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For Immediate Release
March, 22 2021, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Erin Fitzgerald, Press Secretary at Earthjustice
Robert Valencia, Spanish Language Media Strategist at Earthjustice
Armando Carmona, 951-966-6500, Inland Empire Coalition for Immigrant Justice
Private Prison Company Poisoned Immigrants at Adelanto for A Decade
GEO Group Claims That Practices Were Suitable for "Animal Premise Disinfectant."
WASHINGTON
After seven months of investigation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final report and an official Notice of Warning to the GEO Group (GEO) for multiple violations in response to their misuse of the toxic pesticide HDQ Neutral inside the Adelanto Detention Facility (Adelanto). The EPA investigation found that GEO, the private prison company that runs Adelanto and over 30 other ICE detention facilities across the U.S., ordered GEO staff and those in custody to administer HDQ Neutral without proper ventilation, multiple times a day. Ingredients found in HDQ Neutralhave been linked to asthma, infertility, birth defects and other respiratory and reproductive harms. One of the active ingredients in HDQ Neutral can even damage human DNA.
EPA based its report on interviews with GEO staff and detained immigrants at Adelanto, which can cage up to 2,000 immigrants daily and located in the desert just north of San Bernardino, CA. EPA found GEO responsible for violating six different provisions of the pesticide label for HDQ Neutral, which was applied several times a day over a nine-year period. This amounts to an unquantifiable number, but potentially tens of thousands, of individual violations during that time. In September 2020, a California District Court ordered that GEO immediately discontinue the use of HDQ Neutral due to the potential threat of the pesticide.
Migrants who participated in the "volunteer" work program were given HDQ Neutral in 32-ounce spray bottles and mop buckets, often without safety labels or instructions attached, without being required to wear the necessary protective equipment when handling the industrial pesticide. Only one pair of goggles was provided for all the detained workers in each unit. GEO upheld two separate sets of requirements for personal protective equipment, depending on whether it was their staff or those in custody applying the toxic pesticide.
EPA also said GEO was not diluting HDQ Neutral properly and exposing detained migrants to a mixture that was twice as concentrated as the label permits. In response to the EPA inspector's concerns about this practice, GEO said the label allows for a more concentrated mixture of HDQ Neutral for "animal premise disinfectant or animal virucidal uses." When asked by the EPA about the reports of adverse health effects on detained individuals or policies when individuals fall ill, GEO declined to answer.
"This report confirms what those in detention have known for far too long -- that GEO doesn't care about the health and safety of immigrants," said the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition. "But more than that, they don't even regard immigrants as human. There is no reform possible when we are starting the conversation with an argument about the basic humanity of a group of people. This is disgusting and heart-breaking."
For years, the facility at Adelanto has faced intense pressure from local and national advocates over its inhumane detention practices, and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, President Biden signed an Executive Order eliminating private prisons. However, this order does not apply to immigration detention facilities, which are under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security.
GEO's responses to this investigation are shocking and these ongoing failures have created conditions that make it impossible to keep those in custody safe. Conditions in migrant detention facilities, like Adelanto, are not safe, are inhumane, and cannot be allowed to continue operating. The United States government continues to show flagrant disregard for the health of those in custody, including forced sterilization, uncontrolled outbreaks of COVID-19, sexual abuse and attempting to build other facilities on highly toxic Superfund sites. Earthjustice and the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition are calling for the immediate release of everyone being held in migrant detention facilities.
The Shut Down Adelanto Coalition consists of Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice, Detention Watch Network, Freedom for Immigrants, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, Nikkei Progressives and Earthjustice, among others.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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3 Months of Trump's Disastrous Iran War Has Cost US Consumers $60 Billion in Extra Energy Costs
The average US household, according to Moody's, has shouldered nearly $450 in extra fuel costs due to the Republican president's unprovoked Middle East war.
May 29, 2026
Americans have made clear since President Donald Trump joined Israel in beginning an unprovoked war on Iran that they view the conflict-of-choice as damaging to their financial well-being—and that they blame the president for the higher cost of fuel since the war started in February.
On Friday, Moody's Analytics put an exact number on the heightened financial anxiety families across the country have been feeling over the past three months as Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent fuel prices soaring: $447.19.
That's how much the average US household has had to additionally spend on fuel-related expenses since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyanu launched their attack on February 28, Moody's told CNBC.
Altogether, Americans have spent a total of nearly $60 billion on gas, airline fares, and other related costs as the strait, a key shipping route for oil, has remained effectively closed.
According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of regular gas stands at $4.39—up close to 50% since early March. Diesel now costs $5.52 per gallon, forcing consumers to pay $20 billion more in additional expenses on groceries and other goods.
"The economy isn’t just soft, it’s struggling," Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist, said Thursday. "The Iran war needs to end, and the Strait of Hormuz needs to be reopened soon, or recession will become more likely than not."
"Unless the war ends soon, financially pressed consumers will have no option but to turn more cautious in their spending."
As CNBC reported Friday, "higher energy costs can force consumers to raid their savings and lean more on debt to cover expenses."
Trump flatly said earlier this month that he doesn't consider Americans' financial situation "even a little bit" when it comes to the war on Iran, while National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett posited earlier this week that Americans are "spending more money" not because higher prices are forcing them to but because they're "very, very optimistic about the state of the economy." He also bragged recently that "credit card spending is through the roof"—a sign several observers took not as a positive omen for the economy but as a sign that families are being forced to take on debt to pay for gas and other essentials.
Zandi provided a reality check Friday.
"Unless the war ends soon, financially pressed consumers will have no option but to turn more cautious in their spending, threatening the already soft economy,” he told CNBC, warning that families could end up spending nearly $2,000 extra on fuel-related costs if the war continues reaches the one-year mark.
Republicans emphasized last year that Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act would give bigger tax returns to families across the country. Any benefit, said Zandi, has now been canceled out by the president's war.
On Thursday, US Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said the White House is in denial about the fact that Americans are struggling with the impact of Trump's foreign policy decisions as the Pentagon vastly underestimates how much the conflict has cost in public statements.
The acting comptroller of the Pentagon told Congress in April that the war had cost $25 billion, increasing the estimate to $29 billion two weeks later.
The senators told the Congressional Budget Office Friday that independent analyses had put the real cost of the war at $40 billion-$50 billion.
“It is essential," said the lawmakers, "that Congress and the American public receive accurate, comprehensive estimates of the costs of the war in Iran."
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'By This Logic, Any Protest Could Be a Conspiracy': Conviction of Spokane ICE Protesters Raises Free Speech Concerns
"We were guinea pigs," said the father of one of the convicted protesters. "They brought the swamp of Washington, DC, into our area to stop American citizens from exercising our rights that are guaranteed."
May 29, 2026
With the conviction of three anti-ICE protesters in Spokane, Washington on federal "conspiracy" charges Thursday, civil rights advocates and legal experts fear that the Trump administration may have just been handed a powerful tool to criminalize dissent.
Jac Archer, Justice Forral, and Bajun Mavalwalla II, nicknamed the "Spokane 3," were indicted last year for their actions at a protest in June 2025, where they attempted to physically obstruct ICE agents from transporting two Venezuelan immigrants to an ICE processing facility in Tacoma.
Both of the men reportedly entered the US legally under a humanitarian parole program that had been terminated by the Trump administration, leading advocates to protest their detention.
As Spokesman-Review, a Spokane newspaper, described:
Protesters that day eventually began linking arms around vans and in front of agents’ cars. The event grew chaotic. ICE agents entered a crowd of people standing outside the facility’s parking lot gate and began grabbing people by the necks and arms, pushing them to the ground. Protesters also slashed tires of vans meant to transport the detainees.
But where such activity would usually lead to charges against specific protesters for discrete illegal actions like trespassing, property damage, or other public order offenses, the Department of Justice (DOJ)—as part of a nationwide effort to crack down on protests against ICE—charged nine protesters with "conspiracy to impede or injure officers," even though no officers were actually injured during the protest.
Legal experts described it as a novel approach that wrapped many people involved in the protest into a single "conspiracy" regardless of whether they committed specific criminal acts.
“Usually if a protest gets out of hand and people are hurt or property is hurt, you see charges based on that,” Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor and a University of Washington law professor, told The New York Times earlier this month. “They’re not going after people based on specific harm done. They’re stretching conspiracy charges to target protesters and people who organize protests.”
Facing pressure from the federal government to bring the case following a national memo sent from the DOJ to prioritize and publicize cases against ICE agents, then-acting US Attorney for Eastern Washington Richard Barker resigned last year rather than bring charges against the protesters.
He said at the time he was grateful he “never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that [he] didn’t believe in." His successor, Stephanie Van Marter, however, did sign the order.
Six of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charges to avoid federal prison time. But Archer, Forral, and Mavalwalla chose to fight them, believing the case was part of an unjust attempt to criminalize their right to protest.
After a trial that lasted seven days, a jury found the three defendants guilty of conspiracy. But the defense has argued that the trial was marred by problems that rendered the verdict faulty.
As the Guardian explained:
In February, a federal judge ordered the release of a Venezuelan migrant whose transportation for deportation the protesters sought to block, ruling his arrest violated the constitution.
But the jury, drawn from conservative eastern Washington state, did not hear those facts at trial, thanks to rulings by Judge [Rebecca] Pennell. Pennell, a former federal public defender and appointee of the Democratic president Joe Biden, also ruled the protesters on trial could not use the First Amendment as a defense, though they were allowed to state their reasons for demonstrating.
Instead, the jury watched hours of law enforcement body camera video and heard from a parade of ICE agents... Jeremy Burlingame, an ICE agent who testified, had authored social media posts that called Black politicians “lying ghetto garbage” and transgender people “mentally ill.” He boosted a post showing ICE arresting a pregnant woman at gunpoint that called her a “pregnant invader.”
Federal prosecutors deemed the posts troubling enough to recall Burlingame to impeach him, despite the fact that he was their witness...
But Burlingame’s online posts, the lack of injury to ICE officers, and the absence of evidence showing communication between the three defendants prior to the protest were not enough to sway the jury.
The defendants now face potential sentences of up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. However, they are expected to appeal the verdict and have filed a rarely used motion allowing their attorneys to argue that no rational juror could find their clients guilty.
"I question whether justice truly was served by today’s verdict,” Barker told the Spokesman-Review. "This was the first conspiracy prosecution in Eastern Washington history under... a Civil War-era law dusted off to punish members of the Spokane community who stood up for two young men who were unlawfully detained by ICE."
Video by KREM 2 News/Youtube
Looking beyond the details of the trial itself, many observers questioned the very premise of the DOJ's prosecution.
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said from the start of the trial she believed it was "politically motivated."
"It was meant to make an example out of people who disagreed with federal immigration policy," she said.
City council member Sarah Dixit, who said she took part in the protest, said: "Based on the evidence that was shown, I personally didn’t see evidence of what they were accused of. Conspiracy is a charge that feels complicated to prove, and I don’t believe that the government made a strong case for that.”
Others expressed fear for the precedent that had been set. La Rond Baker, the legal director of the Washington ACLU, said the Trump administration "has a demonstrable history of using the Department of Justice to silence and punish its critics."
The administration has pursued similar sweeping conspiracy charges against other groups of anti-ICE protesters around the country—including in Los Angeles, Broadview, Illinois, and North Texas.
“The verdict was painfully disappointing,” said Archer’s attorney, Carl Oreskovich. “I think it was an extraordinarily aggressive approach to prosecution of protests. And it certainly is going to chill people who want to utilize their First Amendment right to dissent against government actions that they don’t agree with."
In a comment to The Guardian, Robert Chang, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and executive director of its Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, said the verdict was "frightening."
“By this logic, any protest could be a conspiracy,” he said. “The goal posts keep moving.”
Bajun Mavalwalla Sr., a retired US Army intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, said his son—also a veteran of the same war—and the other two defendants were standing for "the freedoms that separate this country from the dictatorships.”
“People in Spokane and people in Eastern Washington need to understand that we were guinea pigs. That they brought the swamp of Washington, DC, into our area to stop American citizens from exercising our rights that are guaranteed,” the elder Mavalwalla said after his son was convicted.
“It was the whole point of the Constitution, the right to protest, the right to dissent, the right to assemble, all of those things are now in question because of this case," he said. "My son has taken the brunt of the entire weight of the United States government onto their shoulders.”
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France Asks Top Prosecutor to Probe Alleged Israeli Abuse of Gaza Flotilla Members
French nationals and people from dozens of countries who were abducted from the Global Sumud Flotilla say they were beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted by their Israeli captors.
May 29, 2026
France's government on Friday asked prosecutors to investigate Israel's alleged mistreatment of French nationals aboard the last Global Sumud Flotilla, which was intercepted earlier this month in international waters while trying to break the illegal decadeslong Israeli blockade of Gaza.
“Based on a report I requested from our Consul General in Turkey—who informed me of sexual violence, exposure to the cold, beatings, and repeated humiliation of French nationals—all of these acts are likely to constitute criminal offenses," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said during an interview with France Inter, adding, "I decided yesterday to refer the matter to the public prosecutor."
The move follows France's indefinite ban from its territory of far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who posted a video on social media showing him joyfully humiliating detained activists, journalists, and others who were mostly kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs and their foreheads forced to the ground following the May 18 interception of flotilla vessels off the coast of Cyprus and the abduction of all aboard.
“We cannot tolerate that French nationals can be threatened, intimidated, or brutalized in this way—all the more so by a public official," Barrot said last week.
People from around 40 countries—including 37 French nationals—were seized from dozens of flotilla vessels and held in harsh conditions on what many of them called a "torture boat."
According to Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF): "Detained humanitarians, doctors, and journalists were processed one by one through a darkened shipping container. Inside, groups of three to five soldiers systematically brutalized each person who came through the door while those waiting outside listened to the screams.”
French medical professional Meriem Hadjal said she was "subjected to torture" in the container, where at least one Israeli soldier allegedly sexually assaulted her.
"We were treated like animals," Hadjal added, accusing her Israeli captors of "sadism."
GSF said Tuesday that "legal proceedings are now active in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, with Italian prosecutors opening an investigation into kidnapping and sexual assault" of flotilla members.
Numerous national governments condemned Israel's treatment of the flotilla abductees, including the United States. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said that Ben-Gvir "betrayed the dignity" of his nation, which receives billions of dollars in annual armed aid and diplomatic cover from the United States to carry out what many experts say is a genocidal war on Gaza.
Malaysia is reportedly preparing to initiate proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice over the abduction and alleged torture of its citizens, 29 of whom were aboard the flotilla. The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
“We will not remain silent, we will not stop. While the legal team gathers all documentation on violations of international law; they were kidnapped more than once, they were tortured,” Amirudin Shari, chief minister of the Malaysian state of Selangor, said during a homecoming ceremony for the flotilla members at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Israeli troops have physically and psychologically tortured past flotilla abductees. Dozens of members of the previous Global Sumud mission required medical attention for broken ribs, noses, and other injuries inflicted by Israeli forces. In 2010, Israeli troops killed nine activists aboard one of the first-ever Gaza flotillas, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
As some countries pursue justice for flotilla members, others have declined to act. In the United Kingdom, Zarah Sultana, who represents Coventry South for the socialist Your Party in Parliament, is demanding "urgent action" in the wake of abuse allegations made by British flotilla abductees.
"France is acting. Spain is showing leadership. Where is the UK government?" Sultana said Friday on X. "Nothing but a simp for Israel, a genocidal apartheid state."
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