent or extraordinary," ACLU's Lee Gelernt told @nlanard.bsky.social and I, "where we were worried that every minute we delayed filing something could mean that our clients would end up permanently in a brutal foreign prison for the rest of their lives.”
