The Supreme Court did something Tuesday that it has not done in seven years. It sent two of the justices to Capitol Hill to testify about the court’s budget request for the coming year. The budget has grown dramatically in recent years because of the equally dramatic rise in the number and intensity of threats to the justices’ safety.

Designated as the court’s representatives were Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by President Obama, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by President Trump.

As Kagan pointed out in her testimony, it was Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Elijah Cummings who insisted that the court beef up its security ten years ago after Justice Antonin Scalia died in his sleep on a hunting trip, with no security anywhere nearby to respond quickly.  

“They said, kind of like, we think you’re crazy, you know, that that you have less security than director of the Office of Personnel Management does,” she recounted the Congressmen as telling the Court, “and we think that you have to do better.”

Before that, the justices basically had little to no security. They drove their own cars to work; went to the movies and shopped at supermarkets unaccompanied, and did their private travel on their own. And frankly, they liked it that way, because having security is personally invasive.

In recent years, however, the court has undertaken major changes, including continually expanding the court police force to protect the justices and their homes at all times, and funding additional cybersecurity measures.

And yet, as Justice Kagan pointed out, the Court’s $207 million budget request is less than one tenth of one percent of the entire federal budget.

The justices spoke at length Tuesday about how rising threats impacted their lives. Justice Barrett came prepared with two harrowing stories. First was the day she brought home a bullet-proof vest. 

“My 12-year-old son was standing in the doorway of my bedroom and he wanted to know what it was,” she testified, “and I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.”

Mexico has begun filing criminal complaints with state prosecutors in the United States over the deaths of its citizens in U.S. immigration custody and during enforcement operations, the foreign mini

MEXICO CITY, July 13 (Reuters) – Mexico has begun filing criminal complaints with state prosecutors in the United States over the deaths of its citizens in U.S. immigration custody and during enforcement operations, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

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Mexico’s government has also sent cease-and-desist letters to U.S. detention centers where Mexican nationals have died, the ministry added in a statement.

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The filings follow the deaths of at least 14 Mexican nationals in ICE custody and several others during arrest operations, including the recent fatal shooting of a Mexican citizen by an ICE agent in Houston.

President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Mexico’s intention to escalate its response to the deaths last Friday, as she claimed that the government “cannot turn a blind eye to the Mexicans who have died.”

In addition to the measures in the U.S., Mexico’s foreign minister also contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding the deaths of Mexican nationals in ICE custody.

Mexico expects the U.N. office to gather information from U.S. authorities, analyze the events and “refer the case to the relevant special procedures of the Human Rights Council,” the statement added.

This much is undisputed: On Nov. 2, 2023, a guard and a prisoner at a federal penitentiary in California got into it over a straw sunhat that the officer had confiscated. The man — identified in court records by his initials, J.M. — walked out of the office, as Officer Sandra Munagay followed him. When he stopped and turned around, Munagay “cocked back … and punched me in my face,” he said in an interview. That is on camera. Munagay admitted to the assault and pleaded guilty this January to falsifying records about it.

But the more severe harm came after, J.M. said, in a hallway without security cameras. As Munagay kicked and hit him, she shouted to other officers that J.M. had attacked her. According to a lawsuit, at least three other guards then rushed in, forced him into a blind spot, and pinned him face-first to a wall. With J.M.’s hands cuffed, he says an officer then sexually assaulted him with an unknown object.

That night, J.M. was transferred to another prison, where a nurse noted bleeding and tenderness in his rectum, medical records show. That gave J.M. more proof than most people behind bars in his situation.

But guards still had near-total control over whether he could file a complaint, or someday sue over what happened to him. J.M. knew they could destroy his paperwork, claim it got lost, or simply deny him the forms he needed. And like he had experienced in other federal prisons, he says, they might punish him for even trying to speak out.

It’s the same dilemma presented to anyone who faces violence in federal prison: Try to file an administrative grievance and risk opening yourself up to retaliation — or stay quiet, endure the abuse, and forgo your chance to someday bring your case to court.

Under federal law, people in prison must go through the facility’s own grievance process before they can attempt to sue. That gives prison staff a “chokehold over access to the courts,” said Colin Prince, a civil rights attorney and former federal defender who is representing J.M. in his lawsuit.

“The guards functionally have power over whether a prisoner can sue them for their own misconduct,” he said. “The entire system is layer upon layer of bureaucratic insulation against accountability. It simply prevents prisoners from getting access to the courts.”