Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-06-04 Thursday

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Democracy Now! Thursday, June 4, 2026

New York, this is democracy now. You can tell there's a certain energy to this movement. The movement spans across the ocean into the United States, and the interesting thing is the problems, are the same problems with the same solutions. I think that's why we are all very interested in what's happening in Europe, whereas Europe, conversely was interested in what was happening in the United States with our mass deportation campaign.

So this is exciting. In Portugal, hundreds of... far-right activists gathered Saturday for an anti-immigrant summit focused on so-called remigration. Those who attended included Trump's former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who led the deadly immigration crackdowns in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. We'll speak to two reporters about Bovino, but first we get a report from outside the Delaney Hall Ice Jail in Newark, New Jersey, where prisoners launched a hunger strike two weeks ago. People are scared. People are confused. I just heard a mom tell her daughter, it's okay. We're okay. Look, I told you there's nothing to be scared of because the daughter started shaking.

She's just here to see her dad. She thinks Delaney Hall is a hospital because her her family is too scared to tell her what it actually is, which is a concentration cam. And as the U.S. continues to threaten Cuba, we'll speak to Princeton, historian. Anna Ferrer. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, Cuba, an American history, her new memoir, Keeper of My Ken memoir of an immigrant daughter. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The House of Representatives says approved legislation seeking to end President Trump's war in Iran. On Wednesday, four, Republican Congress members broke ranks and sided with Democrats in a 215-208

vote on the war powers resolution directing President Trump to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities against Iran unless explicitly authorized by Congress. The vote had initially been set for two weeks ago, but was delayed after House Speaker Mike Johnson adjourned for an early May recess when it appeared the resolution had the votes to pass. It now heads to the Senate. If approved there, the resolution would require Trump's signature. Neither chamber of Congress appears to have enough votes to override a presidential veto. Meanwhile, Michigan Democratic Congress member Rashida Taleb is moving forward with a separate war powers resolution that would end U.S. military involvement in Israel's war on Lebanon. She spoke from the House floor Wednesday.

Organization says human rights rights have documented Israel's illegal use of white phosphorus multiple times in Lebanon, which is a war crime. They launched it in residential neighborhoods, y'all. In Lebanese farmland, is there. this what our country is supporting? We are supplying these horrific chemical bombs to the Israeli military, and our military is providing operational support as we speak for these scorched earth campaigns that is destroying the very conditions of life in Lebanon. Lebanon's governments agree to extend the U.S. brokered ceasefire with Israel, even though the Israeli military is consistently violated it. The agreement reached Wednesday requires Hezbollah to ceasefire on Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon, ordering the withdrawal from territory north of the

Latani River. Once again, Hezbollah was not a party to the talks, which were hosted by the State Department in Washington. Ahead of Wednesday's announcement, Hezbollah continued to attack Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon and fired rockets toward northern Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes across Lebanon killed at least nine people Wednesday, including an attack on an ambulance that killed two paramedics. Several more people were wounded. after the ceasefire extension was announced when an Israeli drone attacked a vehicle in southern Lebanon. On Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified to a House committee on Wednesday that military operations against Iran are over. Rubio later clarified his remark to state he meant

only that Operation Epic Fury had ended. It's a fact. We're no longer conducting sustained strikes inside of Iran to degrade their military because Epic Fury is over. Even as Rubio spoke, President Trump appeared to contradict his testimony, telling reporters in the Oval Office the U.S. had attacked Iran as recently as Tuesday evening. And we hit them pretty hard the night before and actually last night. Trump claimed talks to end the U.S. war in Iran were going very well, actually, and could result in a breakthrough as soon as this weekend. He spoke just hours after Iran attacked diplomatic facilities in Kuwait, along with its international. airport, killing one person and injuring over 60 others.

You're not saying that part of the world ceasefires when you're shooting in a more moderate manner. Iranian foreign minister of Basaragchi said Iran remains in communication with the Trump administration, but stress there had been no tangible progress with U.S. negotiators. In Gaza, Israeli air strikes overnight killed nine Palestinians, including four children. On Wednesday, mourners gathered at Alaksa Hospital to bid farewell to two Palestinian brothers, Sakhar and Moham al-Qalil Abu Qarim, who were killed in an Israeli air strike at Magazi refugee camp. This is one of their relatives. There's no ceasefire or anything.

The Israeli army is targeting civilians. He was a young man trying to make a living just like me. I'm a tradesman, just trying to earn a living. We want to live. What shall we do? it's a wartime and everything is shut down. The British government has banned progressive political commentators Hassan Piker and Chank Wiger from entering the UK. They were scheduled to speak at the South by Southwest London Festival and the Oxford Union Society.

The UK's home office said it was canceling their travel permits, quote, on the grounds that their presence in the UK may not be conducive to the public good, unquote. Both Piker and Uyghur outspoken in their criticism of Israel. Weiger posted on social media, quote, I've been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free anymore? he asked. Piker also said, quote, the U.K. has revoked my visa as well. All at the behest of Israel, Piker said.

President Trump said Wednesday night. He'll nominate Todd Blanche as his next attorney general. Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general since Trump fired Pam Bondi in April. He was previously President Trump's personal lawyer. President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday, making it easier to fire 8,000 of the highest-paid government workers. The order by the Office of Personnel Management strips a mostly senior group of workers of their civil service protections by classifying them as at-will employees who can be fired without a stated

cause. The White House previously indicated up to 50,000 positions could be reclassified and hasn't ruled out expanding its order. In Bolivia, rural communities demanding the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz have seized an oil field in the Santa Cruz region, shutting down production. Protesters closed the well valves and erected barriers to slow the events of the police with a local leader stating the takeover was nonviolent and decided collectively by indigenous community members. Police later moved in with riot gear arresting four people, the oil field action is the latest escalation in a weeks-long general strike opposing Paz's

sweeping neoliberal agenda. The unrest began in early May over fuel shortages, rising living costs, and austerity measures. Since then, it's left at least five people dead and caused billions of dollars in economic losses. President Paz's proposing a controversial state of exception bill to Bolivia's Congress to authorize the military to dismantle roadblocks. has nationwide protests enter their fifth week. This is Bolivian President Paz. All the efforts that our national police are armed forces and the government will make will be humanitarian actions aimed at changing this situation.

In Chile, thousands of students, teachers, and activists have taken to the streets of Santiago in a massive march against far-right president, Jose Antonio Cass, education cuts in sweeping austerity measures. Since taking office in March, Cast has pledged to slash roughly $6 billion in public spending over 18 months, imposing a nearly 3% budget cut across all ministries. The Confederation of Students of Chile called on citizens to reject the austerity plan under the slogan, public education must be defended. Warning free, higher education is now under threat in Chile.

These are some of the voices from the march. We are returning once again to a savage dictator. The kids tried to march and the police didn't let them. The teachers were gassed and beaten. We are fighting to maintain rights, to protect them not only for us students, but also for the elderly, and for all the people who need support and whom the state cannot leave alone. Mexico City has been rocked by massive labor protests, as the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers is calling for dignified pensions, fair wages, and job security.

The strike comes just days before Mexico's SETA, who's the first match of the World Cup soccer tournament. On Monday, striking teachers marched on Zocalo Square, where they were met with tear gas from riot police, as they broke through metal barricades. On Tuesday, they toppled giant mannequins of soccer stars advertising FIFA World Cup matches. According to the Union, five protesters who were injured in the clashes. This is Jose Mantes de Oka, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Mexican electricians Union. There is a lack of sensitivity on the part of the government to address and resolve the demands of the working class organized as a social movement. And in Albania, protests are growing over the development of a massive resort linked to Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law.

Back in 2024, Kushner and Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump were set to invest $1.4 billion into turning an abandoned Soviet weapons base, known as Sassan, into a luxury island resort. Cezan Island is littered with World War II era unexploded ordinance, including artillery shells and anti-submarine mines. Activists are now raising concerns that the resort will impact wildlife, particularly the flamingo, seals and sea turtles that live in an area of coastal wetland. This is a local ecologist. In this stretch of kilometers of land, of wildlife habitat, we plan to build a new city. It's declared 10,000 rooms. and what we hear now it's even more. So there we won't have any more the protected area.

The Delta of Viosa is completely being destroyed. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Narmine Sheikh. Welcome to our listeners and views across the country and around the world. As protests continue outside the Newark, New Jersey immigration jail known as Delaney Hall, on New Jersey's Attorney General has sued the Geo Group, the private prison company operating the facility.

The lawsuit asked the court to grant the State Health Department full access to the facility. New Jersey Governor Mikey Sherrill said in a statement, quote, if the Geo Group, with a $1 billion government contract, has nothing to hide and the conditions inside Delaney Hall are as safe and as sanitary as this private corporation and the Trump administration claim, then there is no legitimate reason why my health inspectors are being kept from full access throughout the building. The New Jersey governor is still being denied access to visit the ICE jail. This comes as the city of Newark plans to expand its own lawsuit from last year against the for-profit Geo Group,

asking a court to close Eleni Hall unless city officials are allowed to inspect the jail. Newark Mayor Ross Baraka also looks. lifted a nightly curfew around Delaney Hall on Tuesday as hundreds of immigrants jailed inside the ICE jail continue a hunger and labor strike. Democracy Now is Maria Inez-Teresna was outside Delaney Hall Tuesday and filed this report. We are standing outside the police barricade. It's about half a mile away from Delaney Hall, the ice jail here in Newark. We just spend the afternoon with mutual aid workers speaking to them, speaking to some of the families of immigrants who are detained inside.

They're saying families need an appointment. That has never been the case for those visiting. They're just making it more and more difficult to go and visit those who are on labor and hunger strike. And those who have been on strike have been isolated, retaliated against, have had their tablets taken away from them, have had pepper sprays in their units, and then had the doors closed. We have firsthand accounts of this happening.

These families are just here to visit. They're still waiting here. And whenever we ask the cops, they're literally ignoring me. And our families, how do they feel? Have they told you if they are afraid now that they have to be escorted by police in order to even get to the entrance of Delaney Hall, which used to not be the case? case when this barrier was not in place. People are scared. People are confused. I just heard a mom

tell her daughter it's okay. We're okay. Look, I told you there's nothing to be scared of because the daughter started shaking. She's just here to see her dad. She thinks Delaney Hall is a hospital because her her family is too scared to tell her what it actually is, which is a concentration camp. That was Natalie, a mutual aid organizer with the group Eyes on Ice, New Jersey. We spoke to a high school senior who asked us not to use his real name. He was wearing his graduation sash. I'm here to visit my father. And, I mean, I just came from my signing day, and I wanted to come to see my father.

What would you like to tell your father on such a special day and such an incredible accomplishment? That I did it for him. But all I ever thought about, all I had in mind was him. I really wish she was here. I really wish he was here to see me graduate, and to be here with me. He's been there maybe five months, maybe six. I lost count.

I've been focused more in school. I've been trying to get there for him. I've been trying to make my family proud. We also spoke to a young woman who was there with her siblings and cousin. They asked us to conceal their identities. I was trying to meet my father. He recently got put in, and right now we can't find anybody to help us with the lawyer. And no lawyer is trying to help his case.

And so it's really hard to find someone to stay here because he does not deserve to go to another country when he belongs in this one. If you were able to see your father, what would you like to tell him? Oh, let's tell him that I love him and that one day I know we will be together as a whole family and, you know, I don't know. You know, you have a bond, you know, a father-daughter bond. Do you have any siblings? Yes, that's right here actually my brother and his little baby that he has newborn. it's hard to see him because he has a newborn baby. He does not have a father.

He only has a mother. His mother can't take care of him just by himself. He needs two parents to support him and love him. Every child needs a parent to be there. And it's so painful because not having a father, knowing that your father's in jail, and you can't even communicate. And growing up with the father is just so hard.

About an hour after we spoke to them, they were given permission to pass through the police barrier around Delaney Hall. Others, however, were escorted to the Laney Hall by local police only to be the night entry to visit their loved ones. This is Kimberly Trinidad. My dad's name is Vicenda Trinidad Paliero, and my uncle is Augustine Trinidad Paliero.

So they were, they're here since Wednesday, the 20th. They happened to be detained in a home depot, in Howell, New Jersey. My father has his work authorization, and since the 20th, they haven't released him. A lawyer had to file a habeas corpus for both of them. He tried to show them his social security card, tried to show them his work authorization card. It didn't matter, and they brought him in anyway. My uncle, on the other hand, he doesn't have any legal status.

been here for over 30 years. Were you able to see them this afternoon? I was not because they said that you have to be on a list to get in. I'm Rachel Marindette. I am a detention attorney at the American Friends Service Committee, which is a nonprofit here in New Jersey. So I was inside visiting. I saw five of my clients who are inside today. So I have some clients who, you know, have various, like, medical conditions and because the food in the dining hall is so inedible, they won't eat anything other than out of the commissary. So when their commissary shut down for five days, they're not eating. So many of the clients I saw today hadn't had anything to eat other than perhaps like a cracker in the past week or so. And then there's also, you know, temperature dysregulation.

They said they often like will crank up the air conditioning so that everyone's freezing, which often really feels like kind of direct retaliation. As mutual aid advocates began to pack up and the sun started setting, a man was released from Delaney Hall and re-reasoned. And re-released, united with his friend of 14 years. Feliz, Feliz, are out of his miracle.

Thank you, thank you, God. The man identified himself as Damian Castillo. He said he was detained for about

three weeks. And that he knew of the hunger strike happening inside in a different detention unit. He said the detainees were treated very poorly and were often put on lockdown.

This is Maria Inesta Rasena with Diego Ramos and Sharina Nadura reporting for Democracy Now outside of Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey. Thank you for that, Maria. To see all of our coverage on the hunger strike and protests at the Delaney Hall Ice Jail in Newark, go to Democracy Now.org. Coming up hundreds of far-right activists gathered in Portugal Saturday for an anti-immigrant summit focused on so-called remigration among those who attended. Trump's former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino. Stay with us. Through the old winter's ice and cold down Nicoleta.

City of flame fought fire and ice. Needs an occupier But King Trump's private Army from the D.A. Ages Guns belt is to enforce them all.

So there's stole against smoke for just Streets of Minneapolis, Bruce Springsteen, performing on Democracy Now's 30th anniversary on Monday night, March 23rd at the Riverside

Church. To see the full performance and the event go to DemocracyNow.org. This is Democracy Now, DemocacyNow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermyn Scheher. In Portugal, hundreds of far-right activists

gathered Saturday for the annual Remigration Summit, advocating for the mass deportation of immigrants. Former U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino and white nationalist leader, Jared Taylor, were VIP guests alongside elected officials

from Germany's far right, anti-immigrant AFD party, and Spain's Vox. Other attendees included Stefano Forte, president of the New York Young Republican Club. In an interview ahead of the event, Greg Bovino cited Nazi Germany's lead general, Ervin Romel, as an inspirational figure. At the summit, Bovino said,

quote, if there is inspiration gained from the U.S. Border Patrol model and method, then fantastic. Gregory Bovino led the Trump administration's militarized immigration crackdowns in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. Earlier this year, he appeared in Minneapolis wearing a long olive wool overcoat that some online observers likened to, quote, a Nazi cosplay coat. California Governor Gavin Newsom's social media press account called it Nazi coded.

Bavino was eventually removed from his position in January after immigration agents under his command killed 37-year-old VA nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Pretty was shot dead two weeks after an ICE agent fatally shot Rene Good in Minneapolis. During an interview outside the so-called remigration summit in Portugal, Bavino criticized the Trump administration. The base is not very happy now over what's happening immigration-wise. They voted for mass deportations. Mass deportations are not occurring. There are no mass deportations occurring in the United States right now. So those MAGA voters, those 80 million that came out to vote for him in the polls, are not happy campers right now.

We go now to Vienna, Austria, to speak with the reporter Charles Davis, who writes for The Guardian and also runs the redoubt where his new piece is headlined, why did the press ignore a gathering of the world's leading fascists? Charles, thanks so much for being. with us, why don't you talk about what remigration is and the significance of Bovino being there? Yeah, so remigration is basically the policy response to the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory. And the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory, as I think, unfortunately a lot of your viewers will already know about, is the idea that there's like a global elite plot, typically by Jews, to replace white Europeans and white North Americans with immigrants via mass migration.

So remigration was a term that was popularized a few years ago by an Austrian activist named Martin Selner. He's also the guy who helped popularize the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. And it basically is, it's an argument for mass deportations, not just of illegal criminals, as the typical rhetoric you would hear from the Trump administration far-right parties here in Europe, but it's the idea that you need to actually like reverse the 20th century. That the issue was not just the immigrants who came in the last few years, seeking asylum, refugee status, but those who were allowed in over the last hundred years who were not really, as they see it, European or American.

And Charles, could you explain why you mentioned earlier? Why is this re-migration idea attributed to Jews, this global plot? Well, actually, yeah, my original piece that I wrote last week, I spoke to a professor at the University of Vienna named Daniel Sharp, who explained that this is basically rooted in Nazi ideology. Like the idea, specifically, let's talk about Germany and Austria, the idea that certain people were not German and Austrian, despite the fact that they had lived in this area for hundreds of years, despite the fact that they had citizenship, that was very much the Nazi idea.

In fact, remigration back then, before became the Holocaust, was the idea that we would expel Jews to places like Madagascar. So when it's popularized now, like, I mean, this is why it caused such a controversy a few years ago when Martin Selner was meeting with members of alternative. for Deutschland. In 2003, the German Outlet Corrective reported that there was a secret meeting in Potsdam between Selner and leaders of the AFD. And that caused national protests because Germans know their history, right? They know what happens when you start saying certain Germans are more Germans than others. And I think what is so alarming about this summit is that these

people, including the AFD lawmakers that attended this, the AFD lawmakers Lena Corta, and the AFD press that showed up to give her a platform, they're now doing it out in the open. And I think that is maybe one of the lessons they've learned from Donald Trump. They've been both emboldened and empowered by him. And they've also learned that the way you get away with this kind of stuff and get away with this kind of crazy conspiratorial and, you know, policy of ethnic cleansing, which I think you can call remigration,

the way you get away with it is not by having secret meetings that the press can then expose. You just do it out in public and you say, there's something scandalous here. We're doing this out in public. organizing on Facebook. In fact, that's where I first learned about this summit. Paid Facebook ads by the group Reconquista, which is a far-right Portuguese group, which is named after the idea of mass expulsions of Muslims historically from the Iberian Peninsula. And so now it's all out in the open. And if we can be grateful to Greg Bevino for anything, it's to drawing some attention

to this and also spelling out what they mean by remigration. It is not just deporting the so-called illegals. Greg Bovino, when he was criticizing the Trump administration, you know, I'm less interested in his sour grapes and more in the fact that he spelled out that he thinks there are 100 million illegal aliens in the United States. Now, most credible experts would tell you there are 12 million tops, but if you were paying attention during the 2024 campaign, you might have seen Donald Trump and J.D. Vance making that number go a little bit higher every time they spoke. It hit 20 million. It hit 30 million. And now it hit 100 million. And I think that speaks to the fact They're not just trying to get people out based on pure legal status.

You have to view it in the context of trying to eliminate birthright citizenship and rolling back to the 20th century. It's getting rid of people that came over the last hundred years who they define is not American or not European enough for the European context. And so if you could say a little bit more about the way in which Trump and his administration generally have been advancing and elevating this idea, And in particular, the fact that the State Department has pledged to create an office for remigration, what is the status of that? Has it been established? And what is its purpose? Well, you know, the Trump administration, there's always a little bit of dance that the far right does. There are those that are like the public figures that say, you know, remigration, don't get too scared about it.

We actually just mean deporting criminals. That is what the AFD did after their secret meeting with Martin Seller was exposed a few years ago. If you go to their website, they say, we just mean getting rid of, like, the people that have committed violent crimes, et cetera. And same with the Trump administration. I do not know if they actually succeeded in establishing this, but the whole department of my remigration that they were going to establish under the State Department was ostensibly about voluntary self-deportation. Of course, when you get them to speak honestly at some as like this happened over the weekend, you see that it's not just about getting out a certain amount of illegal aliens as they say. as they call them, or getting people to self-deport. I mean, they would get people to self-deport by creating such a hostile environment,

and I think through state force, to get them expelled. And in terms of remigration in Europe, the United States State Department has actually endorsed this great replacement conspiracy theory. In the U.S. National Security Strategy document that was released last December, the Trump administration warned that majority non-Europeans were taking over Europe, and that Europeans faced a stark prospect of civiliz, civilizational erasure, and that should present trends continue,

the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. Now, living here in Vienna, I can tell you that that is not really taking place. You know, there are definitely more immigrants here than there were 20 years ago, but the idea that they're facing civilizational erasure for white Austrians, that is, it's conspiratorial.

And I think what upsets me so much about the coverage of this and just the far-rate extremism in general, is that if you sound kind of crazy when you talk about it, when you say that the face of Donald Trump's deportation policy and a young Republican leader, Stefano Forte, are going to Europe to meet with self-described fans of Adolf Hitler, people that you can fairly describe as neo-Nazi activists, to talk about a plan for ethnic cleansing.

It sounds crazy because, you know, we should acknowledge that there has been some reporting on this. It's not just people like myself. But you have not seen any coverage from CBS News. You've not seen any coverage from the Washington Post. You've not seen any coverage from the New York Times. And I think that is a huge problem, because the New York Times especially as an institution

that could make this something more than just a one-day story. That could press the Trump administration to answer. When did they realize that Greg Bevino was a Nazi sympathizer? And to press Republicans in New York and elsewhere, do you agree with Stefano Forte in his efforts to forge, a kind of new fascist transatlantic alliance. So I want to ask you more about Bovino and why people should care since he has been ousted.

You have him tweeting from Newark. Many people wondered if he had gone to Delaney, but on his way to Portugal. Senator Mullen, he was talking about the new DHS secretary. And the rest of them have been trying to handle these riots. Well, let's just say it's not going great. For those of you in the comments section, give a vote. Should I just handle this myself? Those agents' lives are at stake due to this

inaction. And then you have, let me go to Greg Bovino speaking to Newsmax about the hunger strike at the Delaney Hall, ICE jail, and Newark. As far as the facilities, those facilities are actually, I think they're too good. Fantastic facilities. Those detainees get everything they need. But what they really need is deporting and we need to expand this facility so we can get even more detainees in there. Carl, hey, I've heard about a hunger strike, which, you know, I think that's fake news anyway. But if they did, well, I'm okay with that because if they lose weight, we can get even more people on planes for deportation. So that was Bovino talking to Newsmax. And, of course, you had Tom Holman, the so-called Borders czar denying there's a hunger strike.

but then saying he would force feed prisoners there. And then you have Bovino saying, you have the world watching and supporting your efforts to hold the line. He's saying to ICE agents at Delaney, every one of us wants to be shoulder to shoulder with you. In speaking with the mean green team, they send you support and are wishing you the best. He also talked about ICE agents at Delaney hang in there.

This is extremely interesting, given he is both supporting them and criticizing the Trump administration. Your final comment on this, the role he plays. Well, yeah, I think he does speak for the MAGA base. And I think it's interesting that when he criticizes the Trump administration, he's criticizing the czars around him. It's always the bad advisors. He's not criticizing Stephen Miller or Donald Trump. And I think he's right not to because I think Stephen Miller and Donald Trump share the remigration agenda that he has. And I think it's interesting since we're talking about him showing up to Newark,

or at least faking that he would. You know, for several days, organizers of this summit had been teasing that they would have a special guest star. And in the weeks leading up to it, I kind of wondered who that was. I thought, is it going to be a former Fox News anchor? Is it going to be Nick Fuentes? And then Greg Bovino posted on X, a photo of himself with giving way it can only be described as a Nazi salute. And I think at that exact moment, I realized, it is him. It is him. and I checked the telegram channel for the summit, and they had just announced him. And I think that is what is alarming, because I think he does speak in an unfiltered way what Stephen Miller and Donald Trump would like to say, but they are prevented to by

the Susie Wiles, who know, again, this kind of fascist dance, that you cannot come out and say this. You can hint at it by embracing the term remigration, but when the broader public asked you what that mean, you tell them it's not the scary thing that it totally does mean in which you are signaling to your far-right supporters that you yourself support. Well, I also want to bring into this conversation, Amanda Moore. She's a reporter who focuses on far-right extremism and state violence. Her recent piece for the nation is headlined notes from an ice chaser.

She spent months covering Gregory Bovino and the immigration crackdown from Mother Jones and other outlets. Welcome to Democracy Now, Amanda. We've just been talking about Bovino at this remigration summit in Portland. Portugal. Could you talk about what you did? The title of your piece is notes from an ice chaser. You chased Bovino? Basically, yeah. I followed Bovino and the surge of federal agents into Illinois, North Carolina, New Orleans, and Minnesota. And so just kind of tailing his caravan, usually, and his men as they drove around. And what did you hope to do by doing this? What did you hope to accomplish by doing this? Well, I mean, we were recording what was happening, right?

So, you know, there was an extreme amount of violence, especially at the Broadview Ice Facility outside of Chicago. But, you know, also just having the agents driving around and stopping random people at bus stops or, you know, just walking down the street and tackling them, taking them away. you know, without journalists dedicated to following that, you're really relying on community members happening to be around and happening to think to pull out their phones. You last were in Delaney. You were in Minneapolis. You were in ICE. You were in Chicago. Talk about what you saw, what the ICE agents were doing, how they were trained, and how this fits into your overall coverage of far-right extremism and state violence here.

Sure. So, I mean, Bavino led Border Patrol. And so though these were, you know, considered ICE surgeons and a lot of federal agents were moved over to ICE, whether they were with ATF or IRS or any other agency, you know, there is a different culture between Border Patrol and ICE. And so a lot of ICE agents now that were previously hired before the Trump administration or before Trump 2.0 kind of are not very positive about their experiences in the U. cities because they don't like that everyone is now considered ice. They don't like, you know, Bovino's cowboy style tactics. They felt like they were put in danger. But, you know, with border patrol, it was different. I think, you know, there would be an escalation of violence outside of the detention facilities where people would be protesting, just massive amounts of tear gas, even when they were in neighborhoods, you know, they would snipe us with rubber bullets from rooftops, by the detention centers. And then in Newark, most recently at Delaney, it was clear that they had been told they had to tone down the visual effects, which meant instead of tear gas, people were getting

tased. And they were being sprayed with extremely powerful pepper spray. Explain what commuters are in the context of those documenting the effects of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, Amanda. Sure. So in each city, there would be groups of people, regular citizens, who would also be following ICE and Border Patrol around. And so they refer to themselves as commuters, as then, you know, I am commuting behind a caravan full of, you know, ice. And they would have signal chats where they would discuss, you know, this is, you know, we're turning on this street here. If you want to follow, you know, along with us, they would haunt horns and blow whistles to alert people in the community that immigration. officials were around. And finally, with, as we're seeing, Bovino attending this far-right, so-called remigration summit in Portugal, and, you know, the images of him in Chicago wearing that Nazi-like green wool coat that he had specially made, your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, you know, that's a photo that I think Bovino's been quite proud of. Ever since it was taken, he immediately started using it, as well as clips of him doing, you know, the hand gestures and the slew as he was getting into the car. So, I mean, it's not something that he's ever hidden, that, you know, this is kind of how he feels. And I don't find it very surprising that he was at the summit. And finally, I wanted to go back to Charles Davis and ask you about another member of the administration if you have researched him. And that is Sebastian Gorka, who, I mean, I think his current role is deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism on the White House National Security Council. He, a top post, Gorka advised Trump in his first term, but was pushed out after the forward newspaper, revealed he once had ties to a Hungarian, far-right Nazi-allied group and that he supported an anti-sense. Semitic and racist paramilitary military in Hungary once he, while he served as a Hungarian politician,

just to round out your coverage of the far right in Europe. Well, yeah, I mean, I think Sebastian Gorka, the fact that he has returned in the second Trump administration, just like another figure from the first Trump administration, Darren Beatty, who got fired for speaking at a white nationalist conference, shows how, like, unleashed the second Trump administration is and how it is dead bent. on forging these ties with far-right extremists. I actually want to go back to Stefano Forte, because although he's just the president

of the New York Young Republican Club, he's actually a key intermediary between the MAGA right and the far-right in Europe. So he invited AFD members who attend his first gala as president of the New York Young Republican Club last December, and he was just invited a few weeks ago to address members of the AFD

in the German parliament. So it is at multiple levels at the Trump administration seeking to forge ties with extremists abroad. And it's certainly something that, again, I think there needs to be a drumbeat of coverage from major media to really drive home

to the average American that this extremism should be viewed with alarm. That is not just those on the left calling people fascists. These people themselves describing themselves as such and still receiving the support from the Trump administration and members of the MAGA movement.

Charles Davis of the Redoubt will link to your new article. Why did the press ignore a gathering of the world's leading fascists? And Amanda Moore will link to your new article in the nation, Notes from an Ice Chaser. We'll link at Democracy Now.org. Coming up as the U.S. continues to threaten Cuba,

we'll speak to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Princeton historian, Ada Ferrer. Stay with us. The Cuban singer in central park in central park almost a decade ago. This is Democracy Now. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermyn Scheher. We turn now to Cuba, five months into the Trump administration's energy blockade of the island,

coming on top of the longest embargo in U.S. history. Banded U.S. sanctions have exacerbated Cuba's economic crisis, forcing 10 million Cubans to live with rolling blackouts, inflation, and shortages of basic goods. This is 64-year-old Felicia de la Caridad Alvarez, a resident of old Havana. We've been without water for six months. Water is essential in a home. Without water, you're nothing. Life doesn't flow. That cistern is empty.

Every 21 days or a little longer, if I don't push the mayor or the director of Aguas de la Havana, they don't send the water truck. And what they do send is a small one. What we need here is a big one. This year, President Trump repeatedly threatened to take over Cuba. But at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio evaded a question about whether the Trump administration plans to invade the island. The question came from Illinois Democratic Congress. Congress member Jonathan Jackson, the son of Reverend Jesse Jackson. Congressman Jackson recently returned from a visit to Cuba. In closing, I would like to ask you, will you invade Cuba?

I yield back. Well, I have one second to answer. What do I do? I mean, you guys tell me your rules. I tried to write down all of something. Will you invade Cuba? Well, that's not the only thing you said. Just last week, Rubio described Cuba as a failed state threatening U.S. national security. He was speaking at a cabinet meeting. Cuba's in a lot of trouble because, unfortunately, for them, it's run by a bunch of incompetent communists. It's 90 miles from our shores. And having a failed state, 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States. Wednesday, June 3rd, was the 95th birthday of former Cuban president and Fidel's younger brother.

Raul Castro. He was a key figure in the Cuban Revolution and remains a powerful figure in Cuban politics, despite having stepped down in 2018. Last month, on May 20th, Cuban Independence Day, the Trump administration unsealed an indictment against Raul Castro for murder and other crimes. Over the 1996 shootdown of two planes flown by Cuban exiles from Miami, who were part of the anti-Castro's Castro Group Brothers to the Rescue, founded by the CIA operative Jose Basulto. Two days later, President Trump threatened Cuba once again saying it was likely he would order military strikes.

Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years doing something, and it looks like I'll be the one that does it, so I would be happy to do it. For more, we're joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at Princeton University. Ada Ferrer, Professor of History and the author of Cuba and American History, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Her latest book is a memoir about growing up between Cuba and the United States. It's called Keeper of My Kinn, Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter. Professor Ferrer, welcome to Democracy Now. Start off by responding to the latest, the indictment of now the 95-year-old former president.

Raul Castro? Marco Rubio, is it pushing hard for, is it overthrow? Is it change of administration? But the fact is he said that it's a threat to the national security of the United States being just 90 miles offshore. Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Amy. It's good to be here. May has been such a busy month in terms of the U.S. pressure campaign against the Cuban government. You mentioned the indictment of Raul Castro. There have been a hardening of secondary sanctions against Cuba, and that is all having an effect on the ground. Just a couple of days ago, Spanish and Canadian companies involved in tourism and hotels have announced that they're pulling out or partially pulling out. So the situation there is dire. It has been for quite some time, and it's gotten,

worse and worse over the last five months. So, you know, it's so hard to predict what will happen, in part because Donald Trump is unpredictable, but there's no question that it's the Cuban people who are bearing the brunt of the policies of both governments. And Professor Federer, if you could also respond specifically to Rubio's comments in this regard, Marco Rubio himself, a Cuban American,

at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday, evading a question about whether the Trump administration plans to invade Cuba, and then describing Cuba as a failed state threatening U.S. national security. Yeah, I mean, he says Cuba is a threat because it's 90 miles from its shores and it's a failed state. But, you know, the geographic position of Cuba hasn't changed last I looked. there, I don't have access obviously to the kind of internal documents that they do. But given the hardships in Cuba, given the fact that right now the government can't, you know, can't provide water and electricity, it's hard to think about it as a serious threat to a government

like the U.S., which is so powerful. And who do you ultimately? And in terms of invading, I mean, sorry. No, no, please go ahead, go ahead. Well, in terms of invading, I mean, Trump has been threatening that since January, since the Maduro operation. You know, people thought he said in the beginning that it would happen within day, you know, the Cuban government would fall within days that obviously didn't happen. He's perfectly capable, I think, of invading as is Rubio, as is this government. But, you know, it's hard to predict from one day to the next.

You see what's happening in Iran, what's happening in this country. And, you know, it's just, it's hard to say. But I have no doubt that Trump would do that if he thought it worked. It would work. And Professor Ferrer, if you could, you know, your position, broadly speaking, has been one in which you're absolutely against American imperial ambitions in Cuba and also those being the cause of. of much of the suffering in Cuba, in particular with this increase in the level of sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on Cuba. But you have simultaneously also criticized the government in Cuba. If you could talk a little bit about this and why you think it's essential to hold

both these positions simultaneously. Yeah. So I think, I mean, it's clear the embargoes done harm to the Cuban people and the, you know, the really intensified sanctions since January have as well. My sense is that the Cuban government is not focused. Its priority is not the well-being of the Cuban people right now. It has made decisions in the short run and in the long run that have not prioritized them. So, for example, it invests, even with tourism in decline, continues, it has continued until recently to invest heavily in tourism, ignoring sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, education, health, all of which are in a horrible decline. Even going back, you know, I started traveling to Cuba in 1990, which was shortly before the

fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. So I spent a lot of time there in what is called the special period. Fidel Castro called it the special period in time of peace. And part of the way that the government, the Cuban government survived, the fall of the eastern block, which was its patron and provided most of the petroleum and subsidies that kept the Cuban state afloat. Part of the way they handled that was to turn to tourism. So I spent a lot of time there in the early 90s, and you would see the water trucks, you know, that the speaker you featured just a few minutes ago talked about. and you'd see these huge water trucks in front of tourist hotels while people in Havana had no water. And, you know, you can't ignore basic infrastructure for 30 years and divert all investments to tourism and not expect it all eventually to come crumbling down. And so what we're living through, what Cubans are living through now is the combined effect of a longstanding embargo and a government,

that has not invested significantly in basic infrastructure and in well-being, in particular, over the last 30 years. Well, Professor Farah, now we would like to turn to your remarkable memoir, Keeper of My Kin, Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter, in which, of course, you tell your own story, the story of you and your family between Cuba and the U.S., the story of your migration to the U.S. But of course, what you write about has much wider and broader implications for how we understand migration generally.

And I'd just like to read to you from your book right at the beginning. You have three notes to the reader. The third of which reads, quote, The consequences of migration are many. One is that people often have to live the intimacy of family across multiple languages, the burden and privilege of translation falling usually to the children. So first of all, if you could talk about your own position as that, at least in your initial years in the U.S., and what that means in terms of how migrants, what they experience as they

come to the U.S.? Yeah, this is, you know, the book is an immigrant memoir. So it's the story that many immigrants share about living between two places. It is also a story about family separation, which is such an important topic given what's happening in the U.S. right now. So at the heart of the story is my own migration with my mother from Havana in 1963. And when we came to the U.S., well, there were no direct flights because it was after the Cuban missile crisis and those had been suspended, but we went to Mexico briefly and then joined my father in New York. My mother, we left behind my brother, my mother's son from a first marriage, who was

nine and a half years old. So my grace, our life in the U.S. began with that absence at its heart. So leaving behind my brother, my grandparents, and, you know, it's what many immigrants have to do. sometimes politics can make all that a lot harder. And in the case of Cuba, there was no such thing as going back. Cubans in the U.S. and abroad weren't allowed to go back for short visits until 1979. And it was hard for military age men to migrate. So a lot of times, separations that people had hoped would last maybe a few months

or a year or two stretched into many years and, decades. So, and I, and I hear echoes of it in so many things today. I hear it, you know, listening to some of the people interviewed at Delaney Hall, the boy who graduated and his father couldn't be there, you know, that separation is at the, family separation is at the heart of so much. And then also I hear it in a continued Cuban migration. Cuba has seen the largest exodus in its history over the last five, eight years since the, since 2017, 2018. Number, exact numbers are hard to come by because Cuba hasn't had a census since 2012, but it's predicted that Cuba has lost about 20% of its population, many of them young people

who basically see no future in that country and decide literally that the future is another country. And each of those people, or many of those people, leave behind loved ones and leave in a moment of great uncertainty and suffer the effects of family separation, of decisions made by governments who don't, frankly, think about them enough. So the echoes of our family story in our migration. I see in so many places I have, you know, a niece's daughter right now living here who has been rendered undocumented after the fact by Trump's immigration policies. And I have another cousin who's spent about six months in Alligator Alcatraz and is now in Chrome Detention Center in Miami. And these are people, you know, contrary to what some of the

administration said have committed. and no crime and are just trying to live. In fact, Human Rights Watch says that the Trump administration has deported over 4,300 Cubans to Mexico. We're going to have to leave it there, but we're going to do an interview in Spanish, and we're going to post it online at DemocracyNow.org. Ada Ferrer is professor of history at Princeton University. Her new book is Keeper of My Kemp.

memoir of an immigrant daughter. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, Cuba, an American history. That does it for our show. I'll be at IFC tonight at 6.30 for the screening of Steal the Story, Please, a story about democracy now in our 30 years and independent media overall, along with the director, Carl Deal, and Karel Deal, and Catherine Grody, the actor, will be moderating. Tomorrow night, I look forward to being in Tampa, Florida,

celebrating WM&F, will be at the Sunray Theater for 630 and 7.30 screenings of Steel This Story plays. Then on to Miami, on Saturday, two screenings, and then on Sunday at 1 o'clock, another screening as well at the O-Cinema. Next week will be in Sheffield, England, and in Belfast, Ireland, and then on to Vermont. You can check our website, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Norman Schech.