April 2, 2025

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Welcome to the third edition of Interrupting Criminalization's "This Month in Criminalization" newsletter, in which IC co-founder Andrea J. Ritchie shares hot topics and current legislative and policy developments in criminalization, and points people to calls to action and relevant resources.

The past month (which has felt like a decade) has been marked by a rapid acceleration and escalation in criminalization as the federal administration cements itself into an authoritarian regime, abducting and disappearing mounting numbers of migrants, students, protesters, and Muslims, and escalating attacks against trans, queer, and disabled people, educational institutions, law firms who have litigated against the President, and lawyers representing organizers and immigrants — all amidst the wholesale dismantling of federal administrative agencies and programs. So much has happened on so many fronts it is impossible to track all trends and incidents in a single newsletter.

And, as the MAGA movement’s fascist end game becomes more clear and Israel flagrantly violates ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, killing hundreds and starving and displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, resistance is spreading and growing.

Hundreds of national and global #TeslaTakedown and Palestinian Land Day actions took place over this past weekend, a Hands Off! National Day of Action is planned for this coming Saturday, April 5th with over 900 events across the country, along with a National March on Washington to Stop the Genocide, and a Communities Not Cages Day of Action! National Day of Action against detention and deportation is planned for Thursday, April 17th.

Our goal in these monthly roundups is not to contribute to the overwhelm, but to help you sift through the firehose of information and focus in a few things we can and must do from wherever we are — as organizers, community members, health care providers, educators, legislators, and funders — to interrupt the criminalization that is the core mechanism and methodology of implementing and rationalizing Right-wing, authoritarian, and fascist agendas and regimes. Deep thanks to our partners at the Building Movement Project and Muslims for Just Futures for their contributions.

☎️ If you are organizing to resist criminalization and could use a thought partner, connections, or resources, be sure to reach out to the Resisting Criminalization Help Desk!

🗓️ And join us for a conversation about Criminalization at the Core of Authoritarianism, Fascism, and Resistance with Andrea J. Ritchie, Rachel Herzing, Ejeris Dixon, Woods Ervin, and Scot Nakagawa next Wednesday April 9th from 6:30 - 8:00 PM ET with Haymarket Books — get your tickets today!

Let us know if you find these roundups helpful, how you are using them, and what you’d like to see more or less of in these monthly updates by completing this very short survey!

Disappearances, Detentions, and Deportations

➡️ Since former Columbia PhD student Mahmoud Khalil was kidnapped on March 8 by ICE agents who shoved their way through the front door to his Columbia University-owned apartment building as he was returning from a Ramadan Iftar dinner with his wife, who is close to giving birth to their first child — a dozen students and scholars, many associated with campus organizing to demand divestment from Israel’s genocide and occupation of Palestine, have been arrested and disappeared into ICE detention or fled the country for fear of being caught in the administration’s dragnet.

The administration claims to have revoked 300 student visas on political grounds, and is scrutinizing social media of students applying for or renewing visas. Meanwhile, a Florida university is poised to be the first to allow campus cops to be deputized to engage in ICE enforcement. Students and allies are rising up at Columbia University, Tufts, and around the country in protest.

✅ Call or write your representatives to demand the immediate release of all students.
✅ Call on your Senators to support an arms embargo as the U.S. prepares to send an additional $8.8 billion dollars’ worth of weapons to arm Israel.
✅ Sign this petition to universities to protect their students from ICE.
✅ Donate to support Rümeysa Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Tufts University graduate student residing in Massachusetts on a valid student visa who was abducted from the street outside her home by masked, plainclothes ICE agents who falsely claimed to be the police when she was heading out to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast. The administration is citing an op-end in support of a student divestment resolution as the basis for revoking her visa and incarcerating her in ICE detention.
✅ The Tufts University administration issued a statement in support of Rümeysa — students, faculty, staff, and alums can push their universities to issue similar statements of support for international students, including those engaged in protests, and to refuse to comply with federal demands to disclose the names and nationalities of student protesters.
✅ Join a Know Your Rights Norooz on Tuesday, April 8th online and at the People's Forum in NYC to connect with experts, learn your rights, and gain tools to best protect yourself, your loved ones, and your rights in today’s challenging political climate. Immigrant families, students, organizers, and allies are all welcome.

➡️ On March 15, the administration colluded with Salvadorean dictator Nayib Bukele to deport over 200 Venezuelan and Salvadorean men, some of whom were asylum seekers, to a notorious torture facility in El Salvador, violating federal court orders to halt and turn around the deportation flights. Bukele shared videos of the men being dragged in chains from planes, shoved to the ground where their heads were roughly shaved, and transported by bus.

The administration invoked a 1798 wartime powers act, last used to intern Japanese people during World War II, to justify its actions, claiming — in some cases based solely on the presence of tattoos — that the men were members of gangs it has designated foreign terrorist organizations it claims are “invading” the United States. Since then an additional 17 men, including a Maryland father deported in violation of a court order protecting him from being sent back to El Salvador, have been sent to the same facility.

✅ You can find a database of the disappeared and a map of last known locations here.
✅ Call your representatives to protest the deportations!
✅ Attend local anti-deportation actions and protests! Find or plan an action for the upcoming Communities Not Cages Day of Actionagainst detention and deportation on April 17th.

➡️  In Washington state, ICE violently arrested beloved Indigenous farmworker organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez as he was driving his wife to work, as well as Service Employees International Union member Lewelyn Dixon.

➡️  On February 4, ICE arrested the family of a 10 year old girl recovering from brain cancer as they drove to the emergency room, denying the child, her siblings, and her parents urgent and essential medical care while in ICE detention.

➡️  Torturous conditions have been reported in ICE detention across the country, including at the Krome facility in Florida.

✅ Take action to fight back against mass detention and deportations and protect your communities! Attend an upcoming event or training:
- April 9 — Attend the virtual panel "From Policy to Practice: How Cities Can Lead on Immigrati on"
- April 9 & beyond — Join Detention Watch Network’s D efend and Recruit training se ries to start or build your local ICE w atch and ICE hotline!
- April 10— Know Your Rights in Protected Areas (health care facilities, educational facilities, religious spaces)
- April 10-11 — Protect Your Community from I CE Raids!
✅ LAWYERS — defense networks for migrant students and protesters are nearing capacity. We need you!
- Sign up to support students and protesters here!
- Join the National Lawyers’ Guild National Immigration Project regional hubs here!

“Extreme Vetting” and Detentions at the Border

➡️ Visitors and returning visa and green card holders are increasingly experiencing harassment, refusal, detention, and deportation at the border based on social media posts supportive of Palestine or critical of the administration — including detention of a Canadian immigrant, denial of entry and arrests of French, German, and British tourists, and deportation of a Brown University faculty member.

✅ April 9 — Join CUNY CLEAR’s Know Your Rights for US citizen and non-US citizen travelers.

✅ Check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s pocket guide to protecting your data crossing the U.S. border and digital privacy at the border report.

Criminalizing Trans Existence

➡️ Legislation is still pending in Texas that would create a felony offense of “gender identity fraud”, and a legislator recently introduced a bill that would expand the existing ban on gender-affirming care to adults and to include puberty blocking medication, targeting providers and cutting public funding for care. Neither bill is expected to pass this session, but both are considered blueprints for action in other states.

➡️ Protests targeting private hospitals denying gender-affirming care to trans youth continue, including a Trans Day of Visibility protest outside NYU Langone. 10,000 letters protesting the institution’s decision to stop providing care despite demands from the state attorney general, elected officials, and members of the public have been sent to the institution.

Abortion Criminalization

➡️  A Texas midwife and a member of her staff were arrested and accused of providing abortion care in violation of Texas law. She has since been released on bond but is confined by electronic monitoring, and her clinic remains closed under a temporary injunction.

➡️  Legislators introduced Texas Senate Bill 2880, which would prohibit the manufacturing, distribution, and information sharing about medication abortion and criminalize people who pay for their friends' and families' abortion care, even if the care is obtained in a state where abortion is legal, potentially impacting anyone who seeks, helps, or supports abortion care in Texas in any way.

➡️  Ten states have introduced legislation that would make abortion a homicide, potentially carrying the death penalty.

Targeting Non-profits, Universities, and Legal Clinics

➡️ In one of dozens of investigation letters sent by Congressional committees to educational institutions across the country, the Committee on Education and the Workforce sent a letter to Northwestern University demanding information about a well known and highly respected legal clinic and the clinic’s director, Sheila Bedi, claiming that federal funds are being improperly used because the clinic is involved in defending anti-genocide, pro-Palestine protesters, and was involved in monitoring the Chicago Police Department consent decree.

Library and Information Criminalization

➡️ Library criminalization bills — legislation that would hold librarians responsible for any materials in the library anyone considers “obscene” — are on the rise across the country.

✅ Learn more about criminalization of and in libraries in Mariame Kaba’s new publications Arrested at the Library and Criminalizing Librarians.

✅ Learn more about how we can work to protect our libraries at For the People!

Feeling scared? Overwhelmed?

The Liberation Line is there to support you! The Liberation Line provides free mental health support calls to organizers and activists, offering support, listening, resources, processing, debriefing or strategizing. These are confidential, non-crisis, non-therapy phone calls facilitated by a trusted volunteer with experience in offering mental health support and who aligns with Palestinian and collective liberation. The Liberation Line is open to any organizer or activist involved in social or political change, who may be impacted by police or state brutality, counter-protestor violence, racism, oppression, or is experiencing conflict, stress, burnout or trauma related to their community organizing or activism.

A reminder that IC also offers various free help desks that provide support for people organizing to resist criminalization; people working on projects to respond to or interrupt harm and violence without the state; journalists and media makers concerned about criminalization; and health care workers committed to resisting criminalization in health care settings.