News & Commentary

This week, voters in St. Louis County sent a clear message of support for the creation of a smarter justice system.  In the race for St. Louis County Prosecutin

It has been a rough week for the GEO Group, a private prison company that contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to lock up undocumented immigrants. And it’s making the contractor lash out in erratic fashion.   All week, activists have been raising support for a national day of action against GEO Group, wh

In March 2016, Fulton, New York, police received a call that a man and a woman were involved in a physical domestic dispute and that the woman was “yelling for someone to call 911.” When the police arrived, the woman described her boyfriend pushing her and punching her in the eye. The police helped make sure that the woman was safe. But the 911 call led to a threatening letter from the city to the landlord.  Citing the “volume of calls for service” from the property, the city threatened that it would take action, including closing

The ACLU and the Trump administration squared off in court on Thursday over Jeff Sessions’ new policy that denies asylum protections to immigrants fleeing domestic violence and gang violence. The hearing focused on whether U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan would issue an emergency order to block the deportation of our plaintiffs, many of whom are women and children fleeing extreme sexual and gang violence, while the case proceeds.  As the judge deliberated the stay, disturbing news came to light: Early Thursday morning the government had pulled two of our clients—a mother and

A lawsuit by the ACLU of Tennessee recently produced evidence that Memphis police spied on Black activists. As Yogi Berra said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” This is the same city where five decades ago the police spied on Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s the city where he was murdered. And it’s my hometown. I know enough that I can’t claim surprise, but it hurts all the same to see yet another overstep by law e

On Tuesday, in what will go down as one of the most stunning political upsets in St. Louis County history,  Wesley Bell, a criminal justice reform advocate, unseated Bob McCulloch in the Democratic primary for the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s seat. McCulloch, an incumbent who has been in office for nearly three decades, is best remembered as the prosecutor responsible for overseeing the grand jury proceedings that resulted in the 2014 non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown. As we mark the four-year anniversary of Brown’s death this week, McCulloch’s dismissal is historic and a symbol of the power of a broader movement. There are four important lessons from what happened on Tuesday night.  First, the story

In November 2017, Gov. Steve Bullock convened a special legislative session to fix Montana’s $75 million budget deficit. The executive and legislative branches arrived in the capitol, allotting themselves five days to hash out whether to cut essential services and programs, raise revenues, or both. CoreCivic — which owns and operates the Crossroads Correction Center, the only for-profit prison in Montana — smelled blood in the water. With its multimillion dollar state contract set to expire, CoreCivic made an offer to Gov. Bullock: If he agreed to extend the Crossroads contra

On October 10, 2012, José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, a 16-year-old boy, was shot and killed on Calle Internacional, a street in his hometown of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico by a U.S. Border Patrol Agent. The agent, Lonnie Swartz, fired his gun through the U.S.-Mexico border fence, striking José Antonio

Grace,* an indigenous woman from a small village in Guatemala, came to the United States seeking protection from beatings, sexual assault, and death threats. Grace made the long and treacherous journey from Central America, arriving at the border in June. She was deeply traumatized, having been raped, beaten, and threatened with death for more than two decades at the hands of her abusive partner, a non-indigenous man, who frequently disparaged and mocked her for being indigenous and unable to read and write. After she tried to leave him, her abuser and his gang member sons continued to pursue and terrorize her. The local authorities could n