Fuzzyred's Marvelous Reading Nook

People continue to die inside the jail in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, most often because of medical neglect, poor monitoring and screening failures when prisoners first arrive. Jail officials are required to share information about in-custody deaths with state officials, but there is little oversight or accountability despite past efforts for new legislation. These failures were evident in egregious instances like the death of Michael Papp, whose cold and stiff body went unseen by jail staff in 2024. From our Cleveland newsroom, TMP’s Doug Livingston and Brittany Hailer continue our coverage of jail conditions. The Marshall Project

“They should have been better prepared.” The bitterly-cold weather in most of the U.S. over the past few weeks has taken a particularly tough toll on incarcerated people and staff in prisons and jails. There were power outages at two state prisons in Mississippi. In Missouri, prisoners were compelled to shovel snow under threat of punishment. In Ohio, amid crumbling correctional infrastructure, a man incarcerated at Pickaway Correctional Institute said: “It’s truly cold in here, even when the heat works.” TMP’s Katie Moore, Doug Livingston, Daja E. Henry and Caleb Bedillion have our story. The Marshall Project

A busy weekend in Minnesota. A federal judge in Minneapolis on Saturday refused to limit “Operation Metro Surge,” the administration’s deadly immigration enforcement incursion in Minnesota. The judge said it was beyond her power to limit the feds. The Associated Press A federal judge in Texas on Saturday ordered the immediate release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from a detention facility there. The New York Times They flew back to Minnesota on Sunday. The Associated Press Jose Huerta Chuma, an immigrant from Ecuador, is apparently the man Border Patrol agents were looking for when they killed Alex Pretti. "I do feel guilty, I do feel bad,” he said. “I saw stories about the man and I saw a very good person." CBS News

Alleged Pretti shooters are identified. We now know the names of the two federal agents who shot Pretti to death last month in Minneapolis. They are Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. Both are from south Texas and both are veteran agents. ProPublica After days of delay, the Justice Department now says it has opened up a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Pretti. The FBI will lead that investigation with help from federal lawyers, Trump officials claim. The Wall Street Journal Police chiefs around the U.S. are frustrated and angry with the excessive force and other tactics they are seeing from federal immigration agents; it makes their jobs more difficult. The New York Times

Year One. Mass deportation in the first year of the second Trump term. Borders tighter. Detentions soaring. Rights abused. ProPublica/The Texas Tribune A year that led to massive anti-ICE protests. New York Magazine A running count of the people injured or killed by ICE agents. The American Prospect ICE agents use facial identification and social media to learn the identities of anti-ICE protesters as well as immigrants. The New York Times The Trump administration is buying massive warehouses to convert into immigration detention facilities in eight states. The Washington Post Trump officials are on the verge of making a deal with their Argentinian counterparts to ship deportees to that country. The New York Times

Covering their tracks. It’s not normal for federal investigators to refuse to cooperate with state and local authorities in a criminal investigation against a law enforcement officer. The Trump administration’s refusal to allow Minneapolis police to secure a potential crime scene following the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good last month by federal immigration agents is just one of the more egregious examples of the Justice Department undermining potential criminal investigations in such basic and substantial ways that it may be impossible to later secure a conviction against any of the agents involved. TMP’s Jamiles Lartey and Wilbert L. Cooper have the latest edition of “Closing Argument,” our weekly newsletter. The Marshall Project

Luigi Mangione will not face a federal death sentence if he is convicted of murdering United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson in New York in 2024. The feds have not announced whether they will appeal the ruling. The Associated Press A federal judge on Friday tossed two counts against Mangione that federal prosecutors hoped would be a capital conviction. The New York Times Related: Read the ruling. U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York

Journalist Don Lemon was arrested by FBI agents early Friday in Los Angeles, California, and charged with federal civil rights violations for his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church last month. Lemon was released late Friday. Six others also have been charged over the same incident, including journalist Georgia Fort. The Associated Press Related commentary: The case against Lemon is a weak one, based on a 1994 law intended to prevent anti-abortion activists from blocking clinics. The Atlantic

There’s now a measles outbreak at the immigration detention facility in Dilley, Texas. CBS News ICE agents in Portland, Maine, shattered a car window during a raid last week and left a mother and her one-month-old baby in the car after seizing an immigrant with no criminal history. Portland Press-Herald ICE officials don’t have to report the number of fatalities that occur during arrests made by their agents. In many cases, they haven’t. Journalists identified nearly two dozen cases where people were injured or killed during ICE arrests. There were official press releases from Homeland Security officials in only two cases. Documented NY Congressional reform or not, ICE is a paramilitary force that will be hard to defang. Talking Points Memo

Indiana legislators last week rejected an attempt to allow firing squads to execute death row prisoners. A measure to add that means of capital punishment failed a vote in the state’s house of representatives. WFYI TMP Context: The return of the firing squad? The Marshall Project

There was another jail escape in Louisiana. Officials say eight prisoners escaped from the jail on Friday in East Carroll Parish, a rural town near the Arkansas and Mississippi borders. The Associated Press They were all re-captured less than 24 hours after escaping. Jail officials did not disclose how the men escaped or how they were caught. The Associated Press

A clear and present threat to voting rights in the 2026 midterm. Why was Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard present at last week’s FBI search of election offices in Fulton County, Georgia? The Guardian The Trump administration’s raid on a state election site is an authoritarian move and a form of voter suppression. Slate “The most important question in 2026 is whether the midterm elections will be free and fair. And these developments go to the heart of that.” Civil Discourse More: The search sets a dangerous precedent and undermines confidence in the 2026 election, experts say. ProPublica Thomas Albus, Trump’s U.S. attorney in St. Louis, is tapped as the Justice Department’s election fraud prosecutor. Bloomberg Law

Punished for bearing witness in America in 2026. “Watchfulness is the most dangerous form of resistance because it obstructs the Trump regime’s project of habituation. Fascism works by making the extreme normal.” The New York Review of Books More: Eight people died from interactions with ICE agents in the month of January. The Guardian TMP context: How ICE and Border Control keep injuring and killing people. The Marshall Project

Vive la Resistance. “Still, 10 years into the Trump era, to see the administration abjectly fail to psychologically manipulate the citizenry — to brazenly deceive and brainwash, to claim that black is white and justice is injustice — is somewhat reassuring. In this case, it took multiple videos of the execution-like killings.” The Atlantic More: “​​The past couple of months, however, have shown that huge numbers of Americans do love their neighbors — enough to show up in frozen streets, confront armed federal agents, and even risk death.” The Atlantic

There is nothing normal about what federal agents are doing on the streets of our cities. “Deviations from long-standing professional norms are doing incalculable damage to critical police-community relations, putting officers and community members in unnecessary danger, and undermining, rather than advancing, public safety.” Verdict The Justice Department is now a sword used against Trump’s perceived enemies and a shield used to protect his friends. The New York Times More: Anti-ICE protests around the U.S. on Friday. The Washington Post

Minnesota is no exception. The Border Patrol was “founded to enforce a racist law” a century ago and has often been a lawless federal law enforcement operation ever since. The New York Times Pretti’s prior scuffle with federal immigration agents doesn’t justify their deadly use of force 11 days later. Reason

Millions of Epstein documents are released; millions more remain secret. The Justice Department says it released about three million documents on Friday. Todd Blanche, the president’s former lawyer who is now deputy attorney general, insists Trump has no control over the process. NBC News Victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking say the new release, like others before it, identifies accusers but not the accused. The Guardian At least 43 victims were identified. The Wall Street Journal A detailed version of an indictment against Epstein drafted by federal prosecutors in Florida two decades ago. U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida

More from Minnesota. Medical staff at a hospital refused to believe federal immigration agents who claimed that an immigrant from Mexico with broken bones in his face and skull “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.” It was “laughable, if there was something to laugh about,” said a nurse at Hennepin County Medical Center. The Associated Press Conditions inside a federal immigration detention facility in Minneapolis have gone from bad to worse, detainees and their advocates say. The Minnesota Star Tribune

The cruelty is the point. A father was his disabled son’s sole caretaker. ICE agents seized the dad, Maher Tarabishi, in October and refused to release him from immigration detention so he could care for his son, Wael. Now Wael is dead, and his dad is still locked away. CNN

Havana daydreaming. The Trump administration has managed to trap a group of Cubans inside the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Cuba. They were seized by ICE agents and deported, but their plane did not land in Havana as they had expected. Now they are waiting in immigration detention The New York Times

A Wisconsin jury delivers a verdict and a message. Jurors found Demetric Scott guilty of forging threats against Trump to deport the victim in a robbery case against him. Trump officials amplified the forged threats but have never retracted their allegations. The Associated Press

“Cons are running the joint right now.” In the early 1970s, Walpole State Prison in Massachusetts (which is now closed) was considered one of the most violent in the U.S. A few years after the Attica uprising, the prisoners were forced to govern themselves during a strike by guards. It went surprisingly well, until the guards came back onto the job. GQ