Vote With Sparkle!

Plus: Gator Gitmo Kaput

Jun 23, 2026

U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, American Hero, Just Doing Her Job

The Trump Maladministration tried to weaponize various federal databases to suppress the vote. The League of Women Voters sued. And won.

Judge Sooknanan wrote:

“This case implicates two fundamental rights that protect Americans from government overreach: the right to privacy and the right to vote. In the past year, several federal agencies have joined forces to create a centralized federal database that contains the private information of United States citizens, including Social Security numbers, citizenship status, and other sensitive data. But decades ago, Congress put protections in place to prevent precisely this type of centralized data bank. And the record in this case shows that the federal agencies that created this database knew that the database violates those statutory protections. The agencies were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification. So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable. Since then, states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information. All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”
“[T]he Court sets aside and vacates the 2025 DHS and SSA SORNs as unlawful. … The Court further sets asides and vacates the SAVE “modified system” described in the 2025 DHS SORN. … [T]he Court grants the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment … and denies the Federal Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.”

SUPREME COURT NEWS:

Today, June 23, 2026, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision that is very bad for every single green card holder, Blanche v. Lau.
Immigration lawyers must read the whole thing, but for non-lawyers (or if you are just short on time) let me oversimplify it for you: if you have a green card, and you return to the USA from abroad, the CBP goons at the airports, seaports or land ports of entry can totally screw with you for decades, even lock you up, and that’s perfectly fine with the Slimy Six Supremes.
In her dissent, Justice Jackson wrote: “I worry that the Court has now handed the Government a massive blank check. … By law, LPRs [green card holders] are as close to citizenship as one can get absent naturalization. … Today, the majority ignores that crucial fact and empowers Government officials to act accordingly.”

GATOR GITMO KAPUT:

CBS News, June 22, 2026: “Companies hired by the state to operate the Florida immigration facility known as "Alligator Alcatraz" were notified Monday morning to begin "full demobilization" of the facility, quietly bringing an ignominious close a $1.2 billion experiment that had once been hailed by Governor Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump as a model other states should pursue, four sources familiar with the operations of the detention center told CBS News Miami. … The final few detainees left the facility last week, either being transferred to other detention centers or deported to third countries. Federal and state officials at the time said it was due to safety concerns over the start of hurricane season. … Conditions at the detention center have been harshly criticized by lawyers, families and human rights groups, who claimed detainees were routinely mistreated. Amnesty International issued a highly critical report on conditions inside the facility. Ultimately, though, the decision to close Alligator Alcatraz was due primarily to the escalating cost of operating the facility. The total cost for the detention center is now estimated to be $1.2 billion.”
Truthout, June 22, 2026: “The reason given to the public was the risk posed by Florida’s hurricane season, with the agency offering this statement: “As we enter hurricane season, ICE and the state of Florida have moved illegal aliens from the soft-sided facility. For the safety of the illegal alien detainees, we transferred them to other facilities.” That didn’t seem to be a concern when the makeshift immigration jail opened last June, just as the 2025 hurricane season began. A July 2025 press conference attended by President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier was disrupted by heavy thunderstorms that caused parts of the facility to flood, a pattern that would become routine during its yearlong operation. The possibility of a hurricane striking the Everglades site was, in fact, of such little concern that officials from the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), which administers Alligator Alcatraz, delayed the release of the facility’s hurricane preparedness and evacuation procedures until pressured by members of Congress. When it was finally made public, the 33-page draft document was so heavily redacted that entire pages were blacked out, leaving lawmakers with more questions than answers. … Since its inception, the immigration jail has shocked the public’s conscience following reports of abuses and horrific conditions. Immigrants imprisoned at Alligator Alcatraz described overflowing toilets leaking into sleeping areas, inadequate access to showers, constant 24-hour lighting, insect infestations, unsafe food and water, and degrading treatment that no human being should endure. Some were forced to scoop human waste from clogged toilets with their bare hands because there was not enough water pressure to flush. Reports documented ongoing routine shackling, physical abuse by guards, and prolonged solitary confinement. In what Amnesty International deemed a form of torture, detainees were placed by guards in a 2-by-2 foot cage-like structure, left restrained on the ground while exposed to the sun and elements for hours without sufficient water or food. Justo Betancourt, a Cuban man who spent more than six months at Alligator Alcatraz, lost about 50 pounds while there. His wrists and ankles were bruised from the shackles he was forced to wear, and he suffered a stroke due to his deteriorating health. The U.S. government attempted to deport him to Mexico through the third-country agreement between the two states, but he was returned after the Mexican government found his health to be in too poor of a condition.”

BONUS FUN FACT: ICE WAS NEVER LEGAL TO BEGIN WITH:

Claire Trickler-McNulty, June 22, 2026: “A fact that surprises even people who work in immigration policy is that Congress never created Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency traces its legal origins to Section 442 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the sweeping post-9/11 law that established the Department of Homeland Security. That section created something called the Bureau of Border Security to take over the enforcement functions of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. Then on January 30, 2003, President George W. Bush submitted a reorganization plan to Congress that renamed the Bureau of Border Security as the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—the agency we now know as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE—and reconfigured the responsibilities it would take on. Congress usually establishes a federal agency in two steps: first, an enabling or authorizing law that formally creates the agency and defines its mission; then, appropriations that fund it. With ICE, the first step was never completed. Lawmakers created DHS and authorized the broad immigration functions housed within it, but never passed a law formally establishing ICE as a distinct agency with a defined mission. … Congress continued to fund ICE, year after year, without directly confronting the agency’s design or purpose. In that time, it has become the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. Yet Congress does not subject either DHS or ICE to the same level of oversight it applies to other security and intelligence agencies. … Congress should define ICE’s mission, enforcement priorities, and limits in statute, as it does for the military and the intelligence agencies, and require authorization every two to five years. This would force lawmakers to revisit these questions regularly, rather than once in a generation. For larger changes, workable proposals already exist. The Hyphen Immigration Blueprints, which I helped write with other former federal officials who served across several administrations, would pull detention out of ICE and into an entirely new Office of the Civil Detention Trustee, redefine how states and local governments participate in the immigration process, reset enforcement priorities, and open legal pathways to meet labor needs. At a minimum, Congress should put real guardrails on the money it has already handed over like spending conditions, requiring a public plan with operational and community impacts for detention expansion, transparency and reporting requirements for any use of force and internal complaints, inspection results tied to funds, and limits on discretionary slush funds. Protections matter for the people on the receiving end of enforcement, whose lives are upended by an agency operating without meaningful rules. And they matter just as much for the taxpayer, whose money—well over $100 billion of it—has now been committed to an agency that cannot tell you, with any rigor, what it is buying, from whom, or to what end.”
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