Project 2025 August 28th Update

Project 2025 Is Here.

With Trump’s return to the presidency, Project 2025, a 920-page blueprint for authoritarianism in the U.S., spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation, is becoming a reality, affecting all Americans and people around the globe.

More than 100 far-right organizations support this plan for autocracy, which is proving to be the source for Trump’s anti-democratic policies, despite his repeated disavowal of Project 2025 during his campaign. Dozens of members of the new administration have direct ties to the effort.

Project 2025’s stated goal is to create an “ideal” America that would see women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color, and others deprived of their hard-won constitutional rights and the erosion of environmental and education protections. It also advocates for a frightening centralization of power in the executive branch, something Trump is keen to achieve. Read GPAHE’s full analysis of Project 2025 and the groups behind it.

GPAHE monitors how Project 2025 is becoming a reality and reports on the ties between the project and the administration, and its impact on the American people and democracy. We track Project 2025 activities at the federal, state, and local levels, and their plans for an authoritarian and Christian Nationalist America.

This week, we look at how criminals are taking advantage of vulnerable communities by impersonating ICE officers, how federal workers are protesting the gutting of their agencies, including FEMA, and the case of Mario Guevara, a legal immigrant and Emmy award-winning journalist detained by ICE for his reporting.

Project 2025’s Mass Deportation Policies Enable Masked Predators and Secret Police

Seven months into Trump’s Project 2025 mass deportation agenda, a chilling pattern has emerged across America as criminal predators weaponize fear to commit acts of violence. With federal agents operating like secret police — masked, unmarked, unidentified — immigrant communities across the country are terrorized. And that seems to be part of the Trump administration’s plan in enacting Project 2025’s deportation policies.

Project 2025 explicitly calls for mass deportations while granting federal agents unprecedented operational flexibility. What has emerged this summer is evidence of the human cost of turning law enforcement into political theater.

Criminal predators didn’t wait long to take advantage of the situation, pouncing immediately on vulnerable communities soon after Trump’s inauguration on January 20th. By early February — just weeks after the inauguration — authorities in at least three states had arrested men allegedly impersonating Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to sexually assault women.

In North Carolina, 37-year-old Carl Thomas Bennett Jr. burst into a Motel 6 and threatened a female employee with deportation if she didn’t have sex with him, flashing fake law enforcement credentials. He was denied bond during his January 27th court appearance — considered too dangerous for release, and charged with kidnapping, second-degree rape, and impersonating a law enforcement officer.

In Charleston, South Carolina, on January 29, Sean-Michael Johnson detained a group of Latino men in their vehicle while impersonating a federal agent, taking their keys, and trapping them. “You got caught! Where are you from? You from Mexico? You’re going back!” he shouted at his victims, according to a shocking video in which he continues to berate them, including addressing one of them as “El Chapo.” Johnson was charged with three counts of kidnapping and impersonating a law enforcement officer.

Some aren’t even trying to hide their methods. In February, Brandon Fellows, a participant in the January 6th Capitol riot, donned a fake ICE jacket and boasted in an online video about terrorizing immigrants for entertainment. He purchased his ICE jacket “for $29.99 on Amazon,” he told his interviewer. “If you want some entertainment, wear this and go to a Home Depot in a sanctuary city like where I live right now, Washington, D.C.,” Fellows said. “You’ll see all the illegals start to run away,” adding, “You feel like a group fitness instructor. It’s really good.”

June brought another horror in Maryland when a predator flashed bogus ICE credentials to a Latina woman in a parking lot and told her to get in his car or face deportation. He then showed her videos on his phone of migrants being detained by ICE and raped her.

On June 8 in Philadelphia, a man impersonating an ICE agent robbed a store, restrained a female employee with zip ties, and escaped with $1,000 in cash.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner railed, saying, “a climate has been created where people almost expect that they will not get due process if there is an ICE raid.”

“How did we get here?” Krasner asked. “I think we know that, unfortunately, coming from a man who himself has 34 felony convictions, that would be Donald J. Trump, I think that we know that his game has been fear, it has been hate, it has been a deliberate effort to dehumanize immigrants.”

What makes this crisis even more sinister is that real federal agents are making it easier for criminals to impersonate them by masking up and refusing to identify themselves. On August 2, in Brewster, New York, Juan Fonseca Tapia was driving through downtown when something caught his attention. Construction workers in bright orange safety vests, their hard hats gleaming in the morning sun, stood near day laborers, watching them but not building anything.

Fonseca Tapia, who runs rapid response networks for Greater Danbury Unites for Immigrants, pulled out his phone and began filming through his car window.

“What agency are you with?” Fonseca asked one of the men. “I’m not going to tell you,” the man responded, his face mostly hidden behind a camouflage mask. “It’s none of your business.” Fonseca says the man, after watching him warn migrants nearby, then told him, “More of my guys are coming and we’re going to take care of you.”

This was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in disguise, conducting surveillance and hunting migrants who actually work construction. The man offered no identification beyond “federal law enforcement.” The encounter directly contradicted repeated Homeland Security assertions that agents always identify themselves properly.

“This is where we are crossing a dangerous line on immigration enforcement into these paramilitary-type tactics with a secret police force,” State Senator Patricia Fahy (D-NY) told The Intercept after introducing the Mandating End of Lawless Tactics (MELT) Act in July to ban ICE masks and disguises.

The connection between criminal impersonators and secret police tactics isn’t coincidental. When real federal agents operate in masks, plainclothes, and unmarked vehicles, they create a perfect cover for predators. Immigrants now fear seeking help anywhere, as communities face violence from both criminals and the state itself.

Federal Workers Revolt Against Project 2025’s Disastrous Consequences

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster recovery caseworker never imagined she’d be writing a letter that could end her career. She has no backup job, no financial cushion, but when disaster struck Texas in July and she found herself answering phones instead of processing aid applications for flood victims, something snapped.

“I never expected to write or sign anything like this,” she told the Washington Post, speaking anonymously out of fear for her job. Contract delays caused by new budget restrictions meant disaster survivors waited while bureaucratic machinery ground to a halt. “There is a strong culture of fear right now in our agency and others,” she said. “I don’t think we have a choice anymore.”

She wasn’t alone. On August 25th, more than 190 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees, most of whom remain anonymous, sent an open letter to Congress warning that incompetent leadership could precipitate another Hurricane Katrina, noting the consequences of Project 2025’s dismantling of federal agencies.

The “Katrina Declaration,” as the letter was called, arrived shortly before the 20th anniversary of the devastating storm that killed 1,833 people and caused $161 billion in damage in Louisiana. These employees see history potentially repeating itself, but this time, the destruction is coming from within.

“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people,” the FEMA employees wrote. They declared solidarity with colleagues at the NIH, EPA, NASA, NSF, and CDC, who have issued similar warnings about the fate of their agencies.

Of the 190 employees who signed, only 36 were willing to have their names attached to the petition. The rest chose anonymity after watching what happened to federal workers who spoke out elsewhere. At the EPA, 144 employees were placed on administrative leave after signing their own dissent letter. The message was clear: challenge the administration, lose your job.

Within days of sending the Katrina Declaration, dozens of FEMA employees were placed on leave — specifically the 36 who had courageously attached their names to the document.

The revolt across gutted federal agencies began in June with the “Bethesda Declaration” from National Institutes of Health employees. It has since spread to NASA, where proposed budget cuts would eliminate a third of the workforce and terminate 19 active missions — including the $4 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the atmosphere has become so toxic that employees conduct sensitive conversations in bathroom stalls. “Staff go to the bathroom to talk to each other, and look under the stalls to make sure that no one else is there before we talk,” says Monica Gorman, who represents 1,700 scientists and engineers.

Federal workers describe an unprecedented assault on institutional knowledge and expertise. At FEMA, about 2,000 employees have left since Trump took office — one-third of the permanent workforce. In the middle of hurricane season, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reassigned dozens of FEMA employees to help ICE recruit deportation personnel. Those who refused faced termination.

The legal violations are brazen. Federal law passed after Katrina requires FEMA administrators to have “demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management.” The current acting administrator, David Richardson, has no such background. In June, he told employees he didn’t know the United States had a hurricane season. The agency later claimed he was joking, but workers weren’t laughing.

The Trump administration has eliminated billions in disaster preparedness grants. It now requires email addresses for aid applications — a barrier that could prevent people without internet access from receiving help during emergencies. In June, Trump stated that he wanted to eliminate FEMA entirely after hurricane season, returning emergency management “back to the state level” — a phrase directly lifted from Project 2025.

Acting FEMA press secretary Daniel Llargués dismissed employee concerns with standard Project 2025 talking points, emphasizing the reduction of “red tape, inefficiency, and outdated processes.” He characterized the letter writers as resistant bureaucrats: “It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform.”

But these aren’t bureaucrats protecting turf. They’re career professionals who’ve spent decades building expertise that could mean the difference between life and death during disasters. They understand that once institutional knowledge walks out the door, it’s gone forever, and they are willing to sacrifice their careers rather than watch institutions they’ve devoted their lives to protecting get systematically destroyed.

Livestreaming to Lockdown: ICE’s War on Immigration Reporting Signals the End of Freedom of the Press

June 14 began routinely for Mario Guevara. A “No Kings” protest in DeKalb County, Georgia, needed coverage. The Emmy-winning reporter, who has legally worked in the United States since 2004, livestreamed as he had countless times before to nearly 800,000 Facebook followers.

Body camera footage and Guevara’s own footage documented the seconds that destroyed two decades of careful work. Guevara stepped out onto the street from the sidewalk as the officers approached.

He was charged with improperly entering a roadway, obstruction of law enforcement officers, and unlawful assembly — minor violations typically handled with citations or a brief overnight jail stay. Prosecutors dropped the initial misdemeanor charges. ICE had different plans.

Two months have passed since his detention began. America’s only journalist imprisoned solely for practicing journalism faces no charges, yet remains locked away. His offense was livestreaming immigration enforcement operations.

Guevara’s case isn’t isolated — it sits at the center of a systematic campaign to silence America’s free press. Since Trump’s return, attacks have shifted from rhetoric to concrete action, all flowing from Project 2025’s blueprint, which considers the mainstream media one of the “centers of Leftist power.”

Trump sued The Wall Street Journal over its coverage of Jeffrey Epstein, while his White House expelled a Journal reporter from presidential travel. The FTC launched investigations into media watchdog Media Matters. As Project 2025 policy prescribed, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will close after 50 years. Voice of America has been gutted, with over 1,400 jobs lost. The administration banned Associated Press (AP) credentialed reporters from White House events after AP refused to refer to the “Gulf of America” in its coverage. Law enforcement injured dozens of journalists covering Los Angeles protests, while the Pentagon restricted building access.

These represent only a fraction of the administration’s actions targeting press freedom — and Guevara’s detention reveals how immigration enforcement has become the sharpest weapon in this arsenal.

An immigration judge granted bond on July 1. Federal authorities refused his release. Prosecutors claimed Guevara’s livestreaming “presented a danger to the public by compromising the integrity and safety of law enforcement activities.” Between February and May 2025, prosecutors alleged, Guevara had “confronted local Georgia law enforcement officers and federal agents” during undercover operations. This is the government criminalizing routine journalism.

Federal and local authorities coordinated his continued imprisonment. Records obtained through Georgia’s Open Records Act show ICE Assistant Field Office Director Dan Jones emailed the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office requesting information to “fight his bond request.” The sheriff’s office responded with reports characterizing Guevara’s journalism as contradicting “societal norms,” and days after Guevara was jailed, the county issued arrest warrants for month-old misdemeanor charges of running a red light, using a cellphone while driving, and reckless driving — charges that had been dropped a month before his arrest.

“The preparation of such a detailed response reflected here indicates an extraordinary level of hostility to a member of the press,” observed Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck.

This coordinated assault serves Project 2025’s broader goal: weaponize immigration enforcement to silence press coverage while pursuing one million deportations annually. The Cato Institute reports that more than 93 percent of those arrested under these policies never committed violent crimes.

August 21 brought Guevara’s counterattack. His attorneys filed a lawsuit against Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi, arguing that his detention violates First and Fifth Amendment protections. “The Government’s continuing detention of Mr. Guevara on the basis of his journalism is intended to silence him, prevent him from reporting in the future, and retaliate against him for his past speech and reporting, in violation of the First Amendment,” the filing stated.

A coalition of press freedom organizations confronted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “Today, we have reached a grim milestone in Guevara’s case: He has been in detention for two months since he was initially arrested while covering a protest,” the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote on August 14, 2025. The Society for Professional Journalists and the Atlanta Press Club, among others, joined their warning that Guevara’s case “represents an erosion of democratic norms in the United States and a curtailment in journalists’ ability to do their jobs, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

His lawsuit’s outcome may determine whether Project 2025’s authoritarian agenda advances unchecked, and mass deportation and media suppression work together, eliminating independent coverage that enables democratic accountability.