During an operation in Lakewood to arrest a Mexican national with a final deportation order last month, ICE agents instead detained 23-year-old Venezuelan citizen Moises Velasquez, an immigrant who had entered the United States legally but was driving the same car, a grey Volkswagen GTI, as their target. In an order granting Velasquez’s habeas corpus petition to challenge his detention, US Magistrate Judge S. Kate Vaughn said agents had demonstrated a “complete lack of procedures,” heightening the risk he would be deprived of his rights under due process, reports the Seattle Times.
Velasquez was released from the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma last Wednesday. His attorney, Bart Klein, said ICE agents merely “saw some Hispanic guy,” decided to go after him and forced him out of the vehicle. Last year, the US Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling and gave ICE the go ahead to stop people on the basis of appearance, language, or accent, a policy also known as racism.
During one of these traffic stops in Key West, Florida on Saturday, ICE detained the Nicaragua-born father of an immigrant soldier on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier deployed to the Arabian Sea for nearly nine months with conditions and morale deteriorating so much that sailors have attempted suicide. The Department of Homeland Security said Luis Manuel Aviles entered the US illegally at an unknown date and would remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings, NBC reports. “This is heartbreaking for me,” said his son, sailor Joshua Aviles. “I don’t know how I can mentally continue working 12+ hour days knowing that my dad is somewhere, possibly being treated like a criminal.”
The exchange rate of Iran’s rial fell to a record low 2.02 million to the U.S. dollar today as Washington prepares to issue more economic sanctions on the country. The price of basic staples has soared; rice is 60 percent higher, while beef is 150 percent more expensive. “The regime’s final refuge now lies in the self-deception of fearful nations that still believe accommodating aggression can secure a durable peace,” said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Yet Iran and Oman, countries which sit on opposite sides of the Strait of Hormuz, are reportedly close to a deal to reopen the waterway and possibly help “wind down the war in the Middle East,” the AP reports.
Weather: Sunny with a high near 76, with no chance of rain in the forecast through Friday. Go enjoy it because summer is winding down. The last 8 p.m. sunset of the year is this Wednesday.
Will the 8 still be late? The expanded red bus lane on Denny Way is a go, fulfilling Mayor Katie Wilson’s campaign promise to speed up the chronically late Route 8 bus. The bus-only lanes on Denny now extend from Seattle Center to I-5. King County Metro Transit General Manager Michelle Allison said it will save 7,200 daily passengers time. “Today is sort of like Christmas,” she said. Today will be the lane’s first big test. Drivers who don’t like change, meanwhile, are considering rocketing off the Denny Way Bridge. This would also reduce traffic congestion, at least on Howell Street. Reports the Seattle Times:
“Despite new lane markings on Boren, and signal tweaks to hasten flows on Howell, the intense competition to enter Howell Street (from First Hill, downtown and South Lake Union) produced gridlock Wednesday and Thursday, when turning cars paused in crosswalks.”
ICYMI: Publicola reports that interim police chief Andre Sayles filed a complaint against the former leader of the department’s hate crimes unit with the Office of Police Accountability for giving a three-minute speech at a No Hate in WA State rally last November, when Sayles was deputy chief. No Hate in WA State is a campaign that opposes the anti-gay and anti-trans ballot initiatives on the ballot this year. Sayles’s complaint, filed last December, accused detective Beth Wareing “of failing to follow a lawful order and dishonesty” he labeled those as “fireable offenses that could have cost the 29-year police veteran her job, her law enforcement certification, and her ability to testify in court as a police officer,” writes Publicola. His complaint included links to videos by former journalist Brandi Kruse.
Officials are warning wildland firefighters exposed to toxic chemicals on the job that the supplement glutathione, given by IV or inhaled via nebulizer, is not proven safe or effective and could harm, not improve, their health if contaminated with bacteria during production. A group of naturopathic doctors, who are not medical doctors, offered glutathione to firefighters during wildfires in Spokane. The same group gave it to firefighters during last year’s fires in Los Angeles.
Shelley Fabares, who sang the 1962 hit “Johnny Angel,” and starred in the sitcom Coach, died at 82. “Johnny Angel” rips.
