March 11 2026, When Power Abuses, the People Respond | Power to the People News
March 11, 2026 | ICE posed as cops, defied court orders, and left death cards in communities. Here's what happened this week — and what you can do about it.
Power without accountability doesn’t just rot — it reaches into your neighborhood, your courthouse, your community’s sense of safety, and the trust that holds emergency response together. This week’s pattern is unmistakable: a government impersonating police to enter homes, defying its own courts, and borrowing the psychological playbook of wartime occupation — counting on exhaustion to keep people quiet.
We’re not staying quiet. Power to the People News exists to name what’s happening, connect the dots, and fuel what comes next. If accountability is going to mean anything in this moment, it will be because ordinary people stayed informed, stayed organized, and stayed in it.
💥 Your Power in Action: What You Can Do Today
📢 Be the change Tell State AGs: Block the Warner-Paramount Mega-Merger
📋 Sign the petition: Tell Congress: Stop Trump’s Illegal War in Iran
👉 Drive the change Tell Congress: End the Cash-for-Deportation Scheme
🚨 Speak out for progress Stop Trump’s Offshore Drilling Plan: 4,000 New Oil Spills
BONUS: 🗳️ Make your voice heard Register to vote, vote in every election, and help your community do the same. Reproductive freedom is won and lost at the ballot box.
BONUS: 👑🚫 Drive the change Sign up for the next national No Kings Day of Action and show up in solidarity with everyone whose rights are under attack.
The movement for progress and power to the people starts here.
📰 Stories Shaping Power to the People Right Now
🚨 ICE Agents Posed as Police to Arrest Columbia Student
ICE agents entered a Columbia University residential building by fabricating a missing-child emergency—producing a flyer for a fictional five-year-old—to arrest Azerbaijani senior Ellie Aghayeva. She was later released after NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani raised her case directly with the Trump administration. Retired officers warn that the tactic, part of a documented pattern of agents posing as utility workers, delivery drivers, and police, may cause communities to hesitate to cooperate with real emergency responders. (The Seattle Times)
Why it matters: An agency that impersonates police corrodes the trust that makes emergency policing possible. The next time a real officer needs cooperation from a fearful community, this deception may cost lives.
🎓 Wrongly Deported Student Stranded in Honduras After Court Defied
Babson College freshman Any Lucia Lopez Belloza—mistakenly deported to Honduras while flying home for Thanksgiving—refused a court-ordered return flight after the Trump administration made clear she would be immediately re-deported upon landing. ICE simultaneously told her she would be released while filing paperwork asserting its intent to deport her again. Her attorney called it outright “gamesmanship.” (The New York Times)
Why it matters: A judge issued an explicit order. The government acknowledged its own error. Neither mattered. When due process is optional, no one is safe.
🎸 Radiohead Demands ICE Remove Unauthorized Use of Their Music
Radiohead demanded that ICE pull a promotional video that used their 1997 song “Let Down”—without permission—as a soundtrack for immigration enforcement propaganda. The band’s statement ended with a direct expletive aimed at ICE. Similar unauthorized uses of music by Sabrina Carpenter and Theo Von have drawn similar rebukes. (NBC News)
Why it matters: The administration is systematically co-opting popular culture to launder its deportation campaign into emotionally resonant content. Artists are an unexpected front line of resistance—and their pushback exposes the machinery.
♠️ ICE’s “Death Cards” Echo Vietnam-Era Psychological Terror
After what local advocates described as fake traffic stops in Eagle County, Colorado, ICE agents left behind customized ace-of-spades cards printed with the “ICE Denver Field Office” address—a direct echo of kill trophies used by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. The Nation connects the incident to a documented pattern of ICE brutality, including illegal arrests, banned chokeholds, and the shooting deaths of at least five people—including two legal observers—since September. (The Nation)
Why it matters: This is not agents going rogue. It is a deliberate cultivation of violence-as-branding by an agency operating without accountability. When enforcement adopts the language of wartime killing, it is a signal—not an accident.
⚖️ Alito Retirement Speculation Grows
Speculation is mounting about Justice Samuel Alito’s potential retirement. His departure could significantly shift the Court’s ideological balance—in either direction—depending on the political moment in which it occurs. Timing is everything, and public pressure on that timing is not misplaced. (Slate)
💊 Homicide Bills Stall—But Attacks on Abortion Medication Continue
Republican-backed bills in Illinois, Tennessee, and South Dakota that sought to classify abortion as homicide have stalled or collapsed, facing resistance not just from Democrats, but from national anti-abortion organizations unwilling to absorb the political fallout. That is real progress.
But quieter battles are advancing. Proposals to criminalize abortion medication are moving forward in Mississippi and South Dakota. Democratic lawmakers in Oregon and New Hampshire are working to strengthen shield laws protecting providers and patients from prosecution originating in restrictive states. (Truthout)
Why it matters: The most extreme criminalization measures are losing momentum—but targeted attacks on medication access and interstate care are filling the void. Shield laws have become a critical line of defense, protecting the infrastructure of care in states where abortion remains legal. The fight did not end. It shifted.
🔥 What Comes Next: The Work Is Ours
The threat: agents fabricating emergencies to enter homes, a government filing contradictory court documents to strand a wrongly deported student, and an agency leaving wartime kill trophies at traffic stops — while calling it law enforcement.
The proof: a mayor intervened and a student was released. Artists spoke out and propaganda campaigns lost their soundtracks. Courts are still issuing orders. Communities are still organizing. None of that happened by accident. It happened because people showed up, applied pressure, and refused to be silent.
ICE counts on fear to do the work of enforcement. When communities know their rights, when mayors answer the phone, when bands say no — that machinery breaks down. Accountability is not automatic. It is built, case by case, call by call, by people who refuse to look away.
Share this with someone who needs to read it. Call your member of Congress at (202) 224-3121. Show up to the next action. Stay in the movement not just for the wins, but through the hard parts — because that is where power actually gets built.
Freedom over fascism. Dignity over deportation. Power to the people — every single one of us.
Together, we can champion our rights, freedoms, and democracy, hold our leaders accountable to the people’s will, and inspire voters to make a meaningful difference.
Laurie Woodward Garcia
(paid with hugs and kisses, not bought by special interests)
Leader, People Power United
People Power United | In this community, we will always speak out against racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, sexism, ageism, ableism, sizeism, elitism, transphobia, misogynoir, and bigotry!
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