Extreme Commanders

Sick ICE agents are stuck in Djibouti at risk of malaria and rocket attacks. Why won’t Trump bring them back?

A group of immigration officers are stuck in a small east African country, plagued by smog from burn pits with human waste, at risk of malaria, and taking a dozen medications to battle chronic respiratory illness.

Those 11 agents are working 12-hour shifts to guard a handful of detainees who were set to be deported to war-torn South Sudan before a judge stepped in to block their removal, citing due process violations.

But the judge didn’t force Donald Trump’s administration to offload those immigrants in Djibouti.

Lawyers for the government had even requested that they land there. Massachusetts District Judge Brian Murphy granted their request to hold those deportees overseas, in U.S. custody, to give them a chance to receive a “reasonable fear interview” to explain how they would face persecution or torture if they were sent to South Sudan.

The Trump administration, which had requested permission to hold deportees in Djibouti, is now accusing Judge Murphy of “stranding” ICE agents there.

“This is reprehensible and, quite frankly, pathological,” Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

Homeland Security accused Murphy of “putting the health and safety of law enforcement officers at risk for the sake of criminals.”

In a court filing on Thursday, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official detailed the conditions officers are facing.

Eight immigrants are sleeping in a conference room in a converted shipping container at Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. military base in Djibouti.

The officers share “very limited sleeping quarters” in a trailer with three sets of bunk beds and six beds in total, according to the declaration from Mellissa B. Harper, acting deputy executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.

ICE’s reliance on Department of Defense resources are “causing disruption to the station’s operations and consuming critical resources intended for service members,” according to Harper.

The agents also have an “unknown degree of exposure” to malaria “despite taking the antimalarial as full efficacy of the medication is unknown currently,” she wrote.

The use of burn pits to dispose of human waste and garbage, five miles from the base, creates a “smog cloud” that is “making it difficult to breathe and requiring medical treatment for the officers, who have experienced throat irritation,” Harper wrote.

Officers began to feel ill within 72 hours of landing in Djibouti last month and “continue to feel ill with symptoms such as coughing, difficulty breathing, fever, and achy joint,” symptoms that “align with bacterial upper respiratory infection,” she added.

Defense officials also warned agents they face “imminent danger of rocket attacks from terrorist groups in Yemen,” but the officers don’t have body armor or other gear to protect them, Harper said.

Last week, Judge Murphy accused the administration of “manufacturing chaos” in the case.

He had previously warned that administration officials could face contempt charges after violating his weeks-old court order against summary removals of immigrants without “meaningful” notice before they are sent to countries where they could face violence or death.

He then allowed the government — by its own request — to hold those deportees overseas.

But government attorneys have now “changed their tune,” he wrote last week. “It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome” than the administration anticipated, he said.

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Predictable as hell.

Still hilarious.

How Trump’s pick for surgeon general uses her big online following to make money

President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next U.S. surgeon general has repeatedly said the nation’s medical, health and food systems are corrupted by special interests and people out to make a profit at the expense of Americans’ health.

Yet as Dr. Casey Means has criticized scientists, medical schools and regulators for taking money from the food and pharmaceutical industries, she has promoted dozens of health and wellness products — including specialty basil seed supplements, a blood testing service and a prepared meal delivery service — in ways that put money in her own pocket.

A review by The Associated Press found Means, who has carved out a niche in the wellness industry, set up deals with an array of businesses.

In her newsletter, on her social media accounts, on her website, in her book and during podcast appearances, the entrepreneur and influencer has at times failed to disclose that she could profit or benefit in other ways from sales of products she recommends. In some cases, she promoted companies in which she was an investor or adviser without consistently disclosing the connection, the AP found.

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Trump-Musk feud leaves some DOGE staffers worried about their futures: Sources

Some DOGE staffers still embedded across federal agencies fear that the rift and public mudslinging between Trump and Musk could leave them vulnerable to political retribution and damage their future job prospects, multiple sources familiar with internal discussions told ABC News.

Some fear their association with DOGE could make them targets if the feud escalates and Trump moves to investigate the government-slashing initiative that Musk led until he stepped away last week, the sources said.

As someone else said..they're eating the doges, they're eat the cats.