Roundup: Chris Duncan, civil liberties since 9/11, and Trump’s ongoing, under-the-radar immigration catastrophe

Sep 30, 2026

Greetings, readers.

It’s been a while since we’ve done a roundup, and I have quite a few updates for you.

So let’s get right to it.

Chris Duncan

I’ve had to hold off on publishing the last part of my series on the wrongful conviction of Chris Duncan due to the cruel and bewildering actions by outgoing District Attorney Robert Tew and retired prosecutor Michael Ruddick. Two weeks ago, I published an update about their ongoing harassment of Duncan and Allison Statham, the mother of Haley, the little girl who died.

Since then, Tew’s office has confirmed that it has started a new investigation of Duncan. Tew apparently obtained an ex parte warrant from a judge (meaning without informing the defense) to collect and test DNA from both Duncan and Statham. It isn’t exactly clear what else is in the warrant because it’s all under seal. But according to my sources, Tew and Ruddick (who helped prosecute Duncan back in 1998 and has come out of retirement specifically to defend Duncan’s conviction and death sentence) want to do additional DNA testing on two items: a pair of underwear Duncan was wearing on the morning Haley died, and a diaper that Haley had worn.

The state has been in possession of both items for 33 years, and has insisted for decades that neither contained any notable biological material. Statham told me that the police officers who came to her home to demand her DNA said that if she refused, Haley would be exhumed. It still isn’t clear if an exhumation is included in the warrant (nor is it clear if they would need a judge’s okay to conduct one).

It’s hard to fathom what they think they’ll find. Duncan lived with Haley and her mom. He bathed her on the morning she died. So DNA from Haley or Duncan like hair or skin cells on either item would be expected. The only scenario I can think of that could implicate Duncan is if they were to find sperm or semen in the diaper. But the diaper has already been thoroughly tested for both, and those tests were negative.

The most alarming part is that they seemed to be planning to do that testing in secret, without anyone from the defense present to monitor it. This is a case in which the very conservative Louisiana Supreme Court recently — and unanimously — affirmed a ruling which found that the state used manufactured evidence at Duncan’s trial, and that Duncan is factually innocent. As I’ll explain in part three, there’s also compelling proof that the state manufactured non-forensic evidence against Duncan, too. I don’t think you need to be too conspiracy-oriented to fear that in trying to do secret DNA testing 33 years after the crime, they may try to do it again.

There is a hearing scheduled for this morning to figure out what’s happening with the warrant. So stay tuned.

Personal news

This is a little dated now, but to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I wrote an essay for the New York Times about how the attacks brought about a generational assault on civil liberties. While many of the abuses we’ve seen from the Trump administration are uniquely dangerous, they’ve gotten away with them by exploiting the legal infrastructure, immunity, and congressional and judicial deference to executive power we saw after the attacks.

Here’s an excerpt:

[W]elcome to the worst-case scenario. We now have a president who is using the post-9/11 counterterrorism powers for his own ends. He is declaring national emergencies where none exist and is targeting his political enemies as if they were terrorists. He is carrying out reckless, extrajudicial executions on the high seas, while members of his administration joke about the possibility that some of those killed were innocent. He and his administration have encouraged officers from the Department of Homeland Security, created after 9/11 to stop attacks by foreigners, to engage in racial profiling and harassment of Americans. In the name of national security, he conflates criticism with treason, protest with terrorism, dissent with sedition.
Faced with this power grab, America has been reduced to the most basic democratic backstops established by the country’s founders. Grand juries, once practically a rubber stamp for prosecutors, have had to block politically motivated abuses of power by the executive branch. In Minneapolis, it took the organized resistance of everyday people to stop the extrajudicial and illegal behavior of President Trump’s militarized federal forces.
The powers previous presidents amassed are now being turned against us. We’re here now because we were too arrogant, or naïve, to think that was possible. We’re here because we thought the Oval Office was too revered and stately — that we were too exceptional — to be co-opted by authoritarianism.
We’re here because we didn’t listen to the civil libertarians. It’s not too late to start.

Relatedly, I also spoke with my friend Shikha Dalmia about what we should do about ICE (abolish it), ICE officers (fire and prosecute them), and policymakers like Stephen Miller (prosecute him and allow victims of his policies to sue him) once Trump is out of office.

You can listen below, or you can read a transcript here.

The UnPopulist

Abolish ICE Before Its Abusive Tactics Spread to Other Law Enforcement: A Conversation With Radley Balko

Listen to Zooming In at The UnPopulist in your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube…

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8 days ago · 21 likes · 2 comments · Shikha Dalmia

Finally, I’ll be launching my own podcast soon. If all goes to plan, the first episode should hit in the next week or so.

I think the first episode is going to blow you away. Not because of me or anything I’ve done, but because of the inspiring resilience and strength of the person I’ll be interviewing. It’s a horrific, tragic, and infuriating story about abuse of power, hypocrisy, and how Trump-era Republican leaders have come to embrace political violence.

The story also happens to be extremely relevant to a very close, high-profile election that will be decided in November.

What I’m reading

Here’s a terrific NYT profile of holistic public defense. This is also one of the central themes of my forthcoming book. (Look for it next year!)
The Texas Tribune has identified the ICE officer who shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston. His name is Gregory Feathers.
ICE removed thousands of immigrants with Final Orders of Removal from its databases. This has made it nearly impossible for their attorneys and families to locate them. It’s also an end-around due process — despite the name, people with final orders still have legal options.
Under DHS chief Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s immigration forces are arresting, detaining, and deporting people at higher rates than ever. They’re continuing to target people who are here legally, people seeking asylum, and people who have no criminal record. They’re also illegally withholding or redacting documents that legal residents need to prove they have authorization to be here. They continue to abuse and kill people, and hold them in inhumane, decrepit facilities, where immigrants continue to die at record rates. The only real change is that they seem to have learned from Minneapolis that rather than publicly celebrate the illegality, abuse, and cruelty, they’re doing it all quietly.
Tennessee planned to execute Christa Pike today. She’d be the first woman the state has killed in more than 200 years. She was spared, for now, by a last-minute stay from a federal appeals court. Pike does not claim to be innocent, and her crime was grisly and nightmarish. She was also 18 at the time, had already experienced a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse and, at 50, is an entirely different person now than she was then. Read this moving profile of Pike, as well as this one, by two journalist who have written about and witnessed executions, and who navigate the difficult nuances of humanizing the condemned without minimizing their crimes as well as anyone. (One is my wife and the other is a good friend, so I’m obviously biased.)
The White House has been airing creepy ads celebrating Donald Trump that are clearly and unambiguously campaign ads. One was an actual campaign ad that they (barely) repurposed. The ads disclose, in clear print, that they were paid for by the U.S. government. This is clearly illegal. Not even a close call. But that’s also the point. As with the obvious, easily disproven lies after killings by immigration officers, the purpose of these ads isn’t to persuade. No one not already fiercely devoted to Trump is going to be moved to vote Republican in the midterms because of a cultish ad imploring viewers to “love” him. The ads are a projection of power. Trump has an $850 million campaign war chest. The cost of these ads would be a rounding error for that account. They decided to pay for them with public funds and boast doing so to demonstrate that they can break the law — and admit to breaking the law — and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.
The Trump administration claimed to have found 16,000 people illegally registered to vote in Nevada. After some investigation, that number dropped to 185. And after further investigation, it dropped to zero. Zero.
Back in June, I wrote about how the Free Press and other right-wing publications had spun Trump’s cruelty toward migrant children as some heroic effort to “save” them. ProPublica now reports that the Trump administration is deporting migrant kids seeking asylum at four times the rate of his first term. If we include adults seeking asylum, the administration has removed more people in 20 months than in the previous eight years combined.
RFK Jr. took millions of dollars from a fund earmarked to provide healthcare for minority infants and spent it on an enhanced security detail for himself.
The FBI removed two more senior-level anti-terrorism specialists, apparently because they didn’t think harassing phone calls to Stephen Miller’s wife merited a top-level anti-terror investigation. I certainly have concerns and criticisms of intelligence agencies, but the ongoing purge of all but the most loyal toadies is going to catch up to us. The problem is that if it does and the country suffers some sort of attack, it will just be an opportunity for Trump to claim more powers under the guise of national security. It’s really a win-win for him.