Rep. Maxwell Frost on how Florida’s internment camp avoids the court
ALSO INSIDE: Senate votes Thursday on lifetime appointment for former Trump attorney
Cam here 👋 bringing you your daily dose of what people are doing – good, bad, and otherwise – in the world of politics. We’re diving into the stories you won’t see anywhere else. And remember, you can also keep up with me over on TikTok and Bluesky.
And if you’re looking for a little more from COURIER, Akilah Hughes goes down the trad wives, MAHA, and Women’s Wellness Pipeline in the latest episode of “How is This Better?”
Since day one of Trump’s political career, people have desperately attempted to normalize his absurd abuses of power and blatant corruption – and 10 years later, much of corporate media remains a victim of their own attempts to return to a sense of normalcy.
It’s time to stop sane-washing the insanity.
What Happened
A list of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s high-profile clients isn’t the only record the Trump administration is going to great lengths to keep hidden from the public. In an interview on Saturday, US Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) revealed that the internment camp set up in the Everglades doesn’t file charges against detainees with state or federal courts.
Frost conducted a restricted congressional oversight visit of the camp, where he was not allowed to enter the tents, speak with detainees, or inspect the medical facility. He was able to briefly examine intake, where detainees are booked, and discovered something unusual: criminal charges against them aren’t being filed.
“When we were in the processing facility, we found out that the system that they're using to keep track of everyone is not the normal system that's used by the courts,” Frost explained. “They actually created a brand new system, just for this internment camp in the Everglades. And, of course, the whole reason they do this is to keep things off the books.”
Typically, after someone is arrested, they can only be detained for 24 hours before they receive their initial court appearance. During that time, prosecutors file formal charges with the appropriate court system, which is processed and made publicly available. Once charges are processed, the accused has the right to stand before a judge and have their day in court, as the US Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed in Noem v. Abrego Garcia earlier this year.
This has caused problems for the Trump administration, which has had to facilitate the return of four people it illegally deported who had pending court cases. To get around the courts, the administration’s latest shadow president, Stephen Miller, now plans to have charges against immigrants dismissed en masse so they can take thousands out of the court system and deport them.
What Frost witnessed at the internment camp takes this a step further by cutting the courts out of the process completely for the newly abducted. People are processed with a private system and detained until they can be put on a plane, which Florida Director of Emergency Management Kevin Guthrie said would be no longer than two weeks.
Since the camp has an airstrip onsite, once a person is taken into custody, the next time they leave will be on a plane out of the country, all without being charged with a crime. And according to records obtained by the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald, who obtained a list of over 700 people detained at the camp, hundreds of people being held have no criminal history whatsoever.
“What we're seeing happen — and this is outside of the centers as well, across the state of Florida —is essentially, someone is picked up for a minor traffic violation or a very small civil thing,” said Frost. “Or maybe they're just picked up randomly once they settle that with the state — they pay the fine, they do whatever — then they just disappear from the system, because they're put into the hands of ICE.”
Note: Later this week, I’ll report more on what Rep. Frost told me during our interview about the Everglade internment camp, including the inhumane conditions, how it’s being used to funnel money to private companies, and what Congress can do to shut down this facility and the 50 other known detention centers the Trump administration has contracted companies to open so far this year.
Attempts to Sanewash
Noem defends conditions at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention facility
Lawmakers visit ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ after being blocked: ‘This place is a stunt’
Allowed inside, lawmakers split on conditions for detainees in ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
Far-Right Spin
6 things the Left doesn’t want you to know about Alligator Alcatraz
Kristi Noem Turns Tables After NBC Host Echoes Dems’ Freakout Over ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
Aileen Cannon 2.0: Senate to vote on lifetime appointment for former Trump attorney
The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to vote Thursday on the nomination of former Trump attorney Emil Bove to be a federal appellate judge.
Bove, whom I wrote about briefly last week, has gained notoriety recently for his role in allegedly obstructing justice at the US Department of Justice (DOJ). Bove is currently a deputy attorney at the DOJ, and told attorneys they should be prepared to “say fuck you to the courts” if they issued orders that got in the way of Trump’s immigration enforcement plan.
But there is so much more to Bove’s resume than firing anyone who refused to defy court orders. Trump nominated him for a lifetime appointment to the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals on May 28, four months after the president named him to his role at the DOJ. In that time, Bove fired a dozen prosecutors who went after Jan. 6 insurrectionists, dismissed corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams as part of a brazen quid pro quo deal between Adams and the Trump administration, and authorized deportation flights after a judge ordered them to stop.
Before his appointment to the DOJ, Bove worked for Trump privately as one of his lead criminal defense attorneys, where he gave his billionaire client a discounted rate. In 2023 and 2024, Bove worked on Trump’s hush money case in Manhattan, the classified documents case in Florida, and the criminal prosecution against him for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. Bove’s team was able to successfully stall all three cases; the federal cases were both dismissed once Trump was reelected, and his 34 felony convictions in Manhattan received an unconditional discharge.
The 126-page questionnaire Bove submitted to the Senate suggests he would remain as loyal to Trump on the bench as he has been previously, including ruling in favor of him running for a third term. Whether or not Bove will have the opportunity to make that ruling first depends on the 21 senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee who will vote on his nomination this week.
Two Republicans would need to side with Democrats to tank Bove’s nomination; here’s who they are, and how to contact them:
Lindsey Graham, South Carolina
US Rep. Michelle Fischbach, Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District
Since taking office in 2021, Rep. Fischbach has:
Seen her net worth increase from $140,000 to $769,000
Sponsored 58 bills
Authored 4 bills that have been signed into law, all to rename post offices
Tried to block the ethics investigation into former US Rep. Matt Gaetz from being released to the public
Received over $40,000 in campaign donations from billionaires after refusing to certify the 2020 election
Shielded Elon Musk and Signalgate participants from congressional oversight
Fun Facts
In 2018, Rep. Fischbach was serving as Minnesota’s Senate President. A string of resignations and appointments that ensued after former US Sen. Al Franken stepped down led to her appointment as the state’s lieutenant governor. Republicans in the Minnesota Senate only had a one-seat majority, however, so Fischbach came up with a simple solution to save their majority: she’d do both jobs!
But that was (probably) illegal, and her announcement was met with several legal threats. After spending months trying to convince people her promotion was “purely ceremonial,” she finally resigned from the state Senate.
Detained by ICE, a Phoenix woman with leukemia faces death without medical care
By Alyssa Bickle, The Copper Courier
Arbella Rodríguez Márquez, known as “Yari” to her friends and family, is a legal permanent resident in Phoenix, who lives with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Rodríguez Márquez, 39, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Feb. 10. Now she is being held at the Eloy Detention Center, the largest ICE prison in the state, where she has been for the last five months. There, she is not receiving proper medical care for her leukemia, a type of cancer that targets white blood cells and bone marrow. As a result, her health is rapidly deteriorating. Her partner, Sonia Almaraz, worries she may not make it out alive.
“In the past five months, she has lost 55 pounds, her hands are swollen and her health worsens every day inside the violent place,” Almaraz said. “Her body is beginning to collapse, she’s experiencing swelling, blotches, bruises, fatigue, and extreme dehydration due to the lack of medical care and proper treatment.”
She has been living in the US for over 20 years and has been a legal resident for two years.
Read Bickle’s full story here.
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Really great you are highlighting the nomination of the odious Bove, Cameron. It's not getting nearly enough attention. We really need to stop him, including otherwise there will be numerous others like him to follow.