Press Clips

WASHINGTON — Former top immigration officials from the Biden administration warned Tuesday that billions for immigration enforcement signed into law earlier this month will escalate the rapid detention and deportations of immigrants.

During a virtual press conference with the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, the former Department of Homeland Security officials said they expect to see a trend toward states building “soft” temporary detention centers similar to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” the name given by Florida Republicans to an Everglades detention center.

Funding for those initiatives will come from President Donald Trump’s tax break and spending cut bill signed into law earlier this month that provides roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement, the former officials said.

Trump’s massive tax and spending cut bill provides $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making it the nation’s highest-funded law enforcement agency, to hire 10,000 new agents and carry out deportations. Another $45 billion will go to ICE for the detention of immigrants and $450 million in grants to states to partake in border enforcement.

Billions more are provided for border security and for the military to partake in border-related enforcement.

Andrea Flores, who directed border management for the National Security Council under former President Joe Biden said she expects to see states running their own immigration detention centers similar to the “Alligator Alcatraz” center that state officials quickly erected to hold immigrants. That state-run facility in the Florida Everglades is expected to house up to 5,000 immigrants.

Safety for migrants questioned
Jason Houser, who served as ICE chief of staff in the Biden administration, said the quickly built detention centers will likely create an unsafe environment for immigrants brought there. The lack of experience and training for employees running those centers will also put migrants at risk, he said.

“People are gonna get hurt,” he said. “They’re gonna die.”

He added that with the arrest quotas that immigration officials have been given, roughly 3,000 arrests a day, “ICE is going to focus on those (immigrants) that are easily reachable, those who have been complying and checking in,” either with immigration officials or appearing in immigration court.

“Hitting quotas is not in the national security interest,” Houser said.

Houser said with the rapid arrest and detention of immigrants, the need for detention centers will likely lead to states building the “soft sided” detention centers in “some of the most rural parts of the country where they cannot be properly staffed and resourced.”

Flores said if states work to build their own centers like the one in Florida, there will likely be a lack of oversight because DHS has significantly fired federal employees that ran the watchdog that conducted oversight of ICE — the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Flores currently serves as the vice president of immigration policy at FWD.us, which focuses on immigration policy and reform.

Increase expected in third-country removals
Royce Murray, a former DHS assistant secretary for border and immigration policy and a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official during the Biden administration, said she is concerned that the Trump administration will now be able to ramp up third-country removals with the increase in funding.

Any removals to a third country “have to be to a country that is safe,” she said.

If an immigrant has a final order of removal but their home country will not accept their deportation, then the United States typically looks for another country that will accept the removal — a third country.

The Trump administration has tried to secure agreements with countries to take deportees, such as Mexico and South Sudan, which recently ended a civil war, but is still experiencing violence. The State Department warns against travel to South Sudan, but the Trump administration won a case before the Supreme Court seeking to use the East African country for third-country removals.

Murray said that the Trump administration is using third-country removals to “create a climate of fear” and get immigrants to self-deport.

She said if third-country removals are going to take place, they “need to be a place where people can successfully integrate.”

• ICE arrested 1,361 people with criminal records in Houston in June 2025 during a major operation. • Operation included 32 child sex offenders, 9 with homicide convictions, 16 gang members, and 1 airplane hijacker.

• ICE’s daily arrest goal rose to 3,000, focusing on violent offenders under Trump’s executive order.

Federal immigration agents arrested 1,361 people with criminal records in Houston in June 2025, including an airplane hijacker, as part of a sweeping ICE operation. The arrests, which targeted violent offenders and those with serious criminal backgrounds, mark one of the largest enforcement actions in the region in recent years.

ICE, or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, led the operation with help from several other federal and state agencies. The sweep comes amid new White House directives to increase daily arrests and focus on public safety. Officials say the goal is to remove people who pose a threat, but critics warn that the broad approach may also harm families and communities.

Key Details of the Houston Operation

The June 2025 operation in Houston was part of a larger national push to enforce immigration laws more strictly. ICE agents, working alongside U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the DEA, ATF, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, and the Texas Department of Public Safety, arrested 1,361 people with criminal records. These individuals were found living in the Houston area without legal status.

Among those arrested, ICE highlighted several cases that stand out:

32 people had previous convictions for child sex offenses.
9 people had homicide-related convictions.
16 people were believed to be members of gangs or drug cartels.
1 person had been convicted of hijacking an airplane traveling from Cuba to Key West, Florida.
All of these individuals are now in ICE custody and are waiting for removal proceedings, which means they will likely be deported after their cases are reviewed.

ICE’s Mission and Public Safety

Gabriel Martinez, the acting field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in Houston, explained the agency’s focus: “Despite attempts to undermine ICE’s mission, our agents continue to target dangerous criminal aliens to restore integrity to the immigration system and bolster public safety.”

Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) added that ICE is “targeting predators, abusers, and murderers” and is working to fulfill the administration’s promise to restore law and order.

Why Is This Happening Now?

The operation follows President Trump’s Executive Order, “Securing Our Borders and Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” This order gives the Department of Homeland Security more power to find and remove people with serious criminal records who are living in the United States 🇺🇸 without permission.

Since May 2025, the White House has ordered ICE to make 3,000 arrests every day, a sharp increase from previous years. This has led to more resources being directed to ICE and a greater focus on finding and removing people with criminal convictions, especially those involved in violent crimes.

National Trends and Statistics

The Houston sweep is part of a much larger national trend. In the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term, ICE arrested 66,463 people living in the United States 🇺🇸 without legal status and removed 65,682. About three out of four of those arrested had criminal records.

Since January 2025, ICE has detained more than 97,700 people. Of these, about 40% had criminal convictions. Among those with criminal records:

8.4% (8,200 people) had convictions for violent crimes.
478 people had been convicted of homicide.
6,800 people had been convicted of assault or sexual assault.
While traffic-related offenses remain the most common reason for arrest, ICE says its recent sweeps are focusing more on violent and serious offenders.

How Does ICE Find and Remove People?

ICE uses several methods to identify people for arrest:

Checking criminal databases for people with past convictions.
Working with local law enforcement to share information.
Using intelligence from multiple agencies.
Once ICE identifies a target, agents arrest the person and take them to a detention center. The person is then processed and placed in removal proceedings. This means their case is reviewed, and if they do not have a legal right to stay, they are deported to their home country.

What Happens to Those Arrested?

Everyone arrested in the Houston operation is now in ICE custody. They are waiting for their cases to be reviewed by immigration courts. If the court decides they do not have a legal right to stay in the United States 🇺🇸, they will be deported.

ICE says these actions are necessary to keep communities safe. However, some people worry that the broad approach may also catch people who do not pose a threat.

Community Impact and Concerns

Supporters of the operation say it helps protect the public by removing people with violent criminal histories. They argue that focusing on serious offenders is the best way to keep communities safe.

However, critics, including advocacy groups and some ICE agents, have raised concerns:

The increased number of arrests includes more people without criminal records, not just those with violent backgrounds.
The focus on meeting daily arrest quotas may take resources away from targeting the most dangerous individuals.
Large-scale sweeps can disrupt families and make communities less trusting of law enforcement.
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, said, “The vast majority of immigrants are law-abiding and contribute positively to society.” She worries that the administration’s approach paints all immigrants as dangerous, which is not true.

Houston’s Role in Immigration Enforcement

Houston and Texas have long been at the center of immigration enforcement. Texas has a large immigrant population and is close to the border with Mexico 🇲🇽. This makes it a key area for ICE operations.

Texas has over 90 local law enforcement agencies that participate in what are called 287(g) agreements. These agreements allow local police to help enforce federal immigration laws. However, Harris County, where Houston is located, does not take part in this program.

A new law, Senate Bill 8, is waiting for the governor’s signature. If it becomes law, it will require most Texas sheriffs to work more closely with ICE. This could lead to even more cooperation between local and federal agencies in the future.

Resource Challenges and Funding

The push for more arrests has put a strain on ICE’s resources. The agency has moved staff from other federal agencies and is now facing a reported $1 billion deficit because of the scale of its operations. This has led to concerns about the conditions in detention centers and whether ICE can keep up with the demands of the new policies.

Multiple Perspectives: Supporters and Critics

Supporters of the Houston operation and similar sweeps across the country say these actions show a strong commitment to public safety and the rule of law. They believe that removing people with violent criminal records is the right thing to do.

On the other hand, critics argue that the approach is too broad and may harm people who do not pose a threat. They also worry about the impact on families and the community, as well as the strain on ICE’s resources.

Some ICE agents have also expressed concern. They say that focusing on arrest numbers, rather than targeting the most dangerous individuals, may actually make it harder to keep the public safe.

What Happens Next?

ICE is expected to continue these high-volume operations, especially in areas like Houston with large immigrant populations. Congress is currently debating issues related to funding, oversight, and the focus of immigration enforcement.

If Senate Bill 8 becomes law, local-federal cooperation in Texas could increase even more. This would likely lead to more arrests and removals in the coming months.

What Should Affected Individuals and Families Do?

If you or someone you know is affected by ICE operations, it is important to know your rights and seek legal help. People in ICE custody have the right to a legal review of their case. Families can contact the ICE Houston Field Office for updates or information about specific cases.

It is also important to stay informed about changes in immigration policy. The ICE ERO Statistics page provides up-to-date data on enforcement actions, while the DHS Newsroom shares the latest policy announcements.

Practical Guidance for the Community

Know Your Rights: Everyone in the United States 🇺🇸, regardless of immigration status, has certain rights. If approached by ICE, you have the right to remain silent and to ask for a lawyer.
Stay Informed: Policy changes can happen quickly. Follow official sources for the latest information.
Seek Legal Help: If you or a family member is detained, contact a qualified immigration attorney as soon as possible.
Community Support: Local organizations may offer help with legal advice, family support, and information about your rights.
Looking Ahead: Policy Debates and the Future of Enforcement

The debate over immigration enforcement is likely to continue. Supporters of the current approach argue that strong enforcement is needed to keep the country safe. Critics say that the focus should be on the most dangerous individuals, not on meeting arrest quotas.

As reported by VisaVerge.com, the Houston operation is a clear example of the administration’s new priorities. The focus on violent offenders, including an airplane hijacker, shows a commitment to public safety. However, the broad approach and increased number of arrests have raised questions about fairness, resources, and the impact on families.

Congress and state lawmakers will play a key role in shaping the future of immigration enforcement. Decisions about funding, oversight, and cooperation between local and federal agencies will affect how ICE operates in Houston and across the country.

Conclusion: What This Means for Houston and Beyond

The recent ICE operation in Houston, which included the removal of an airplane hijacker among 1,361 violent criminals, marks a major moment in U.S. immigration enforcement. The operation reflects new policies that prioritize public safety but also raise concerns about fairness and community impact.

For those affected, it is important to know your rights, seek legal help, and stay informed about policy changes. For the wider community, the debate over immigration enforcement is far from over. As policies continue to change, the balance between safety, fairness, and family unity will remain at the center of the conversation.

For more information about ICE operations and how to contact the agency, visit the official ICE Houston ERO page. This resource provides updates, contact details, and guidance for individuals and families affected by enforcement actions.

ICE → U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency enforcing immigration laws and removing violators.
Airplane Hijacker → An individual convicted of illegally taking control of an aircraft during flight.
Removal Proceedings → Legal process reviewing if an undocumented immigrant must be deported from the U.S.
287(g) Agreement → Partnership allowing local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws under ICE supervision.
Executive Order → Directive issued by the U.S. president to manage federal government operations or policies.

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan duo is teaming up in the House to introduce a bill that would provide legal status for certain undocumented immigrants amid President Donald Trump’s broader mass deportation efforts.

Under the legislation from Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, called the Dignity Act of 2025, undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States since before 2021 would be able to apply for up to seven years of legal status with work authorization. They would have to pay restitution and check in regularly with the Department of Homeland Security, and the legal status would not allow for any federal benefits or a path to citizenship.

The provision is specifically aimed at addressing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has heavily affected farms and food service providers.

The bill would also seek to beef up security measures at the border and require employers nationwide to use E-Verify, the government system for checking whether workers are in the country legally.

Members of Congress have been working for decades on a comprehensive immigration solution. Salazar said she’s hopeful that because her proposal with Escobar does not include amnesty or a path to citizenship, it will open the door to a bipartisan compromise.

“For 40 years, every president and Congress has looked the other way while millions have lived here illegally, many working in key industries that keep our economy running. It’s the Achilles’ heel no one wants to fix,” Salazar said in a statement. “The Dignity Act offers a commonsense solution: certain undocumented immigrants can earn legal status — not citizenship — by working, paying taxes, and contributing to our country. No handouts. No shortcuts. Just accountability and a path to stability for our economy and our future.”

The plan would be paid for with restitution and payroll fees by the participants.

The Trump administration has already begun a process to try to provide a layer of protection for migrant workers. The Department of Labor has reshaped its immigration policy department with the goal of making it easier for migrant workers to apply for work visas and temporary status.

At the end of June, Trump said he was working on a way for some migrant laborers to remain in the country.

“We’re working on it right now. We’re going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away,” Trump told Fox News. “What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers, where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows. He’s not going to hire a murderer.”

Despite Trump’s pledge, Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to target workplaces. A recent raid on two agriculture facilities in Southern California led to more than 200 arrests and violent clashes with protestors.

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A Texas Democrat and a Florida Republican are making another try at getting comprehensive immigration reform passed in Congress.

The new version of The Dignity Act sponsored by U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, and Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Florida, includes tweaks they hope will persuade colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it.

“For 40 years, every president and Congress has looked the other way while millions have lived here illegally, many working in key industries that keep our economy running. It’s the Achilles’ heel no one wants to fix,” Salazar said in a statement to NBC. “The Dignity Act offers a commonsense solution: certain undocumented immigrants can earn legal status — not citizenship — by working, paying taxes, and contributing to our country.

“No handouts. No shortcuts. Just accountability and a path to stability for our economy and our future.”

Earlier on Tuesday, she went on Fox News to explain how the bill does not go against President Trump’s immigration policies.

“I do believe the president promised that the illegals who were criminals were going to be kicked out of the country. Now there is another mass of people – most of them are Hispanics – that have been here for more than five years, that have been contributing to the economy, who do not have a criminal record, and those people are the ones who deserve some type of dignity,” Salazar said on Fox & Friends on Tuesday.

The Dignity Act proposes enhanced border security, and the gradual, compulsive use of an employee immigration status checks system called E-Verify. It also calls for more work visas, a transitional seven-year “dignity” status for undocumented immigrants who would pay a $5,000 fine for coming into the country illegally but could continue to work.

“Immigrants – especially those who have been in the United States for decades – make up a critical component of our communities and also of the American workforce and economy. The vast majority of immigrants are hard-working, law-abiding residents; and, most Americans recognize that it is in our country’s best interest to find bipartisan reforms,” said cosponsor Escobar.

The bill was introduced in 2023 but failed to get a vote in the House floor. The bill last sat in the House Subcommittee on Ways and Means. The current iteration has 18 Democratic and Republican cosponsors, according to Salazar’s office.

Advocates are banking on shifting perceptions among independent voters on immigration to get The Dignity Act across the finish line.

“The Dignity Act would offer opportunities to strengthen our legal immigration system, protect immigrant families, secure the border, and provide stability for individuals who have contributed to this country for decades,” said FWD.us President Todd Schutte. “It presents a stark contrast to the harmful actions we’re seeing every day, with the ramp-up in deportations and efforts to strip away status and work authorization from millions.”

A coalition of evangelical leaders on Monday sent a letter to members of Congress supporting the bill.

“As Christians committed to the rule of law … we believe the Dignity Act offers necessary reforms to help achieve a permanent immigration policy that remedies wrongdoings, protects our communities, and aligns with the priorities of evangelical Christians,” the groups under the umbrella of the Evangelical Immigration Table wrote.

Individual organizations said the fines would generate billions of dollars that can be used to maintain border security in the long run. They also said this is the right time for reform — given the record low number of illegal border crossings.

“Congressional funding has provided for unprecedented border security. Now we have the opportunity and responsibility to secure a just and humane resolution to the status of immigrants who are valued members of our churches and communities,” said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar is proposing a major bipartisan immigration reform bill in Congress amidst President Donald Trump administration’s growing crackdown on immigrants.

Escobar, D-El Paso, announced the reintroduction of the Dignity Act Tuesday, July 15, in Washington D.C. The announcement was made along side the bill’s co-author Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Florida.

“This would be a very important first step,” Escobar said. “I hope this means we can build the momentum necessary with this more scaled down version to provide the legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants, a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, relief for American families, where there is a spouse that is undocumented, and other reforms including visa reform and asylum reform.”

The bill has 18 co-sponsors from both side of the aisle. They all accompanied the Representatives during the announcement of the legislation.

During Escobar and Salazar’s first attempt to pass the reforms, the bill had 38 cosponsors — 30 Democrats and eight Republicans. Today’s effort has added one Republican.

Salazar did not immediately provide a comment about the bill.

The bill is a scaled back version of the Dignity Act that Escobar and Salazar introduced in 2023, reflecting the current political realities in 2025.

“I have always felt a sense of urgency around immigration reform, but there is a far more profound sense of urgency today given what we are seeing unfold across the country,” Escobar said.

The Dignity Act could assist as many as 10 million immigrants in the United States.

The 2023 reform itself faced barriers from both sides of the aisle, Escobar said, leading to the bill failing to advance. At least eight pushes for immigration reforms in Congress have failed since 2013.

The last immigration reform was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

What are key provisions of Dignity Act of 2025?
The Dignity Act would establish the Dignity Program, which will provide legal immigration status for individuals who entered the country prior to Dec. 31, 2020 and who pass a criminal background check. Those who enter the program would receive work and travel authorization. The act will also provide pathways to citizenship for Dreamers, keep families together and open the door for those in the dignity program to enter the U.S. armed services.
It seeks visa reforms, looking to decrease backlogs to a maximum of 10 years, raising visa caps, and exempt spousal and minor children visas from these caps. It would also reform the asylum system, opening three regional processing centers across Latin America, requiring credible fear interviews within 15 days of arrival in the U.S. and a decision in the asylum case within 45 days.

The bill includes upgrades and improvements to border infrastructure, and increases training and minimum pay rates for U.S. Border Patrol agents. It also looks to codify the protection of sensitive locations from immigration enforcement operations, including schools, hospitals, places of worship, courthouses and places that provide disaster relief, among others. The bill also places additional ICE accountability measures, including requiring the agency to update detainee data within 24 hours and providing telephone calls to family members if they are relocated.
The bill will provide $10 billion for the Department of Homeland Security to modernize ports of entry and provide additional funding to fund the Dignity Program.

Trump’s immigration crackdown
The immigration reform comes as Trump’s administration has sought to ramp up arrests and deportations.
Trump’s administration officials have sought to strip the legal status of millions of immigrants who entered the country during the Biden administration or who have been in the country with a temporary protected status.

Officials most recently announced they would be removing the protected status of Hondurans and Nicaraguans. The administration previously stripped TPS for Haitians and for Venezuelans.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” granted the Department of Homeland Security an additional $165 billion in funding to carry out immigration enforcement and deportations.

Growing support for immigration
Americans have increasingly grown more positive about the benefits of immigrants to the country, recent polling from Gallup found.
Gallup found that 73% of those polled believed that immigration benefits the country, with 91% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans saying that immigration is good for the country. Both parties showed an increase approval over 2024.

The polling also found that 62% of those asked disapproved of Trump’s handing of immigration.
“The Trump administration’s swift and visible response appears to have defused that concern, particularly among Republicans,” Gallup’s Lydia Saad concluded. “As a result, Americans’ attitudes on immigration have largely returned to where they stood before the recent border surge, marked by broader appreciation for immigration, less desire to reduce it, and more support for pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.”

The surge in support for immigration amidst the crackdown signals to Escobar that the tide in public opinion may be changing, and it may contribute support for her bill. But there are still challenges coming from the White House.
“This moment is very important and I think the shift in public sentiment should help us,” Escobar said. “But we need business owners, farmers and community members to apply pressure to their members of Congress, and frankly to the president as well, saying we want reform now.”

Miami Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar and Texas Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar have teamed up to introduce a “revolutionary immigration reform bill” that they say would further secure the border and allow undocumented immigrants in the country prior to 2021 to become legal U.S. residents.

The two lawmakers held a news conference Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington to talk about their proposal — The Dignity Act of 2025.
They were joined by more than a dozen other lawmakers and boisterous supporters carrying #DignityAct.

“The Dignity Act of 2025 is a revolutionary bill that offers the solution to our immigration crisis: secure the border, stop illegal immigration and provide an earned opportunity for long-term immigrants to stay here and work,” said Salazar. “No amnesty. No handouts. No citizenship. Just accountability and a path to stability for our economy and our future.”

Addressing President Donald Trump directly at the press conference, Salazar said, “I believe that you can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism” in urging him to fix the “40-year [immigration system] mess.”

“Yes, they broke the law,” said Salazar, “but someone gave them a job because they needed those workers — workers still needed today.”

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, said the proposed legislation represents “a critical first step to overhauling this broken system.”

Salazar introduced a similar bill, The Dignity Act of 2023, in Congress two years ago but it never made it to the House floor for a vote.

In this latest version, say the two lawmakers, the legislation will be fully funded with “restitution payments and application fees made by immigrants” and not cost U.S. taxpayers a dime.

READ MORE: Immigration judges are being fired despite backlog of immigration cases

Among the bill’s key provisions is a program that would allow undocumented immigrants to continue to live and work in the U.S. with a renewable visa “based on good conduct and restitution” for seven years at a time.

Another would allow so-called “Dreamers,” young people brought illegally into the country by their parents to gain “a path to permanent residency.”

Challenging fight to pass Dignity Act

These two provisions, which critics may view as “amnesty” for those immigrants here illegally, face a challenge in the Republican-majority Congress and with the White House.

The Trump administration has been aggressively seeking to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. And it has ended Biden-era programs that granted temporary visas to hundreds of thousands of other immigrants.

The administration is terminating Temporary Protected Status for up to 1 million legal immigrants, including Haitians, Venezuelans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans. It also revoked temporary visas for more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans granted under the previous Biden Administration’s humanitarian parole program.

Other legislation provisions related to border security include mandatory E-Verify, an online Department of Homeland Security system launched in the late 1990s. It can quickly confirm if someone is authorized to work in the U.S., often by using Social Security numbers.

The legislation also addresses an end to releasing migrants in the U.S. while they await immigration court hearings, a practice known as “catch-and-release.” The Trump administration has already imposed such a policy earlier this year. One provision, “workforce development,” would expand training, apprenticeships and education for U.S. workers.

The two lawmakers also propose reforming legal immigration by updating visa categories “to align with 21st-century economic needs.”

The lawmakers say the Dignity Act is “a tough but fair approach” to securing the border and giving a chance for undocumented immigrants “who have built their lives here to come out of the shadows with dignity.”

“For decades, millions have lived and worked in the shadows — harvesting our crops, building our homes and contributing to our economy,” they said. “The system is collapsing before our eyes. Congress can no longer look the other way. This is the moment to act.”

‘More political theater’

Richard Lamondin, who is running for the Democratic nomination to run against Salazar in November, said her bill is “more political theater than true immigration reform.”

Noting Salazar has twice introduced a similar bill that’s failed in Congress, Lamondin said Salazar “has proven herself to be an ineffective, insincere representative for communities that desperately need an advocate.”

“We need comprehensive immigration reform that honors our values, strengthens our economy, and includes a real path to citizenship,” Lamondin said in a statement. “And we need leaders who understand the stakes and deliver results — not more political stunts that trade dignity for headlines.”

Last month, Salazar called out Trump for not using legal due process when arresting undocumented migrants — and reminded Trump of his campaign pledge to focus deportations on criminal migrants.

The Trump administration wants to make millions of immigrants who entered the United States without legal authorization ineligible for bond hearings. This means they would need to remain in immigration detention as they fight deportation proceedings in court, which can take months and in some cases years.

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told NBC News in an email Tuesday that the recently issued guidance “closes a loophole” in immigration law that had long been applied mostly to detain those who had recently arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“All aliens seeking to enter our country in an unlawful manner or for illicit purposes shall be treated equally under the law, while still receiving due process,” the ICE spokesperson wrote. “It is aligned with the nation’s long-standing immigration law.”

The Washington Post first reported about the new ICE memo instructing immigration officials to keep immigrants detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings.”

“I don’t think it’s beyond anyone’s notice that we are starting to see policies to keep people detained and keep people detained longer,” Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told NBC News.

“We’re seeing the administration’s goal of detaining and deporting more people grow,” Dojaquez-Torres added.

The new guidance seems to give immigration authorities broader discretion to detain other types of immigrants — such as those who have lived in the U.S. for decades and have U.S. citizen children, and may potentially have legal pathways to remain in the country.

Bond hearings help detainees show to immigration judges that they “are not a flight risk or a public safety risk,” Dojaquez-Torres.

Under the new policy guidance, “the judge doesn’t even have the power to hear your bond case,” Dojaquez-Torres said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the best person in the world, a judge won’t be able to hear your case… If they are agreeing with DHS’ view.”

In a Tuesday post on X, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said President Donald Trump and his administration plan on “keeping these criminals and lawbreakers off American streets.”

“Now thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill,” which set aside $45 billion to build new immigration detention centers, “we will have plenty of bed space to do so,” DHS wrote on social media.

Rebekah Wolf, director of immigration justice campaign at the American Immigration Council, told NBC News the organization has already received reports from across the nation of some immigration judges who are already “accepting the argument” from DHS and ICE.

“And because the memo isn’t public, we don’t even know what law the government is relying on to make the claim that everyone who has ever entered without inspection is subject to mandatory detention,” Wolf said.

There have also been reports of other immigration judges who have disagreed with the new guidance and have granted a bond hearing since the policy went into effect last week, Dojaquez-Torres said. In these cases, “ICE has appealed and refused to release people in the interim until the appeal has been finalized.”

In the memo, ICE acting Director Todd M. Lyons, who oversees the nation’s immigration detention facilities, wrote that the new policy will likely face legal challenges, The Washington Post reported.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Seventeen immigration court judges have been fired in recent days, according to the union that represents them, as the Trump administration pushes forward with its mass deportations of immigrants in the country.

The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents immigration court judges as well as other professionals, said in a news release that 15 judges were fired “without cause” on Friday and another two on Monday. The union said they were working in courts in 10 different states across the country — California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

“It’s outrageous and against the public interest that at the same time Congress has authorized 800 immigration judges, we are firing large numbers of immigration judges without cause,” said the union’s President Matt Biggs. “This is nonsensical. The answer is to stop firing and start hiring.”

Firings come with courts at the center of administration efforts
The firings come as the courts have been increasingly at the center of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration enforcement efforts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arresting immigrants as they appear at court for proceedings.

A spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which is the part of the Justice Department that oversees the courts, said in an email that the office would not comment on the firings.

The large-scale arrests began in May and have unleashed fear among asylum-seekers and immigrants appearing in court. In what has become a familiar scene, a judge will grant a government lawyer’s request to dismiss deportation proceedings against an immigrant. Meanwhile, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are waiting in the hallway to arrest the person and put them on a fast track to deportation as soon as he or she leaves the courtroom.

Immigration court judges are also dealing with a massive backlog of roughly 3.5 million cases that ballooned in recent years. Cases can take years to weave their way to a final determination, with judges and lawyers frequently scheduling final hearings on the merits of a case over a year out. Unlike criminal courts, the government isn’t required to provide lawyers to everyone going through immigration courts; immigrants can hire their own lawyer but if they can’t afford one they represent themselves — often using an interpreter to make their case.

Senator alleges one firing is punishment
Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois alleged that one of the judges fired was essentially being punished for talking to him during a visit the senator made a few weeks ago to the Chicago Immigration Court.

In a news release Tuesday, Durbin said the judge “took time to show me the court and explain its functions.” He said after the visit, the judge received an email from the Justice Department telling her that all communications with congressional offices should be routed through headquarters and that immigration judges shouldn’t be talking directly with members of Congress.

“Her abrupt termination is an abuse of power by the Administration to punish a non-political judge simply for doing her job,” said Durbin, who’s the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Courts are getting a cash infusion
Under recently passed legislation that will use $170 billion to supercharge immigration enforcement, the courts are set to get an infusion of $3.3 billion. That will go toward raising the number of judges to 800 and hiring more staff to support them.

But the union said that since the Trump administration took office over 103 judges have either been fired or voluntarily left after taking what was dubbed the “Fork in the Road” offers at the beginning of the administration. The union said that rather than speeding up the immigration court process, the Justice Department’s firings would actually make the backlogs worse. The union said that it can take as long as a year to recruit, hire and train new immigration court judges.

There are currently about 600 judges, according to the union figures. Immigration courts fall under the Justice Department.

ATLANTA — As federal agents conduct immigration raids in Southern California and across America, the union representing major and minor league baseball players has warned any concerned members to “carry documentation wherever they go,” union chief Tony Clark said Tuesday.

Clark, asked about the raids amid the context of a significant Latino player base, said the union has retained immigration lawyers and encourages players and family members to reach out with any concerns, so as to ensure players can be “in the best position possible to just get to the ballpark and do their jobs.”

Said Clark: “We continue to communicate with our guys and assure them, whether they’re at the minor league level or at the major league level, this is how best to protect yourself in the near term, and carrying the documentation while having an open line of communication is what we’ve found has worked so far.”

Clark said the union is working “hand in hand” with the league on this issue and believes the league is delivering a similar message to players. Clark and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred each spoke in separate meetings with the Baseball Writers Assn. of America here Tuesday.

Manfred said the league has discussed the issue with the Trump administration.

“They assured us that there were going to be protections for our players — for example, going back and forth between the U.S. and Canada,” Manfred said. “They told us that was what was going to happen. That’s what happened. Beyond that, it’s all speculation.”

A federal judge ruled last week that the government cannot use racial profiling — what language someone speaks, for instance, or what race they are — in coming to the “reasonable suspicion” required to detain someone.

According to the league, 28% of players on opening day rosters were born outside the United States, with the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Cuba ranking as the top three foreign countries.

Does Manfred worry Latino players might get caught up in the raids?

“I worry about anything that could be disruptive to the very best players in the world,” he said. “The prospect of that disruption, given that our players all have visas, it’s speculation at this point. We have seen no evidence of that at this point.”

The dramatic surge in funding for immigration enforcement agencies puts spending at a level that rivals foreign military forces, creating a benchmark critics fear will serve as the norm for years to come.

President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” triples funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Its $30 billion now exceeds funding levels for the militaries of Canada and Turkey.

The bill likewise allocates $45 billion in funding for detention centers, allowing the U.S. to more than double its current capacity in the hopes of detaining more than 100,000 people.

It also designates roughly $47 billion for continuing construction of Trump’s border wall.

“I think what we can’t even quite comprehend yet is what the human impact will be and the ways in which this money is going to further convert the United States into a police state for immigrant communities and beyond,” Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, told The Hill.

“They’re talking about creating a militarized environment for anyone in this country they believe to be worthy of deportation.”

Border czar Tom Homan over the weekend told Politico the bill is “going to give us more resources and more boots on the ground, so when we have to go to these sanctuary cities, we want to send in many more agents in sanctuary cities. … It’s going to ramp up deportations, because it’s going to buy us some more beds to hold people. It is going to buy more transportation contracts to remove people more efficiently and quicker.”

Jorge Loweree with the American Immigration Council said the funding levels aren’t just historic — he’s worried they could also become the baseline funding levels for immigration enforcement.

“This infusion of more than $170 billion into our enforcement apparatus in a very short period of time is both historical, but also the reality is that in this country when we infuse a ton of resources into a law enforcement agency — into some kind of enforcement apparatus — that then becomes a new norm,” he said.

“That is the agency that we will be dealing with forever. We’ve effectively made immigration enforcement the top federal law enforcement priority of this country in terms of funding.”

Both immigration advocates and Trump administration officials have referred to the funding levels as “unprecedented.”

“The unprecedented funding for ICE will enable my hardworking officers and agents to continue making America safe again by identifying, arresting and removing criminal aliens from our communities,” acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said when the bill passed Congress earlier this month.

But Loweree said the funding levels go well beyond what ICE would need to comply with Trump’s pledge to deport migrants with criminal histories, whom the president has referred to as “the worst of the worst.”

“We’re seeing indiscriminate enforcement activity taking place in communities throughout the country. A lot of going after people that are just seeking work in a Home Depot parking lot — that type of activity — going after the low-hanging fruit. Because the reality is that there aren’t that many immigrants with criminal histories. There certainly aren’t that many with serious criminal histories in the U.S.,” he said.

“So the harsh reality is that you can’t both have mass deportation and also focus enforcement resources on people with serious criminal histories. The numbers just aren’t there.”

There’s some debate as to just how quickly the bill will have an impact.

Even with an infusion of cash, it takes time to hire and train officers — raising the possibility the Trump administration may rely more heavily on contractors who don’t have the same training or experience.

“It’s going to change hugely, but not overnight,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute.

“Even before this money, ICE and [U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)] were not able to staff up to their previously allocated levels, and that was despite CBP offering significant bonuses, including signing and retention bonuses.”

Beyond shortfalls in hiring, traditionally any new detention centers would also take years to build.

But Altman fears “Alligator Alcatraz,” the new facility built deep within the Florida Everglades, could be the model for swiftly expanding detention capacity. Built in just days, the facility uses soft-sided tents with chain-link fence and contains cells crammed with bunk beds.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt boasted that the location is “isolated, and surrounded by dangerous wildlife in unforgiving terrain” — a nod to the swamp surrounding the property that is home to alligators, snakes and mosquitoes.

Altman said the facility was paid for by Florida, only to be covered by money set aside elsewhere in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) budget — reimbursed through funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“You have this clearly horrific, awful place to be detained that pops up seemingly overnight that isn’t even being done in contract with ICE that is fully paid for and managed by the state of Florida,” she said.

“The reconciliation bill, in addition to these types of money for ICE and CBP, also has $13.5 billion worth of funds that are available as reimbursement to state and local governments for immigration enforcement,” Altman added.

“So we’re very concerned that the type of unaccountable, dangerous facility that we’re seeing popping up in the Everglades right now could be replicated in other states that want to have their own turn at playing at being as harmful and cruel to immigrants as they possibly can be.”

Thirteen people have died in ICE detention this year. That includes the recent death a 75-year-old Cuban man who had been in the U.S. since he was a child. Outside of ICE facilities, another man died after falling 30 feet from a roof as ICE raided his workplace.

Loweree noted the facilities and plans for detention are coming at a time when DHS has eliminated many of its oversight mechanisms, working to limit congressional visits to facilities while eliminating various civil rights offices and ombudsmen within the department.

“They have all been sort of cast aside, and at the same time that the government’s receiving this enormous infusion of cash to wildly increase the detention capacity. I mean, the reality is a lot of people are going to die unnecessarily.”

WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department explored bringing criminal charges against Minnesota judges and defense lawyers who discussed requesting virtual court hearings to protect defendants from being arrested by federal immigration officers, according to five people familiar with the matter.
In February, FBI agents in Minneapolis opened a preliminary inquiry into whether local judges and defense attorneys obstructed immigration enforcement by requesting virtual hearings, and the concept was also pitched to law enforcement officials in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal Justice Department deliberations.

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Reuters could not determine whether the probe is ongoing. To date, no judge or lawyer in Minnesota has been charged over the episode.

Two of the people familiar with the discussions said FBI and Justice Department leadership in Washington supported the probe.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

The probe was launched shortly after Emil Bove, the former Acting Deputy Attorney General who has since been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as an appellate judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, ordered prosecutors in a January 21 memo to pursue potential criminal cases against “state and local actors” for impeding immigration enforcement.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to vote on Bove’s nomination on Thursday, with Democrats expected to oppose it.

The Trump administration has taken aggressive steps against the legal system when its policies have been blocked, lashing out at judges over rulings it disagrees with and seeking to punish law firms and legal organizations that have challenged its policies.

“They’ve been intimidating law firms and lawyers from the beginning,” said Bennett Gershman, a former state prosecutor who teaches law at Pace University. “This is just … part of the campaign to terrorize, intimidate, frighten people from speaking out.”

EMAIL TRAIL
The Minneapolis probe followed comments made in an email chat maintained by Minnesota defense lawyers on February 6 discussing requesting virtual court hearings for defendants who were living in the U.S. illegally to reduce the risk that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would apprehend them at court, the five people told Reuters.

Fox News reported about the existence of the email chat in March, about a month after the Justice Department started its inquiry.

The DOJ probe that the chat helped spark has not been previously reported.

In the email chain, one defense attorney said judges in the Third Judicial District in Minnesota “proactively” reached out to public defenders and prosecutors to encourage them to request Zoom court hearings on any cases with immigration issues, and that such requests would be granted “liberally,” according to an excerpt of the chat verified to Reuters by an attorney who saw the email messages.

In late April, the Justice Department charged Hannah Dugan, a local elected judge in Milwaukee, for trying to help a migrant evade immigration authorities when he appeared in her courtroom for a hearing. The indictment also alleges she told the defendant’s attorney he could “appear by Zoom” for his future court appearances.
Dugan has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The Justice Department previously tried to charge a local Massachusetts judge in Trump’s first term for helping a state court defendant evade arrest by ICE by allowing him to leave through a rear door.
The case was later dropped during the Biden administration.
Virtual hearings became commonplace in courtrooms across America during the COVID pandemic, and still remain a popular option in some states – including Minnesota.

Chris Wellborn, a recent former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that scheduling virtual appearances for clients is a “routine and established procedure” that can help defendants who are balancing multiple jobs or facing child care duties.

“This situation underscores a recurring challenge: the misinterpretation of the vital role a criminal defense attorney plays in upholding constitutional obligations,” he said.

“It is a fundamental duty of all defense lawyers to provide comprehensive advice to their clients regarding all available legal options and pathways.”

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Maggi’s home in a suburban neighborhood here is a haven for local families. It’s a place where after just a few weeks in Maggi’s family-run child care program this spring, one preschooler started calling Maggi “mama” and Maggi’s husband “papa.” Children who have graduated from Maggi’s program still beg their parents to take them to her home instead of school.

Over the past few months, fewer families are showing up for care: Immigration enforcement has ramped up and immigration policies have rapidly changed. Both Maggi and the families who rely on her — some of whom are immigrants — no longer feel safe.

“There’s a lot of fear going on within the Latino community, and all of these are good people — good, hard-working people,” Maggi, 47, said in Spanish through an interpreter on a recent morning as she watched a newborn sleep in what used to be her living room. Since she started her own child care business two years ago, she has dedicated nearly every inch of her common space to creating a colorful, toy-filled oasis for children. Maggi doesn’t understand why so many immigrants are now at risk of deportation. “We’ve been here a long time,” she said. “We’ve been doing honest work.”

Immigrants like Maggi play a crucial role in home-based child care, as well as America’s broader child care system of more than 2 million predominantly female workers. (The Hechinger Report is not using Maggi’s last name out of concern for her safety and that of the families using her care.) Caregivers are notoriously difficult to find and keep, not only because the work is difficult, but because of poverty-level wages and limited benefits. Nationwide, immigrants make up nearly 20 percent of the child care workforce. In New York City, immigrants make up more than 40 percent of the child care workforce. In Los Angeles, it’s nearly 50 percent.

The Trump administration’s far-reaching war on immigration, which includes daily quotas for immigrant arrests, new restrictions on work permits and detainment of legal residents, threatens America’s already-fragile child care system. Immigrant providers, especially those who serve immigrant families, have been hit especially hard. Just like at Maggi’s, child care providers nationwide are watching families disappear from their care, threatening the viability of those businesses. In America, 1 in 4 children under the age of 6 has at least one foreign-born parent. Some kids who could benefit from experienced caregivers are now instead at home with older siblings or elderly relatives, losing out on socialization and kindergarten preparation. Some immigrant workers, regardless of status, are too scared to come to work, exacerbating staffing shortages.

“Anti-immigrant policy can and will weaken our entire caregiving infrastructure,” said Karla Coleman-Castillo, senior policy analyst at the National Women’s Law Center. Home-based programs in particular will feel the squeeze, she said, since they tend to serve more immigrant families. “Anything that threatens the stability of families’ ability and comfort accessing early childhood education — and educators’ comfort entering or remaining in the workforce — is going to impact an already precarious sector.”

For Maggi, the fallout has been swift. In February, just a few weeks after the first changes were announced, her enrollment dropped from as many as 15 children each day to seven. Some families returned to Mexico. Others became too nervous to stray from their work routes for even a quick drop off. Some no longer wanted to give their information to the state to get help paying for care.

By May, only two children, an infant and a 4-year-old, were enrolled full time, along with six kids who came for before- or after-school care. She accepts children who pay privately and those who pay with child care subsidies through the state program for low-income children. She brings in about $2,000 a month for the infant and preschooler, and a couple hundred more each week for after-school care — down significantly from the $9,000 to $10,000 of late 2024. For parents who don’t receive a state subsidy, she keeps her rates low: less than $7 an hour. “They tell me that I’m cheap,” Maggi said with a slight smile. But she isn’t willing to raise her rates. “I was a single mom,” she said. “I remember struggling to find someone to care for my children when I had to work.”

Like many child care providers who emigrated to the United States as adults, Maggi started her career in an entirely different field. As a young mother, Maggi earned a law degree from a college in Mexico and worked in the prosecutor’s office in the northern Mexico state of Coahuila. Her job required working many weekends and late evenings, which took a toll on her parenting as a single mother. “I really feel bad that I was not able to spend more time with my daughters,” she added. “I missed a lot of their childhood.”

For a year when her girls were in elementary school, Maggi enrolled them in a boarding school, dropping them off Sunday nights and picking them up Friday afternoons. On some weekends, she took the girls to her office, even though she knew it wasn’t a place for children. Maggi longed for a different job where she could spend more time with them.

She started thinking seriously of emigrating about 15 years ago, as violence escalated. Her cousin was kidnapped and police officers she worked with were killed. Maggi received death threats from criminals she helped prosecute. Then one day, she was stopped by men who told her they knew where she lived and that she had daughters. “That’s when I said, ‘This is not safe for me.’”

In 2011, Maggi and the girls emigrated to America, bringing whatever they could fit into four suitcases. They ended up in El Paso, Texas, where Maggi sold Jell-O and tamales to make ends meet. Three years later, they moved here to Albuquerque. Maggi met her husband and they married, welcoming a son, her fourth child, shortly after.

In Albuquerque, Maggi settled into a life of professional caregiving, which came naturally and allowed her to spend more time with her family than she had in Mexico. She and her husband went through an intensive screening process and became foster parents. (New Mexico does not require individuals to have lawful immigration status to foster.) Maggi enrolled her youngest in a Head Start center, where administrators encouraged her to start volunteering. She loved being in the classroom with children, but without a work permit could not become a Head Start teacher. Instead, after her son started elementary school, she started offering child care informally to families she knew. Maggi became licensed by the state two years ago after a lengthy process involving several inspections, a background check and mandatory training in CPR and tenets of early childhood care.

It didn’t take long for Maggi to build up a well-respected business serving an acute need in Albuquerque. Hers is one of few child care programs in the area that offers 24/7 care, a rarity in the industry despite the desperate need. The parents who rely on her are teachers, caregivers for the elderly and people answering 911 calls.

In Maggi’s living room, carefully curated areas allow children to move freely between overflowing shelves of colorful toys, art supplies parked on a miniature table and rows of books. Educational posters on her walls reinforce colors, numbers and shapes. She delights in exposing the children to new experiences, frequently taking them on trips to grocery stores or restaurants. She is warm, but has high expectations for the children, insisting they clean up after themselves, follow directions and say “please” and “thank you.”

“I want them to have values,” Maggi said. “We teach them respect toward animals, people and each other.”

By the end of 2024, Maggi’s business was flourishing, and she looked forward to continued growth.

Then, Donald Trump took office.

Data has yet to be released about the extent to which the current administration’s immigration policies have affected the availability of child care. But interviews with child care providers and research hint at what may lie ahead — and is already happening.

After a 2008 policy allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check the immigration status of people taken into custody by local police, there was a marked decline in enrollment in child care among both immigrant and non-immigrant children. There was also a decrease in the supply of child care workers. Even though women were the minority of those deported, researchers found the policy sparked fear in immigrant communities, and many pulled back from their normal routines.

In the child care sector, that’s problematic, experts say. Immigrants in the industry tend to be highly educated and skilled at interacting with children positively, more so even than native workers. If a skilled portion of the workforce is essentially “purged” because they’re too afraid to go to work, that will lower the quality of child care, said Chris Herbst, an associate professor at Arizona State University who has studied immigration policy’s effect on child care. “Kids will be ill-served as a result.”

Home-based programs like Maggi’s are among the most vulnerable. Children of immigrants are more likely to be in those child care settings. In the decade leading up to the pandemic, however, the number of home-based programs declined by 25 percent nationwide, in part due to financial challenges sustaining such businesses.

On a recent morning, Maggi stood in her living room, wearing white scrubs adorned with colorful cartoon ladybugs. Last year, the room would have been buzzing with children. Now, it’s quiet, save for chatter from Kay, the sole preschooler in her care each day. (The Hechinger Report is not using Kay’s full name to protect her privacy.) While Kay sat at a table working on a craft, Maggi cradled the infant, who had just woken up from a nap. The baby’s eyes were latched onto Maggi’s face as she fawned over him.

“Hello little one!” she cooed in Spanish. He cracked a smile and Maggi’s face lit up.

As one of her daughters took over to feed the newborn, Maggi followed Kay outside. The preschooler bounced around from the sandbox to the swings to a playhouse, with Maggi diligently following and playing alongside her.

Finally Kay came to a standstill, resting her head against Maggi’s hip. Maggi gently patted her head and asked if she was ready to show off her pre-kindergarten skills. The pair sat down at a small table in the shade and Kay watched eagerly as Maggi poured out small plastic trinkets. Kay pulled three plastic toy turtles into a pile. “Mama, look! They’re friends!” Kay said, giggling.

Kay came to Maggi’s program after her mother pulled her out of another program where she felt the girl wasn’t treated well. Here, Kay is so happy, she hides when her mom comes back to get her. Still, a key aspect of the child care experience is missing for Kay. Normally, the girl would have several friends her own age to play with. Now when she is asked who her friends are, she names Maggi’s adult daughters.

Maggi worries even more about the children she doesn’t see anymore. Most are cared for by grandparents now, but those relatives are unlikely to know how to support child development and education, Maggi said. Many are unable to run around with the children like she does, and are more likely to turn to tablets or televisions for them.

She has seen the effects in children who leave her program and come back later having regressed. “Some of them are doing things well with me, and then when they come back, they have fallen behind,” she said. One child Maggi used to care for, for example, had just started to walk when the mother pulled them out of full-time care earlier this year, at the start of the immigration crackdown. In the care of a relative, Maggi found out they now spend much of the day sitting at home.

Before the second Trump administration began, the child care landscape looked bright in New Mexico, a state with a chronically high child poverty rate. In 2022, New Mexico started rolling out a host of child care policy changes. Voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to early childhood education, with sustained funding to support it. The state now allows families earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or nearly $125,000 a year, to qualify for free child care. That includes the majority of households in the state. Among the other changes: Providers are now paid more for children they enroll via the state’s assistance program.

The increase has been helpful for many providers, including Maggi. Before the pandemic, she received about $490 a month from the state for each preschooler enrolled in her program, compared to $870 a month now. If she enrolls infants who qualify for child care assistance, she gets paid $1,100 a month, nearly $400 more than pre-pandemic. She needs children enrolled to get the payments, however. Running her program 24 hours a day, seven days a week helps. She earns extra money from the state when caring for children evenings and weekends, and she is paid monthly to cover the cost of housing foster children.

Child care advocates in New Mexico are concerned that immigration policy will affect the industry’s progress. “I am worried because we could be losing early childhood centers that could help working families,” said Maty Miranda, an organizer for OLÉ New Mexico, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “We could lose valuable teachers and children will lose those strong connections.” Immigration crackdowns have had “a huge impact emotionally” on providers in the state, she added.

State officials did not respond to a request for data on how many child care providers are immigrants. Across the state, immigrants account for about 13 percent of the entire workforce.

Many local early educators are scared due to more extreme immigration enforcement, as are the children in their care, Miranda said. They are trying to work regardless. “Even with the fear, the teachers are telling me that when they go into their classrooms, they try to forget what’s going on outside,” she added. “They are professionals who are trying to continue with their work.”

Maggi said she’s so busy with the children who remain in her care that there is no extra time to work an additional job and bring in more income. She won’t speculate on how long her family can survive, instead choosing to focus on the hope that things will improve.

Maggi’s biggest fear at the moment is the well-being of the children of immigrants she and so many other home-based providers serve. She knows some of her kids and families are at risk of being detained by ICE, and that interactions like that, for kids, can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, disrupted brain development and behavior changes. Some of Maggi’s parents have left her with emergency numbers in case they are detained by immigration officials.

Many of the children Maggi cares for after school are old enough to understand that deportation is a threat. “They show fear, because their parents are scared,” Maggi said. “Children are starting to live with that.”

Amid the dizzying policy changes, Maggi is trying to keep looking forward. She is working on improving her English skills. Her husband is pursuing a credential to be able to help more in her program. All three of her daughters are studying to become early childhood educators, with the goal to join the family business. Eventually, she wants to serve pre-K children enrolled in the state’s program, which will provide a steady stream of income.

In spite of all the uncertainty, Maggi said she is sustained by a bigger purpose. “I want them to enjoy their childhood,” she said on a sunny afternoon, looking fondly at Kay as the girl flung her tiny pink shoes aside and hopped into a sandbox. It’s the type of childhood Maggi remembers from her earliest days in Mexico. Kay giggled with delight as Maggi crouched down and poured cool sand over the little girl’s feet. “Once you grow up, there’s no going back.”

After months of a steady climb in ridership, Metro’s numbers fell to its lowest levels of the year in June after the immigration raids throughout Los Angeles County.

The transit agency estimated a ridership count of roughly 23.7 million last month on its bus and rail systems — a 13.5% drop from May and the lowest June on record since 2022, when numbers had started to rebound since the pandemic emergency, according to Metro data. The large immigration sweeps began June 6.

The decline didn’t affect the entire system. Ridership on the K Line, for example, rose 28% on weekdays, 85% on Saturdays and 72% on Sundays. Metro attributed the increase to the opening of the LAX/Metro Transit Center.

A variety of factors led to the drop elsewhere, including actions taken by Metro to close multiple stations during demonstrations after officials said that protesters breached the A line tracks, burned trash cans outside the Little Tokyo station, which was closed for up to 12 hours a day for nearly a week, and that they surrounded and vandalized Metro buses.

In El Monte, where officials said federal agents had been sighted questioning patrons at a Metro station, the busway was closed for several days.

The decisions to close stations were made in collaboration with local law enforcement, the Los Angeles Police Department and the county’s Sheriff’s Department, Robert Gummer, deputy chief of security and law enforcement, said during a board meeting last month.

“During the period of the protests, Metro has been challenged by behaviors that put our customers and our employees at risk,” Gummer said.

Outgoing Metro chair and L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn expressed concerns that closures left peaceful protesters stranded.

“I think the unintended consequences of shutting down those stations really harmed the people who were peacefully protesting and trying to get out of there,” Hahn said last month. “There seemed to be a lot of confusion — a lot of people who did not understand what was happening — and a lot of people who didn’t know how to get out.”

Fears over whether immigration raids would occur on bus or rail lines also affected ridership, which is largely Latino. A 2023 Metro survey showed that more than 60% of Metro bus riders and roughly 50% of its rail riders are Latino.

Mayor Karen Bass said the federal response stirred anxiety about using public transit.

“What the administration has done — the provocative actions of the administration — has also led to widespread fear in our city and people being afraid to get on Metro, people being afraid that maybe raids would take place,” Bass said. “We have to look at how we make sure that people in our city feel comfortable and safe.”

Board member and county Supervisor Hilda Solis echoed the concerns.

“I just pray that our staff as well as our patrons — people who ride our system — are not harmed,” Solis said last month. “They’re afraid — they’re fearful for their lives.”

In a widely shared video in June, masked agents descended on a bus stop in Pasadena and detained several people. The stop, which is owned by the city, was on one of Metro’s bus routes.

Three men who were detained at the bus stop are Pasadena residents and plaintiffs in an ACLU lawsuit filed against the Trump administration over unlawful stops and a lack of access to legal representation during the ongoing immigration enforcement. According to the lawsuit, the masked agents who detained the men did not identify themselves as immigration officers and did not show any warrants. In detention, the men were provided little food and water and were forced to sleep on the floor of the holding center, the suit alleges.

In response, a federal court recently issued two temporary restraining orders to the federal government. The Trump administration has since asked an appeals court to lift the restrictions.

Metro has touted its rise in ridership after a drop during the pandemic emergency, and again after a spate of violence on rail lines and buses that affected public trust. During Metro’s annual State of the Agency address last week, Chief Executive Stephanie Wiggins said that ridership has increased by more than 53% over the last four years and that in a recent survey, customer satisfaction rose to 87%.

It was not immediately clear whether ridership has started to rebound since last month’s drop.

“I know that recent events have caused fear, anxiety and heartache in communities we all serve and call home,” Wiggins said, acknowledging the recent turmoil throughout the region. “Many of us have friends, neighbors and loved ones who have been impacted.”

United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the withdrawal of 2,000 National Guard troops from Los Angeles, roughly half the federal troops deployed to the city, the Pentagon said.

President Donald Trump ordered some 4,000 National Guard and 700 Marines into Los Angeles in early June to help enforce federal immigration raids amid widespread protests.

According to Department of Homeland Security figures, cited by NBC Los Angeles, the raids have led to the arrest of 2,792 undocumented immigrants.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell on Tuesday confirmed the release of 2,000 California National Guardsmen “from the federal protection mission”. He claimed the move was because “the lawlessness in Los Angeles is subsiding”.

Mayor Karen Bass described the withdrawal as a “retreat”, crediting the success of peaceful protests and legal actions.

“This happened because the people of Los Angeles stood united and stood strong,” Bass said.

“We organised peaceful protests, we came together at rallies, we took the Trump administration to court. All of this led to today’s retreat,” the Democratic mayor said.

She referred to a lawsuit the city joined that led to an order from a federal judge barring immigration officers from detaining people based solely on their race or for speaking Spanish.

Federal troops deployed to Los Angeles are authorised to detain people who pose a threat to federal personnel or property, but only until police can arrest them.

Military officials are not allowed to carry out arrests themselves.

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Responding to the withdrawal of some of the troops, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said that “thousands of members are still federalised in Los Angeles for no reason and unable to carry out their critical duties across the state”.

“End this theatre and send everyone home,” he added in a post on social media.

Despite legal challenges, a US appeals court has let Trump retain control of California’s National Guard, the first to be deployed by a US president against the wishes of a state governor since 1965.

Newsom’s office said in late June that California National Guard firefighting crews were “operating at just 40 percent capacity due to Trump’s illegal Guard deployment”, as fires were “popping up across the state” months after devastating fires tore through Los Angeles.

INTERACTIVE – What is the National Guard United States Military Los Angeles riots-1749473488

Originally a part of the Mexican empire, Los Angeles continues to have a large population of people with Central and South American origins. The Californian capital is also one of several so-called “sanctuary” cities in the US, offering protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of undocumented people living there.

Trump has promised to deport millions of people in the country without documentation and has executed raids at work sites, including farms that were largely exempted from enforcement during his first term. The administration has faced dozens of lawsuits across the country challenging its tactics.

Trump has also increasingly turned to the military in his immigration crackdown.

In addition to sending troops to Los Angeles, thousands of active-duty troops have been deployed to the border with Mexico, and the Pentagon has created military zones in the border area.

The zones are intended to allow the Trump administration to use troops to detain migrants without invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act that empowers a president to deploy the US military to suppress events such as civil disorder.

A recent poll showed support for immigration in the US has increased since last year, while backing for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants has gone down.

The first step in responding to a crisis is to acknowledge it exists. The surge in illegal crossings at our southern border during the first three years of Joe Biden’s presidency was, by any reasonable definition, a crisis. The failure to acknowledge this reality and take timely action to try to resolve it cost Democrats a great deal of trust with American voters and contributed to President Trump’s return to the White House.

I had a front row view of all this in my role as the assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security. I learned that the border crisis is, to a large extent, an asylum crisis: Our broken immigration laws have increasingly incentivized economic migrants to claim that they fear persecution in order to start a lengthy administrative process that allows them to remain in the United States and work. The political left typically refers to these immigrants as asylum seekers, because our laws allow them to make those claims. Many on the political right refer to them as criminals, because, they often say, crossing the border without documentation is a crime.

The fact that both views have at least some merit shows the dysfunction in our immigration laws. Only Congress can fix those laws, and until its members — from both parties — take action, the challenges at our border will continue.

Illegal entries at our southern border started increasing in the summer and fall of 2020 — when Mr. Trump was still in office. It turned into a tidal wave in 2021, even as Mr. Biden swung the pendulum too far to the left early in his term, including by announcing a 100-day pause on most deportations. I was in Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021 and saw the chaos that resulted when as many as 15,000 people amassed under the International Bridge.

Among the issues that contributed to the surge were the global economic devastation caused by Covid-19, adverse court decisions that delayed the end of a pandemic-era health rule, a lack of resources to adequately secure the border and the inability to deport people to countries like Venezuela. Deliberations that delayed important policy choices didn’t help, either. I pushed for several reforms, including some that eventually made it into executive orders or draft legislation, but there were and are no easy solutions.

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By the time Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats began working in earnest with Republicans in late 2023 and 2024 on revamping our immigration laws, the politics were hopelessly interwoven with the presidential election, which is why a tough, bipartisan bill ultimately foundered.

In June 2024, Mr. Biden issued an executive order that put common-sense restrictions on claiming asylum at the southern border. Combined with a prior executive action that significantly expanded access to safe, orderly and lawful pathways for migrants to come to the United States, illegal entries fell that summer to their lowest levels since the fall of 2020. These actions allowed the Department of Homeland Security to deport more than 685,000 individuals in 2024 — more than any prior fiscal year since 2010. Border Patrol encounters were actually lower when Mr. Biden left office in 2025 than when Mr. Trump did in 2021. Despite this, it was too late to change the political narrative.

Crises at the southern border are not unique to Democrats. We’ve seen regular surges in migration under presidents of both parties going back decades. On his watch in 2018, Mr. Trump responded to a crisis by separating thousands of children from their parents, in pursuit of a zero-tolerance immigration policy. In 2014, Barack Obama’s administration faced a crisis caused by unprecedented encounters of unaccompanied children. In fiscal year 2001, overlapping with the first year of George W. Bush’s presidency, the Border Patrol tallied more than 1.2 million encounters at the southern border.

Right now, the border is relatively quiet. But we’ve traded a border crisis for a border-fueled crisis in governance. This includes the Trump administration’s twisting the Alien Enemies Act to deny due process and send people that the administration asserts (without proof, in some cases) are gang members indefinitely to foreign prisons; applying a foreign-policy-interests exception, meant to be used rarely, to revoke visas of people who say things the administration doesn’t like; and attempting to end birthright citizenship. It also includes deploying the Marines and the National Guard in response to largely peaceful demonstrations in Los Angeles, without the consent of state and local leaders. The relative quiet on our border has come at the significant cost of eroding our constitutional order.

The short answer to the question of how we got here is that Congress has cynically allowed immigration to remain a toxic political issue. Our immigration laws last underwent major updates decades ago when, by far, most migrants encountered at the southern border were seasonal workers from Mexico and few claimed asylum. We wound up with a complicated system of legal options to come here to work temporarily, and it included yearly caps on the number of many types of visas — which haven’t changed significantly in decades and are woefully incapable of meeting today’s labor demand. This helps fuel a gray market for labor in which unscrupulous employers exploit undocumented workers.

The tension between this demand for labor and Mr. Trump’s desire to ramp up deportations appears to have led Immigration and Customs Enforcement to issue internal guidance directing agents to hold off on targeting hotels, restaurants and farms and then to rescind that guidance.

In the absence of enough labor visas, many economic migrants have turned to our asylum system instead. This is because our asylum system is set up as a funnel: At the top, a very permissive standard is applied during a screening interview at the border — which before Covid allowed more than 80 percent of people to pass. But at the bottom, immigration judges apply a much stricter standard, which granted protection to fewer than 25 percent of asylum claimants before the pandemic began.

It can take years to conclude asylum cases, and migrants are eligible for work authorization six months after filing claims. Even when people lose their cases, deporting them is challenging. It involves pulling people out of communities in ways that can quickly generate public backlash, as we are seeing all over the country today. As a result, our enforcement efforts have historically focused on removing undocumented immigrants who commit crimes, because it is much easier to take them into custody directly from jails and lockups — something the current administration is relearning as it struggles to meet its arbitrary removal quotas.

We have ended up with a system that is generous to those who cross the border and claim asylum and is frequently stingy with those who try to use appropriate legal pathways to come here to work.

Democratic and Republican presidents have tried to manage migration by fiat, leading to court injunctions that arbitrarily tie the government’s hands. Mr. Trump has railed against judges who have issued injunctions in cases challenging his executive actions, but he and his team cheered on the judges who issued injunctions against Mr. Biden. In June the Supreme Court gave Mr. Trump a significant win by limiting the power of lower federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions.

But the long-term solution here isn’t more muscular executive actions; it is for Congress to do its job. The bipartisan bill unveiled last year by Senators James Lankford, Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema would have been a good start. It would have streamlined the asylum process at the border, provided an emergency authority to shut the border down during surges and added thousands of personnel, including administrative judges. Knowing that passage of the bill would have been perceived as an election-year win for Democrats, Mr. Trump successfully pressured congressional Republicans to kill it.

What we’ve been left with is a political crisis. Some immigrant advocates argue that the United States has an open-ended obligation to protect people fleeing dangerous countries and that even reasonable enforcement measures — such as expedited removal — are cruel and ineffective. At the other end of the political spectrum, some argue that migrants are replacing Americans and that draconian actions are needed to stop an invasion at our southern border.

These competing moralistic frames are not just disingenuous; they make compromise nearly impossible. Yes, we have an obligation to provide asylum to those who qualify, but most asylum claimants don’t meet the criteria. And even though our borders must be safeguarded, immigration is an economic imperative: Immigrant labor has made us all better off.

We cannot solve this crisis without bipartisan reform. Congress should create an immigration system that is most generous to those who are willing to wait and use significantly expanded pathways to come here and work and that is least generous to those who cross illegally.

In other words, we need a system that recognizes that we are not only a nation of immigrants but also a nation of laws and that we need to respect both. Until that happens, the next border crisis will always be just around the corner.

Blas Nuñez-Neto was an assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security and later a deputy assistant to the president and White House senior adviser for migration and southwest border coordination during the Biden administration.

Fifteen years ago, when Arizona enacted a notorious anti-immigrant “show me your papers” law, I wrote an essay in The Times that began: “I’m glad I’ve already seen the Grand Canyon. Because I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into.”

The essay provoked a variety of reactions, most supportive but some vituperatively negative. One angry reader, noting that the newspaper identified me as teaching at Yale Law School, wrote to the school’s dean to demand that he fire me. The dean and I had a good laugh over that letter. But rather than dismiss it as the product of an eccentric crank, I realize now that I should have understood the letter as a window on the toxic brew of anti-immigrant sentiment that led a state to pass such a law.

The Obama administration challenged Arizona’s law, and after the Supreme Court invalidated most of it in 2012, the harsh anti-immigrant wave subsided. But now my letter writer and like-minded people have a friend in the White House. Or friends, actually — among them, Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, who appears to be giving President Trump his marching orders for the arrests and deportations now shredding the civic fabric of communities across the country.

I have a home in the Los Angeles area, and my recent weeks there encompassed the deployment of the Marines and the federalization of California’s National Guard. I steeled myself every morning to read the granular reporting in The Los Angeles Times of scenes that I could never have imagined just months ago: people snatched up while waiting at a bus stop in peaceful Pasadena; the undocumented father of three Marines taken at his landscaping job, pinned down and punched by masked federal agents before being thrown into detention. People whose quiet presence among us was tolerated for decades as they paid their taxes and raised their American children are now hunted down like animals, so fearful of even going grocery shopping that Los Angeles nonprofits have mobilized to deliver food to their doors.

I was taking an early morning walk in my neighborhood when a black S.U.V. with tinted windows slowed to a stop a half block ahead. I considered: If this is ICE coming to take someone, should I intervene? Start filming? Make sure the victims know their rights? Or just keep walking, secure in the knowledge that no one was coming for me? The car turned out to be an airport limo picking up a passenger, and I was left to ponder how bizarre it was to feel obliged to run through such a mental triage on a summer morning on an American city street.

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Something beyond the raw politics of immigration lies behind the venomous cruelty on display, and I think it is this: To everyone involved, from the policymakers in Washington to the masked agents on the street, undocumented individuals are “the other” — people who not only lack legal rights as a formal matter but who stand outside the web of connection that defines human society. Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, refers to undocumented immigrants as “the gotaways,” the ones we didn’t catch.

In a lecture at Loyola University Chicago in April, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso observed that the current immigration crisis “is driven by the deeper crisis of public and social life.” He continued: “On a fundamental level, these are signs that we are losing the story of who we are as a country. This is a crisis of narrative. Are we no longer a country of immigrants? Are we no longer a country that values the dignity of the human person, individual liberties and with a healthy regard for checks and balances?”

An adaptation of Bishop Seitz’s powerful lecture was published by the Catholic magazine Commonweal, which is where I read it. (Another bishop, Alberto Rojas of San Bernardino, Calif., 60 miles east of Los Angeles, took the rare step of telling the 1.6 million worshipers in the diocese by letter last week that they were excused from attending Mass if they were afraid of immigration enforcement if they came to church.) The Catholic Church has distinguished itself by the moral clarity of its critique of the president’s deportation obsession.

I wish I saw the same powerful advocacy from major Jewish organizations, which I’d argue have a particular responsibility and interest in addressing this issue. Aren’t antisemitism and anti-immigrant cruelty two sides of the same coin? Both spring from viewing members of a group as “the other.” The focus of these organizations, naturally enough, is antisemitism, and the Trump administration’s exploitation of the real problem of antisemitism for its own purposes seems to have thrown some of them off-kilter.

I’ve been wondering when the moment will come when ICE will go far enough to persuade more people outside Los Angeles that it must be reined in. Maybe it will look something like the military invasion of the city’s MacArthur Park the other day, when soldiers and federal agents on horseback and in armored vehicles swept in for no obvious purpose other than to sow terror. “It’s the way a city looks before a coup,” Mayor Karen Bass, who rushed to the park, said later.

Can New Yorkers envision such a scene in Central Park? Is anywhere safe now for someone who can’t show the right papers?

People of a certain age might remember the songwriter Jimmy Webb’s weirdly compelling “MacArthur Park,” with its refrain that begins: “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark.” Growing up in the East, I had never heard of MacArthur Park when the song hit the charts in 1968, and I wasn’t sure it was a real place. All these years later, something real is melting for sure. It is the glue that holds civil society together.

The other day, Stephen Miller went on Fox News and offered a plea that got surprisingly little attention given its highly toxic and unnerving implications. Miller urged politicians in GOP-run states to build their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state-run immigration detention facility that officials just opened in the Florida Everglades.
“We want every governor of a red state, and if you are watching tonight: pick up the phone, call DHS, work with us to build facilities in your state,” Miller said, in a reference to the Department of Homeland Security. Critically, Miller added, such states could then work with the federal government by supplying much-needed detention beds, helping President Trump “get the illegals out.”

Keep all that in mind as we introduce you to one James Uthmeier.
Uthmeier, the attorney general of Florida and a longtime ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, is widely described in the state as the brains behind “Alligator Alcatraz.” Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics, sums him up this way: “In Uthmeier, DeSantis found his own Stephen Miller.”
Uthmeier is indeed a homegrown Florida version of Miller: Only 37 years old, he brings great precociousness to the jailing of migrants. Like Miller, he is obscure and little-known relative to the influence he’s amassing. Also like Miller, he is fluent in MAGA’s reliance on the spectacle of inhumanity and barbarism.

“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a slick video he recently narrated about the complex, which featured heavy-metal guitar riffs right out of a combat-cosplay video game. “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
Any migrant who dares escape just might get devoured alive by an animal—one animal eating another. Dehumanization is so thrilling!
The real-world “Alligator Alcatraz” is already gaining notoriety for its very real cruelties. After Democratic lawmakers visited over the weekend, they sharply denounced the scenes they’d witnessed of migrants packed into cages under inhumane conditions. Meanwhile, detainees and family members have sounded alarms about worm-infested food and blistering heat. And the Miami Herald reports that an unnervingly large percentage of the detainees lack criminal convictions.

But Uthmeier is getting feted on Fox News and other right wing media for this new experiment in spite of such notorieties—or perhaps because of them. There’s good reason to think more red state politicians will seek to create their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz” or get in on this action in other ways—and that more young Republican politicians will see it as a path to MAGA renown and glory.
For one thing, the money is now there. Buried in the big budget bill that Trump recently signed is a little-noticed provision that immigration advocates increasingly fear could fund more complexes like this one. It makes $3.5 billion available to “eligible states” and their agencies for numerous immigration-related purposes, including the “temporary detention of aliens.”

When Miller told GOP politicians to follow Uthmeier by collaborating with federal officials to develop new versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” he was probably talking about this slush fund. State officials can try to tap into it for building out such facilities. “For Republican states across the country that want to copy the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ model, this bill will give them that money,” immigration analyst Austin Kocher tells me.
What’s more, red state politicians are paying attention. Fox News contacted numerous gubernatorial offices to ask if they intend to take up Miller’s invitation. The responses were positive, with many eagerly touting plans for detention complexes. While it’s unclear if these will resemble “Alligator Alcatraz,” the underlying impulse is clear: Many red states want to expand state-run detention efforts. And again: The money is there.

This is a bad development. “Alligator Alcatraz” should not be the model for the future of migrant detention in much of the United States.
Here’s why. The facility is funded and operated by the state of Florida, but the state can use it to detain undocumented people under a federal program that allows ICE to authorize local law enforcement to carry out immigration crackdowns. That puts “Alligator Alcatraz” in a grey area: Local law enforcement agencies are using it to carry out Trump’s immigration detention agenda even as ICE does not run the facility.
Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center, who specializes in criminal justice, points to a toxic combination built into the idea of more versions of this arrangement. ICE detention is subject to federal oversight. But huge influxes of federal money for migrant detention—as in Trump’s new bill—could create new incentives for states to ramp up their own detention efforts. Yet because “Alligator Alcatraz” is a new experiment, she says, it’s unclear what sort of federal oversight future imitation efforts would receive, even if they get some federal money.

“What will access to counsel look like for detainees?” Eisen asks. “What will access to family members look like? It’s difficult to imagine state-run facilities where conditions and due process are prioritized.”
Illustrating the point, when a reporter recently asked ICE for comment on what’s going on inside “Alligator Alcatraz,” ICE said, well, it isn’t their facility. In other words, the federal government is not responsible for what happens inside those walls—even as Miller and Trump call on other states to build more of them.
Which brings us back to Uthmeier and the future of MAGA.

It’s easy to see Uthmeier and his “Alligator Alcatraz” becoming a model for other young Republicans seeking a route into MAGA celebrity. Consider his career trajectory: It’s fairly conventional establishment-Republican stuff. A native of Destin, a small beach city in the deep red Florida panhandle, he earned a law degree from Georgetown and then worked for the Commerce Department in the first Trump administration—and then for the ultra-establishment D.C. law firm Jones Day.
Uthmeier has also made appearances at the conservative Federalist Ssociety, which is as establishment-conservative as it gets. He joined DeSantis’s first administration as a senior legal adviser, and then got appointed as attorney general when the slot was vacated by the appointment of former AG Ashley Moody to now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Senate seat.

All in all, it’s in some ways a conventional path to GOP success. In fact, Uthmeier actually has a track record of criticizing Trump in the past on things like Covid-19 and abortion. But J.D. Vance survived such heresies, and now, in the party that Trump remade, Uthmeier apparently recognizes that “Alligator Alcatraz” is his big ticket. It’s a reminder that in today’s GOP, the MAGA and older-line Republican establishments are bleeding into one another—and that getting attached to such an idea is a path to national MAGA stardom.
Put another way, in the cut-throat world of the MAGA attention economy, association with things like “Alligator Alcatraz” can carry enormous weight. It’s hard for people who don’t swim in MAGA’s rancid information currents to grasp, but when Trump recently toured the facility with DeSantis, it was a huge MAGA propaganda coup for the Florida governor (yes, he apparently still harbors national ambitions).
Indeed, one person who very much noticed this was apparently Uthmeier himself. According to one Florida operative in touch with Uthmeier’s staff, there’s considerable sensitivity in his inner circle over who is getting credit for “Alligator Alcatraz,” with some worrying that Uthmeier isn’t reaping enough of it.

Uthmeier needn’t worry, however. When Trump toured the facility, he said of Uthmeier: “That guy’s got a future.” In this, the MAGA God King himself gave a big boost to Uthmeier’s 2026 electoral bid to keep his appointed AG role, which will be a platform for even higher ambitions. And if more barbarities emerge from “Alligator Alcatraz,” as they surely will, his MAGA future will only get that much brighter.

President Donald Trump and his administration continue to bet big on the issue that, more than any other, appeared to help him win a second term in 2024: immigration.

The administration and its allies have gleefully played up standoffs between federal immigration agents and protesters, such as the one Thursday during a raid at a legal marijuana farm in Ventura County, California.

And as congressional Republicans were passing a very unpopular Trump agenda bill last month, Vice President JD Vance argued that its historic expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and new immigration enforcement provisions were so important that “everything else” was “immaterial.”

But this appears to be an increasingly bad bet for Trump and Co.

It’s looking more and more like Trump has botched an issue that, by all rights, should have been a great one for him. And ICE’s actions appear to be a big part of that.

The most recent polling on this comes from Gallup, where the findings are worse than those of any poll in Trump’s second term.

The nearly monthlong survey conducted in June found Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration by a wide margin: 62% to 35%. And more than twice as many Americans strongly disapproved (45%) as strongly approved (21%).

It also found nearly 7 in 10 independents disapproved.

These are Trump’s worst numbers on immigration yet. But the trend has clearly been downward – especially in high-quality polling like Gallup’s.

An NPR-PBS News-Marist College poll conducted late last month, for instance, showed 59% of independents disapproved of Trump on immigration. And a Quinnipiac University poll showed 66% of independents disapproved.

Trump has managed to become this unpopular on immigration despite historic lows in border crossings. And the data suggest that’s largely tied to deportations and ICE.

To wit:

59% overall and 66% of independents disapproved of Trump’s handling of deportations, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
56% overall and 64% of independents disapproved of the way ICE was doing its job, according to Quinnipiac.
54% overall and 59% of independents said ICE has “gone too far” in enforcing immigration law, per the Marist poll. (Even 1 in 5 Republicans agreed.)
Americans disapproved 54-45% of ICE conducting more raids to find undocumented immigrants at workplaces, according to a Pew Research Center poll last month.
Americans also appear to disagree with some of the more heavy-handed aspects of the deportation program:

They disapproved 55-43% of significantly increasing the number of facilities to hold immigrants being processed for deportation, per Pew – even as the Trump administration celebrates Florida’s controversial new “Alligator Alcatraz.”
They said by a nearly 2-to-1 margin that it’s “unacceptable” to deport an immigrant to a country other than their own, per Pew – another key part of the administration’s efforts.
They also disapproved, 61-37%, of deporting undocumented immigrants to a prison in El Salvador – the place where the administration sent hundreds without due process, in some cases in error (such as with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has since been returned).
There’s a real question in all of this whether people care that much. They might disapprove of some of the more controversial aspects of Trump’s deportations, but maybe it’s not that important to them – and they might even like the ultimate results.

That’s the bet Trump seems to be making: that he can push forward on something his base really wants and possibly even tempt his political opponents to overreach by appearing to defend people who are in the country illegally.

But at some point, the White House has got to look at these numbers and start worrying that its tactics are backfiring.

Gallup shows the percentage of Americans who favor deporting all undocumented immigrants dropping from 47% last year during the 2024 campaign down to 38% now that it’s a reality Trump is pursuing.

And all told, Trump’s second term has actually led to the most sympathy for migrants on record in the 21st century, per Gallup. Fully 79% of Americans now say immigration is a “good thing,” compared with 64% last year.

The writing has been on the wall that Americans’ support for mass deportation was subject to all kinds of caveats and provisos. But the administration appears to have ignored all that and run headlong into problems of its own creation.

A man who was wrongfully detained in Anchorage by federal immigration officials is claiming that officers stole his wallet, which contained his immigration documents and social security card.

On Feb. 5, Roble Salad, a then-27-year-old refugee from Somalia, was arrested in Anchorage by ICE officers. Margaret Stock, an Anchorage-based immigration expert and Salad’s attorney, said her client was detained while on his way to work.

“They stopped their car, and he was dragged out of the car and arrested,” Stock said. “And at the time they arrested him, they seized his wallet, which had his documents in it, his social security card and his work permit from DHS with this picture on it.”

Stock said a judge later ruled that Salad was unlawfully detained, and issued an order for his release. But when Stock and Salad asked for his wallet back, ICE officials said they didn’t have it.

“When we asked for the documents back,” Stock said, “surprisingly, these Department of Homeland Security law enforcement agents told me that they had discarded his social security card and his work permit at the scene of the arrest, which is not standard behavior for any police officer.”

Officials with ICE did not immediately respond to questions Monday about Salad’s claim that officers threw away his documents or ICE procedures for confiscating property from detainees.

In April, Salad filed a theft report with the Anchorage Police Department, which Alaska Public Media recently obtained a copy of. An APD spokesman Monday said the matter was still under investigation.

Meanwhile, Stock said she’s still fighting to get Salad’s documents back.

“I’ve checked repeatedly with DHS to see if they found his documents, and they told me as recently as Friday that they had not,” Stock said.

Stock said Salad has applied to get new copies from DHS, but the process can take a long time.

“They take months, if not years, to process,” Stock said. “And we did file one, but of course, it’s just sitting there and they haven’t approved it. So he’s stuck. He doesn’t have any documents because they stole them from him.”

Stock said the judge’s order should prevent Salad from being deported in the short term, but the lack of documents makes things like traveling and applying for jobs much more difficult.

She said Salad’s case isn’t unique, and she’s seen multiple news reports around the country of ICE detainees having their property discarded at the scene of their arrests.

“I hope the resolution is DHS stops being a lawless agency,” Stock said. “At the moment, DHS, and to some extent, the Department of Justice are not following the law anymore, you know. And it’s shocking to me as an attorney, to see lawyers putting false statements into the record and police officers that are supposed to be protecting the community, stealing property from people when they make an illegal, unlawful arrest.”

Some restaurants in Omaha and Lincoln, the state’s largest cities, have announced they are temporarily closing their doors – citing concerns about increased immigration enforcement.

Both offer Latin food options. Omaha Fernando’s Café and Cantina owner Mitch Tempus said he had received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security requesting employee documentation.

He said the restaurant is cooperating fully, but that the inquiry resulted in workers being terminated. The Café and Cantina’s two locations are no longer able to operate at full staff. Tempus said the restaurant hopes to return to full operations as soon as possible.

“Every restauranteur is probably concerned about this whole immigration debacle we’re in at this time,” he said. “We’re all trying to run our business and take care of our families and our employees.”

Tempus said he doesn’t know why his restaurant was one to receive a subpoena and he isn’t sure if other restaurants in the area also received one.

These closures are not unique to Nebraska–at least one restaurant in Missouri has shut its doors due to similar concerns.

Many in the restaurant industry across the country have appealed to the President to ask for reprieve from immigration raids to stay in business. This follows the president’s decision to revoke the legal status of more than half a million migrants.

The restaurant in Lincoln posted in Spanish: “We raise our prayers for all our Latin brothers, especially for our Cuban and Venezuelan countrymen, who are being the most affected.”

The migrants most affected in the administration’s decision are from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen next with this current administration and so, it’s tough,” Tempus said. “It’s just kind of a tough situation, I think, for the whole country.”

He said his business is more of a family than a restaurant and that some of the workers that had to be let go had been there longer than he and his wife.

MILFORD — Marcelo Gomes da Silva was eating chicken strips with his two younger siblings at his local Dairy Queen, when he noticed a middle-aged woman approaching their booth.
“I saw you coming in and I had to say something,” the woman told Gomes, who spread a warm, welcoming smile across his face, his braces on full display.
“I’m so sorry for what happened to you,” she said. “God bless you.”
Gomes, a Brazilian national who was detained by ICE officers on May 31 on his way to volleyball practice at his high school, has quickly become the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive ICE operations in Massachusetts.

The 18-year-old has decried the conditions he experienced during the six days he was detained in local and national media interviews, shared his story with Governor Maura Healey, who presented him a rosary blessed by Pope Francis, and has been routinely stopped by strangers in public, such as the woman in the Dairy Queen, who want to share their views about immigration policy.
Some ask for a photo or thank him for speaking out about the conditions of detention. Others tell him he doesn’t belong in the United States.

Gomes is confronting his newfound celebrity as he also must grapple with his family’s vulnerable status in the United States, the trauma he experienced as a teenager pulled away from his home and detained in a federal facility, the responsibility of being the oldest child in a family with limited English skills, and the looming demands of his senior year of high school this fall.

The Globe spent a month documenting the teen’s life since his detainment in a Burlington facility, where he said he shared a cell with 30 other immigrants deprived of sunlight or a shower.
Since his release, Gomes has become resolved to remain in the country and help other immigrants. But he knows this future is not promised.
Small mistakes could lead him to being detained again and eventually deported.
The day Gomes was detained began early as he got ready for volleyball practice while the rest of his family was still sleeping. It ended with him sitting on the cold concrete floor of a detention cell.

In detention, Gomes’s mind flooded with anxiety.
When he closed his eyes, images of his family shuffled on repeat. He imagined what he’d do if he was deported to Brazil, a country that seemed so distant to him.
Where would I live? Would I finish high school? Maybe I could work at an açaí shop.
It’d been more than 12 years since his parents moved him to the US seeking better economic opportunities. Gomes recalls his departure from Brazil, his grandparents crying at the airport as they watched him, at 6 years old, get through security to board a plane.
Worlds away in the windowless cell of the Burlington facility, Gomes couldn’t escape the foul stench of the toilet he shared with his cellmates. He spent his days translating immigration documents for cellmates who didn’t speak English, breaking the news to some that they were being deported. He watched the men cry.

Standing in a circle with heads bowed and eyes closed, the men held hands as Gomes asked God, in Portuguese and Spanish, to bless them.
God, please give us strength. Please bring calmness into our environment, Lord. Please let us go home to our families.
Each night, those invocations would bring peace to the small, crowded cell. Within 30 minutes, they’d all fall asleep.
When Gomes was released on June 5, he wanted to go home and shower. But first he decided to speak with reporters waiting for him outside the Burlington facility.

“Nobody should be in here,” Gomes said as two congressmen, Representatives Seth Moulton and Jake Auchincloss, stood at his side. “Most people in there are all workers. They all got caught going to work. These people have families.”
“Should I change?” Gomes wondered in front of a mirror in his family’s living room, as he waited to be picked up for his first studio television interview, the week after his release.
He wore his usual gray sweat pants and a T-shirt.
“My lawyer said I should dress as if I’m going to church,” he remembered.
“Yeah, I should change,” the teen said before walking upstairs to his bedroom.

Before his arrest, Gomes wanted the American dream. The steady job. The house with a pool. The family.
He was a carefree teen who was always smiling and goofing around with his friends.
He longs for that time again, that naivety.

“I want to enjoy my summer, have fun like a normal kid, but I can’t be a kid anymore. I need to be an adult,” he said. “That’s kind of ironic because everyone’s like, ‘I want to be an adult so bad. I want to grow up.’ I regret saying that.”
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Friends have told him, “I’d love to be at the detention center for six days to get your fame.”
But Gomes never wanted to be famous. And he wouldn’t wish his detention on any of them.

Still, he acknowledges it opened doors for him.
Almost overnight, his Instagram followers grew from about 500 to more than 3,400. Many wished him well or said they were praying for him after a recent post he made about his release that included a selfie with Healey at the State House.
The governor asked Gomes, who previously never paid attention to political campaigns, whether he would consider a career in politics. Other adults around him asked him to think about becoming an immigration lawyer. Immigration activists invited him to meetings and to join their fight.

Before his detainment, Gomes thought he would become a plumber.
His arrest woke him up to a bigger mission. In detention, he made a promise to the men he shared a cell with to be a voice for immigrants without criminal records who are detained by ICE. He’s weighing starting a nonprofit to provide services for such immigrants and their families.
He’s also tried to live up to his promise by not turning down any opportunity to speak up.
Sitting at a television studio for the first time in early June, Gomes cracked his knuckles, with a soft, closed-mouth smile, as NBC News host Tom Llamas introduced him for the network’s show “Top Story.”

When asked whether he’s an American, Gomes said, “I’m half, I’m both.”
“I definitely wanna become an American citizen. I wanna stay in America,” Gomes said. “This is my community, I love this country.”
The next day, Gomes and his friends gathered for a pool party. The teens played Marco Polo, chicken fight, and volleyball in the pool. But before the games, they paused to pray while crammed into a backyard Jacuzzi.
“I thank you for being here, not inside of a prison cell, my God,” Gomes prayed, as the he and his seven friends held hands, eyes closed, heads bowed, knees and shoulders touching.

“I believe that you used me, that you took care of me in that place, my Lord, and I hope that you keep using me,” he said.
Gomes’s faith extends well beyond church walls and the gold cross that hangs around his neck. It is his belief in God that helps him maintain hope.
As he grew up, Gomes’s parents read the Bible to him every day. His favorite Bible character is Job, whose faith is tested when he loses his family, his health, and his wealth. Despite the adversity, Job maintains his faith in God.
“How could you possibly go through so much … your family, kids die, knowing that God let it happen and still stay with Him and trust Him?” Gomes said. “It just shows me the literal, true faith. The ultimate faith of a human being.”

His faith is cultivated at a Presbyterian church, where he started playing music at age 11. At that time, he would creep onto the platform after service concluded and try his hand at the drums. He’d be chased away by the pastors, but he kept at it, eventually teaching himself how to play.
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Church is his “safe place,” and he plays the drums during worship nearly every Sunday and Friday, when he attends a youth group.
The drums bring him closer to God. So do his friends who share his faith.
In the Jacuzzi, Gomes’s friend, Gabe Santos, prayed after him.

“I pray over every other immigrant that’s getting taken right now, that’s innocently getting taken. Lord, I just pray over them and their families,” Santos said.
“In the name of Jesus, we pray.”

A week later, Gomes was changing in the locker room of his gym when a man approached him.
“Are you the famous kid? I heard about you,” said the man Gomes thought to be in his 60s. “You seem like a great kid, but you’re illegal. You shouldn’t be here.”
Gomes had been called illegal before. As he grew up, other children sometimes gave him and his parents that label.
The man drew closer, and more confrontational.

“You’re not legal. You need to go back to your country,” the man continued, closing in the space, and eventually jabbing Gomes’s arm.
The man said Gomes’s family is a burden on the American taxpayer.
Gomes wanted to respond, he wanted to defend himself. But the man wouldn’t stop talking, he said.
The teen is aware he’s being watched — by ICE and the public at large. The weight of his actions feels heavier than before, knowing that a little mistake could have big consequences, marring his reputation, and even those of other immigrants.
Gomes’s friends drew near him. Afraid a fight would break out, Gomes walked away.

The next morning, Gomes pulled into a Framingham parking lot, his body battling nerves. He was quiet, observant — not his usual gregarious self.
He was about to interact with the same agency that had arrested and detained him weeks earlier.
He walked into the waiting room where his ICE check-in took place and sat alongside other immigrants waiting for appointments. Most were Brazilian, and they recognized the teen.
One shouted in Portuguese from a chair two rows behind Gomes.

“Bro, you getting arrested was good for us!” the man said.
Gomes, trying to make sense of what he heard, asked the stranger to repeat himself.
“Because of you, now the media is exposing the truth,” the man replied, his tone friendly.
Before Gomes could answer, a worker opened the waiting room door to ask if he wanted his appointment to be in Portuguese or English.
“English,” Gomes answered without hesitation. Within minutes, the teen’s name was called.

Being released from detention was merely the first step in a long process to fight the government’s attempt to deport Gomes. His next court hearing is in October, during the fall of his senior year of high school. After that hearing, it might take three more years for him to get a final hearing due to a backlogged system, his lawyer said. The teen has applied for asylum to change his status, but while that is underway, he must follow strict, parole-like rules.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment about Gomes’s detainment or the current status of his case. In June, an ICE spokesperson said in a statement that Gomes “peddled blatant lies regarding his treatment while in custody in Burlington,” adding he received three meals per day and “off-site medical attention.”

At the Framingham office, Gomes learned more about the conditions of his release: No travel outside of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island without ICE’s permission, and for no more than 15 days. ICE check-ins every three months. Immediate reply with a selfie to a monthly phone notification that comes at random times.
If he misses an appointment or a notification, it’s a violation. And any violation could lead to him being detained again.
The teen, who has no criminal record, opted for the phone notifications over an electronic ankle monitor.

He was accompanied by Coleen Greco, the mother of one of his volleyball teammates.
Greco, who Gomes lovingly refers to as his “American mother,” sprang into action when the teen was detained, securing a legal team for him within hours.
From their first introduction, Greco said, she was charmed by Gomes, his traditional manners and kindness.
“He immediately started telling me all the great qualities about my own kid, and that just stuck with me,” she said.
In the aftermath of his detainment, Greco worried about the emotional toll and traumatic experiences Gomes had in detention. She helped find him a therapist. She, like so many in their community, would never have imagined Gomes in trouble with the law.

“He has a special heart,” she said. “He’s the kind of kid that you wish you had raised.”
As the duo left the ICE appointment, Greco made sure he had all his documents with him.
“I feel like a criminal,” he said, his voice heavy with frustration as he reached the elevator.
Later that day, Gomes walked onto the soccer field at Milford High School, followed by his two younger siblings.
Between soccer passes, speaking a mix of Portuguese and English with his friends, Gomes scored goals, and missed some.
Throughout the practice, he largely kept his eyes on the sidelines, where his two siblings played by themselves, Miguel with a soccer ball and Mariana with a mermaid doll.

During the summer, while his parents often work 12-hour days as house cleaners, Gomes watches Miguel, 7, and Mariana, 9. The two — both US citizens — are full of energy and are constantly chattering, bouncing from discussions on their newest coloring book to their growing keychain collection.
“If my parents are ever taken, God forbid, I’m the one who’s going to care of my siblings,” he said. “I definitely feel a big responsibility to take care of them.”
It’s a thought that often haunts him:
Would I be able to take care of my younger siblings by myself?
Gomes has always been a helper, said his father, João Paulo Gomes Pereira, volunteering to help his mom clean the house, helping his father repair things, or helping strangers carry in groceries.

When he was about 4, while still living in Brazil, Gomes saw an older man sitting on a sidewalk by his grandparents’ house. He worried the man was sick or needed help. He sidled up next to him to make sure the man was OK, his mother, Daiane Pereira, recalled.
And when he was 8, he saw an older woman with a cane, hands full of grocery bags, struggle to open her car trunk in the parking lot of Market Basket, Pereira said. Gomes asked her if he could hold her bags.
Throughout high school, Gomes has volunteered to teach multiple children from his church to play the drums. He coaches a volleyball team comprising senior women.

That day at the Dairy Queen, between sips of vanilla Coke, Gomes smiled at other strangers and acquaintances who approached him to talk about his story.
The stranger who blessed him. A teacher with his child. A Dairy Queen worker who also attended Milford High School.
In every interaction, the teen was courteous and gracious. Underneath the big smile, though, he was starting to feel a deep exhaustion.

Between more than a dozen media interviews and meetings with politicians and activists, Gomes was also trying to have a regular summer — his last in high school — with video game nights, volleyball games, and hiking days with his teammates.
Keeping busy was an intentional choice. Being alone brought back thoughts he wanted to push away, the fears over what could happen to him or his parents.
When it was time to leave the Dairy Queen, Gomes’s little sister asked where the trio was headed next. Gomes, who wanted a break from the attention, offered her an answer he no longer took for granted.
“Home.”

The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times has obtained a list of more than 700 people who have been detained or appear to be scheduled to be sent to the Florida-run immigration detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz.

The DeSantis administration has not made public a list of names of the immigrants held at the facility in heavy duty tents at an airstrip in the Florida Everglades. Individuals sent to the makeshift detention center do not show up in an online government database that allows the public to search for immigrant detainees’ whereabouts. Lawyers say they have had difficulty locating clients sent to the site, often learning that they are there when detainees call family members.

The list — made public for the first time here — was shared with the Department of Homeland Security and the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which oversees the site. Neither disputed its accuracy.

READ MORE: Hundreds at Alligator Alcatraz have no criminal charges or convictions, records show

The list is not exhaustive and it is subject to change as the detention facility’s population fluctuates. The Herald/Times searched each of the 747 names in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Detainee Locator. Only 40 appeared on the public-facing website, most of them listed as being located at nearby facilities, and three marked with a note to “call field office.”

Do you know someone detained at Alligator Alcatraz? We’d like to hear from you

The Florida Division of Emergency Management, which is overseeing the site’s operations, has not said how many people are held at the facility. Democratic lawmakers who toured the site on Saturday said detention center employees told them that there are about 750 detainees at the site.

The Trump administration immigration sweeps that have roiled Southern California have shown few signs of slowing despite lawsuits, a court order and growing indications the aggressive actions are not popular with the public.

The operations, which began in early June in the Los Angeles area, largely focused on small-scale targets such as car washes, strip malls and Home Depot parking lots before authorities hit their biggest target last week — two farms for one of the largest cannabis companies in California. One worker died after falling from a greenhouse roof during the raid, while 361 others were arrested.

Responding to the death, President Trump’s chief border policy advisor, Tom Homan, called the situation “sad.”

“It’s obviously unfortunate when there’s deaths,” he told CNN. “No one wants to see people die.”

“He wasn’t in ICE custody,” Homan said. “ICE did not have hands on this person.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said authorities plan to intensify immigration crackdowns thanks to more funding from the recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” spending plan from Congress.

The budget bill infuses roughly $150 billion into Trump’s immigration and border enforcement plans, including funding for ICE and Border Patrol staffing, building and operating immigrant detention facilities, and reimbursing states and local governments for immigration-related costs.

“We’re going to come harder and faster, and we’re going to take these criminals down with even more strength than we ever have before,” Noem said at a news conference over the weekend. Trump, she added, “has a mandate from the American people to clean up our streets, to help make our communities safer.”

But there are some signs that support might be slipping.

A Gallup poll published this month shows that fewer Americans than in June 2024 back strict border enforcement measures and more now favor offering undocumented immigrants living in the country pathways to citizenship. The percentage of respondents who want immigration reduced dropped from 55% in 2024 to 30% in the current poll, reversing a years-long trend of rising immigration concerns.

While the desire for less immigration has declined among all major political parties, the decrease among Republicans was significant — down 40% from last year. Among independents, the preference for less immigration is down 21%, and among Democrats it’s down 12%, according to the poll.

The poll also showed that a record-high 79% of adults consider immigration beneficial to the country and only 17% believe it is a negative, a record low for the poll.

Meanwhile, a Quinnipiac University poll published in June indicates that 38% of voters approve of the way Trump is handling the presidency, while 54% disapprove. On immigration, 54% of those polled disapprove of Trump’s handling of the issue and 56% disapprove of deportations.

At the same time, growing legal challenges have threatened to hamper the Trump administration’s efforts.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, temporarily blocked federal agents in the Southland from using racial profiling to carry out immigration arrests after she found sufficient evidence that agents were using race, a person’s job or their location, and their language to form “reasonable suspicion” — the legal standard needed to detain an individual.

But the Trump administration vowed to fight back.

“No federal judge has the authority to dictate immigration policy — that authority rests with Congress and the president,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman. “Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview or jurisdiction of any judge. We expect this gross overstep of judicial authority to be corrected on appeal.”

On Monday, the administration asked a federal appeals court to overturn the judge’s order, allowing it to resume the raids across seven California counties.

Legal experts say it’s hard to say just how successful the federal government will be in getting a stay on the temporary order, given the current political climate.

“This is different from a lot of the other kinds of Trump litigation because the law is so clear in the fact finding by the district court,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “So if you follow basic legal principles, this is a very weak case for the government on appeal, but it’s so hard to predict what will happen because everything is so ideological.”

In the past, legal scholars say, it would be extremely uncommon for an appeals court to weigh in on such an order. But recent events suggest it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the federal government to deport convicted criminals to “third countries” even if they lack a prior connection to those countries.

That same month, it also ruled 6 to 3 to limit the ability of federal district judges to issue nationwide orders blocking the president’s policies, which was frequently a check on executive power.

Still, it’s not an easy case for the government, said Ahilan Arulanantham, professor of practice and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

“I think one thing which makes this case maybe a little bit harder for the government than some of the other shadow docket cases is it really does affect citizens in an important way,” he said. “Obviously the immigration agent doesn’t know in advance when they come up to somebody whether they’re a citizen or a noncitizen or if they’re lawfully present or not.”

The continued sweeps have resulted in a wave of other lawsuits challenging the Trump administration. Amid the legal battles, there are also signs of upheaval within the federal government.

Reuters reported on Monday that the Justice Department unit charged with defending legal challenges to the administration’s policies, including restricting birthright citizenship, has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff.

The administration has also faced scrutiny from Democrats and activists over its handling of last week’s raids at the marijuana cultivation farms, which were part of a legal and highly regulated industry in California.

“It was disproportionate, overkill,” Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) said of the operation.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) criticized Trump for targeting immigrant farmworkers as the administration continues to publicly state that its targets are people with criminal records.

“How many MS-13 gang members are waking up at 3 a.m. to pick strawberries? O’yeah, zero! Trump said he’d go after ‘bad hombres,’ but he’s targeting the immigrant farm workers who feed America. Either he lied — or he can’t tell the difference,” Gomez wrote on X.

The White House clapped back in a post on X: “That ain’t produce, holmes. THAT’S PRODUCT.”

Over the weekend, Jaime Alanís Garcia, 57, the cannabis farmworker who was gravely injured after he fell off a roof amid the mayhem of the Camarillo raid, was taken off life support, according to his family.

Alanís’ family said he was fleeing immigration agents at the Glass House Farms cannabis operation in Camarillo on Thursday when he climbed atop a greenhouse and accidentally fell 30 feet, suffering catastrophic injury. The Department of Homeland Security said Alanís was not among those being pursued.

His niece announced his death Saturday on a GoFundMe page, which described him as a husband and father and the family’s sole provider. The page had raised more than $159,000 by Monday afternoon, well over its initial $50,000 goal.

“They took one of our family members. We need justice,” the niece wrote.

The U.S. immigration system is facing a historic crisis. In the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, the backlog of immigration cases has skyrocketed to 11 billion, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This includes Green Card renewals, visa applications, asylum applications, and work permits. This is the largest immigration backlog in U.S. history, leaving millions of applicants in legal limbo.

Who is most affected?
Among the most affected categories are replacements and renewals of residence cards. The average processing time for Form I-90, which is used to replace or renew permanent residence cards (better known as Green Cards), went from less than a month to more than eight months between the first and second quarters of 2025, an increase of nearly 1,000%. According to USCIS, 80% of I-90 replacement cases now take up to 21.5 months to complete.

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USCIS received more than 285,000 I-90 applications between January and March 2025, a sharp increase from approximately 189,000 in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the number of pending I-90 cases reached 356,000 at the end of March, up from 265,000 previously. Even routine immigration applications are affected by the overall systemic backlog.

What is causing the delay?
The suspension of the Streamlined Case Processing program, which was previously used to expedite low-risk applications, has added pressure to a system already facing problems of insufficient funding, understaffing, and outdated technology, according to experts and analysts. The USCIS has also admitted that it has more than 34,000 unopened applications still sitting in physical mailrooms, awaiting digital processing, a problem the agency claimed to have resolved in 2024.

Delays in obtaining a Green Card
Green Card holders who lose their physical card or reach its expiration date must submit a new I-90 form to maintain documentation of their legal status. Delays not only affect their ability to travel or work, but also leave them vulnerable to arrest or detention during the increase in immigration enforcement measures under President Donald Trump’s second administration.

The USCIS has attempted some temporary solutions, such as a 36-month extension of the validity of green cards with pending renewals, but this solution may not be sufficient in the long term.

Other immigration categories also face long wait times. Applications for work permits (Form I-765) and employment-based visa applications (Form I-129) have also accumulated significant delays, affecting both employees and employers.

In one of the most concerning estimates, some Indian applicants in the EB-2 and EB-3 categories are expected to wait up to 80 years to obtain permanent residency. Chinese professionals applying for work visas face waits of 20 to 25 years, while family-sponsored applicants in the family visa pipeline from Mexico and the Philippines would have to wait 10 to 15 years.

Efforts to address the crisis have stalled in Congress so far. Immigration reform proposals include visa recovery (reallocation of unused green cards from previous years), elimination of country limits, and increased funding for USCIS, but none have made significant progress. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which aims to eliminate discriminatory country quotas, remains in legislative limbo. Until comprehensive immigration reform is passed, the backlog of green card applications, which has already reached record levels, could become a permanent crisis for millions of people stuck in the system.

Impact on migrants
Due to the Trump administration’s immigration policy, these delays may affect thousands of immigrants seeking to replace their Green Card or regularize their status. Currently, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains people who do not have their documents in order and can deport them without due process.

In response, protests are planned across the country on July 17 under the slogan “Good Trouble Lives On,” which refers to the legacy of civil rights leader John Lewis and condemns the current tactics of ICE and the Trump administration.

Thomas, a 35-year-old tech worker and father of three from Ireland, came to West Virginia to visit his girlfriend last fall. It was one of many trips he had taken to the US, and he was authorized to travel under a visa waiver program that allows tourists to stay in the country for 90 days.

He had planned to return to Ireland in December, but was briefly unable to fly due to a health issue, his medical records show. He was only three days overdue to leave the US when an encounter with police landed him in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody.

From there, what should have been a minor incident became a nightmarish ordeal: he was detained by Ice in three different facilities, ultimately spending roughly 100 days behind bars with little understanding of why he was being held – or when he’d get out.

“Nobody is safe from the system if they get pulled into it,” said Thomas, in a recent interview from his home in Ireland, a few months after his release. Thomas asked to be identified by a nickname out of fear of facing further consequences with US immigration authorities.

Despite immediately agreeing to deportation when he was first arrested, Thomas remained in Ice detention after Donald Trump took office and dramatically ramped up immigration arrests. Amid increased overcrowding in detention, Thomas was forced to spend part of his time in custody in a federal prison for criminal defendants, even though he was being held on an immigration violation.

Thomas was sent back to Ireland in March and was told he was banned from entering the US for 10 years.

Thomas’s ordeal follows a rise in reports of tourists and visitors with valid visas being detained by Ice, including from Australia, Germany, Canada and the UK. In April, an Irish woman who is a US green card holder was also detained by Ice for 17 days due to a nearly two-decade old criminal record.

The arrests appear to be part of a broader crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pushed to deport students with alleged ties to pro-Palestinian protests; sent detainees to Guantánamo Bay and an El Salvador prison without presenting evidence of criminality; deported people to South Sudan, a war-torn country where the deportees had no ties; and escalated large-scale, militarized raids across the US.

‘I thought I was going home’
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Thomas detailed his ordeal and the brutal conditions he witnessed in detention that advocates say have long plagued undocumented people and become worse under Trump.

Thomas, an engineer at a tech firm, had never had any problems visiting the US under the visa waiver program. He had initially planned to return home in October, but badly tore his calf, suffered severe swelling and was having trouble walking, he said. A doctor ordered him not to travel for eight to 12 weeks due to the risk of blood clots, which, he said, meant he had to stay slightly past 8 December, when his authorization expired.

He got paperwork from his physician and contacted the Irish and American embassies and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seek an extension, but it was short notice and he did not hear back, he said.

“I did everything I could with the online tools available to notify the authorities that this was happening,” he said, explaining that by the time his deadline to leave the US had approached, he was nearly healed and planning to soon return. “I thought they would understand because I had the correct paperwork. It was just a couple of days for medical reasons.”

He might have avoided immigration consequences, if it weren’t for an ill-timed law enforcement encounter.

Thomas and his girlfriend, Malone, were visiting her family in Savannah, Georgia, when Thomas suffered a mental health episode, he and Malone recalled. The two had a conflict in their hotel room and someone overheard and called the police, they said.

Malone, who requested to use her middle name to protect her boyfriend’s identity, said she was hoping officers would get him treatment and did not want to see him face criminal charges. But police took him to jail, accusing him of “falsely imprisoning” his girlfriend in the hotel room, a charge Malone said she did not support. He was soon released on bond, but instead of walking free, was picked up by US immigration authorities, who transported him 100 miles away to an Ice processing center in Folkston, Georgia. The facility is operated by the private prison company Geo Group on behalf of Ice, with capacity to hold more than 1,000 people.

Thomas was given a two-page removal order, which said he had remained in the US three days past his authorization and contained no further allegations. On 17 December, he signed a form agreeing to be removed.

But despite signing the form he remained at Folkston, unable to get answers on why Ice wasn’t deporting him or how long he would remain in custody. David Cheng, an attorney who represented Thomas, said he requested that Ice release him with an agreement that he’d return to Ireland as planned, but Ice refused.

At one point at Folkston, after a fight broke out, officers placed detainees on lockdown for about five days, cutting them off from contacting their families, he said. Thomas said he and others only got approximately one hour of outdoor time each week.

In mid-February, after about two months in detention, officers placed him and nearly 50 other detainees in a holding cell, preparing to move them, he said: “I thought I was finally going home.” He called his family to tell them the news.

Instead, he and the others were shackled around their wrists, waists and legs and transported four hours to federal correctional institution, Atlanta, a prison run by the US Bureau of Prisons (BoP), he said.

BoP houses criminal defendants on federal charges, but the Trump administration, as part of its efforts to expand Ice detention, has been increasingly placing immigrants into BoP facilities – a move that advocates say has led to chaos, overcrowding and violations of detainees’ rights.

‘We were treated less than human’
Thomas said the conditions and treatment by BoP were worse than Ice detention: “They were not prepared for us whatsoever.”

He and other detainees were placed in an area with dirty mattresses, cockroaches and mice, where some bunkbeds lacked ladders, forcing people to climb to the top bed, he said.

BoP didn’t seem to have enough clothes, said Thomas, who got a jumpsuit but no shirt. The facility also gave him a pair of used, ripped underwear with brown stains. Some jumpsuits appeared to have bloodstains and holes, he added.

Each detainee was given one toilet paper roll a week. He shared a cell with another detainee, and he said they were only able to flush the toilet three times an hour. He was often freezing and was given only a thin blanket. The food was “disgusting slop”, including some kind of mysterious meat that at times appeared to have chunks of bones and other inedible items mixed in, he said. He was frequently hungry.

“The staff didn’t know why we were there and they were treating us exactly as they would treat BoP prisoners, and they told us that,” Thomas said. “We were treated less than human.”

He and others requested medical visits, but were never seen by physicians, he said: “I heard people crying for doctors, saying they couldn’t breathe, and staff would just say, ‘Well, I’m not a doctor,’ and walk away.” He did eventually receive the psychiatric medication he requested, but staff would throw his pill under his cell door, and he’d sometimes have to search the floor to find it.

Detainees, he said, were given recreation time in an enclosure that was partially open to fresh air, but resembled an indoor cage: “You couldn’t see the outside whatsoever. I didn’t see the sky for weeks.” He had sciatica from an earlier hip injury and said he began experiencing “unbearable” nerve pain as a result of the lack of movement.

Thomas said it seemed Ice’s placements in BoP were arbitrary and poorly planned. Of the nearly 50 people taken from Ice to BoP, around 30 of them were transferred back to Folkston a week later, and the following week, two from that group were once again returned to BoP, he said.

In the BoP Atlanta facility, he said, Ice representatives would show up once a week to talk to detainees. Detainees would crowd around Ice officials and beg for case updates or help. Ice officers spoke Spanish and English, but Middle Eastern and North African detainees who spoke neither were stuck in a state on confusion. “It was pandemonium,” Thomas said.

Thomas said he saw a BoP guard tear up “watching the desperation of the people trying to talk to Ice and find out what was happening”, and that this officer tried to assist people as best as she could. Thomas and Malone tried to help asylum seekers and others he met at BoP by connecting them to advocates.

Thomas was also unable to speak to his children, because there was no way to make international calls: “I don’t know how I made it through.”

In mid-March, Thomas was briefly transferred again to a different Ice facility. The authorities did not explain what had changed, but two armed federal officers then escorted him on a flight back to Ireland.

DHS and Ice did not respond to inquiries, and a spokesperson for Geo Group declined to comment.

It seems like a completely incomprehensible, punitive detention
Sirine Shebaya
Donald Murphy, a BoP spokesperson, confirmed that Thomas had been in the bureau’s custody, but did not comment about his case or conditions at the Atlanta facility. BoP is now housing Ice detainees in eight of its prisons and would “continue to support our law enforcement partners to fulfill the administration’s policy objectives”, he added.

‘This will be a lifelong burden’
It’s unclear why Thomas was jailed for so long for a minor immigration violation.

“It seems completely outlandish that they would detain someone for three months because he overstayed a visa for a medical reason,” said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, who is not involved in his case and was told a summary by the Guardian. “It is such a waste of time and money at a time when we’re hearing constantly about how the government wants to cut expenses. It seems like a completely incomprehensible, punitive detention.”

Ice, she added, was “creating its own crisis of overcrowding”.

Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel with the National Immigration Law Center, also not involved in the case, said in general, it was not uncommon for someone to remain in immigration custody even after they’ve accepted a removal order and that she has had European clients shocked to learn they can face serious consequences for briefly overstaying a visa.

Ice, however, had discretion to release Thomas with an agreement that he’d return home instead of keeping him indefinitely detained, she said. The Trump administration, she added, has defaulted to keeping people detained without weighing individual factors of their cases: “Now it’s just, do we have a bed?”

Republican lawmakers in Georgia last year also passed state legislation requiring police to alert immigration authorities when an undocumented person is arrested, which could have played a role in Thomas being flagged to Ice, said Samantha Hamilton, staff attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, a non-profit group that advocates for immigrants’ rights. She met Thomas on a legal visit at the BoP Atlanta facility.

Hamilton said she was particularly concerned about immigrants of color who are racially profiled and pulled over by police, but Thomas’s ordeal was a reminder that so many people are vulnerable: “The mass detentions are terrifying and it makes me afraid for everyone.”

Thomas had previously traveled to the US frequently for work, but now questions if he’ll ever be allowed to return: “This will be a lifelong burden.”

Malone, his girlfriend, said she plans to move to Ireland to live with him: “It’s not an option for him to come here and I don’t want to be in America anymore.”

Since his return, Thomas said he has had a hard time sleeping and processing what happened: “I’ll never forget it, and it’ll be a long time before I’ll be able to even start to unpack everything I went through. It still doesn’t feel real. When I think about it, it’s like a movie I’m watching.” He said he has also struggled with longterm health problems that he attributes to malnutrition and inappropriate medications he was given while detained.

He was shaken by reports of people sent away without due process: “I wouldn’t have been surprised if I ended up at Guantánamo Bay or El Salvador, because it was so disorganized. I was just at the mercy of the federal government.”

The Trump administration has declared that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

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In a July 8 memo, Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told officers that such immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years. Lawyers say the policy will apply to millions of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few decades, including under the Biden administration.

In the past, immigrants residing in the U.S. interior generally have been allowed to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. But Lyons wrote that the Trump administration’s departments of Homeland Security and Justice had “revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities” and determined that such immigrants “may not be released from ICE custody.” In rare exceptions immigrants may be released on parole, but that decision will be up to an immigration officer, not a judge, he wrote.

The provision is based on a section of immigration law that says unauthorized immigrants “shall be detained” after their arrest, but that has historically applied to those who recently crossed the border and not longtime residents.

Lyons, who oversees the nation’s 200 immigration detention facilities, wrote that the policy is expected to face legal challenges.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott issued similar guidance last week; that agency also did not respond to questions.

The sweeping new detention policy comes days after Congress passed a spending package that will allocate $45 billion over the next four years to lock up immigrants for civil deportation proceedings. The measure will allow ICE to roughly double the nation’s immigrant detention capacity to 100,000 people a day.

Since the memos were issued last week, the American Immigration Lawyers Association said members had reported that immigrants were being denied bond hearings in more than a dozen immigration courts across the United States, including in New York, Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia. The Department of Justice oversees the immigration courts.

“This is their way of putting in place nationwide a method of detaining even more people,” said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s requiring the detention of far more people without any real review of their individual circumstances.”

Immigration hawks have long argued that detaining immigrants is necessary to quickly deport those who do not qualify for asylum or another way to stay in the United States permanently. They say detaining immigrants might also discourage people from filing frivolous claims, in hopes of being released as their cases proceed in the backlogged immigration courts.

“Detention is absolutely the best way to approach this, if you can do it. It costs a lot of money, obviously,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors enforcement. “You’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to remove the person, if there’s a negative finding, if he’s in detention.”

In its 2024 annual report, however, ICE said it detains immigrants only “when necessary” and that the vast majority of the 7.6 million people then on its docket were released pending immigration proceedings. Keeping them detained while their case is adjudicated has not been logistically possible, and advocates have raised concern for migrants’ health and welfare in civil immigration detention.

Immigrants are already subject to mandatory detention without bond if they have been convicted of murder or other serious crimes, and this year the Republican-led Congress added theft-related crimes to that list after a Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, was killed by a man from Venezuela who had been picked up for shoplifting and not held for deportation.

Immigration lawyers say the Trump administration is expanding a legal standard typically used to hold recent arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border to a much broader group — including immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades. Many have U.S. citizen children, lawyers say, and probably have the legal grounds to defend themselves against deportation.

Forcing them to remain in detention facilities often in far-flung areas such as an alligator-infested swamp in Florida or the Arizona desert would make it more difficult to fight their cases, because they will be unable to work or easily communicate with family members and lawyers to prepare their cases.

“I think some courts are going to find that this doesn’t give noncitizens sufficient due process,” said Paul Hunker, an immigration lawyer and former ICE chief counsel in the Dallas area. “They could be held indefinitely until they’re deported.*

ICE is holding about 56,000 immigrants a day as officers sweep the nation for undocumented immigrants, working overtime to fulfill Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million people in his first year. Officials have reopened family detention centers that the Biden administration shuttered because of safety concerns, stood up soft-sided facilities such as one in the Everglades, and begun deporting immigrants with little notice to alternative countries such as conflict-ridden South Sudan.

Immigration lawyers say the new ICE policy is similar to a position that several immigration judges in Tacoma, Washington, have espoused in recent years, denying hearings to anyone who crossed the border illegally.

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle filed a lawsuit in March on behalf of detainees challenging the policy, arguing that their refusal to consider a bond hearing violated the immigrants’ rights.

The original plaintiff in the case, Ramon Rodriguez Vazquez, has lived in Washington state since 2009, works as a farmer and is the “proud grandfather” of 10 U.S. citizens, court records show. His eight siblings are U.S. citizens who live in California.

He also owns his home, where ICE officers arrested him in February for being in the United States without permission. In April, a federal judge in Washington found that he has “no criminal history in the United States or anywhere else in the world” and ordered immigration officers to give him a bond hearing before a judge. A judge denied him bond and he has since returned to Mexico, his lawyer said.

But that decision does not apply nationwide, lawyers said.

Aaron Korthuis, a lawyer in the case, said Rodriguez is typical of the type of immigrants who now face prolonged detention as they fight deportation in immigration courts. He called the government’s new interpretation of bond hearings “flagrantly unlawful.”

“They are people who have been living here, all they’re doing is trying to make a living for their family,” Korthuis said in an interview. He said the policy “is looking to supercharge detention beyond what it already is.”

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is attempting to make millions of immigrants living in the country illegally ineligible to be released from detention on bond as they fight their deportation cases, according to an administration official familiar with the matter.

The policy shift, issued under what’s known as interim guidance by acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons last week, will apply to all immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, no matter when. Lyons told officers in a memo that such immigrants should remain in detention throughout their deportation proceedings, which can stretch for months or even years, according to the official, who had been briefed on the memo.

The move marks a significant departure from decades of practice, when immigration judges had the latitude to release someone from detention on a bond if they weren’t deemed a flight risk. Immigration law states that all immigrants in the country illegally must be detained while their fates are decided, but with limited beds available in ICE jails, the government had considered the law effectively impossible to enforce.

The Washington Post on Monday evening earlier reported on the new policy.

Roughly 57,800 people were in ICE detention as of June 29, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, known as TRAC.

With a coming infusion of tens of billions of dollars from President Trump’s signature tax and spending package, ICE is hoping to expand its detention capacity to 100,000 beds, up from roughly 40,000 under the Biden administration. Trump administration officials hope to soon begin stepping up deportation efforts, which have lagged behind in the early months of Trump’s second term.

Immigration officials asked the general counsel’s office at the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, to reconsider the longstanding policy of allowing immigrants to be released on bond, given that the agency will soon have the capacity to detain them, the administration official said. A small number of people might still be released from detention, Lyons wrote, but those decisions will now be made by an ICE officer rather than a judge.

The legal interpretation ICE is now using has faced previous legal challenges in Washington state, where advocates say immigration court judges in Tacoma for years denied bond to almost all of the immigrants there who have entered the country illegally.

A spokesperson for ICE didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

ara Lizeth Lopez Garcia, a 20-year-old Colombian honors student at Suffolk County Community College, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials at her Long Island home in May after they came looking for someone else, said her fiancé, Santiago Ruiz Castilla.

Newsweek has confirmed via the ICE detainee database that Lopez Garcia is being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center.

Newsweek has contacted Castilla for comment via GoFundMe and ICE and Suffolk County Community College via email.

Why It Matters
Lopez Garcia’s detention comes amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. President Donald Trump has pledged to launch the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

Immigrants residing in the country illegally and legally, with valid documentation such as green cards and visas, have been detained. Newsweek has reported dozens of cases involving green card holders and applicants who were swept up in the immigration raids and various arrests.

Lopez Garcia’s detention has raised concerns at Suffolk County Community College, where almost 40 percent of the student body identifies as Latino.

What To Know
According to Patch, immigration officials appeared early on May 21 at Lopez Garcia’s residence, where she lived with her mother and teenage brother.

Lopez Garcia and her mother were taken into ICE custody, while her brother remained on Long Island. They have since been transferred to the GEO Group-operated South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile.

Castilla said in an online fundraiser for Lopez Garcia’s legal funds, “ICE wasn’t even looking for them, but for someone completely unrelated who didn’t live at their address.”

He told Patch that his fiancée was born in Colombia and moved to the U.S. in 2020 when she was 15 years old. She was majoring in interior design and involved in community service and mentorship programs at school, where she held a 3.9 GPA.

Castilla said she had been granted Special Immigrant Juvenile status, which is designed to protect young immigrants who have experienced abuse or neglect. The status allows individuals who have come into the country to stay legally. Castilla said she and her mother had Social Security numbers and work permits.

A spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) told Newsweek in an email Wednesday, “as a matter of practice, USCIS does not discuss the details of individual immigration cases.”

He wrote on GoFundMe, “She is currently in the process of obtaining her permanent residency.” He told Patch that Lopez Garcia and her mother had no criminal history or deportation orders.

A GoFundMe campaign for her legal fees had raised more than $21,000 as of Wednesday morning.

What People Are Saying
Santiago Ruiz Castilla wrote on GoFundMe: “My fiancé is known for her kindness and dedication, and she needs our support. She’s the kind of person who brings light into every room, always striving to do her best and help those around her. … Both the mother and daughter are hardworking women who came to this country with dreams of building a better life. They have always given to their community with open hearts, and now they need our support more than ever.”

Dante Morelli, a professor of communications at Suffolk County Community College, told Newsday: “Our community is outraged by this. It’s just an awful, terrible situation.”

Cynthia Eaton, an English professor who taught Lopez Garcia, told Newsday: “I’ve been teaching for 30 years … and sometimes you meet a student who just stands out. Sara was one of those.”

What Happens Next
Lopez Garcia is being held in Louisiana and awaiting an immigration hearing. She and Castilla were scheduled to be married on August 7.

Castilla told Newsday that amid her detention, Lopez Garcia agreed in June to self-deport.

Undocumented farm workers feel they’re being “hunted like animals”, they told the Guardian, as Donald Trump’s administration ramps up its crackdown on immigration.

Raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) have caused workers to lose hours and income, and forced them into hiding at home, according to interviews.

With many US farms reliant on undocumented workers to function, the US president and his administration have sought to reassure their owners in recent months. But Trump’s pledge to put farmers “in charge” of immigration enforcement alarmed workers’ rights advocates, who suggested they were being asked to surrender “their freedom to their employer” just to stay in the country.

“We really feel like we’re being hunted, we’re being hunted like animals,” said an undocumented farm worker in Ventura county, California, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

An Ice raid at a cannabis farm in the county last week resulted in a worker suffering severe injuries after falling from a greenhouse and later dying. The raids sparked protests, with federal agents using smoke canisters in a bid to disperse a crowd of hundreds of protesters.

“You can’t go out peacefully to do things, or go to work with any peace of mind anymore. We’re stressed out and our kids are stressed out. No one is the same since these raids started,” the worker added. “We are stressed and worrying if it continues like this, what are we going to do because the rent here is very expensive and it has affected us a lot. How are we going to make ends meet if this continues?”

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said: “President Trump is a tireless advocate for American farmers – they keep our families fed and our country prosperous. He trusts farmers and is committed to ensuring they have the workforce needed to remain successful.”

The Department of Agriculture and Ice did not respond to requests for comment.

Most of the more than 2.6 million farm workers in the US are Hispanic, non-citizen immigrants. Around 40% of US farm workers are estimated to be undocumented.

Last month, the Trump administration called for Ice arrest quotas of 3,000 per day, up from 1,000. Following criticism of the raids, Trump claimed that changes were coming to how raids were conducted in agriculture, hospitality and food service, though a directive issued by Ice to stop targeting such sites was reversed.

Trump recently claimed the administration is looking into legislation to defer immigration enforcement on farms to farmers. “Farmers, look, they know better. They work with them for years,” he said at a rally in Iowa on 3 July.

The US president is “clearly” trying to give corporate leaders “as close to slavery … that he can give to them,” claimed Rosalinda Guillen, a farm worker from Washington, community organizer and founder of the non-profit Community to Community. “Giving workers an opportunity who are already here in this country the ability to work and support their families and stay in this country by giving up their dignity and their freedom to their employer? If that isn’t a definition of slavery, I don’t know what is.”

Trump has indicated that his administration could issue temporary passes to immigrant workers. “Even Trump consumes products being produced by farm workers, without realizing who produced these for him,” Lázaro Álvarez, a member of the Workers’ Center of Central New York and Alianza Agrícola, who has worked on a farm for more than a decade, said.

“They have really demonized us with the word ‘criminals’,” Álvarez said. “Despite the fact we are undocumented, we pay taxes. We are invisible to the government until we pay taxes, and we don’t receive any benefits.”

Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union representing farm workers, said: “Everything that he’s doing to detain these workers is unconstitutional. They don’t have a document signed by a judge. They don’t have a court order. They want to just eliminate protections of farm workers who are currently here and have been working in the field for 20 to 30 years.

“These workers who have not committed any crime are being taken by people who are masked, are not wearing a uniform and don’t have a marked vehicle, so they are essentially being kidnapped.”

The impacts of these raids on farm workers will reverberate, Romero warned, from the communities being affected to consumers who rely on the work of farm workers.

“There’s a lot of fear of going to work,” said Dr Sarait Martinez, executive director of Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO), which works in the Central valley and on the central coast of California with Indigenous farmworkers. She added that family dynamics among farm workers have been changing due to the Ice raids, as parents will alternate between who goes to work and who stays home with the children, to ensure they aren’t both arrested, and separated from their children.

“This administration is targeting and just racially profiling anyone at this point that is brown, and it’s intimidating workers,” said Martinez. “There’s a broader agenda of this administration, who and how they want workers to be employed in the country, and I think we need to be aware of that, and we need to be organizing.”

Luis Jiménez, an undocumented farm worker in central New York for 21 years, said the raids have affected the mental health of many undocumented farm workers.

“A lot of people come here to work and their families back home depend on the work and the support of them, so it would be a tragedy if they were arrested and deported,” he said. “We don’t know who is going to report us or at what moment if we go out we will be reported to Ice because of the propaganda the federal government has been carrying out against the immigrant community.”

“There are many people who are racist but do not realize it affects them, too,” added Jiménez. “The immigrant community and migrant labor supports the agricultural industry and makes the economy grow. And if the economy is good, then those people are better off financially.

“And there are people who don’t care about that because of the simple fact of wanting to get immigrants out of this country.”

Back in Ventura county, the undocumented farm worker warned of far-reaching consequences should Trump press ahead with his crackdown. “If there are no immigrants, there is no food, there are no houses, no hotels, no people who do the work in restaurants,” they said. “Without us, food is going to be more expensive. We’re essential.

“We worked through Covid. We worked through the wildfires in Los Angeles. We get up at 4am every day. No one else is willing to work the eight-, 10-hour days the way we do. We’re not criminals. We’re hardworking people trying to give our kids a better life. And we contribute a lot to this country.”

WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.
Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.

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The tally has not been previously reported. Using court records and LinkedIn accounts, Reuters was able to verify the departure of all but four names on the list.

Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump’s administration.

“Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system,” said one lawyer who left the unit during Trump’s second term. “How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”

Critics have accused the Trump administration of flouting the law in its aggressive use of executive power, including by retaliating against perceived enemies and dismantling agencies created by Congress.

The Trump administration has broadly defended its actions as within the legal bounds of presidential power and has won several early victories at the Supreme Court. A White House spokesperson told Reuters that Trump’s actions were legal, and declined to comment on the departures.

“Any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the President’s policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement.

The seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures.

Three of them said some career lawyers feared they would be pressured to misrepresent facts or legal issues in court, a violation of ethics rules that could lead to professional sanctions.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics and avoid retaliation.

A Justice Department spokesperson said lawyers in the unit are fighting an “unprecedented number of lawsuits” against Trump’s agenda.

“The Department has defeated many of these lawsuits all the way up to the Supreme Court and will continue to defend the President’s agenda to keep Americans safe,” the spokesperson said. The Justice Department did not comment on the departures of career lawyers or morale in the section.

Some turnover in the Federal Programs Branch is common between presidential administrations, but the seven sources described the number of people quitting as highly unusual.

Reuters was unable to find comparative figures for previous administrations. However, two former attorneys in the unit and two others familiar with its work said the scale of departures is far greater than during Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s administration.

HEADING FOR THE EXIT
The exits include at least 10 of the section’s 23 supervisors, experienced litigators who in many cases served across presidential administrations, according to two of the lawyers.

A spokesperson said the Justice Department is hiring to keep pace with staffing levels during the Biden Administration. They did not provide further details.

In its broad overhaul of the Justice Department, the Trump administration has fired or sidelined dozens of lawyers who specialize in prosecuting national security and corruption cases and publicly encouraged departures from the Civil Rights Division.
But the Federal Programs Branch, which defends challenges to White House and federal agency policies in federal trial courts, remains critical to its agenda.

The unit is fighting to sustain actions of the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency formerly overseen by Elon Musk; Trump’s order restricting birthright citizenship and his attempt to freeze $2.5 billion in funding to Harvard University.
“We’ve never had an administration pushing the legal envelope so quickly, so aggressively and across such a broad range of government policies and programs,” said Peter Keisler, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Division under Republican President George W. Bush.

“The demands are intensifying at the same time that the ranks of lawyers there to defend these cases are dramatically thinning.”

The departures have left the Justice Department scrambling to fill vacancies. More than a dozen lawyers have been temporarily reassigned to the section from other parts of the DOJ and it has been exempted from the federal government hiring freeze, according to two former lawyers in the unit.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not comment on the personnel moves.

Justice Department leadership has also brought in about 15 political appointees to help defend civil cases, an unusually high number.

The new attorneys, many of whom have a record defending conservative causes, have been more comfortable pressing legal boundaries, according to two former lawyers in the unit.

“They have to be willing to advocate on behalf of their clients and not fear the political fallout,” said Mike Davis, the head of the Article III Project, a pro-Trump legal advocacy group, referring to the role of DOJ lawyers in defending the administration’s policies.

People who have worked in the section expect the Federal Programs Branch to play an important role in the Trump administration’s attempts to capitalize on a Supreme Court ruling limiting the ability of judges to block its policies nationwide.

Its lawyers are expected to seek to narrow prior court rulings and also defend against an anticipated rise in class action lawsuits challenging government policies.
Lawyers in the unit are opposing two attempts by advocacy organizations to establish a nationwide class of people to challenge Trump’s order on birthright citizenship. A judge granted one request on Thursday.
FACING PRESSURE
Four former Justice Department lawyers told Reuters some attorneys in the Federal Programs Branch left over policy differences with Trump, but many had served in the first Trump administration and viewed their role as defending the government regardless of the party in power.

The four lawyers who left said they feared Trump administration policies to dismantle certain federal agencies and claw back funding appeared to violate the U.S. Constitution or were enacted without following processes that were more defensible in court.

Government lawyers often walked into court with little information from the White House and federal agencies about the actions they were defending, the four lawyers said.

The White House and DOJ did not comment when asked about communications on cases.

Attorney General Pam Bondi in February threatened disciplinary action against government lawyers who did not vigorously advocate for Trump’s agenda. The memo to Justice Department employees warned career lawyers they could not “substitute personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election.”
Four of the lawyers Reuters spoke with said there was a widespread concern that attorneys would be forced to make arguments that could violate attorney ethics rules, or refuse assignments and risk being fired.

Those fears grew when Justice Department leadership fired a former supervisor in the Office of Immigration Litigation, a separate Civil Division unit, accusing him of failing to forcefully defend the administration’s position in the case of Kilmar Abrego, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador.
The supervisor, Erez Reuveni, filed a whistleblower complaint, made public last month, alleging he faced pressure from administration officials to make unsupported legal arguments and adopt strained interpretations of rulings in three immigration cases.
Justice Department officials have publicly disputed the claims, casting him as disgruntled. A senior official, Emil Bove, told a Senate panel that he never advised defying courts.
Career lawyers were also uncomfortable defending Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms, according to two former Justice Department lawyers and a third person familiar with the matter.
A longtime ally of Bondi who defended all four law firm cases argued they were a lawful exercise of presidential power. Judges ultimately struck down all four as violating the Constitution. The Trump administration has indicated it will appeal at least one case.

Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:

It is ironic that this week, as we celebrate the 249th anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence, which established the United States of America and freed it from the British monarchy, we have a president who believes himself to be king and has alarmingly expanded his executive powers. One of his enablers is the nation’s own Supreme Court.

Last Friday’s high court ruling, linked to President Donald Trump’s plans to deny birthright citizenship to those born in the United States to undocumented parents, did not address the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order.

But it did overturn the rulings of lower court judges who blocked Trump’s plan. In other words, the Supreme Court ruled that judges cannot issue nationwide injunctions but must limit them to the states and jurisdictions where the president’s plans have been challenged.

In theory, the 22 states, individuals, and organizations that challenged Trump’s directive would be protected from the executive order. The Supreme Court ruled that class action lawsuits remain a viable remedy for challenging and blocking federal policies deemed unconstitutional, as in the case at hand.

Although the case on birthright citizenship will continue, the Supreme Court’s ruling favors Trump’s plans on this and other issues by restricting the ability of lower courts to block executive actions deemed unconstitutional or illegitimate.

And it is even more alarming because even if the appealed cases return to the Supreme Court, the conservative-majority body tends to rule in favor of Trump. It is the same court that granted the president immunity and now appears to favor him by undermining the powers of the judiciary.

Trump has been exerting significant control over all branches of government, not just the executive. The narrowly Republican-controlled Congress is Trump’s rubber stamp, where spineless lawmakers put the president’s political agenda ahead of the interests of their constituents and the voters who put them in office.

The most vivid example is the reconciliation bill that the Senate just passed despite multimillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid and nutritional assistance programs, all to finance tax cuts for billionaires while increasing the debt ceiling and the deficit.

Also, let’s not forget that it includes a monumental budget for national security and the border to finance the police state that Trump has turned immigration enforcement into. That’s more than $150 billion for national security and its agencies, especially ICE.

Public policy expert Don Moynihan wrote that ICE’s detention budget is expected to increase by 365%, from $3.4 billion in the current fiscal year to $45 billion by the end of fiscal year 2029. This figure exceeds the budget for the correctional system in all 50 federal prisons.

Moynihan added that “the ICE detention budget is larger than the total annual budget for USAID used to be. The ICE detention budget increase is larger than cuts in education or SNAP in the BBB. It is larger than cuts to NIH, CDC, and cancer research combined. It is on the scale of the type of supplemental budgets that the US passed when engaged in foreign wars.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who broke the tie to pass Trump’s budget bill, admitted on social media that no matter what the bill contains or the criticism against it, the most important thing is the money for deportations.

“Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”

Trump and his entourage are destroying everything in their path, including support networks for those most in need, many of whom voted for him, to solidify his deportation machine and benefit his billionaire benefactors.

But this would-be king has more sinister plans and has facilitators in Congress and on the nation’s highest court. What’s next on his list?

President Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, now law, promises sweeping changes to the country’s immigration system and safety net. But for millions of immigrant families, it spells a future of fear, hardship, and exclusion.

Touted as a win for border security and fiscal restraint, the law pours unprecedented resources into immigration enforcement and border security — to the tune of $170 billion — while stripping away critical health care and food assistance.

Legal experts and community advocates have warned that the law’s harsh provisions — massive detention expansions, steep new immigration fees, and deep cuts to social programs — will destabilize families, endanger children, and undermine the very communities that help drive the nation’s economy.

Among the law’s most alarming provisions: $45 billion to expand detention capacity to more than 100,000 beds — rivaling the entire federal prison system — and $31 billion to expand immigration enforcement and deportation activity, which could lead to the hiring of as many as 10,000 new ICE agents. The result? More raids, more arrests, more fear.

It doesn’t stop there. The bill imposes financial barriers and new fees on immigrant families. For instance, asylum applications, once free, will now cost $100 (after House Republicans originally proposed $1,000) and work permits, also once free, will now cost $550.

Appeals of immigration decisions now cost $900, up from $110. For many immigrants, these fees represent an “unaffordable price tag on due process,” Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, told NPR.

Then there’s the new 1 percent tax levied on remittances sent abroad, which disproportionately affects low-income immigrants whose families back home rely on that financial support. The law also bars some legally present immigrants from accessing Medicaid and restricts food assistance (SNAP) eligibility for certain immigrants.

“The Big Ugly Bill is incredibly irresponsible,” Héctor Sánchez Barba, president and CEO of Mi Familia Vota, a Latino advocacy organization, said in a statement.

The sweeping law, which also includes massive tax cuts for rich individuals, carries a hefty cost: It’s estimated that it will add more than $3.4 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. “Our children and grandchildren will have to pay for its massive debt, while obscene amounts of money will go to ICE policies that punish families and the essential workers our economy needs for their hard work and tax dollars,” Barba said.

What this law enshrines is not reform but punishment — it’s criminalizing immigration to the fullest extent possible, monetizing some legal rights, and prioritizing cruelty over common sense. It is a legislative embodiment of Trumpism: performative and punitive.

For immigrant families, the “big, beautiful” promise has revealed its true face, and it surely is an ugly one.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop immigration agents in southern California from “indiscriminately” arresting people based on racial profiling, saying that it had likely broken the law by dispatching “roving patrols” of agents to carry out sweeping arrests.

The decision was a win for a group of immigration advocates and five people arrested by immigration agents that sued the Department of Homeland Security over what it called a “common, systematic pattern” of people with brown skin forcibly detained and questioned in the Los Angeles area.

In a complaint filed July 2, the group said the area had come “under siege” by masked immigration agents “flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places.” They alleged agents picked out targets to forcefully detain and question solely because they had brown skin, spoke Spanish or English with an accent, and worked as day laborers, farm workers, or other jobs.

Those arrested were denied access to lawyers and held in “dungeon-like” facilities where some were “pressured” into accepting deportation, the lawsuit alleged.

Judge Maame Frimpong of the Central District of California wrote in her order that the group would likely succeed in proving that “the federal government is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.” Stopping the indiscriminate arrests was a “fairly moderate request,” she wrote.

Her order granted an emergency request, and the lawsuit is going.

Mohammad Tajsar, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the group that brought the lawsuit, said, “It does not take a federal judge to recognize that marauding bands of masked, rifle-toting goons have been violating ordinary people’s rights throughout Southern California.”

“We are hopeful that today’s ruling will be a step toward accountability for the federal government’s flagrant lawlessness.”

Frimpong “is undermining the will of the American people,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to USA TODAY. “America’s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists.”

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop ‘indiscriminate’ immigration enforcement raids in southern California.
Allegations that agents are making arrests based on skin color are “disgusting and categorically FALSE,” McLaughlin said. “DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence.”

More: Mentally ill, detained and alone. Trump budget cuts force immigrants to fight in solitude
The Trump administration ramped up immigration raids across California starting in June, widening its focus from those with criminal records to a broader sweep for anyone in the country illegally.

The crackdown sparked ongoing protests, which Trump dispatched National Guard troops and Marines to quell.

Federal prosecutors in California have moved to dismiss charges against a Los Angeles protester accused of assaulting border patrol agents, a major victory for the demonstrator who said he himself was brutally attacked by law enforcement.

US attorney Bill Essayli, a Donald Trump appointee, filed a motion on Wednesday to dismiss a complaint against Jose Manuel Mojica, a 30-year-old Los Angeles resident who was present at one of the first major protests of immigration raids in southern California this month. Mojica, a father of four born in LA, came forward last week to the Guardian, which published footage of his arrest by a group of officers.

Mojica, who strongly rejected the charges, was facing eight years in federal prison over the 7 June arrest, which left him injured.

“I feel a huge relief,” Mojica said on Thursday. He had spent two nights in jail and has been forced to wear an ankle monitor for nearly two weeks.

“They knew they were in the wrong and they didn’t want to face the court. The truth is always going to come out in the end.”

Mojica was one of nine people arrested and charged with federal crimes in a first round of charges that the Trump administration highlighted as evidence of violence by protesters.

On Wednesday, US prosecutors also moved to dismiss the charges against a second protester who was arrested at the same time as Mojica and who was seen on footage being shoved by a federal agent.

Civil rights advocates and defense attorneys who analyzed the Department of Justice’s criminal complaints and footage of the incidents have scrutinized the prosecutions, arguing that in some cases authorities were misrepresenting events, going after people who were themselves injured by officers and criminalizing free speech.

The US attorney’s office and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday about the dismissal of charges.

After hearing reports of Ice indiscriminately targeting workers and neighbors in his predominantly Latino community, Mojica said he went to the demonstration in Paramount, in southern LA county near his home. He had not participated in protests since marching with his father as a child, but after seeing how Ice caused widespread fear and panic in the region, and as a US citizen, he wanted to support the rally.

Mojica, who works at warehouses in the region unloading shipping containers, said the situation escalated when increasing numbers of heavily armed agents arrived.

Grainy cellphone footage, including video taken by his spouse, captured the moment when he was arrested in a chaotic scuffle. While some demonstrators shouted at officers, one agent was seen forcefully shoving a protester standing near Mojica. The videos did not clearly show what happened next, but Mojica said he was trying to de-escalate the situation and stop the protester who was shoved from retaliating. A crowd of officers then quickly took them both to the ground.

“I thought I was going to die at that moment and never get up from the ground and see my kids again,” Mojica said last week. “I couldn’t breathe.”

He said officers held him in a chokehold and pushed him into the pavement, causing a large contusion on his nose and bruises all over his body – some of which were visible four days later.

At one point during his arrest and transport, an officer told him he could be facing 20 years in prison, he recalled.

Mojica, who had no criminal record, was charged alongside three other co-defendants he said he didn’t know. A criminal affidavit included few details about Mojica but alleged he “elbowed and pushed” border patrol agents and “physically made an attempt to thwart [the other protester’s] arrest”.

Prosecutors’ two-page filing to dismiss Mojica’s case provided no details on the decision, but said the request was “made in good faith and in the interest of justice”. A judge still has to sign the order.

“Based on the video, I knew my client did nothing wrong,” Meghan Blanco, Mojica’s attorney and a former federal prosecutor, said on Thursday.

“There was no scenario that I could see this case moving forward in a manner that would have been helpful to the government. Once they had an opportunity to look at the video themselves, I think they very quickly came to the same conclusion.”

Blanco, who previously prosecuted use-of-force cases against federal agents, said Mojica’s case was not unique.

“I’m hopeful this is just the first of many [dismissals] for protesters who were charged with violating the law simply based on the fact that they were protesting and exercising their constitutional rights, not because they were being violent or doing anything illegal,” Blanco said.

The impacts of the prosecution have been significant, she noted. Essayli, the US attorney, earlier posted Mojica’s photo and name on X, formerly Twitter, announcing his arrest and saying the government would “continue to arrest anyone who interferes with federal law enforcement”. The post led to widespread comments calling for Mojica, a US citizen, to be deported.

Mojica said he had been suffering flashbacks from his arrest and was still struggling with pain in his back and ribs from his injuries, in addition to having difficulty sleeping.

“I want people to know they are not alone, there are a lot of people on our side, and they know how the officers treat people,” he said.

“And if people know they are innocent, they should keep fighting and don’t be intimidated.”

A Mexican farmworker died on Saturday from injuries sustained during a federal immigration raid this week north of Los Angeles, a lawyer for his family said.

The farmworker, Jaime Alanís, fell several stories to the ground from a greenhouse on Thursday, when federal agents raided a state-licensed cannabis farm in the agricultural region of Ventura County, Calif.

Mr. Alanis‘s condition had been the subject of confusion among officials, relatives and the media. On Friday, leaders with the United Farm Workers union said that Mr. Alanís had died on that day, and The New York Times and other media outlets reported that.

On Saturday morning, however, his family said that he was on life support and that it was deciding next steps, and Ventura County Medical Center said in a statement that he was still alive but in critical condition.

On Saturday evening, a lawyer retained by the family through the Mexican consulate said in a text message that Mr. Alanis had died on Saturday afternoon. The lawyer, Jesus Arias, added that the family decided to “disconnect” after tests for brain function yielded “no good results.” Mr. Arias said arrangements were being made to transfer Mr. Alanis’s body to his family in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

Elizabeth Strater, vice president for the United Farm Workers union, said in an interview on Friday that during the chaos of the raid, Mr. Alanís “fell 30 feet or more, and experienced devastating spinal and skull injuries.”

An official who was briefed on the situation said Mr. Alanís was from Michoacán, had been working at the farm for more than a decade and had been trying to flee from agents when he fell. He is in his late 50s.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said on Friday that Mr. Alanís had not been in federal custody and denied that the agents involved in the raid were the reason he climbed the greenhouse. “Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30 feet,” she said in a statement. Agents called for help, she added, “to get him care as quickly as possible.”

Andrew Dowd, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department, said that eight people had been transferred to area hospitals in response to 911 calls on Thursday and that four other people had been treated at the scene.

In a statement, Teresa Romero, president of the U.F.W., said that several farmworkers had been critically injured in the enforcement actions, and that others, including U.S. citizens, remained unaccounted for. She said those citizens who were detained “were forced to delete photos and videos of the raid from their phones” before being released.

The Trump administration last month began to aggressively target work sites in California, including farms, as it seeks to sharply bolster the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants. President Trump has said that he wanted to allow some farmworkers to stay in the country legally. However, raids in agricultural areas have persisted.

Federal agents, backed by National Guard troops in military-style vehicles, raided two locations operated by Glass House Farms on Thursday. One was in Camarillo, a Ventura County town about 50 miles outside Los Angeles, and another was in Carpinteria, a town in Santa Barbara County.

News of the raids on Thursday rapidly spread, prompting protesters and community members to rush to the scenes. Clashes broke out between hundreds of protesters and the agents.

During the confrontation in the Camarillo area, one protester was seen on video appearing to fire a pistol at officers. The Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that the protester fired a gun at law enforcement officers and that the F.B.I. was offering $50,000 for information leading to the person’s arrest. The agency said four U.S. citizens were being criminally processed for assaulting or resisting officers and that the protesters had damaged vehicles.

“At least 10 migrant children were rescued from potential exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking,” homeland security officials said in a statement.

Glass House Farms said late Thursday that its greenhouses had been visited by federal authorities with search warrants and that the company had fully complied. It is legal for licensed companies to grow cannabis in California.

Hundreds of immigrants with no criminal charges in the United States are being held at Alligator Alcatraz, a detention facility state and federal officials have characterized as a place where “vicious” and “deranged psychopaths” are sent before they get deported, records obtained by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times show.

Mixed among the detainees accused and convicted of crimes are more than 250 people who are listed as having only immigration violations but no criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States. The data is based on a list of more than 700 people who are either being held under tents and in chain link cells at Florida’s pop-up detention center in the Everglades or appear slated for transfer there.

A third of the detainees have criminal convictions. Their charges range from attempted murder to illegal re-entry to traffic violations. Hundreds of others only have pending charges. The records do not disclose the nature of the alleged offenses, and reporters have not independently examined each individual’s case.

The information — subject to change as the population of the facility fluctuates — suggests that scores of migrants without criminal records have been targeted in the state and federal dragnet to catch and deport immigrants living illegally in Florida.

Nationally, nearly half of detainees in ICE custody as of late June were being held for immigration violations and did not have a criminal conviction or charge, according to data from Syracuse University. Polls have shown that American voters support the deportation of criminals but are less supportive of the arrest and detention of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants. South Florida’s congressional representatives have called on the Trump administration to be more compassionate in its efforts to round up and deport immigrants with status issues.

“That place is supposedly for the worst criminals in the U.S.,” said Walter Jara, the nephew of a 56-year-old Nicaraguan man taken to the facility following a traffic stop in Palm Beach County. The list obtained by the Herald/Times states that his uncle, Denis Alcides Solis Morales, has immigration violations and makes no mention of convictions or pending criminal charges. Jara said his uncle arrived here legally in 2023 under a humanitarian parole program, and has a pending asylum case.

Reporters sent the list to officials at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the absence of a criminal charge in the United States doesn’t mean migrants detained at the site have clean hands.

“Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.,” McLaughlin told the Herald/Times. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally. It is not an accurate description to say they are ‘non-criminals.’”

McLaughlin said the Trump administration is “putting the American people first by removing illegal aliens who pose a threat to our communities” and said “70% of ICE arrests have been of criminal illegal aliens with convictions or pending charges.”

She added that the state of Florida oversees the facility, not ICE, an argument echoed in court by Thomas P. Giles, a top official involved in enforcement and removal operations.

“The ultimate decision of who to detain” at Alligator Alcatraz “belongs to Florida,” he wrote as part of the federal government’s response to a lawsuit challenging the detention facility on environmental grounds.

A spokesperson for ICE referred reporters to Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, which oversees the detention facility. The Florida agency did not respond to a request for comment.

Mixed population

The records offer a glimpse into who is being sent to Alligator Alcatraz. The network of trailers and tents, built on an airstrip off of U.S. Highway 41, has been operating for a little more than a week. It is already housing about 750 immigrant detainees, a figure that state officials shared with Democratic state Sen. Carlos Guillermo-Smith, one of several Florida lawmakers who toured the site on Saturday afternoon.

The records obtained by the Herald/Times show detainees are from roughly 40 countries around the world. Immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba made up about half the list. Ages range from 18 to 73. One is listed as being from the United States. Reporters were unable to locate his family or attorney.

Lawmakers who visited the facility Saturday said they saw detainees wearing wristbands, which state officials explained were meant to classify the severity of their civil or criminal violations. The colors included yellow, orange and red — with yellow being less severe infractions and red meaning more severe offenses, said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.

When the detention facility opened on July 1, President Donald Trump visited the site and said it would soon house “some of the most vicious people on the planet.” He and Gov. Ron DeSantis have said the detention center is creating more space to house undocumented immigrants who otherwise would have to be released due to a lack of beds.

The state has refused to make public a roster of detainees at Alligator Alcatraz, instead offering selective information about who is being detained there. On Friday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office released the names of six men convicted of crimes to Fox News, and later to the Herald/Times upon request. The charges against the men — all included on the list obtained by the Herald/Times — ranged from murder to burglary.

“This group of murderers, rapists, and gang members are just a small sample of the deranged psychopaths that Florida is helping President Trump and his administration remove from our country,” Uthmeier’s spokesman, Jeremy Redfern, said in a statement.

One of those men is Jose Fortin, a 46-year-old from Honduras who was arrested in 2017 on attempted murder charges. Records show Fortin was deported to his home country in August 2019. A month later, he re-entered the country illegally. Border patrol agents picked him up in Texas.

Another man identified as a detainee by Uthmeier’s office, Luis Donaldo Corado, was convicted of burglary and petty theft after he was accused of being a “peeping tom” — watching a woman through her apartment window in Coral Gables. And Eddy Lopez Jemot, a 57-year-old Cuban man, was accused of killing a woman and setting her house on fire in Key Largo in 2017. The state dropped homicide charges against him in a plea deal this year and convicted him of arson.

But other detainees left off the attorney general’s list face lesser charges — such as traffic violations, according to attorneys and family members. An attorney told the Herald/Times her client was detained by federal immigration agents after a routine-check in at an ICE field office. Some are asylum seekers.

Solís Morales, the 56-year-old Nicaraguan, ended up in Alligator Alcatraz after he was unexpectedly detained on his way to a construction job in Palm Beach County on July 1, according to Jara, his nephew. He was a passenger in a Ford F-150 when the driver was pulled over by the Florida Highway Patrol for an unsecured load, Jara told the Herald/Times on Saturday.

Solís Morales arrived in the United States from Nicaragua in 2023 under humanitarian parole and has a pending asylum case, Jara said.

Miami immigration attorney Regina de Moraes said she’s representing a 37-year-old Brazilian man being held at Alligator Alcatraz who entered the United States lawfully on a tourist visa in 2022 and then applied for asylum, which is pending.

She said the man, who has a five-year work permit and owns a solar panel business in the Orlando area, was arrested on a DUI charge in 2024. While he was attending a probation hearing on June 3, he was detained by the Orange County Sheriff’s office, which is participating in a federal immigration program known as 287(g). He was transferred from there to Alligator Alcatraz on Thursday, according to information provided to her by the man’s sister.

De Moraes, a seasoned immigration lawyer, said she doesn’t understand why the Brazilian man was transferred to the state-operated detention facility in the Everglades. She asked the Herald/Times not to identify her client.’

“He’s not subject to mandatory detention and he’s not subject to removal because he has a pending asylum application,” de Moraes told the Herald/Times. “He has one DUI and he’s not a threat to others. This is ridiculous. This is a waste of time and money. … He’s not the kind of person they should be picking up.”

“They should be picking up people with sexual battery or armed robbery records,” de Moraes said.

Immigrants being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in at least seven states are complaining of hunger, food shortages and spoiled food, detainees and immigration advocates say. They say some detainees have gotten sick; others say they have lost weight. In one facility, an incident involving detainees reportedly broke out in part because of food.

The food problems come amid overcrowding at ICE facilities tied to the Trump administration’s push to quickly ramp up immigration arrests. While capacity data isn’t publicly available for every ICE detention facility, nationwide figures on the availability of beds show a system beyond its overall capacity. As of mid-June, ICE was detaining nearly 60,000 people, almost 45% above the capacity provided for by Congress.

Although many of ICE’s detention centers are run by private contractors, the problems are happening all over the country regardless of who’s running a given facility, advocates say. A former ICE official told NBC News it is difficult for a facility to stay stocked with the right amount of food when, on any given day, it may face an unexpected surge of new detainees. While the agency can move money around to cover the cost of detaining more immigrants, planning for unexpected daily spikes can be difficult for facilities and could lead to food being served late or in small quantities, the former ICE official said.

On top of that, there are now fewer avenues for detainees to submit concerns while they are in ICE custody, advocates say, pointing to recent job cuts to an independent watchdog within the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency.

“We haven’t seen any company-specific trends,” said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel with the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It just goes to the overall detention system and how overcrowded the detention system is as a whole.”

Alfredo Parada Calderon, a Salvadoran man who has been detained for almost a year, says he has recently had meals that have left him feeling hungry.

Detainees have sometimes been given flavorless meat that is so finely ground that it is almost liquefied, he told NBC News from the Golden State Annex detention facility in California.

“It looks like little, small pebbles, and that will be the ounces that they give you,” he said, referring to meat portions he has had in meals.

Jennifer Norris, a directing attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center with clients at multiple California detention centers, said it has gotten several complaints from clients in other facilities about the food being “inedible” and in one case “moldy.” The complaints come as some centers reach capacity with recent arrests, she said.

A woman named Rubimar, who asked that she and her husband, Jose, be identified by their first names only because he was deported Wednesday and fears fallout in Venezuela as a result of talking to the media, said Jose was detained by ICE in El Paso, Texas, for about three months and had complained about a lack of food there.

“He tells me many are given two spoonfuls of rice and that many are still hungry,” Rubimar said in an interview before Jose was deported to Venezuela.

Russian immigrant detainee Ilia Chernov said the conditions, including food, have gotten worse since he was detained at the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana on July 24, 2024.

“The portions got smaller,” Chernov said through a Russian translator. “I have to deal with hunger, so I am getting used to the hunger. So I have lost weight.”

DHS said Winn Correctional Center has received no complaints from Russian detainees. However, Chernov’s lawyers said he has submitted complaints about food to ICE in writing, at least one as recently as April.

The detainees’ complaints are consistent with what advocates say they are hearing from other detainees and their lawyers across the country.

Liliana Chumpitasi, who runs a hotline for detainees at the immigration advocacy group La Resistencia in Washington state, said she gets 10 to 20 calls a day from ICE detainees complaining about conditions. They have told her that the meals used to be delivered on a regular schedule, such as 6 a.m. for breakfast and noon for lunch, but that now breakfast may not come until 9 a.m. and dinner is often not served until midnight. Some detainees have also said meals are now half the size they were last year, she said.

According to ICE’s food service standards, detainees are required to be served three meals a day, two of which are supposed to be hot, and with “no more than 14 hours between the evening meal and breakfast.”

Congress has funded ICE to detain up to 41,500 people, including facilities, food, staffing and supplies. But as of the week of July 7, ICE had over 57,000 detainees in its facilities across the country, according to ICE data. However, there is an expectation that more space will be added with the passage this month of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which allocates $45 billion for ICE detention centers until the end of September 2029. According to an estimate by the American Immigration Council, that amount could “likely fund an increase in ICE detention to at least 116,000 beds” per year.

Two other former ICE officials said the agency can hold more people than Congress has funded it for but only for short periods. A current senior ICE official, who asked not to be named to freely discuss ongoing funding issues, said the agency has pulled money from other parts of DHS to continue funding detention through Sept. 30.

Asked about specific allegations of food scarcity and substandard food, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News in a statement, “Any claim that there is lack of food or subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.”

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment and have opportunity to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” McLaughlin said. “Meals are certified by dieticians. Ensuring the safety, security and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE.”

‘Improper food handling practices’
In Tacoma, Washington, at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, Chumpitasi fears the increase in people being held there has contributed to poor food safety.

Seven food violations have been found there in 2025 so far, compared with two in 2024 and one in 2023, according to inspection data by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. According to ICE data, 1,081 people were detained there as of June 23, compared with 719 at the end of fiscal year 2024 and 570 at the end of fiscal year 2023. (The federal government’s fiscal year runs through Sept. 30.)

One morning in mid-April, the facility contacted the local Health Department to report 57 cases of suspected foodborne illness, with symptoms including diarrhea, stomachache and bloating, according to the Health Department. After an investigation, the department concluded that reheated collard greens that had been served at the facility had tested positive for Bacillus cereus, a bacterium that can cause food poisoning. The collard greens were a substitute food for that day and not posted on the day’s menu, according to health department documents. Food poisoning caused by Bacillus cereus is often related to leftover food that has been improperly cooled or reheated.

The Health Department went back to the Northwest Processing Center for an unannounced visit and found “several improper food handling practices.” It worked with the staff there to correct them, and as of June 18 the facility had passed inspection.

Asked about that, McLaughlin said in an email, “While the Health Department was notified, the on-site medical team concluded that there was no evidence linking the illness to a specific food item, as claimed by the detainees.”

‘I am getting used to the hunger’
Over the past month, the American Immigration Lawyers Association has received at least a dozen food-related complaints from advocacy groups and lawyers representing detainees across the country, according to Dojaquez-Torres.

“The common complaint is that there is just not enough food,” she said in an interview. “What I am hearing is that there are extended periods of time when people are not being fed, and when they are, they are being given chips or a slice of bread.”

“We have been getting reports from around the country from our members … and conditions have been declining rapidly,” she said. She also said that some detainees haven’t been given beds and that some have said they aren’t given access to showers.

In early June, a “melee” broke out in Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, because of conditions inside the facility, which included “paltry meals served at irregular hours,” according to The New York Times, which spoke to several lawyers representing detainees inside the facility and family members.

Geo Group pushed back against the Times’ reporting in an emailed statement at the time, saying, “Contrary to current reporting, there has been no widespread unrest at the facility.”

DHS also denied allegations of food issues at the Newark immigration detention facility when NBC News asked about them.

“Allegations that there are chronic food shortages at Delaney Hall are unequivocally false. The facility regularly reviews any detainee complaints. The Food Service Operations Director conducted a review of food portions and detainees are being fed the portions as prescribed by the nutritionist, based on a daily 2400 to 2600 caloric intake,” McLaughlin said.

DHS didn’t respond to a follow-up question about how recently the food service operations director — or any oversight body reviewing food in ICE detention facilities nationwide — had last visited and made an assessment.

In late May, Rubimar said, her husband, Jose, had called and told her that the gas at his facility wasn’t functioning and that they had been given only a bag of tuna to eat in the meantime. But even before that, she said, her husband said the food was “too little.”

McLaughlin said a dietitian had recently approved the meal plan at the El Paso Service Processing Center and indicated “the total caloric intake for ICE detainees at the facility was 3,436 per day — which exceeds the average daily recommended minimums.”

LaSalle Corrections, which operates the Winn Correctional Center, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The GEO Group, which operates the ICE facilities in Newark and Tacoma, as well as the Golden State Annex and many others nationwide, didn’t respond to specific allegations about food service and instead provided this statement: “We are proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Over the last four decades, our innovative support service solutions have helped the federal government implement the policies of seven different Presidential Administrations. In all instances, our support services are monitored by ICE, including on-site agency personnel, and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure strict compliance with ICE detention standards.”

Reduced oversight
Beyond overcrowding, immigration advocates also blame the alleged food issues at detention facilities in part on cutbacks to a team of inspectors inside DHS.

The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, an office that previously oversaw conditions inside ICE and ICE-contracted facilities, was entirely or mainly shuttered this year after the “majority of the workforce” was issued reduction-in-force notices, according to ongoing litigation regarding the cuts.

“One of the things that made the [Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman] is that we actually had case managers in the facilities and they were accessible to the detainees,” a former DHS employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about future government employment. “They would actually go into the kitchen [to see] if there were deficiencies and work with kitchen management.”

Karla Gilbride, a lawyer with Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group suing the Trump administration over the firings of people in the office, said the office has been completely dismantled.

“That is our position, that they have shut down the office. They put everyone on leave. They were told to stop interacting with everyone who filed complaints” from detention, Gilbride said.

The former DHS employee said the dismantling of the ombudsman’s office means detainees have fewer options if they have complaints or concerns about things like food, overcrowding, sanitation, access to legal counsel and clean clothes.

“At the end of the day, it really just means that there are less people to sound an alarm,” the former DHS employee said.

McLaughlin didn’t respond to requests for comment about the dismantling of the ombudsman’s office. DHS has maintained in court filings that the ombudsman’s office remains open and that efforts to restaff certain positions affected by the layoffs are underway.

In a status report filed in court in early July, government lawyers said they are onboarding three new employees at the ombudsman’s office and that files have been created for all new complaints since the end of March.

Under pressure from worried farmers and hotel owners, the Trump administration is launching a program to streamline issuing visas for temporary, migrant workers to try to make sure fruits get picked, meat is packed and lodgings are cleaned.

Why it matters: President Trump’s immigration crackdown has put his administration between a MAGA rock and a special-interest hard place.

Farmers who rely on noncitizen workers — who make up as much as 40% of the agricultural labor market — are howling that Trump’s mass deportation program is damaging the labor market, and could therefore threaten the food supply.
But Trump’s MAGA base wants to ratchet up deportations, saying the administration shouldn’t allow employers to incentivize illegal immigration by granting “amnesty” to certain noncitizen workers.
Zoom in: Trying to balance those competing interests, the Department of Labor has created the Office of Immigration Policy. It’s designed to be a red-tape-cutting, one-stop shop to help employers get faster approval for temporary worker visas for noncitizen labor.

“Today, @USDOL took action to ensure taxpayer-funded workforce services are reserved for American workers — not illegal immigrants,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer wrote Thursday on X, announcing new labor guidelines.
The Office of Immigration Policy is so new that it has no stats on how many employers it plans to work with, but officials say it will have “customer-centered policies” with employers, help coordinate with other federal agencies and try to speed visa approvals.
The new office won’t help those who are in the country illegally to stay or get work visas — that’s barred by current immigration law, officials said. New visa recipients would have to have their paperwork completed in their home country before legally migrating to the U.S.
“This is not amnesty. It’s not amnesty lite,” a senior administration official told Axios. “No one who is illegally here is being given a pathway to citizenship or residency.”
Zoom out: Trump has pushed the strongest, toughest and meanest immigration policies of any modern president. But his recent suggestions of leniency to farmers and key industries that have hired unauthorized workers have left MAGA hardliners suspicious.

“Any time someone says, ‘This isn’t an amnesty because …’ then it’s an amnesty. If an illegal alien gets to stay, that’s an amnesty,” said Mark Krikorian, a vocal immigration restrictionist.
Krikorian said Trump should start raising the minimum wage for H-2A visas so that farmers start investing in mechanization to wean themselves from “illegal labor.”
Because the agricultural industry has had so much unauthorized labor, it will take years to have a fully authorized workforce, even with the new Office of Immigration Policy’s program. An estimated 70% of the workers are already gone from some farms.
Reality check: Generally, unauthorized farmworkers have had a de facto type of amnesty from immigration officials, who are hesitant to conduct raids on a labor force that supplies food across the nation.

There have been some farm raids under Trump (including a high-profile operation Thursday in California against a marijuana farm), but he mostly backed off widespread farm raids after June 12, when he took to Truth Social and lamented the loss of farm, leisure and hotel-sector labor.
“That was the bat signal to ICE: Leave the farmers alone,” one Trump adviser said.

The intrigue: Trump’s post that day was made after lobbying by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

But it caught three crucial administration players flatfooted: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.
“Every [Cabinet] secretary can’t do that: Go rogue and call the president like this, without any sort of appreciation for competing conversations or ideology,” another senior official said.
Inside the room: In White House meetings, Miller took the lead in dialing back the president from moving toward anything that could be branded an “amnesty” program.

One idea that was shot down: a “touchback” program under which laborers illegally in the U.S. would have go back to their nation of origin, get a U.S. work visa there and be able to return here.
For some workers, that would require an exception to current law, which bars re-entry into the U.S. for those who immigrate here illegally and stay for six months or more.
“Stephen is so hardcore that the president almost jokes about it, saying that, ‘You could have a person who has been here for 20 years and has a clean record and everyone loves them, and Stephen will say deport them,’ ” according to one person who heard Trump’s remarks.
What they’re saying: “President Trump is a tireless advocate for American farmers — they keep our families fed and our country prosperous,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Axios.

“He trusts farmers and is committed to ensuring they have the workforce needed to remain successful.”

Thousands of new deportation agents deployed into American cities. A doubling of detention space to hold tens of thousands of immigrants before they are expelled. Miles of new border wall, along with surveillance towers equipped with artificial intelligence.

That is the expansive plan that President Trump’s top immigration officials now intend to enact after months of struggling to overcome staffing shortages and logistical hurdles that have stymied his pledge to record the most deportations in American history.

After weeks of pressuring members of Congress into supporting his signature domestic policy legislation, Mr. Trump has secured an extraordinary injection of funding for his immigration agenda — $170 billion, the vast majority of which will go to the Department of Homeland Security over four years.

The annual budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement alone will spike from about $8 billion to roughly $28 billion, making it the highest funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.

The new resources will fuel an intense initiative to recruit as many as 10,000 new agents who will have a presence in cities like New York City and Los Angeles, and throughout the United States. And the money comes as a windfall for private prison companies, who have already rushed to pitch the administration on new contracts to run detention facilities.

“You’re going to see immigration enforcement on a level you’ve never seen it before,” Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, said in an interview.

The massive infusion of funds is raising worries that in the rush to make good on Mr. Trump’s pledged immigration crackdown, his administration could cut corners on the careful vetting needed to hire deportation officers. And immigration advocates say they are bracing for more masked agents to descend upon local communities with heavy-handed tactics.

“There’s an incredible sense of dread, frankly,” said Chris Newman, the legal director and general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which represents day laborer groups across the country.

So far, he said, Mr. Trump has tried to expand his power over immigration through executive actions, some of which have been blocked by the courts. “But this is legislation, signed into law, and gives people an impression of a sense of permanence, which is ominous,” Mr. Newman said.

No matter what, the budget increase will leave a Trump imprint on the American immigration system for years to come, according to current and former immigration officials.

“This is the missing piece in mass deportations that the administration needed,” said Andrea Flores, who directed border management for the National Security Council in the Biden White House. “What this signals is a new level of funding for immigration enforcement nationally that likely changes it forever even if Democrats come into power.”

Even with the new funding, Mr. Trump’s aides are still hedging on whether they can deliver on their goal to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants this year and millions more before he leaves office. They are aware that it could take months to scale up new detention facilities and recruit, conduct background checks of and train thousands of immigration agents.

“It’s going to take some time,” Mr. Homan said. “We’re already about six months in the game. We just got this money, so we’re going to do the best we can.”

The legislation sets aside roughly $30 billion to bolster immigration enforcement through 2029, money that the administration says will fund the hiring of 10,000 ICE agents. That would bring the total number of deportation officers to 16,000, surpassing the roughly 13,700 special agents at the F.B.I.

“You’re going to see more agents on the street,” Mr. Homan said, adding that the administration planned to ramp up migrant arrests in cities, in immigration courts and at work sites.

With the surge of agents, he added, the administration could also target more foreigners who overstay their visas, who immigration experts have said account for a significant portion of those without legal status in the United States.

Identifying and hiring thousands of qualified agents will not be easy. Some former immigration officials warn that the administration could feel pressure to cut corners on safeguards like background checks and training to speed the process. When the United States has rushed in the past to surge hiring to federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Bush administration’s quick expansion of the Border Patrol, the government was plagued with cases of misconduct, they noted.

“There’s going to be a lot of people who are ill-suited to be a law enforcement officer and apply for one of these jobs,” said John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE in the Obama administration. “I think you’re going to see them pushing and bending every rule they can to get them on the streets as soon as possible.”

Tim Quinn, a former senior official in Customs and Border Protection, said the rapid expansion of the immigration agencies makes accountability mechanisms even more essential. But the administration earlier this year took steps to dismantle the watchdog agencies inside the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE.

“You got now an agency that has a high influx of resources; what are the oversight capabilities?” said Mr. Quinn, who resigned in protest of one of Mr. Trump’s anti-D.E.I. directives earlier this year. “Where does that come from?”

Mr. Homan said that the administration planned to move both quickly and responsibly.

“We want to try to speed up as quickly as we can without sacrificing any of the rules that we have in place that are necessary,” Mr. Homan said, adding that officials were already planning on expanding the footprint of the ICE academy. “We don’t want to hire the wrong people.”

Mr. Homan says one of his top priorities is an expansion of detention capacity, an issue that has long been a challenge for the federal government. ICE often has to hold immigrants for weeks or even months given a limited number of deportation planes, backlog in immigration courts and inconsistent diplomatic agreements with other nations who take deportees.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement was funded in recent years to hold over 41,000 immigrants in custody, primarily in private facilities and some county jails. The agency is already buckling under the pressure of increased enforcement this year, holding around 58,000 immigrants as of earlier this month, according to internal data. Immigration advocates have raised concern over the overcrowded detention facilities, with some immigrants going a week or more without showers and others sleeping on bare floors.

On a recent day, Mr. Homan said, the agency only had around 200 open beds to hold detained immigrants.

The new law includes $45 billion for immigration detention, allowing ICE to expand its footprint to 100,000 beds across the United States. Mr. Homan said he hoped to reach that mark by the end of the year.

Private prison companies stand to benefit greatly from the expansion, with the ability to ramp up detention quickly. Mr. Homan said the administration had already received outreach from companies interested in new contracts.

Joe Gomes, managing director of equity research at Noble Capital, said that the two biggest companies working with ICE, CoreCivic and Geo Group, each have beds available in existing facilities that they could immediately contract to the agency for tens of millions of dollars.

Spokespeople for both Geo Group and CoreCivic noted that their companies do not lobby for immigration legislation.

“We stand ready to continue to help the federal government meet its expanded immigration enforcement priorities,” a spokesman for Geo Group said in a statement.

Other companies could also get in the mix by quickly standing up tent facilities, which have often been used to hold migrants at the border before turning them away.

Immigrant advocates say the swift upscaling in detention could lead to dangerous conditions.

“They don’t have the beds to detain the numbers this funding equates to, so there is going to be a rush to set up hasty, makeshift prisons, with subpar conditions and infrastructure,” said Robyn Barnard, senior director of refugee advocacy at Human Rights First. “A humanitarian calamity in waiting.”

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, pushed back on any criticism of the potential surge in ICE deployments and said more attention should be paid to the challenges that agents face. She also defended the standards of ICE detention facilities. “ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards,” Ms. McLaughlin said.

The law also includes more than $4 billion to hire and train Customs and Border Protection officials, even though Mr. Trump has already deployed the military to the border and illegal crossings remain low.

In addition, Mr. Trump will have more than $46 billion for border wall construction and billions more to finance new applications of artificial intelligence.

The law requires that border authorities integrate technology “including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other innovative technologies, as well as other mission support, to combat the entry or exit of illicit narcotics at” the border.

The administration is also getting a more than $3 billion boost for the immigration courts, a system that has long been riddled with delays and staffing shortages. Both Democrats and Republicans have agreed over the years that the small work force of judges needs support for the overall immigration system to truly be repaired. But immigration experts question whether the extra funding for additional judges and support staff will be enough to help a system overwhelmed with more than 3.5 million cases.

In order to pay for the investments in Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda, Congress imposed cuts to Medicaid and the social safety net. Immigrants will now have to pay a 1 percent tax in order to send money back to family and friends in their home countries and $100 to apply for asylum. Those asylum seekers will have to pay an additional $100 annually while they wait for a decision on their application. They would pay roughly $800 more than they pay now to appeal a rejection of their application. Entire classes of legal immigrants, including refugees, will also now be ineligible for Medicare and food stamps.

Ms. Flores, the Biden-era immigration official, said all of the changes would bolster Mr. Trump’s priorities, but at the risk of upending America’s role as a sanctuary for immigrants across the globe.

“This formalizes that America’s immigration policy is primarily about enforcing, removing and reducing the size of the immigrant population in the United States,” Ms. Flores said. “It’s a signal that Congress has embraced immigration restrictionism and has made enforcement a national priority.”

Federal immigration officers may deport immigrants to countries other than their own, with as little as six hours’ notice, even if officials have not provided any assurances that the new arrivals will be safe from persecution or torture, a top official said in a memo.

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Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in a memo to the ICE workforce Wednesday that a Supreme Court ruling last month had cleared the way for officers to “immediately” start sending immigrants to “alternative” countries.

People being sent to countries where officials have not provided any “diplomatic assurances” that immigrants will be safe will be informed 24 hours in advance — and in “exigent” circumstances, just six. Those being flown to places that have offered those assurances could be deported with no advance notice.

If the State Department “believes those assurances to be credible,” then ICE may deport someone to that country “without the need for further procedures,” Lyons wrote in the memo, obtained by The Washington Post.

The United States has rarely deported people to countries where they are not citizens, and lawyers warned that thousands of longtime immigrants with work permits and families in the U.S. could now be uprooted and sent to places where they lack family ties or even a common language.

Among those who could be targeted are thousands of immigrants with final removal orders who have not been deported to their native countries because a judge found that they might face danger there. Others are those with deportation orders to countries such as China or Cuba that do not always cooperate with deportations because of their frosty relationship to the U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, whose agency oversees ICE, confirmed on “Fox News Sunday” that the agency had the policy in place. The memo is “incredibly important to make sure we get these worst of the worst out of our country,” she said.

“This is the same operation we had in the past, that people can go to third countries,” Noem said. “Many times, if other countries aren’t receiving their own citizens, other countries have agreed that they would take them in … and take care of them until their home country would receive them. That’s what this memo was confirming and that’s all been negotiated with that country through the State Department.”

Immigrants who state a fear of being deported will be screened for possible protection, Lyons wrote in the memo, but immigration lawyers said the government’s plan does not give immigrants enough time to assess the danger they might face in a country that the government has selected for them.

“It puts thousands of lives at risk of persecution and torture,” said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which is challenging the third-country removals on behalf of immigrants in an ongoing federal lawsuit filed in Massachusetts.

The alliance filed the lawsuit in March arguing that the U.S. government was violating federal law and sending immigrants to places where they could be harmed or killed, without giving them a chance to argue against it, including a Guatemalan man deported to Mexico, where he had been kidnapped and raped.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy barred the government from removing immigrants without giving them a “meaningful” opportunity to challenge it. On June 23, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority paused the judge’s decision in a brief, unsigned statement that did not explain its reasoning, but it cleared the way for the removals to resume.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote a stinging dissent with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned that the court’s decision would put people at risk. “In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution,” she wrote. “In this case, the Government took the opposite approach.”

Since President Donald Trump took office promising mass deportations, officials have sent immigrants from Venezuela to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador, dispatched eight immigrants from Cuba, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Sudan and Mexico to a conflict zone in South Sudan, and illegally deported a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego García, to El Salvador even though an immigration judge’s order forbade it. The Trump administration brought Abrego back to the U.S. last month after the Supreme Court ordered them to facilitate his return, but in recent days government lawyers have said they could deport Abrego to a third country instead.

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the memo on Saturday, or say how many immigrants are at risk of being deported.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, the lead lawyer on a federal lawsuit in Maryland that successfully fought to return Abrego to the U.S., said the deportation procedures in the Lyons memo are “clearly inadequate” to prevent immigrants from being deported to countries where they might be at risk.

“It is definitely thousands upon thousands of people,” he said. “This is a category of people who understood themselves to be out of the woods.”

While in some cases immigrants could be deported to a country that has provided assurances that newcomers will be safe from torture or persecution, Lyons also outlines how officials should proceed if they are deporting people to a country that has not provided those guarantees.

In those cases, officers must follow a more limited procedure than the one Murphy had laid out in federal court in May after ICE attempted to deport immigrants to South Sudan. The judge said officers should screen the men to determine if they have a legitimate fear of removal, give them access to a lawyer and at least 10 days to challenge their removals. The Supreme Court ruling set aside that process, and the men were deported to South Sudan in recent days.

The Lyons memo says ICE can deport someone to a third country that has not offered any safety guarantees within 24 hours of notifying them where they are being sent. Officials will not ask immigrants if they fear being deported to that country, he wrote. Lyons’s memo is based on guidance Noem issued in a March memo, but provides additional details.

Immigrants who express a fear of being deported in the 24-hour period will be screened for possible humanitarian protection under federal law and the Convention Against Torture, which Congress ratified in 1994 to bar the government from sending immigrants to a country where they might face torture.

The screenings will “generally” occur within 24 hours to determine if migrants could merit immigration court proceedings, humanitarian protection, or if they should be deported to another alternate country.

However, Lyons wrote that “in exigent circumstances” immigration officers may deport someone as soon as six hours after notifying them of the third country.

In such cases, immigrants must be provided “reasonable means and opportunity to speak with an attorney” beforehand, he wrote, and the DHS general counsel or ICE’s top legal adviser must approve it.

WATCH VIDEO:

Esme Murphy spoke with the organizing director for immigrant rights group COPAL on what the new poll means for the country.

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has been on an anti-immigrant tear. With billions of dollars in new funding for his mass deportation goals recently approved, the tools are there to escalate his crackdown even further. But a new poll from Gallup shows just how badly his heavy-handed policies have soured with Americans.

If those polls were a tremor, the survey that Gallup released Friday has the potential to be a political earthquake.

I wrote last month about Trump’s weakening numbers on immigration. While it was still his “strongest issue” in June’s NBC News poll, it was still not an overwhelming seal of approval from the electorate. Other surveys conducted during and after the protests in Los Angeles and the harsh federal response showed those numbers slacking further as the spotlight shone on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s widening scope.

If those polls were a tremor, the survey that Gallup released Friday has the potential to be a political earthquake. In the face of a constant barrage of dark rhetoric from the White House, Americans showed themselves across multiple questions to be more open and accepting of immigration than they have been in years.

For the past 50 years, Gallup has measured Americans’ preferred rate of immigration based on three options: “should immigration be kept at its present level, increased or decreased?”

Last year, 55% of Americans said that immigration rates should be decreased. Now, that number has dropped down to 30%, the same as it was in 2021, when those rates began to climb. Another 38% of Americans think it should be kept at the same level, up from 26% last year, and 26% think it should be increased — a 10-point jump from the same time in 2024.

The shift seen among Republicans and independents is particularly noteworthy, as Gallup analyst Lydia Saad wrote:

With illegal immigration levels down dramatically and refugee programs suspended, the desire for less immigration has fallen among all party groups, but it is most pronounced among Republicans, down 40 percentage points over the past year to 48%. Among independents, this sentiment is down 21 points to 30%, and among Democrats, down 12 points to 16%. Republicans are the only group still showing at least plurality support for reducing immigration. Independents are most likely to favor maintaining current levels, while a plurality of Democrats favor increasing it.

At the same time, a record-high 79% of Americans now say that immigration is good for the country, compared to a record-low 17% who say otherwise. Accordingly, we’re also seeing a broader shift in support away from enforcement policies against undocumented immigrants and toward a pathway to citizenship for them. This poll showed 78% of all people surveyed supporting the latter, an 8-point jump. But crucially, there’s now a majority of support among self-identified Republicans (59%!) for a pathway to citizenship.

On the one hand, these numbers taken in tandem could be a sign that Americans consider Trump’s immigration policies to be effective — to a point. While there’s often a gap between perceived rates of immigration and actual border crossings, there has been a substantial plummet in border encounters reported since January. Some administrations might see this desire to freeze things at their current lower rates as a victory and choose to maintain the new status quo. The imminent threat of overreach that these polls portend would also likely give most presidential administrations pause.

But this administration is just gearing up, as the architect of Trump’s immigration policies, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, encourages a further uptick in the number of ICE arrests and deportations. As a true ideologue, he is unlikely to be deterred by these or other poll numbers in his quest to expel millions of immigrants — but his boss is a bit more sensitive to the swings of the electorate.

Trump originally latched on to anti-immigration sentiments in part because of the response it drew from his nascent MAGA base. Concerns among the restaurant and agriculture industries prompted him to hit the brakes on some unpopular raids, before reversing himself. The growing backlash that the Gallup poll suggests might be the nudge that Trump needs to put the untethered Miller back onto his leash.

Americans’ attitudes toward immigration have softened in the past year, according to a Friday Gallup report.

Why it matters: A record-high share of U.S. adults said immigration benefits the country, despite the Trump administration’s continued focus on strict enforcement policies.

Sentiment toward immigration has returned to 2021 levels, before negative views increased, per Gallup.
By the numbers: The share of Americans who said they want less immigration dropped to 30% from a high of 55% last year.

38% of respondents in June said immigration should stay at its present level, while 26% said it should increase.
A significant majority — 79% — of respondents said immigration is a “good thing” for the U.S. today.
The share who said it’s a “bad thing” dropped from 32% last year to 17% this year.
State of play: Unauthorized border crossings decreased to their lowest level in decades earlier this year after trending down for several months.

“Republicans are the only group still showing at least plurality support for reducing immigration,” the Gallup report said. “Independents are most likely to favor maintaining current levels, while a plurality of Democrats favor increasing it.”
The intrigue: U.S. public attitude has shifted after the Trump administration has focused on deportation, expanding detention camps and even denaturalizing immigrant citizens.

More Americans support offering undocumented immigrants pathways to citizenships, rather than using stringent measures to deter or reverse their status.

U.S. adults’ support for “hiring significantly more Border Patrol agents” dropped 17 percentage points from last year, and support for deportation of all undocumented immigrants decreased by nine percentage points.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just months after President Donald Trump returned to office amid a wave of anti-immigration sentiment, the share of U.S. adults saying immigration is a “good thing” for the country has jumped substantially — including among Republicans, according to new Gallup polling.

About 8 in 10 Americans, 79%, say immigration is “a good thing” for the country today, an increase from 64% a year ago and a high point in the nearly 25-year trend. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now, down from 32% last year.

During Democratic President Joe Biden’s term in office, negative views of immigration had increased markedly, reaching a high point in the months before Trump, a Republican, took office. The new Gallup data suggests U.S. adults are returning to more pro-immigrant views that could complicate Trump’s push for sweeping deportations and other anti-immigration policies. The poll shows decreasing support for the type of mass deportations Trump has championed since before he was elected.

Since taking office, Trump has called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do all in its power to deliver “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” His administration has also pushed to limit access to federal benefits for immigrants who lack legal status, sought to revoke the citizenship of immigrants who commit crimes and is working to end birthright citizenship for children born to those without legal status or who are in the country temporarily.

In general, Americans’ views of immigration policies have shifted dramatically in the last year, the Gallup polling shows — including among Republicans, who have become much more content with immigration levels since Trump took office but who have also grown more supportive of pathways to citizenship for people in the country illegally.

The broader trend also shows that public opinion is generally much more favorable to immigrants than it was decades ago.

The vast majority of U.S. adults say immigration is good
Americans’ more positive view on immigration is driven primarily by a shift among Republicans and independents.

About two-thirds of Republicans now say immigrants are “a good thing” for the country, up from 39% last year. And independents moved from about two-thirds last year to 80% this year.

Democrats have maintained their overwhelmingly positive view of immigration in the last few years.

The share of Americans who want immigration decreased has dropped significantly
In the time since Trump took office, Republicans have become more satisfied with the level of immigration in the country.

The share of Americans who want immigration “decreased” in the United States dropped from 55% to 30%. While fewer Americans now want to decrease the number of people who come to the U.S. from other countries, more want immigration levels kept the same than want higher immigration levels. About 4 in 10 say immigration should be kept at its current level, and only 26% say immigration should be increased.

The poll suggests Republicans’ sharp anti-immigrant views highlighted before November’s election — which helped return Trump to the White House — have largely faded. The share of Republicans saying immigration should be decreased dropped from a high of 88% to 48% in the last year. Close to 4 in 10 Republicans now say immigration levels should remain the same, and only about 1 in 10 would like an increase.

Much of that Republican movement likely comes from support for the Trump administration’s stringent immigration enforcement, but there are also signs in the Gallup polling that Republicans have become more supportive of pathways to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally and more likely to see benefits from immigration that could be at odds with the Trump administration’s priorities.

More Americans back a pathway to citizenship
Most Americans favor allowing immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time, the poll shows.

Almost 9 in 10 U.S. adults, 85%, favor a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and nearly as many say they favor a path to citizenship for all immigrants in the country illegally as long as they meet certain requirements.

That increased support for pathways to citizenship largely comes from Republicans, about 6 in 10 of whom now support that, up from 46% last year. Support was already very high among independents and Democrats.

Support for deporting immigrants in the country illegally has also decreased across the board, but less significantly. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults now favor deporting immigrants who are in the country illegally, down from about half a year ago.

Six months into the Trump administration’s efforts to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history, a new poll shows that the American public is once again warming to immigration.

A sustained increase in migrants crossing the southern border starting in 2021 had stirred anxiety and anger across the United States, and public support for immigration plunged as Donald J. Trump made the issue the centerpiece of his campaign to return to the White House.

But in the past year, Americans have grown less negative about the issue, with the share of those wanting to see immigration decrease now totaling 30 percent, compared to 55 percent in 2024, according to the new survey, conducted by Gallup, a polling organization. A record high of adults in the United States — 79 percent — now believes immigration is a “good thing” for the country.

The results are in line with other recent surveys that suggest attitudes on immigration may be shifting as Mr. Trump has intensified efforts to detain and deport people. Illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, which began dropping last year under President Biden, are now at their lowest level in decades, and major cities like New York are no longer struggling to care for large numbers of migrants. At the same time, people in many communities — large and small, urban and rural — are seeing immigrant relatives, friends and neighbors taken away by federal agents.

Still, immigration remains an area where Mr. Trump receives some of his strongest approval ratings. Gallup pollsters said Mr. Trump’s “swift and visible” response had allayed concern among some Republicans, which in turn shifted overall American sentiment on immigration back to where it was before migration levels climbed to record heights.

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“We went through a period of irregularity in attitudes on immigration, and now we are just getting back to a normal,” said Lydia Saad, Gallup’s director of U.S. social research. But where pollsters are still seeing partisan friction, she added, are with the Trump policies.

The new Gallup poll found that more Americans disapprove rather than approve of President Trump’s handling of the issue, which has been the case since Mr. Trump took office. Support for stricter border enforcement measures is down over the last year — though a majority of Americans still support stricter measures — while support for creating pathways to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants remains high.

The Gallup poll, conducted from June 2 to 26 and released Friday, found that support for the president’s handling of immigration has fallen, with 35 percent approving, down from 46 percent in February. Support was particularly low with Hispanic adults, 21 percent of whom approved of Mr. Trump’s approach on the issue, 14 percentage points below the national number. The numbers most likely reflect that demographic group’s low support for some of his administration’s marquee immigration policies, Ms. Saad said, such as deporting all immigrants in the country illegally and increasing the number of immigration agents.

Still, a plurality of Hispanic adults — 39 percent — said they wanted immigration levels to decrease, while only 30 percent of the general public said the same.

The results mark a dramatic reversal in trends that began in 2021 when immigration apprehensions hit levels not seen in 20 years and more than 1.5 million people crossed the southern border for the first time. In recent years, a majority of Americans had come to see the situation at the border as a problem, and concern over immigration, both legal and illegal, had been rising. Last year was the first time since 2005 that a majority of Americans told Gallup they wanted to see immigration in the country decrease.

Mr. Trump was voted into the White House for a second term after a campaign marked by nativist rallying cries against migrants and pledges to carry out mass deportations — and with many Americans ranking immigration as most important issue in the election.

Since then, Mr. Trump and his allies have embarked on an immigration crackdown more sweeping than the one he undertook in his first term and harsher than any since World War II. In its first months, his administration has implemented a travel ban, rolled back temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people and fast-tracked asylum cases without granting court hearings.

His administration has also sought to ramp up arrests and raids at homes, courthouses and workplaces; suspend a wide array of student visas; invoke centuries-old wartime law to summarily deport people; and end the constitutional right granting U.S. citizenship to all children born on U.S. soil.

The recent shift in attitudes about immigration has been driven primarily by Republicans, whose support for lowering immigration rates plummeted to 48 percent, from 88 percent just one year ago. Although a plurality still want immigration to decrease, an increasing share expressed a desire to keep immigration at current levels. In turn, a 64 percent majority of Republicans now say immigration is a good thing for the country, up from 39 percent last year.

But the poll, which surveyed 1,402 U.S. adults, is the latest public opinion research to show a drop in Mr. Trump’s approval ratings on immigration and a mixed-to-negative response to his hard-line policies. A New York Times/Siena College poll in April found that Mr. Trump’s highest approval rating was on immigration, though slightly more Americans disapproved than approved of his handling of the issue. Fifty-three percent believed he had gone too far on enforcement.

A Pew study in June found Americans evenly split over his administration’s use of state and local law enforcement officers in its deportation dragnet, and over its efforts to offer money and travel funds to undocumented immigrants who leave voluntarily. But a majority of the public disapproved of ending Temporary Protected Status programs, suspending most asylum applications and increasing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on job sites where immigrants who are in the United States illegally may be working.

Morning all. All week we’ve been talking about how Trump’s repeated failures to get his approval rating up, his STRENGTH restored and his political project back on track would likely lead to him to create more “spectaculars” – dramatic events that would make him feel powerful and cause others and reality itself to bend the knee.

His previous spectaculars had all failed to do the trick – his ICE escalation, his sad birthday parade, his bombing of Iran and the passage of the big ugly. This week was supposed to be a victory lap for him after his bill was signed last Saturday night, but it’s turned out to be another ugly week for him – the Texas tragedy and DHS/FEMA flailing, Epstein debacle, ongoing Russia fiasco, turmoil and DOJ malfeasance in the Abrego Garcia case, a new nationwide injunction on birthright citizenship effort, his tariff deadline arrives and he has to come to the American people humiliated with no deals in 90 days, and polls showing him losing not gaining ground.

So, what’s a weak, failing, big blubbery babyman to do?

Throw insane and dangerous tariffs at all those mean countries who refused to bend the knee.

With the announcement of 30% tariffs on Mexico and Europe this morning, we have officially entered the most dangerous period in Trump’s second term. These tariffs, if implemented will dramatically raise prices here on everything; essentially burn down the global economic system that has made America the wealthiest country in history; alienate our close allies and make us a pariah nation today and potentially for generations to come. These tariffs are arbitrary and capricious attacks on these countries and everyone who lives there, and will be viewed that way by the leaders and citizens of these nations. It is akin to an act of war. Yes, again, the Trump agenda is one of unrelenting sabotage, rapacious plunder and rancid betrayal.

Just so we understand how batshit crazy this all is 1) Trump has no legal or Constitutional authority to levy these tariffs 2) Judges have declared the tariffs illegitimate in two ongoing court cases 3) they are wildly unpopular with the American people and the central driver of his declining poll numbers 4) he even sent a tariff letter to Myanmar, a country we do not have diplomatic relations with, and their outlaw regime publicly thanked Trump for the recognition of their government.

As I’ve been saying all week Trump is weak not strong, failing not succeeding, losing not winning, a villain not a hero. And I mean look at how worried the White House is about his strongman image. They posted this on Thursday:

On Monday we are all going to need to come out of the box strong and call our Senators and House Members to get them to prioritize the rolling back of these tariffs and his overall tariff authority. We are in dangerous territory now as a nation, and we need to come fighting on Monday. This shit is not OK and we need to say so, loudly.

My Conversation With David Leopold – After the signing of the big ugly last Saturday I decided to make this week a week of talking about what comes next. So we heard from (links to all are here):

Charles Gaba on how the damage to our health care system is starting now, not in 2027

Tara McGowan on the growing power and effectiveness of pro-democracy media

CO AG Phil Weiser on the successes of the 23 Dem AGs and what they are planning for next

My comprehensive talk with the New Republic’s Greg Sargent on what comes next and my weekly post and video on how we should next these few months as ones of incredible opportunity to tell our story

And throwing in my terrific discussion with Senator Elissa Slotkin on her “Economic War Plan”

This morning I’m excited to share my new conversation with respected immigration legal expert David Leopold. A recording and transcript are above. In this highly informative discussion we review the current legal landscape, where we’ve had some important wins of late, and explore ideas for how we are going to be able to contain ICE in the months ahead. As he says in the very beginning of our interview we have to understand what Trump is doing fundamentally as a “war on due process.”

On Thursday we got a nationwide injunction against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. Last night, after David and I spoke, a Federal Judge in California issued an encouraging ruling that would reign in ICE (NYT gift link):

A federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration on Friday from making indiscriminate immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area and from denying detainees the right to consult with a lawyer.

The two temporary restraining orders issued by the judge represented a sharp rebuke of tactics that federal agents have employed in and around Los Angeles during waves of immigration raids that began last month.

In the orders, the judge, Maame E. Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, directed agents to stop racial profiling in the course of seeking out immigrants and mandated that the federal government, which has deployed hundreds of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies in Los Angeles County, ensure detainees have access to legal counsel.

“What the federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening,” the judge wrote of the tactics barred in her order.

She said that “roving patrols” without reasonable suspicion violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and that denying access to lawyers violated the Fifth Amendment.

The ruling, which remains in place for up to 10 days, came in response to a lawsuit filed last week by immigrant advocacy groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the nonprofit Public Counsel. A fuller hearing is expected in the coming weeks as the groups seek a more durable order, known as a preliminary injunction.

We also got a major new poll from Gallup yesterday that showed the country rejecting Trump’s inhumane immigration escalation.

If you are looking for a deep dive on Trump’s war on immigrants and our rights this interview with David is a terrific one. For more on Trump’s dramatic escalation check out my recent interviews with Senator Chris Van Hollen, Joe Garcia, and Leon Krauze.

Final Note – Tariffs, ICE May Be Trump’s 2 Vietnams – While the Texas tragedy is feeling more and more like Trump’s Katrina, I keep thinking that his tariffs and immigration escalation may become his two Vietnams – deeply unpopular battles he cannot win, and ones for reasons of POWER and STRENGTH he cannot abandon. Look at where Trump stands with the public on tariffs and rising prices. Nothing he is doing is more unpopular.

Here’s Annie Lowery in The Atlantic this week:

Businesses thus far have sheltered American consumers from tariffs by eating some of the cost themselves and relying on stockpiled goods. As a result, inflation has remained subdued and economic growth strong enough through the first half of the year. But firms can keep only so much stock in warehouses. Analysts at BNP Paribas, a banking group, estimate that inventories will “clear” by the end of the summer, and prices will rise in turn. Right now, American consumers are facing an 18 percent effective tariff rate, the highest since 1934, the Yale Budget Lab estimates. Households will pay an average of $2,400 more for goods this calendar year, thanks to Trump’s policies.

As I’ve written to you these last few days (here, here) Trump is making enormous mistakes and it is a time for us to go on offense and get very, very loud this summer……

The Trump administration is rescinding the Temporary Protected Status of about 70,000 Nicaraguans and 4,000 Hondurans.

The Department of Homeland Security published notices of the terminations in the Federal Register July 8. The move follows similar actions this year against TPS and humanitarian parole recipients from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Cuba, Haiti, Nepal and Venezuela.

The effort is part of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign with mass detentions and deportations, termination of temporary protections and an ongoing attempt to end birthright citizenship.

Many Nicaraguan and Honduran TPS recipients have been in the U.S. since the program was created in 1999 with its provisions for work authorization, tax-paying responsibilities and driving privileges. But the administration said citizens from both nations have been granted far too many extensions and must leave the country by Sept. 8 or face deportation.

“Temporary Protected Status, as the name itself makes clear, is an inherently temporary status,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem declared in the termination notices for both Nicaraguan and Honduran temporary status programs. “A 60-day orderly period of transition is consistent with the precedent of previous TPS country terminations and makes clear that the United States is committed to clarity and consistency.”

Some of those previous terminations have been met with lawsuits, resulting in delays imposed by federal judges. But the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the administration in two cases.

The justices on May 30 paused a lower-court order blocking the termination of the CHNV parole program for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. Earlier that month, the court allowed the administration to end temporary status for Venezuelans who had sued to stop the termination.

“The Trump administration has gone to war against TPS itself,” said Emi MacLean, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and co- counsel in a lawsuit to prevent the deportation of Honduran, Nicaraguan and Nepalese immigrants from that state.

“Secretary Noem, through her actions, is seeking to dismantle the statute that has provided humanitarian relief for hundreds of thousands of people who cannot safely return to their home countries,” MacLean said.

The termination of temporary protections places immigrants in an agonizing dilemma, said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

“This administration is forcing TPS holders — and their U.S. citizen children — to make an impossible choice. They cannot safely go back to their country of nationality, leaving their families and communities, and yet they will be stripped of the right to live and work in the U.S.”

Immigrant advocates said the administration’s actions will return immigrants to nations to face the violence and severe economic hardships that led to the creation of TPS and parole in the first place.

“In the case of Nicaragua, rampant political and ideological persecution remains a major driving factor for people seeking refuge in the United States. Many continue to fear return to such repressive conditions,” said Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. “In Honduras, widespread gang violence and economic depression threaten many people.”

Negative effects from the terminations will be felt in the U.S. as well, said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice: “The Trump administration’s revocation of TPS for Honduras and Nicaragua will harm our economy and destabilize American communities and families.”

The consequences for children and families will be equally severe, said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense.

“Broadly eliminating TPS protections for thousands of individuals whose safety depends on this longstanding federal program risks separating caregivers from children, rendering these kids unaccompanied or separated from their families again, during a time when their access to support and fundamental legal protections is under attack,” she said.

And then there are the humanitarian harms of the administration’s actions to consider, said Guerline Jozef, executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance.

“The decision to end TPS for Hondurans and Nicaraguans is a cruel betrayal of our shared humanity. It is state-sanctioned violence disguised as policy, forcing thousands back into danger after decades of building lives, contributing to our economy and raising families in the U.S.,” she said.

The Trump administration can expect more lawsuits challenging its immigration policies, said Jose Palma, coordinator of the National TPS Alliance.

The National TPS Alliance and its 320,000 members will continue fighting to protect TPS through legal channels, while also pushing forward the fight for permanent residency. We know that an attack on one TPS-designated country is an attack on all of us,” Palma said.

President Donald Trump has pledged to deport “the worst of the worst.” He frequently speaks at public appearances about the countless “dangerous criminals” — among them murderers, rapists and child predators — from around the world he says entered the U.S. illegally under the Biden administration. He promises to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history to protect law-abiding citizens from the violent threats he says they pose.

But government data around ongoing detentions tells a different story.

There has been an increase of arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since Trump began his second term, with reports of raids across the country. Yet the majority of people currently detained by ICE have no criminal convictions. Of those who do, relatively few have been convicted of high-level crimes — a stark contrast to the chilling nightmare Trump describes to support his border security agenda.

“There’s a deep disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-faculty director of the UCLA Law School’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “This administration, and also in the prior Trump administration, they consistently claim to be going after the worst of the worst and just talk about immigration enforcement as though it is all about going after violent, dangerous people with extensive criminal histories. And yet overwhelmingly, it’s people they’re targeting for arrest who have no criminal history of any kind.”

A look at the numbers
The latest ICE statistics show that as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, 41,495 — 71.7% — of whom had no criminal convictions. That includes 14,318 people with pending criminal charges and 27,177 who are subject to immigration enforcement, but have no known criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

Each detainee is assigned a threat level by ICE on a scale of 1 to 3, with one being the highest. Those without a criminal record are classified as having “no ICE threat level.” As of June 23, the latest data available, 84% of people detained at 201 facilities nationwide were not given a threat level. Another 7% had been graded as a level 1 threat, 4% were level 2 and 5% were level 3.

“President Trump has justified this immigration agenda in part by making false claims that migrants are driving violent crime in the United States, and that’s just simply not true,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s no research and evidence that supports his claims.”

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, called the assessment that ICE isn’t targeting immigrants with a criminal record “false” and said that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has directed ICE “to target the worst of the worst—including gang members, murderers, and rapists.” She counted detainees with convictions, as well as those with pending charges, as “criminal illegal aliens.”

Nonpublic data obtained by the Cato Institute shows that as of June 14, 65% of the more than 204,000 people processed into the system by ICE since the start of fiscal year 2025, which began Oct. 1, 2024, had no criminal convictions. Of those with convictions, only 6.9% had committed a violent crime, while 53% had committed nonviolent crimes that fell into three main categories — immigration, traffic, or vice crimes.

Total ICE arrests shot up at the end of May after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller gave the agency a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term. ICE arrested nearly 30% more people in May than in April, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse, or TRAC. That number rose again in June, by another 28%.

The Cato Institute found that between Feb. 8 and May 17, the daily average of “noncriminals” processed into the system ranged from 421 to 454. In the following two weeks at the end of May, that number rose to 678 and then rose to 927 in the period from June 1 through 14.

“What you’re seeing is this huge increase in funding to detain people, remove people, enforce immigration laws,” Eisen said. “And what we’re seeing is that a lot of these people back to sort of the original question you asked, these are not people who are dangerous.”

Administration says focus is on dangerous criminals
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said the administration is intensely focused on rooting out unvetted criminals who are in the country illegally.

“Just this week, the Administration conducted a successful operation rescuing children from labor exploitation at a marijuana facility in California, and continued arresting the worst of the worst – including murderers, pedophiles, gang members, and rapists,” she wrote in an email. “Any suggestion that the Administration is not laser focused on these dangerous criminals is flat out wrong.”

While most ICE detainees are not convicted criminals, there are detainees who have committed serious crimes. On Friday, the administration released information on five high-level offenders who had been arrested.

During his campaign, Trump highlighted several cases where immigrants in the country illegally were arrested for horrific crimes. Among them: The killing of 22-year-old Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was slain last year by a Venezuelan man in the U.S. illegally. Jose Ibarra was found guilty of murder and other crimes in Riley’s February 2024 killing and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Ibarra is seeking a new trial.

Trump in January signed into law the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes.

Immigrants are not driving violent crime in US, studies find
Research has consistently found, however, that immigrants are not driving violent crime in the U.S. and that they actually commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. A 2023 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, for example, reported that immigrants for 150 years have had lower incarceration rates than those born in the U.S. In fact, the rates have declined since 1960 — according to the paper, immigrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated.

Experts say the false rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration creates real harm.

“It makes people in immigrant communities feel targeted and marginalized,” Arulanantham said. “It creates more political and social space for hate in all its forms, including hate crime against immigrant communities.”

Eisen noted that the impact extends to other communities as well.

“All Americans should want safe and thriving communities and this idea that the president of the United States is making misleading statements about the truth and distorting reality is not the way to deliver public safety,” she said.

ICE occupies an exalted place in President Donald Trump’s hierarchy of law enforcement. He praises the bravery and fortitude of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers—“the toughest people you’ll ever meet,” he says—and depicts them as heroes in the central plot of his presidency, helping him rescue the country from an invasion of gang members and mental patients. The 20,000 ICE employees are the unflinching men and women who will restore order. They’re the Untouchables in his MAGA crime drama.

The reality of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign is far less glamorous. Officers and agents have spent much of the past five months clocking weekends and waking up at 4 a.m. for predawn raids. Their top leaders have been ousted or demoted, and their supervisors—themselves under threat of being fired—are pressuring them to make more and more arrests to meet quotas set by the Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Having insisted for years that capturing criminals is its priority, ICE is now shelving major criminal investigations to prioritize civil immigration arrests, grabbing asylum seekers at their courthouse hearings, handcuffing mothers as their U.S.-citizen children cry, chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As angry onlookers attempt to shame ICE officers with obscenities, and activists try to dox them, officers are retreating further behind masks and tactical gear.

“It’s miserable,” one career ICE official told me. He called the job “mission impossible.”

I recently spoke with a dozen current and former ICE agents and officers about morale at the agency since Trump took office. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing their job or being subjected to a polygraph exam. They described varying levels of dissatisfaction but weren’t looking to complain or expecting sympathy—certainly not at a time when many Americans have been disturbed by video clips of masked and hooded officers seizing immigrants who were not engaged in any obvious criminal behavior. The frustration isn’t yet producing mass resignations or major internal protests, but the officers and agents described a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.

Despite Trump’s public praise for ICE officers, several staffers told me that they feel contempt from administration officials who have implied they were too passive—too comfortable—under the Biden administration.

Some ICE employees believe that the shift in priorities is driven by a political preoccupation with deportation numbers rather than keeping communities safe. At ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, which has long focused on cartels and major drug-trafficking operations, supervisors have waved agents off new cases so they have more time to make immigration-enforcement arrests, a veteran agent told me. “No drug cases, no human trafficking, no child exploitation,” the agent said. “It’s infuriating.” The longtime ICE employee is thinking about quitting rather than having to continue “arresting gardeners.”

The administration argues that morale has actually never been higher—and will only improve as ICE officials begin spending billions in new federal funding. Tricia McLaughlin, the spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement the agency’s workforce has welcomed its new mission under Trump. “After four years of not being allowed to do their jobs, the brave men and women at ICE are excited to be able to do their jobs again,” McLaughlin said.

But ICE’s physical infrastructure is buckling. The agency is holding nearly 60,000 people in custody, the highest number ever, but it has been funded for only 41,000 detention beds, so processing centers are packed with people sleeping on floors in short-term holding cells with nowhere to shower.

“Morale is in the crapper,” another former investigative agent told me. “Even those that are gung ho about the mission aren’t happy with how they are asking to execute it—the quotas and the shift to the low-hanging fruit to make the numbers.”

A common theme of my conversations was dissatisfaction with the White House’s focus on achieving 1 million deportations annually, a goal that many ICE employees view as logistically unrealistic and physically exhausting. The agency has never done more than a quarter of that number in a single year. But ICE’s top officials are so scared of being fired—the White House has staged two purges already—that they don’t push back, another official told me.

Miller has made clear that not hitting that goal is not an option. He and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called ICE’s top leaders to Washington in May and berated them in a tense meeting. Miller set a daily arrest quota of 3,000, a fourfold increase over the average during Trump’s first few months. Veteran officials murmured and shifted in their seats, but Miller steamrolled anyone who spoke up.

“No one is saying, ‘This is not obtainable,’” the official told me. “The answer is just to keep banging the field”—which is what ICE calls rank-and-file officers—“and tell the field they suck. It’s just not a good atmosphere.”

Several career officials have been pushed out of leadership roles. Other employees have decided to quit. Adam Boyd, a 33-year-old attorney who resigned from ICE’s legal department last month, told me he left because the mission was no longer about protecting the homeland from threats. “It became a contest of how many deportations could be reported to Stephen Miller by December,” Boyd said. He told me that he saw frustration among ICE attorneys whose cases were dismissed just so officer teams could grab their clients in the hallways for fast-track deportations that pad the stats. Some detainees had complex claims that attorneys have to screen before their initial hearings, to ensure due process. Others with strong asylum cases were likely to end up back in court later anyway. The hallway arrests sent the message that the immigration courts were just a convenient place to handcuff people. Some ICE attorneys “are only waiting until their student loans are forgiven, and then they’re leaving,” he said.

Boyd, who worked at the Department of Justice after law school, said he’d always envisioned a long career in public service. “I had to make a moral decision,” he told me. “We still need good attorneys at ICE. There are drug traffickers and national-security threats and human-rights violators in our country who need to be dealt with. But we are now focusing on numbers over all else.”

Over the holiday weekend, Trump wrote a gushing “THANK YOU!” post to the ICE workforce that acknowledged the strains of the job and promised that relief was on the way. The Republican spending bill he signed on Independence Day will give the agency “ALL of the Funding and Resources that ICE needs to carry out the Largest Mass Deportation Operation in History,” he wrote.

“Our Brave ICE Officers, who are under daily violent assault, will finally have the tools and support that they need,” Trump said.

The amount of money for ICE in the bill is staggering: A $170 billion package for Trump’s border-and-immigration crackdown, which includes $45 billion for new detention facilities, more than doubling the number of available beds, and $30 billion for ICE operations, including hiring thousands more officers and agents. To put those sums in perspective, ICE’s entire annual budget is about $9 billion.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the legislation includes money for “well-deserved bonuses.” Trump officials said they’ll provide $10,000 annual bonuses for ICE personnel as well as Border Patrol agents, along with $10,000 for new hires.

ICE officials say it takes roughly 18 months to recruit, screen, hire, train, and deploy a new officer. The White House doesn’t plan to wait that long. The administration is preparing a plan to assign military personnel to help with enforcement work, one official who wasn’t authorized to talk about the plan told me. They will primarily help with processing new detainees and preparing deportation paperwork for those in custody. And the additional billions in the Republican funding bill will allow ICE to hire private contractors to prepare target lists and other administrative tasks.

“We’re trying to keep morale up,” one official told me. “We’re telling everyone, ‘The cavalry is coming.’”

Some ICE officers have been thrilled by Trump’s changes and what they describe as newfound free rein. They chafed at rules set under the Biden administration, which prioritized the deportation of serious offenders but generally took a hands-off approach to those who hadn’t committed crimes. Officers said they used to worry about getting in trouble for making a mistake and wrongly arresting someone; now the risk is not being aggressive enough.

Other ICE veterans, who long insisted that their agency was misunderstood and unfairly maligned by activists as a goon squad, have been disturbed by video clips of officers smashing suspects’ car windows and appearing to round up people indiscriminately. They worry that ICE is morphing into its own caricature.

“What we’re seeing now is what, for many years, we were accused of being, and could always safely say, ‘We don’t do that,’” another former ICE official told me.

John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director during part of President Barack Obama’s second term, told me he remembered conducting town-hall meetings with the agency’s workforce along with Tom Homan, a former ICE leader who is now Trump’s “border czar.” Morale was a challenge then too, Sandweg said, but the problems were more related to lunch-pail issues such as overtime compensation and employee–management relations.

Those who signed up for ICE “like the mission of getting bad guys off the street,” Sandweg told me, but what they’re doing now is “no longer about the quality of the apprehensions.”

“It’s more about the quantity,” he said. “And senior leaders are getting ripped apart.”

The agency is split primarily into two branches: Enforcement and Removal Operations, which has about 5,500 immigration-enforcement officers, and Homeland Security Investigations, whose roughly 7,000 agents investigate drug smuggling, human trafficking, counterfeit goods, and a range of other cross-border criminal activities.

Even at ERO, many officers have spent their career doing work more akin to immigration case management: ensuring compliance with court orders, negotiating with attorneys, coordinating deportation logistics. There are specialized “fugitive operations” teams that go out looking for absconders and offenders with criminal records, but they are a subset of the broader workforce.

There have long been tensions between ICE’s two divisions, and during Trump’s first term, the leaders of HSI began pushing more formally to break away from ERO, to forge their own identity. The stigma of ICE’s deportation work was undermining their ability to conduct criminal investigations in jurisdictions with sanctuary policies—including nearly every major U.S. city—that limit police cooperation with ICE.

Some at ICE ERO viewed this as a betrayal, akin to HSI agents looking down their nose at immigration enforcement. In recent years, HSI’s reputation was bolstered by the role its agents played in dismantling Mexican cartel networks and busting fentanyl traffickers. Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s homeland-security secretary, expressed support for making HSI an independent agency, and last year, he allowed it to rebrand with its own logo and an email domain scrubbed of the “ICE” identifier.

Those efforts have now backfired. HSI agents have been told to shift their focus to civil immigration enforcement and assisting ERO, effectively relegating them to be junior partners in Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. Some agents and officials told me they suspect HSI is paying a price for wanting to distance itself from immigration enforcement.

“Their personnel are being picked off the investigative squads, and there’s only so many people to go around,” another former ICE official told me. “There are national-security and public-safety threats that are not being addressed.”

Noem has made clear that it’s her job to carry out Miller’s demands, no matter how unrealistic, and she has joined in the criticism of the agency she oversees. While tagging along on a predawn operation early this year, Noem posted live updates on social media, blowing the team’s cover for the rest of the day. And Noem has installed a former political aide, Madison Sheahan, to be the agency’s deputy director, a position typically held by veteran ICE officials. Sheahan, 28, formerly ran the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries but has little experience in law enforcement. Some ICE officers have nicknamed her “fish cop.”

One former ICE official told me that the Biden administration treated the agency’s workers with more basic decency and appreciation, even as their caseload grew.

“Giving people leave, recognizing them for small stuff, that kind of thing. It went a long way,” the official said. “Now I think you have an issue where the administration has come in very aggressive and people are really not happy, because of the perception that the administration doesn’t give a shit about them.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last month arrested the most people in at least five years, but deportations are still lagging far behind what President Donald Trump has promised — and even behind those in the Obama administration, according to data obtained by NBC News.

The discrepancy between arrests and deportations highlights the challenges the Trump administration faces to make good on Trump’s Inauguration Day vow to deport “millions and millions” of immigrants.

According to ICE data, its agents arrested roughly 30,000 immigrants last month, the most since monthly data was made publicly available in November 2020. But the number of immigrants deported in June — more than 18,000 — amounted to roughly half the number of arrests, according to internal figures obtained by NBC News.

The difference between arrests and deportations was similar the previous month. The Trump administration took roughly 24,000 immigrants into custody in May and deported over 15,000, according to the ICE data.

The discrepancy during the second Trump administration can be explained, at least in part, by the number of immigrants being detained who are not immediately eligible for deportation. Immigration lawyers have told NBC News that many of their clients who have been arrested have pending asylum cases and orders from immigration judges temporarily blocking their deportation.

Since February, the Trump administration has averaged 14,700 deportations per month. That’s far below the monthly average of 36,000 in 2013, the year with the most deportations during the Obama administration. From February to April 2024, the Biden administration deported 12,660 immigrants on average, according to ICE data obtained by NBC News. (The Biden administration’s deportation numbers included a surge in immigrants arrested at the southern border by Customs and Border Protection.)

The previous record high for arrests was set In January 2023, when ICE took 18,170 people into custody, according to agency data.

The Trump administration is seeking to fast-track many of those with pending asylum cases by terminating their cases and placing them on “expedited removal” paths without hearings and by deporting those with orders blocking their removal to their home countries to alternative third countries.

The large number of arrests, coupled with deportations at roughly half the same rate, has also caused overcrowding in ICE facilities. Nearly 60,000 immigrants are being held at detention facilities, according to a senior administration official, even though Congress funded 41,500 beds. Immigrants in ICE detention have complained about hygiene, medical care, lack of food and access to bedding and laundry in the facilities.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, under which ICE falls, said any claim of “overcrowding or subprime conditions is categorically false.”

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” she said in a statement. “As we arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens and public safety threats from the U.S., ICE has worked diligently to obtain greater necessary detention space while avoiding overcrowding.”

McLaughlin also said the Trump administration has deported over 253,000 immigrants but did not say what was included in that number and whether DHS counted those interdicted by the Coast Guard, immigrants who left voluntarily or those who are turned around at the border. The deportation data reviewed by NBC News includes those arrested by both Customs and Border Protection and ICE who are returned to their home countries or third countries that agree to take them back.

The passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” by Congress is expected to give ICE $45 billion in detention funding, tripling its capacity to detain immigrants.

The Supreme Court ruled in late June that the Trump administration can, at least temporarily, deport immigrants to countries other than their own. The ruling may speed up deportations this month if the Trump administration can skirt immigration judges’ rulings prohibiting the deportation of immigrants to their home countries — based on fear of persecution or torture — by sending them to others.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently announced Guatemala and Honduras have agreed to take back more foreign nationals from the United States.

A federal judge in New Hampshire on Thursday placed a new nationwide block on President Donald Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship, a decision that came two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court opened a path for the administration to begin enforcing the order.

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During a court hearing, U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante agreed to a request from civil rights groups to certify a class-action lawsuit against the administration on behalf of U.S.-born children or future children whose automatic citizenship could be jeopardized by the president’s executive order.

In a written order, Laplante said the petitioners “are likely to suffer irreparable harm if the order is not granted.”

The decision represents a fresh setback for the Trump administration in its efforts to begin implementing the president’s executive order that would deny automatic citizenship to the children born in the United States to unauthorized immigrants and foreign visitors. Some studies suggest more than 150,000 children each year would be affected.

Trump has said the directive is necessary to end a system that he contends has encouraged illegal immigration, enticing foreigners, many without documentation, to enter the country to give birth. Civil liberties groups have denounced the order as a violation of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment that has guaranteed that virtually everyone born on U.S. soil is an American.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit June 27 hours after the Supreme Court backed Trump’s request to scale back nationwide injunctions from lower courts that had prevented his administration from moving forward on the executive order.

The high court, in a 6-3 decision, did not rule on whether Trump’s birthright order is constitutionally valid. The justices kept Trump’s ban on hold for at least 30 days and sent a set of cases back to the lower courts to determine the practical implications of their ruling.

They left open a path for challengers to try to continue to block the president’s policy nationwide through class-action lawsuits but also raised the possibility that birthright citizenship could be cut off in the 28 states that have not joined lawsuits against it.

“This is a major win for immigrant communities and these babies across the country,” Cody Wofsy, the ACLU’s lead attorney in the case, said in a phone interview. “The Supreme Court left a potential gap in protection, and this decision slams that gap shut and makes clear this order [from Trump] cannot be applied to anyone nationwide.”

In its lawsuit, the ACLU had sought to certify a class of petitioners that included both the children whose citizenship could be affected by Trump’s order and their parents, but Laplante narrowed his order to cover only the children. Wofsy said that distinction would have no practical impact on the judge’s ruling.

Laplante, a George W. Bush appointee, stayed his order for seven days, which could allow the Trump administration time to pursue an appeal. The case could return quickly to the Supreme Court to determine whether the judge’s decision complies with its ruling last month.

In his 38-page ruling, Laplante said the court “has no difficulty concluding” that the executive order’s rapid adoption with no concurrent legislation or national debate would bring irreparable harm for the thousands who would be denied citizenship. He characterized the policy as being “of highly questionable constitutionality.”

A White House spokesman derided the decision, accusing Laplante of seeking to circumvent the Supreme Court’s “clear order against universal relief.”

“This judge’s decision disregards the rule of law by abusing class action certification procedures,” spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will be fighting vigorously against the attempts of these rogue district court judges to impede the policies President Trump was elected to implement.”

White House border czar Tom Homan denounced the ruling as “another example of a radical judge not paying attention to the Supreme Court.”

“These radical judges won’t stop,” he told reporters outside the White House. “They want to stop the Trump agenda. But they need to understand the American people voted for this.”

Trump’s executive order, which he signed Jan. 20, is based on a reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 and grants citizenship to those born on U.S. soil who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the federal government.

The administration has argued that undocumented immigrants and foreigners on temporary visas are not fully under U.S. jurisdiction and do not owe allegiance to the country; therefore, their children should not be awarded citizenship.

More than half a dozen groups — including two coalitions of Democratic-led states — filed lawsuits challenging the order. Three federal judges issued nationwide temporary injunctions blocking the Trump administration from implementing it, but their orders were essentially nullified by the Supreme Court’s ruling last month.

In February, in an initial case brought by the ACLU and other immigrant-rights groups, Laplante also issued an injunction against the birthright citizenship order. But he limited that order to cover only members of the groups that had pursued the lawsuit.

On Thursday, after agreeing to certify the class-action case on behalf of children nationwide, the judge reminded those in the court that he had initially been circumspect about blocking Trump’s order across the country.

“It’s a better process to narrow these decisions and not have judges create national policy. That said, the Supreme Court suggested a class action is a better option,” Laplante said, according to Reuters.

Democrats, including Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), have resoundingly rebuked Trump’s executive order and celebrated news of the injunction.

“While the fight is not over, this is a positive step in making sure that our values and rights are protected,” Castro said on social media.

Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigrant rights group, said in a statement that Laplante’s ruling “reinforces what we have always known: birthright citizenship is a foundational commitment enshrined in the Constitution. Any attempt to dismantle it undermines core constitutional protections and will continue to face strong public resistance and fly against clearly established law.”

“MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!”, cried a federal agent as officers huddled around an asylum seeker who had just left his immigration hearing. Moments earlier the agents’ phones had beeped and vibrated. They had received a photo of the next person they were to detain. They walked to the elevator bank. A couple of agents held the elevator doors open. The migrant was shaking. He was one of at least 23 people detained by ICE on a recent Tuesday in New York City.

Detentions at immigration court rose fast about six weeks ago. At first it was people whose asylum cases were dismissed who were detained. Having a case dismissed used to be a good thing. It meant the next stage of the immigration process could begin outside the court system. Now, dismissal could mean rapid deportation. Many of those now being detained by federal agents had just been given court dates by the judge, which means they have a temporary right to be in America.

“MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!”, cried a federal agent as officers huddled around an asylum seeker who had just left his immigration hearing. Moments earlier the agents’ phones had beeped and vibrated. They had received a photo of the next person they were to detain. They walked to the elevator bank. A couple of agents held the elevator doors open. The migrant was shaking. He was one of at least 23 people detained by ICE on a recent Tuesday in New York City.
Detentions at immigration court rose fast about six weeks ago. At first it was people whose asylum cases were dismissed who were detained. Having a case dismissed used to be a good thing. It meant the next stage of the immigration process could begin outside the court system. Now, dismissal could mean rapid deportation. Many of those now being detained by federal agents had just been given court dates by the judge, which means they have a temporary right to be in America.
Most of the federal agents cover their faces with masks or balaclavas. They are in plain clothes, with most wearing a vest in black or army green that says “POLICE FEDERAL AGENT” or “BORDER PATROL”. A few have ICE shields on their belts. One says that they are from different federal agencies and have been deployed to New York from elsewhere.

“Today is not a good day,” says Benjamin Remy, a lawyer with New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG), a charity. It was a Thursday and the third day in a row of mass detentions. “We’ve never seen this. These judges have never seen this. Court staff has never seen it.” He says due process is being ignored.

Migrants are moved quickly and often to different detention centres round the country, making it hard for people to communicate with loved ones and with lawyers. Melissa Chua of NYLAG says that her clients are disappearing from the system. “These are people who have valid claims for asylum,” says Ms Chua. “They’re trying to do the right thing. It shouldn’t require an army of lawyers to get them out of detention. They’re not a flight risk, they’re not a danger to the community.”

Children look on fearfully. One New York police officer, who said he voted for President Donald Trump, cried when his friend, a Haitian immigrant, was detained and whisked away. Agents surrounded a married couple, detained the woman and released her husband. He was shaking. He said they both had hearing dates for 2026.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.

These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups.

With illegal border crossings down sharply this year, fewer Americans than in June 2024 back hard-line border enforcement measures, while more favor offering pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

These findings are based on a June 2-26 Gallup poll of 1,402 U.S. adults, including oversamples of Hispanic and Black Americans, weighted to match national demographics.

The same poll finds many more Americans disapproving than approving of President Donald Trump’s handling of immigration. Trump’s 21% approval rating on the issue among Hispanic adults is below his 35% rating nationally, with the deficit likely reflecting that group’s low support for some of the administration’s signature immigration policies.

Fewer Americans Want Immigration Decreased
After climbing to 55% in 2024, the percentage of Americans who say immigration should be reduced has dropped by nearly half to 30%. Sentiment is thus back to the level measured in 2021, before the desire for less immigration started to mount. Meanwhile, 38% now want immigration kept at its current level, and 26% say it should be increased.

With illegal immigration levels down dramatically and refugee programs suspended, the desire for less immigration has fallen among all party groups, but it is most pronounced among Republicans, down 40 percentage points over the past year to 48%. Among independents, this sentiment is down 21 points to 30%, and among Democrats, down 12 points to 16%.

Republicans are the only group still showing at least plurality support for reducing immigration. Independents are most likely to favor maintaining current levels, while a plurality of Democrats favor increasing it.

Record High Say Immigration Benefits Nation
When asked if immigration is generally a good thing or bad thing for the country, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults call it a good thing; a record-low 17% see it as a bad thing.

This is consistent with the long-term pattern of more Americans viewing immigration as helpful than harmful to the country. But today’s endorsement is up from 64% last year and represents a reversal of the downward trend seen in this view from 2021 to 2024.

The recent jump in perceptions of immigration being a good thing is largely owed to a sharp increase among Republicans and, to a lesser extent, independents. These groups’ views have essentially rebounded to 2020 levels after souring in the intervening years.

Democrats’ belief that immigration is beneficial to the country is also up slightly, to a record-high 91%. However, this is generally consistent with their highly positive perspective on immigration over the past decade, with at least 80% calling it a good thing each year since 2016.

More Citizenship, Less Enforcement
In addition to supporting increased or stable immigration levels, more Americans now favor offering undocumented immigrants pathways to citizenship, while fewer support stringent measures to deter or reverse illegal immigration.

In terms of impeding illegal immigration at the source, support for increasing the number of Border Patrol agents has declined 17 points to 59%, from 76% a year ago. And backing for expanding the U.S.-Mexico border wall has dropped eight points to 45%. This likely reflects people perceiving these measures as less necessary given the sharp drop in illegal border crossings.

Yet, support is also lower today for deporting all undocumented immigrants, with 38% now favoring this as the administration is attempting it, down from 47% last year when it was a Trump campaign promise. However, it should be noted that last year’s support for deportation was uniquely high. Today’s level matches where it stood in 2019 (at 37%) and is slightly higher than when first measured in 2016 (32%).

In terms of a new policy being debated this year, Americans give lukewarm support to denying alleged gang members the ability to challenge deportation in court — half favor this being done, while 45% oppose it.

Meanwhile, support for allowing undocumented immigrants to become U.S. citizens has risen to 78%, up from 70% last year. This is also back to the level of support seen in 2019 (81%) while slightly lower than in 2016 (84%). Approval is higher still, albeit statistically unchanged, for offering individuals brought to the U.S. illegally as children a pathway to citizenship, with support holding above 80%.

The declines in support for hiring more border agents and deporting all undocumented immigrants are mainly due to less support from independents and Democrats. Independents are also primarily responsible for the slip in support for expanding the construction of walls along the U.S.-Mexico border. Republicans’ support for each of these measures remains high.

Meanwhile, the eight-point increase in support for giving immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens reflects increased support from all party groups, with the biggest gain among Republicans (up 13 points to 59%).

Majority Disapprove of Trump’s Handling of Immigration
Perhaps because of Americans’ opposition to immigration policies that Trump has enacted to remove undocumented immigrants from the U.S., their evaluation of his work on immigration is mostly negative. Thirty-five percent approve of his handling of the issue, including 21% strongly approving, while 62% disapprove, including 45% strongly.

These views are sharply partisan: 85% of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, compared with 28% of independents and just 2% of Democrats. Notably, 81% of Democrats strongly disapprove, while 59% of Republicans strongly approve. Independents are much more likely to strongly disapprove (45%) than to strongly approve (14%).

Hispanic Adults More Supportive of Citizenship, Less of Enforcement
Hispanic Americans’ views on immigration are particularly relevant to these measures, given the strong focus of current immigration policy on immigrants from parts of Latin America who have entered the U.S. illegally at the southern border.

In terms of policy views, the greatest divergence between Hispanic adults and U.S. adults overall is Hispanic adults’ 16-point lower support for hiring more border agents (43%). Hispanic adults also trail the general population in their support for deporting all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally (by 15 points, at 23%). They are 13 points more likely to support allowing immigrants living in the U.S. to become citizens — 91% favor this.

Additionally, at 21%, Hispanic Americans’ approval of Trump’s handling of immigration is 14 points below the national average. With respect to immigration levels, Hispanic adults are slightly more likely than U.S. adults overall to say immigration should be decreased (39% vs. 30%, respectively) as well as to consider immigration a bad thing (25% vs. 17%), but the majority in both cases still express pro-immigration views.

Bottom Line
The surge in illegal border crossings during the Biden administration triggered heightened public concern about immigration and increased demand for stricter enforcement. The Trump administration’s swift and visible response appears to have defused that concern, particularly among Republicans. As a result, Americans’ attitudes on immigration have largely returned to where they stood before the recent border surge, marked by broader appreciation for immigration, less desire to reduce it, and more support for pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. At the same time, support for tougher border control and aggressive deportation policies has eased since last year, with these measures mostly losing their appeal among Democrats and independents.

Daphnee Poteau, a Haitian who came to the U.S in 2023, began working for Amazon last year at a returns center in Indianapolis. While packing up boxes, she met her husband Kristopher Vincent, who’s been at the site, known as IND8, since 2013.

Last month, Poteau was contacted by the Department of Homeland Security, after the Trump administration canceled humanitarian immigration programs that allowed participants to live and work legally in the U.S. for two years while applying for permanent status.

A notice from DHS told Poteau that her parole program was being terminated. Her last day at Amazon was June 28. She’s among a group of warehouse workers whose jobs have been eliminated since DHS revoked the parole program that was created during the Biden administration.

While Poteau tries to secure a spousal visa, her future in the U.S. is uncertain. She and Vincent, who’s from Indiana, said they’re concerned about being able to afford rent and costly immigration fees.

“We’re taking it one day at a time, but it does leave me stressed that they’re going to come and try to get her, even though she does have an asylum case pending in court,” Vincent said in an interview.

“Everything we’ve seen in the news shows they flagrantly no longer care what the laws say,” Vincent said.

Poteau and her terminated co-workers had been protected under programs that provided Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with temporary legal status in the U.S. Many of the employees at IND8 are Haitian, a large enough contingent that some of the morning staff meetings are translated into Creole, Vincent said.

Amazon last month began asking staffers who came to the U.S. under the Biden-era program to provide updated work permits within a certain timeframe or they would be put on unpaid leave, according to documents viewed by CNBC.

Several workers who spoke to CNBC said they were dismissed by Amazon in late June after they couldn’t get new work authorizations.

Amazon declined to say how many employees were let go following the changes in immigration policy, but spokesperson Richard Rocha said the company prepared for potential staffing impacts due to changes in work authorization programs, and made adjustments to be in compliance with the law.

“We’re supporting employees impacted by the government’s recent changes in immigration policy,” Rocha said in a statement. “Over the past few months, we’ve been in regular communication with these employees about the changes and are ensuring they’re aware of all available resources.”

The company has provided impacted employees with information about where to find free or low-cost legal services, access to counseling support and other resources, Rocha said.

A DHS spokesperson pointed to the agency’s announcement terminating the humanitarian parole program.

As part of the Trump administration’s broad immigration crackdown, DHS has eliminated not just the humanitarian parole program. It’s also ended separate programs that provided temporary protected status to Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Hondurans seeking refuge from their native countries, which have suffered from armed conflict and humanitarian crises. Last week, a federal judge ruled the Trump administration can’t revoke the temporary protected status, or TPS, of Haitian migrants. The White House said it will appeal the ruling.

Amazon is far from alone. Other companies including Walmart and Disney have been forced to fire employees or put them on leave in order to comply with shifting federal policies.

Among private employers in the U.S., only Walmart has a bigger workforce than Amazon. Most of the e-commerce giant’s 1.56 million employees globally are concentrated in its warehouse operations.

The terminations started just as Amazon was gearing up for its annual Prime Day discount blitz, which began on Tuesday and lasts four days. The event is typically one of the busiest periods of the year for Amazon warehouse and delivery employees, alongside the holiday shopping season.

Amazon has counted on immigrants to meet a big part of its staffing needs. In 2022, the company set a goal to hire 5,000 refugees and other forcibly displaced individuals by the end of 2024.

While Trump’s policies create a challenge for large employers like Amazon, the real devastation is being felt by the immigrant workers. Those who now find themselves unemployed and lacking documentation are at a higher risk of being targeted for deportation unless they can secure an alternative form of legal status.

Christopher Lubin, an Amazon warehouse worker in Delaware, lost his job at the company on June 27, a day before Poteau received her notice.

“We have done everything legally in this country,” said Lubin, 24, who is also from Haiti. “We haven’t committed fraud. We go to school, we work, and we pay taxes.”

DHS said it was revoking protections for Haitian nationals after a review by Secretary Kristi Noem determined “country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety.”

The U.S. granted TPS for Haitian nationals following a catastrophic earthquake in 2008 that destroyed much of the nation’s infrastructure. In 2024, the TPS designation was extended through February 2026, as the country faced “rapidly deteriorating security, human rights and humanitarian” conditions, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Armed gangs control the majority of Port-au-Prince and violence has spread beyond the capital in recent months. About 10 individuals from Haiti lost their jobs at an Amazon warehouse in Spokane, Washington, after DHS revoked the TPS program, said Katia Jasmin, executive director of Creole Resources, which provides support to Haitian immigrants in the region.

Serge, who asked to have his full name withheld out of fear of being targeted for deportation, came to the U.S. from Haiti nearly two years ago and secured a job at the Spokane warehouse as a packer. The situation in Haiti was dire when he left and it remains unsafe today, Serge said.

“I witnessed violence and trauma, including the loss of family members who were killed,” Serge said. “Others were displaced from their homes and are now homeless. I genuinely feared for my life.”

In desperation, he said he sought a safer future and secured a sponsor that allowed him to come to the U.S. legally. It’s “unjust” that Haitians are now being ordered to return to their home country when it’s plagued with violence, Serge said.

“We’re not just recipients of economic support,” he said. “We’re also contributors who help drive the economy.”

Federal immigration agents descended on a farm outside of Camarillo on July 10, blocking off a road outside the facility and clashing with protesters.

Reports flooded social media in the morning of federal agents arriving at a Glass House Farms facility at 645 Laguna Road. Video posted by 805 Immigrant Coalition, a group that tracks Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, showed men in tactical gear blocking off a roadway.

The raid marked one of Ventura County’s largest since the Trump administration has ratcheted up its deportation efforts across the state and country. Days earlier, a large caravan of military vehicles drove through Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park, sparking outrage from politicians.

At the scene in Ventura County, yellow crime scene tape with U.S. Border Patrol markings stretched across Laguna Road. On one side stood what appeared to be masked and armed federal agents. On the other, a crowd of more than 100 people amassed, taunting the agents and yelling expletives.

The face-off was tense. Agents fired projectiles into the crowd, striking several people and hitting at least one in the face. Agents lobbed canisters that emitted yellow or white gas. Protesters stomped several of the canisters until they went out.

The masked agents continued to deploy gas canisters throughout the afternoon. Some people in the crowd left. Others poured milk on their faces to counteract the gas.

What is Glass House Farms?
The Glass House Farms greenhouse complex on Laguna Road is one of the largest licensed cannabis farms in California, with more than 5 million square feet of growing space. The company bought the property from Houweling’s Tomatoes in 2021.

Federal agents also raided a Glass House Farms greenhouse facility in Carpinteria on July 10, according to the Santa Barbara news site Noozhawk. Protesters there faced off with agents in a similar situation to the one near Camarillo.

Glass House officials confirmed the raids on the social media platform X, noting that ICE agents provided search warrants.

Teresa Romero, the president of United Farm Workers, said union members at the farm had been in contact with staff during the incident, but details on the operation are still unclear.

“All we know is that it’s happening,” Romero said. “There’s no good reason to do this to agricultural areas, to the agricultural industry. These workers are working very hard, and they are just living in panic.”

Steve Auclair, president of the Ventura County Democratic Party, described the situation at Glass House Farms as “totally outrageous.”

His mother, who is in her mid-60s, was hit by the gas and struck by a projectile. He called it “a military attack on our community.”

“First they came for the farmworker, and now, they’re taking all of us.”

As raid unfolds, family members hold vigil
It was unclear what agents were doing on the farm 100 yards on the other side of the tape, but a line of people, possibly farmworkers, walked along one edge of the farm. An email left with the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.

Some of the gathered crowd were protesters. Others were family members of farmworkers.

Jessica Lopez was leaning against a vehicle. She said she got a call from her husband at about 9:30 a.m. saying ICE was in the facility. Lopez, a U.S. citizen, said her undocumented husband worked at Glass House.

“Last time I talked to him, he said he was hiding somewhere,” she said. “They’re taking hardworking people who have had no problems with the law.”

Dalia Perez, 30, of Oxnard, said she last heard her mother was in a room at the facility with ICE agents and that her phone was taken away.

“Upset. Helpless,” Perez said of how she was feeling. “(Her mom) hasn’t done anything wrong. She just worked for us to have a better life here.”

Perez said her mother, who is undocumented, has lived in Oxnard for more than 30 years.

“We just want to know if our family is OK,” she said.

Clashes break out
Shortly after 2 p.m., a large white bus rolled down Laguna Road from the facility accompanied by what appeared to be a National Guard vehicle.

Gas and pellets were used on the waning crowd. Small puddles of milk dotted the road where protesters treated their eyes from the gas.

Federal agents had moved the line of protesters back, but demonstrators also hurled objects at their vehicles.

Oxnard Police Chief Jason Benites said the initial operation appeared to be entirely composed of federal agents. The Ventura County Fire Department responded to a medical emergency there shortly before noon.

First responders declared a mass casualty incident for the injured as the Oxnard Fire Department and county fire arrived. By declaring the incident, crews ensured they had ambulances and the proper workers ready if needed.

County fire spokesman Andrew Dowd said five patients had been transported to area hospitals as of 6:45 p.m. An additional four people were assessed and may have been treated at the scene. Dowd did not have information about the injuries or conditions.

Fire crews were on site to help with injuries, not to provide federal aid, Dowd said.

Adrian Garcia, a 25-year-old from Oxnard, previously worked at the farm. He held a sign handed to him by another protester that read “We are essential” in Spanish. Garcia, like others who gathered in the crowd, said he rushed to the scene after hearing from family inside the facility.

‘This is not the way’
Congresswoman Julia Brownley described the day’s raid as “unfair, and it’s unAmerican.”

“It just breaks my heart that hard-working people are being rounded up and detained and taken to places unknown,” she said.

Brownley, D-Westlake Village, said she had not received any information from federal officials about any actions or detentions.

“That has been (the case) since the very beginning of the Trump administration,” said Brownley, as she drove to the site.

Brownley called the recent immigration enforcement actions egregious and immoral.

“It is not who we are as Americans,” she said. “I think there is a way to do it. This is not the way.”

Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, who represents California’s 42nd Assembly District, wrote in a statement posted to social media platform X that she was heartbroken by images of what she called “senseless” raids at local farms. Her district covers a swath of Ventura County, including Camarillo where the raid took place, and portions of Los Angeles County.

“Deporting our field workers does nothing to strengthen the safety of our community but rather, serves to instill fear in immigrant communities and make them less likely to involve law enforcement when crimes do occur,” said Irwin, a Democrat.

Flurries of action throughout the afternoon
Dozens of protesters remained on Laguna Road and flurries of action continued throughout the afternoon.

At about 3:45 p.m., authorities made an announcement on a loud speaker: “This is the police, please make way for emergency vehicles or chemical agents will be deployed.”

A military truck and several SUVs made their way along the road with a siren blaring. Gas was used, sending people scurrying for protection behind a farm fence. Some protesters threw rocks at the vehicles.

Farther down the road at the corner of Laguna and Wood, Oxnard City Councilman Gabe Teran surveyed a line of what appeared to be National Guard trucks and talked about the federal immigration raid.

“They’re terrorizing and targeting people who are foundational to our community,” he said.

Kiara Sosa, 18, of Santa Paula, sat in her vehicle, waiting for word from her mother, an undocumented worker at Glass House. Earlier, her mother, like many workers, had been hiding from federal agents, sparking Sousa’s hopes she would be OK.

The teen was afraid and worried but another emotion was even stronger.

“I’m very angry,” she said. “My parents deserve better.”

Clearing out the demonstrators
At about 4:30 p.m., Ventura County Sheriff’s deputies marched down Laguna Road and cleared the intersection of demonstrators. A department official said the agency role was traffic control and keeping the peace.

Farther up Laguna Road, a smaller group of protesters stood across from a line of federal immigration agents. Among them were sisters Ysennia and Cynthia Martinez of Oxnard.

The sisters said they arrived in the morning and saw gas and pellet guns deployed on the crowd of demonstrators.

“It is intense. There are no words, it is just pretty sad,” Cynthia Martinez said.

The father of Cynthia’s 11-year-old daughter, Juan, was rounded up in the raid, she said.

“How do you explain to your daughter that her dad just got taken away?” Cynthia Martinez asked.

Federal agents raided a large cannabis farm in Southern California on Thursday, clashing with protesters and arresting multiple people, the latest confrontation in a state that has become a flashpoint for President Trump’s immigration agenda.

Footage taken by local news media from helicopters showed the agents firing tear gas and crowd control munitions during the operation in Camarillo, Calif. The agents were “executing criminal search warrants,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said on social media.

Rodney Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said on social media that “10 juveniles,” eight of them unaccompanied, were found at one of the facilities raided on Thursday, and that all of them were in the country illegally.

The federal operation on Thursday was the latest in a series of immigration raids that have triggered demonstrations and caused panic in Latino communities across California, and prompted a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop them. Some Republican lawmakers have also pleaded with President Trump to focus enforcement efforts on immigrants with criminal backgrounds.

Federal agents went to multiple cannabis cultivation facilities owned by Glass House Farms on Thursday. In addition to the facility in Camarillo, which is spread across 5.5 million square feet in Ventura County, there was also a raid around 35 miles away at the company’s farm in Carpinteria, Calif., local media and immigrant rights groups said.

The company said on social media that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials came to its facilities and that it complied with the search warrants. It is legal for licensed companies to grow cannabis in California.

It was not immediately clear how many federal agencies were involved in the operation, and if they were assisted by National Guard troops. Some footage aired by local media showed armored military-style vehicles at the farms. The Ventura County Fire Department said it deployed to the Camarillo area only to provide medical aid and was not involved in any immigration action.

During the clash near Camarillo, a person appeared to fire a pistol at law enforcement officers, the F.B.I. said, offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to that individual’s conviction.

Bill Essayli, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said that multiple individuals were arrested for “impeding” the operation, warning in a social media post that those interfering would be arrested and charged with a federal offense.

ICE and the Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to requests for information made outside business hours.

Thursday’s raids were sharply criticized by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, as well as Representative Salud Carbajal, a Democrat, who said that he tried to enter the area in Carpinteria where ICE was operating but was denied entry.

“This was completely unacceptable,” Mr. Carbajal said in a statement, criticizing what he described as a “troubling lack of transparency.”

Workplace immigration raids nationwide can cause confusion and fear in industries that employ migrant workers, from farming to hospitality.

Why it matters: North Carolina relies heavily on migrant workers to harvest sweet potatoes and Christmas trees, lay concrete, farm hogs and staff its hotels and restaurants. A disruption to that workforce could send shockwaves through the state’s economy.

What they’re saying: “This issue could cause real problems in agriculture, which relies on immigrant labor in the harvest of foods and plants and in processing proteins,” North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler said of raids in a statement to Axios.

Troxler added that his office has been encouraged, however, by what President Trump has said about the importance of the agricultural workforce.
By the numbers: Immigrants make up roughly 11% of North Carolina’s labor force, according to the North Carolina Justice Center.

Nearly 30% of the state’s construction workers are foreign-born, and one in four workers in the agriculture industry is foreign-born, according to the N.C. Commerce Department.
Other industries with a large immigrant workforce include administrative support and waste management, accommodation and food services, and manufacturing.
The big picture: Immigration enforcement has ramped up in recent months amid pressure from the Trump administration, which has been demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is still trying to reach, Axios’ Brittany Gibson reported.

Between the lines: Whitaker Farms in Randolph County, founded by Faylene Whitaker and her husband 50 years ago, employs about 80 workers to grow tobacco, strawberries, squash, and tomatoes — more than half of whom are migrant laborers, primarily from Mexico, Whitaker tells Axios.

Some of those workers have been on the farm for three decades. Others recruit family members to work there, too. “We could not farm without them,” she says.
Whitaker says she hasn’t encountered issues with ICE because her workers are all on H-2A visas, a program that allows farmers to hire foreign workers for nine months out of the year. The farm provides housing and transportation, and pays the workers about $22 an hour.
Still, given shifting immigration policies, there’s uncertainty over the future of the H-2A program — and Whitaker hopes it will be expanded to allow temporary workers to be here for 12 months a year.
She once tried hiring three American workers. They lasted two days. It’s hot in the fields, Whitaker notes, and it’s hard work.
“Many farmers simply could not operate without seasonal labor, and they must have a dependable guest worker program that assures them an affordable, legal workforce,” North Carolina Farm Bureau president Shawn Harding said in a statement to Axios.

Harding also said he’s encouraged by President Trump’s recent recognition of the value of farm workers, and “we are eager to hear his plan.”
Yes, but: Unlike places like California, there have been few reports of mass workplace raids in North Carolina.

Last month, ICE agents detained approximately a dozen people at Buckeye Fire Equipment Company in Kings Mountain, a company that produces fire protection equipment.
A Buckeye Fire Equipment Company representative did not respond to a request for comment.
Zoom in: Finding workers has always been a challenge in the hospitality industry, and it’s perhaps even more so now, says Lynn Minges, president and CEO of the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association.

“In general, there’s a concern about the raids and the likelihood that the hospitality business may be targeted,” she adds.
Zoom out: Immigration in general is good for economic growth, Tarek Hassan, a professor of economics at Boston University, recently told the Los Angeles Times.

“This idea that immigrants take away Americans’ jobs is not correct,” he added.

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — A woman who has lived in the U.S. for nearly 50 years and had no criminal record was detained outside of her Lakeview, La., home by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last month, much to the shock of her family and friends.

After nearly three weeks in custody, her family confirmed she has been released, and a Republican lawmaker may be to thank.

In June, Mandonna Kashanian’s daughter Kaitlyn Milne told Nexstar’s WGNO that her mother had been taken away by ICE agents while gardening outside her home. Sarah Gerig and her husband watched it all happen in real-time, claiming ICE agents gave no explanation.

“When … we saw her getting taken, I mean, it was one of our worst fears, but we were shocked,” Gerig said. “I mean, it was in front of her house, and she, she was in her yard. My husband ran out to try to talk to her.”

Kashanian’s daughter, Kaitlynn Milne, says she was able to track her mother’s phone to find out where she was: a jail in Hancock County, Miss., and then to detention centers in Jena and Basile.

Kashanian came to the U.S. on a student visa when she was 17 years old. She reportedly applied for asylum but was denied. According to Milne, Kashanian was granted a stay of deportation in 1978, allowing her to stay in the U.S. under supervision.

“She checks in regularly,” Milne said last month. “She had her next appointment on July 21. The only appointment that she might not have been able to walk through the door for was 2024 when they were saying no one can come in to make an appointment online.”

ICE claims Kashanian was ordered by a judge to leave the U.S. and did not.

On Tuesday, a family member confirmed to WGNO that she was released on Monday night.

After a surge of community support for Kashanian, Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who represents Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District, including the New Orleans suburbs, told local media outlet WDSU that he asked the Department of Homeland Security to give Kashanian “a fair shake.”

Scalise said Kashanian should be judged on “her life’s work” and role in her community.

“When she was picked up, we looked at it and said, ‘Are they really looking at it the right way, objectively?’” Scalise told WDSU. “And so they took a second look at it.”

Scalise’s intervention was “absolutely crucial” to behind-the-scenes advocacy to secure Kashanian’s release, her attorney Ken Mayeaux told The Associated Press. What happens next for Kashanian’s legal status is still being worked out, he said.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that “the facts of this case have not changed.”

“Mandonna Kashanian is in this country illegally,” McLaughlin said. “She exhausted all her legal options.”

Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, a Republican who represents Kashanian’s community, said she had been a “devoted mother and wife, a caretaker, neighbor and dedicated volunteer” with Habitat for Humanity, her local school district and other organizations.

More than 100 of Kashanian’s neighbors wrote letters of support for her, which Hilferty told the AP that she and Scalise had shared with President Donald Trump’s administration.

“She’s just been an incredible volunteer and servant to our Lakeview community, everybody knows her because of all she gives and does,” said Connie Uddo, a neighbor of Kashanian’s who leads the NOLA Tree Project where Kashanian and her husband have volunteered for years.

Some neighbors wrote letters addressed to Trump expressing support for his immigration policies but saying that some people like Kashanian were being detained improperly and urging him to reconsider her case.

“She’s meeting her obligations,” Milne told the AP following her detention. “She’s retirement age. She’s not a threat. Who picks up a grandmother?”

Other Iranians living in the U.S. for decades have also been picked up by immigration authorities, and U.S. military strikes on Iran have raised concerns that more may be taken into custody and deported. Iran was one of 12 countries subject to a U.S. travel ban that took effect this month.

Immigration authorities are seeking to arrest 3,000 people a day under directives from the Trump administration.

Kashanian’s attorney, Mayeaux, said he represents other clients who had built lives in the U.S. over decades and are now being detained and deported.

“There is still a tremendous amount of heartache that is happening for people,” Mayeaux said. “The difference is they lived quiet lives and didn’t have access to political power to change the outcomes in their cases.”

A grandmother planning to document Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at the San Diego courthouse instead became herself the story on Tuesday, after video of her arrest began circulating online.

The 71-year-old woman, U.S. citizen Barbara Stone, was accused of pushing an ICE agent and was placed in custody for several hours. Stone denied the allegation to NBC 7 on Wednesday.

Stone was handcuffed and held by federal agents for eight hours, according to her family.

“I have a large bruise there,” Stone said on Wednesday. “I feel mentally and physically traumatized.”

A video of the incident shared with NBC 7 shows the moment tensions started to boil over.

NBC 7 made several attempts to contact ICE about the incident but was referred to the Federal Protective Service, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. FPS has not responded to a request for comment.

NBC 7 spoke with Stone’s husband, Gershon Shafir, the day his wife was detained.

“She is a soft-spoken person who was here to protect innocent refugees, and she is the last person in the universe who would hit an agent or interfere with their work,” Shafir said.

Stone was at the court to observe proceedings, which is legal and a First Amendment right, according to Ruth Mendez of the organization Detention Resistance.

“The fear is very, very real here,” Mendez said, “and the volunteers that are showing up today are now coming, knowing that there might be a risk of our own detention.”

No charges have been pressed against Stone, but her family said her phone was confiscated.

Mendez worries that the incident will have an invisible impact — like people deciding not to volunteer. In the video, an officer can be heard suggesting that more people could get detained.

“The message that it sent was very clear: For us to be afraid to come back and do the work that we’re doing,” Mendez said, adding that “all Americans should know that this is how their taxpayer money is being spent, and that it is really a crying shame. The people who are actually suffering are the people who are seeking asylum.”

Stone, however, said she would volunteer again.

President Trump is voiding work authorizations for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and other troubled places, and on Monday he ended temporary protected status, or TPS, for thousands of Hondurans and Nicaraguans. A day later Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins pledged no compromise on mass deportation and “a 100% American workforce.”

Does the White House really mean that, or is it another fusillade of rhetorical deterrence? Sometimes Mr. Trump talks about giving farms and hotels a deportation pass, given how much they rely on immigrant labor. By the way, these Hondurans and Nicaraguans were originally granted TPS after Hurricane Mitch tore through Central America in 1998. It’s reasonable to ask what’s so “temporary” about this protection. On the other hand, if people have lived and worked in the U.S. under TPS for 30 years, what’s to be gained by kicking them out?

The loss side of the ledger is that mass deportation of productive employees will drain economic growth and make it harder for Mr. Trump to deliver a return to the prosperity of his pre-Covid first term. Consider an economic paper published Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “Our analysis,” the authors say, “raises the concern that a sharp tightening of immigration policies has the potential to substantially reduce output growth.”

The study is based on a model that includes historical data on immigration and the economy from 1955 to 2019. “U.S. GDP growth typically increases for two years in response to an unexpected increase in net unauthorized immigration and then gradually reverts to its mean,” the authors write. “Inflation shows almost no response in the first few years but decreases slightly at longer horizons.”

We don’t read this as an argument for actively encouraging illegal border jumping. But a takeaway is that workforce growth sends economic output up and inflation down. The researchers then apply the model to future scenarios. Their baseline case assumes “net unauthorized immigration remains at its spring 2025 level.” Compared with the policies last fall under President Biden, annual GDP growth is 0.81 percentage point lower in 2025 and 0.49 in 2027.

While that’s a negative effect, ending the free-for-all at the border, which Mr. Trump has done, was a priority for national security and the rule of law. The question now, though, is how high Mr. Trump wants to crank the economic losses by mass deporting migrant farm laborers, roofers and meatpackers.

The study finds that “high interior deportation,” with removals gradually rising to 437,500 a year, would cut economic growth by 0.83 percentage point this year and 0.84 in 2027.

If there’s a “self-deportation wave,” meaning half of the people with TPS leave the U.S. before mid-2026, that would shave GDP growth by 1.01 point this year and 0.45 in 2027.

Under “mass interior deportation,” with removals rising over the next two years to a million annually, growth would be 0.89 point lower this year and 1.49 in 2027.

Economic models aren’t perfect crystal balls, as the authors warn. “However, this does not mean the results are not informative,” they say. “There is good reason to be concerned that immigration policies that lead to a reduction in net unauthorized immigration relative to historical trends, all else equal, are likely to significantly lower real GDP growth.”

This fits what businesses have been trying to tell the Trump Administration. The Agriculture Department says 42% of farmworkers in 2020-22 didn’t have legal work authorization and could be deported. (See the nearby chart.) Mr. Trump said last week that the White House is drawing up a plan to let farmers vouch for longtime reliable alien employees. Farmers and the economy need them.

Donald Trump rode the issue of immigration to the presidency twice. What that issue primarily meant to Trump and his supporters, in both 2016 and 2024, was fixing a porous southern border, and preventing the kinds of crimes allegedly committed by immigrants who had come across that border.

But the center of gravity of the immigration issue has changed. It’s now Trump’s mass-deportation agenda. And it’s becoming pretty clear that the politics of mass deportation could turn out to be very different from the politics of controlling the border. Could the spectacle of a mass-deportation campaign become a political vulnerability for Trump?

I think so. But what’s newly interesting is the possibility that mass deportation could be creating particular problems for Trump among churchgoing Catholics and Protestants, groups that have disproportionately supported him in the past. There appears to be growing unease in the churches with Trump’s signature policy. We don’t know yet how widespread the discomfort is. We certainly don’t know how widespread it could become. And we don’t know whether discomfort will turn into active disapproval. But we may have seen a couple of leading indicators this week.

In California, Bishop Alberto Rojas leads more than 1.5 million Catholics in the Diocese of San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles.1 It’s the nation’s sixth-largest Catholic diocese. And this week, Bishop Rojas took the extraordinary step of formally excusing parishioners in his diocese from the obligation of attending mass weekly, because of the possibility immigration officers would seize people coming to or from church.

“There is a real fear gripping many in our parish communities that if they venture out into any kind of public setting they will be arrested by immigration officers,” Rojas explained.

Sadly, that includes attending Mass. The recent apprehension of individuals at two of our Catholic parishes has only intensified that fear. I want our immigrant communities to know that their Church stands with them and walks with them through this trying time.

Now it’s fair to point out that San Bernardino is more heavily Hispanic than most areas, and that Rojas’s action is for now an outlier, and may remain so. (One other bishop, in Nashville, has taken a similar step.) On the other hand, it’s still a striking action, and one wonders what ripple effects it will have in the Church and among churchgoers. Especially because Pope Leo XIV—who is, after all, the first American pope—has also indicated that he is sympathetic to the plight of immigrants here in the United States and is critical of mass-deportation efforts. (For more on this, read Joe Perticone’s excellent piece on the collision course that the Church and Trump seem to be on.)

Will this ultimately affect the voting of American Catholics, who supported Trump by 14 points over Kamala Harris in 2024, a marked increase from Trump’s 5-point margin over Biden in 2020? It could. Trump doesn’t seem at all inclined to let up on his mass-deportation efforts. Nor is the Church likely to become less critical of those efforts over the next year. How many masses will there be against mass deportation?

At the same time, the administration appears to be trying to marry its deportation campaign to the teachings of the Church—though in typically clumsy fashion. The Department of Homeland Security tried to enlist the Bible in its efforts, tweeting out a video with grainy footage of immigration agents on boats and helicopters carrying out their missions under cover of darkness, while featuring a voiceover of a Border Patrol agent:

There’s a Bible verse I think about sometimes. Many times. It goes, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’”

As Austin, Texas pastor Zach Lambert pointed out, in a much-retweeted post, that Bible verse is Isaiah 6:8—and the context in Isaiah cuts against DHS’s message.

“Here am I, send me” was the prophet Isaiah’s response after being called by God to deliver a message to the people of Israel. And what was that message? . . . “Your leaders are rebels, the companions of thieves. All of them love bribes and demand payoffs, but they refuse to defend the cause of orphans or fight for the rights of widows.” Isaiah 1:23

Pastor Lambert also pointed to Isaiah 10:1–3:

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.

Pastor Lambert’s post, and others in the same vein, have gotten a lot of pickup and support on social media. Maybe the flacks at DHS should leave the prophet Isaiah alone, and go about their sordid business without seeking Biblical blessing? But they’ll presumably continue to claim the moral high ground for their efforts. Could that lead to a further backlash?

In any case, the reactions of Bishop Rojas and Pastor Lambert to mass deportations seem notable to me. Are they important leading indicators of resistance to Trump in their communities? I wouldn’t claim to know. But sometimes politics, like the good Lord, moves in mysterious ways.

1. ICE > Medicaid
While most people spent the budget fight fixated on health care policy, I suspect that in a year we will consider this legislation to be the moment that Trump created his own internal security apparatus: His goal is to have ICE supplant the FBI in national law enforcement.

This is a big deal. Because the FBI is a professionalized organization with strict standards and a well-defined mission while ICE is more or less a national brute squad.

The Trump administration realized that corrupting the FBI would be a tall order. So while they’re certainly trying to do that, they put most of their chips on a different number: Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power.

Tensions over immigration enforcement in San Francisco escalated this week when federal agents clashed with activists who tried to block an arrest outside a courthouse, with the agents at one point driving away in a van with protesters hanging from the hood of the vehicle.

The confrontation on Tuesday came as frustrations grow in the San Francisco Bay Area over federal agents’ aggressive efforts to detain immigrants after they attend required immigration proceedings.

Since late May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have regularly been spotted around the San Francisco Immigration Court building downtown, including in its hallways and waiting rooms and outside its doors. Their presence has attracted a growing number of protesters who have tried to block the building’s entrances and shouted at and scuffled with officers. A month ago, demonstrations forced the immigration courts in both San Francisco and Concord, about 30 miles northeast, to close for nearly two days.

The new ICE approach is a significant break from past practice, when immigration officials largely steered clear of courthouse arrests out of concern that they would deter people from complying with legal orders.

Videos taken by witnesses and local news media, and verified by The New York Times, on Tuesday show masked agents, with body armor and batons, pushing through a crowd of demonstrators to load a handcuffed man into a black minivan. The footage shows agents and protesters shoving one another as some protesters surround the van.

The van then began to drive slowly down Montgomery Street, even as several protesters clambered on top of it, footage shows. One video captures the van speeding up with one protester clinging to the hood before falling onto the asphalt.

“Someone’s going to get run over,” Joel Garcia, an entrepreneur who captured the footage from a high-rise building across the street, says in the video, which he posted to X.

Emily Covington, a spokeswoman for ICE, said in a statement that protesters on Tuesday had “violently attacked and obstructed federal ICE officers who were simply doing their job by enforcing the rule of law.” She added, “Of course these protesters have zero respect for the rule of law, as they so casually violate it.”

The courthouse arrests have come as the Trump administration is trying to increase deportations as part of its immigration crackdown.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security defended the arrests. Immigrants who have a valid claim for asylum can continue with their proceedings, but those who don’t “will be subject to a swift deportation,” the spokesperson said. The department said that most immigrants who entered the United States within the past two years are subject to “expedited removal” if they could not show that they have a valid claim for credible fear of returning to their home countries.

The San Francisco Police Department said in an email that no injuries had been reported from the episode on Tuesday, and that it had not been involved.

The courthouse arrests in San Francisco appear to be part of a new Trump administration effort to detain migrants at immigration courts immediately after hearings if they have been ordered to be deported or if their cases have been dismissed.

California is home to an estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, more than any other state. Though Los Angeles has become ground zero for the nation’s immigration protests this year, the Bay Area also has seen large and tense demonstrations over immigration raids, with more than 150 people arrested at a single demonstration last month.

In June, President Trump mobilized about 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 Marines in Los Angeles after protests and resistance against ICE agents intensified in Southern California. He has not sent soldiers to the Bay Area or other parts of California.

In San Francisco, federal immigration agents since late May have waited outside courtrooms, waiting to arrest asylum seekers, said Milli Atkinson, the director of the San Francisco Bar Association’s immigrant legal defense program. The organization has confirmed that about 25 people have been arrested at the immigration court in the past month, she said.

“ICE used to show up once or twice a week. Now they’re a daily occurrence,” Ms. Atkinson said, adding that it had spread fear among migrants. “Because it’s random and it’s hard to know when ICE will show up or who they’ll target, there’s been a large increase of people who don’t show up to their hearings.”

Ms. Atkinson declined to identify the man arrested by ICE on Tuesday, but said that a lawyer from her organization had met the man inside the building to guide him through court proceedings. After he was arrested, the asylum seeker was taken to another federal building in San Francisco, where immigration officials did not allow a lawyer from the bar association to speak with him, Ms. Atkinson said.

ICE and Homeland Security officials did not comment on individual cases.

A Massachusetts lawmaker has filed legislation to prohibit law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, from wearing masks on the job.
The bill, filed by State Representative James K. Hawkins, a Democrat from Attleboro, would bar anyone acting on behalf of a local, state, or federal law enforcement agency from wearing “any mask or personal disguise” while interacting with the public, except for surgical masks or N95 respirators ”designed to prevent the transmission of airborne diseases and masks designed to protect against exposure to smoke or toxins during a state of emergency.”

Another exception would be made for members of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams, who would be allowed to “utilize gear necessary to protect their faces from physical harm, according to the bill.
The bill was filed July 7 and “already has 10 cosponsors,” said Tara A. Major, Hawkins’s legislative director.
The bill is ”waiting to be assigned to a committee,” Major said.

At the Congressional level, similar legislation was introduced Tuesday by Senators Cory Booker and Alex Padilla that would prohibit immigration enforcement officers from wearing non-medical face coverings, such as masks or balaclavas, and require them to display clearly visible identification.
The use of masks by federal agents has increasingly become a point of concern as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up operations in recent months, often arresting people in public without visible signs that they are law enforcement.

ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, has defended the practice.
“I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line and their family on the line because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” Lyons said last month.
State Representative Steven G. Xiarhos, a Republican from Barnstable who served as deputy chief of the Yarmouth Police Department until his retirement in 2019, said he opposes the bill because “I understand firsthand the risks our officers face every single day.”

“While I recognize the concerns some may have about transparency, I do not support this legislation,” Xiarhos said in a statement. “Officers often wear face coverings for legitimate and necessary reasons — including tactical operations, personal safety, and to protect their families from potential retaliation. Having worked alongside these brave men and women, I know the importance of giving them every possible tool to do their jobs safely and effectively.“
Xiarhos said the bill “creates unnecessary obstacles that could compromise” the safety of law enforcement officers and the success of their operations.
“We should be focused on supporting our law enforcement professionals, not placing them at greater risk,” Xiarhos said.

Accompanied by their newborn son, Michelet and his wife arrived at the St. Vincent de Paul Community Center in Springfield, Ohio, last week looking for help from the non-profit’s volunteers. They wanted to apply for a valuable document for the infant that for now seems out of reach for them as Haitian immigrants: a U.S. passport.

With their own legal status precarious, Michelet and his wife see the passport as crucial proof that their U.S.-born son is an American citizen. But they know that their son’s citizenship will do nothing to stop the Trump administration from following through on its goal of deporting them — and hundreds of thousands of other Haitian immigrants — back to the violence-racked Caribbean island nation.

Michelet, who only provided his first name for fear of drawing attention from immigration agents, said he was not interested in migrating to a third country and sees his pending asylum claim as the best option for staying in the U.S.

“Moving to Canada or another country would mean starting over,” said the 35-year-old, who works for a local auto parts company and came to Springfield via Chile more than two years ago. “I’m already here. I have a job and experience here.”

Some migrants began exploring such contingency plans after the Department of Homeland Security said on June 27 that it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status providing legal status for half a million Haitians, effective September 2.

On July 1, a federal judge in New York blocked that DHS effort, but the Trump administration is expected to appeal. The Supreme Court already allowed a similar move to go ahead, ruling in May that the administration could end TPS protections for Venezuelans in the United States.

Initially granted to Haitians after a devastating 2010 earthquake, TPS has been extended numerous times, most recently due to gang violence and unrest that persists to this day.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that the earthquake no longer posed a risk and that ending TPS showed Trump was “keeping his promise to restore sanity to our immigration system.” Eligible Haitians could pursue legal status through other means, she said.

Springfield is home to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Haitian nationals. Working at Amazon warehouses and auto suppliers, they help drive the local economy. Predominantly Christian, many lean on their faith when talking through their deportation fears.

“I’m going to stay here. I’m not afraid,” said Jean Marc, a warehouse worker in his 20s. “Jesus put me here.”

Jean Marc poses for a photo outside the St. Vincent de Paul Society on July 2.Jeffrey Dean / Reuters
Michelet’s and Jean Marc’s stories were typical of the dozen Haitian nationals interviewed by Reuters in Springfield last week. Of the total, eight said they were banking on asylum claims for a shot at staying in the United States. All said a third country was an unrealistic option for them.

Still, a number of migrants with pending asylum claims have been swept up in the immigration crackdown around the country and are now in detention awaiting court hearings.

The Haitians interviewed by Reuters said they remain committed to staying despite facing a torrent of threats and online hate last year triggered by false rumors on social media that Haitian nationals were eating local pets. Those claims were then repeated by Trump on the campaign trail.

Some Haitians find it hard to believe that Trump, as a former businessman, would want to deport hardworking members of society contributing to economic growth, said Casey Rollins, executive director at St. Vincent in Springfield.

“They have been in such denial about this,” she said, adding that some Haitians leaned into a belief that God would take care of them or that the administration would somehow change its thinking and let them stay.

“They have this ultimate faith thing,” she said.

During an interview at the Haitian Community Help and Support Center just outside downtown Springfield, a Haitian man in his 50s lifted his collared shirt to reveal the scar from a hot iron pressed to his chest six years ago.

M.B., who only gave his initials because he was afraid of being singled out by ICE, said he did not know the men who tortured him, but believes the attack was likely related to his work for a political party out of power in Haiti at the time.

M.B., who is permitted to work for a local manufacturer under the TPS program, said he and his wife are consulting with a lawyer about their asylum claims. In his 50s, he said he did not want to uproot to somewhere else.

“This is the only other country that we have lived in besides Haiti,” he said. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Rampant gang violence in Haiti has displaced some 1.3 million people from their homes, fueling hunger and insecurity, while hospitals have shut their doors, and much of the economy, judicial system and government remain paralyzed.

I.M., a Haitian man in his 20s and a brain cancer survivor, worries he would not be able to get medications needed to sustain his life in Haiti. But he said he will not flee to a third country and would self-deport to avoid detention.

I.M. poses for a photo in Springfield on July 2.Jeffrey Dean / Reuters
I.M. also asked to be identified by his initials, citing concerns he could be targeted by ICE.

He laughed when asked about the DHS assertion that Haiti was now stable and safe enough for Haitian migrants to return, pointing to the U.S. State Department advisory warning Americans against traveling there due to “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.”

“If they tell me to go September the 2nd, I will go before that just not to let people put me in handcuffs and treat me like a criminal,” he told Reuters, referring to how migrants deported from the United States are often transported shackled.

Viles Dorsainvil, director at the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, said most Haitians faced limited options, without the family ties or financial resources needed to get to a third country like Canada or Brazil.

“It’s like a Catch-22,” he said. “It’s so sad.”

Immigrant detainees and their loved ones are denouncing what they allege are terrible conditions — including a lack of water, issues with electricity and copious mosquitoes — at the state-managed immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades that officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Vladimir Miranda, a migrant from Cuba who has been at the facility since Sunday, said that “right now the generators apparently can’t cope and the electricity is going out,” he told Telemundo 51 via telephone call. When the electricity goes out there’s no water and the phones and air conditioners don’t work, “and we’re here sweating” profusely, Miranda said in his native Spanish.

His girlfriend, Eveling Ortiz told NBC 6 that Miranda crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and, like many Cuban migrants, was given the I-220A form that documents that a migrant has been released into the U.S. by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“He had the final hearing two weeks ago,” she said.

But days later, Miranda, 32, was detained by immigration officials at his job in Orlando and moved to the Everglades facility.

“The conditions they’re going through, they’re horrible,” Ortiz alleged. “They don’t have water, they can’t use the bathroom properly. They’re not taking a bath.”

Miranda hadn’t had access to immigration attorneys, Ortiz added.

Miranda’s allegations echo other detainees’ accounts. Leamsy Izquierdo, also known as Leamsy La Figura, a self-described Cuban urban artist, has been at the detention center since Friday.

“There is no water here to bathe,” Izquierdo said in Spanish to Telemundo 51 from inside the facility, adding it’s been four days since he showered. Izquierdo also alleged that “they give you food only once a day, food that even has worms in it.” Detention center lights are always on, 24/7, he said, and the mosquitoes are “the size of elephants.”

Izquierdo said they are not allowed to go outside, and the tents detainees are kept in are freezing.

According to Izquierdo’s partner, he’s a permanent resident. He was sent to the facility following assault and battery charges involving a dispute with a tow company worker; he’s pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Several other detainees at the facility have made similar complaints. A Colombian national said he’s been there for three days without access to medicine he needs.

Stephanie Hartman, deputy director of communications for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in an email to NBC South Florida that “the reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false. The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order.”

NBC South Florida also reached out to ICE, but a spokesperson said they cannot talk about detainees who are not in one of their facilities. The Everglades detention center is run by the state.

The Florida Immigration Coalition is urging Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to file a lawsuit against the state, with the hopes that the detention center will be shut down.

Levine Cava, a Democrat, sent a letter to the Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, stating the land owned by the county has been “commandeered” by the state and requesting access to the facility. She asked for “weekly site reports summarizing conditions at the facility,” remote video monitoring access and scheduled site visits by a small oversight team so it can check for compliance, safety and possible environmental impacts.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday left in place a lower court decision that blocked part of a Florida law making it a crime for undocumented immigrants to cross into the state. The statute imposed various mandatory prison terms for violating the law.

The high court’s action came in a one sentence order, without any elaboration and without any noted dissents.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the state legislation into law in February, and just two months later the law made national headlines when Florida’s Highway Patrol arrested Juan Carlos Lopez-Garcia, an American-born U.S. citizen, for crossing into the state from Georgia. Lopez-Garcia was detained for 24 hours before his release.

Immigrant rights organizations and undocumented immigrants sued, arguing that the new Florida law conflicted with federal immigration law, and under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, states must bow to federal law in the event of such conflicts.

Florida, however, maintained that state legislation is necessary to curb the “evil effects of immigration,” and that state law works in tandem with federal law. Until now, however, the Supreme Court has held that federal law occupies the immigration field if there is a conflict.

Florida is not the first state to pass a law to criminalize illegal immigration, only to be blocked by the federal courts. In recent years, federal judges have blocked similar state efforts in Oklahoma, Iowa, and Idaho—each time deciding that a state law criminalizing illegal immigration would conflict with existing national laws. In 2024, the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Texas’s efforts to enforce a similar law.

While Wednesday’s Supreme Court order blocked parts of the Florida law championed by DeSantis, the immigration issue remains a winning proposition for the governor. In May, he announced that in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Florida led a “first-of-its-kind statewide operation” arresting more than 1,000 undocumented immigrants in less than a week.

A pastor who led a small Hispanic church in Florida was deported to Guatemala after more than two decades of living in the United States, leaving his wife and five children feeling that the world as they knew it had come to an end.

Maurilio Ambrocio, a 42-year-old pastor who led the 50-member Iglesia de Santidad Vida Nueva in Wimauma, told the Tampa Bay Times he was among 100 Guatemalan immigrants deported from New Orleans through a charter flight. He was allowed to contact his family once he arrived and was provided with information to help with reintegration into Guatemalan society.

Ambrocio was arrested in mid-April during a check-in at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Tampa. He lived in Florida for more than 20 years after entering the U.S. illegally. He left his home in Guatemala when he was 15 years old.

He was allowed to remain in the country through a stay of removal that required him to meet with federal agents annually and refrain from committing any crimes. He and his wife have five children, aged 12 to 19, all of whom are U.S. citizens.

At the time of his arrest, an ICE spokesperson told media that the pastor was in the U.S. illegally and offered no further clarification.

“My mother, my brothers, and I are very saddened by all this, but also relieved that my father is no longer in prison and is a free man,” Ambrocio’s 19-year-old daughter, Ashley, told the newspaper. “We were very worried about his health and the fact that he was locked up for so long.”

Ambrocio claims the conditions in detention were difficult and “treatment was very bad,” saying he lost about 24 pounds.

“I don’t think we deserved that because we are not bad people or criminals,” the pastor said. “But that time is over. Now we have to recover and think about what to do next.”

Ambrocio’s wife, Marleny, told NPR last month that for her and the children, it feels like the “world ended.”

“How are we going to eat?” she asked. “How are we going to pay the bills?”

While the Trump administration often touts its immigration enforcement on migrants with criminal records, there have been several cases of immigrants who don’t have violent criminal histories being detained and deported, much to the dismay of their communities.

Trying to fulfill one of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, the White House has increased pressure on federal agents to arrest up to 3,000 people per day, which would equate to more than 1 million per year.

Another Guatemalan deported this year is Cesar Reyes, a Hispanic conservative former advisor of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt. Reyes was brought to the U.S. at the age of 16 with his parents. Over the past decade-plus, he married and has a 3-year-old son in Oklahoma City. He had been trying to fight a removal order for the past decade.

“I just feel like I was discouraged, I feel like I wasn’t given due process,” Reyes told KFOR. “I feel a good citizen like me should have the opportunity to come back in a legal way to be with my 3-year-old and my wife, who need me the most right now.”

Late last month, Pastor Ara Torosian of Cornerstone Church in West Los Angeles spoke out after five members of his Iranian Christian congregation were detained by federal agents over the previous week, including one couple seeking asylum who fled Iran because of their faith in Christ.

The couple, he said, attended his church for over a year and have no family in L.A. They had work permits and no criminal records.

“In one moment, I felt that I’m in the street of Tehran, under fear, under dictatorship,” he told NBC Los Angeles. “They came here for freedom, not like this.”

Iran ranks as the ninth-worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, where converts from Islam face dire consequences and are given long prison sentences.

Earlier this year, around two dozen Afghan Christian refugees facing deportation who attend a North Carolina church received notifications informing them they had to leave the U.S. Much like Iran, Christians in Afghanistan face heavy persecution.

“We are continuing to try to reach out to senators and congressmen and other people who may know, have contacts … in the administration,” Julie Tisdale, a seminary student who attends the Church of the Apostles in Raleigh, told The Christian Post in early June. “We have lots of people who have told us that they understand, they’re sympathetic, but we have yet to find anybody who’s willing to really be the champion for this and raise the issue very publicly.”

LOS ANGELES — San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas, who leads more than 1.5 million Catholics in Southern California, has formally excused parishioners from their weekly obligation to attend Mass following immigration detentions on two parish properties in the diocese.

The dispensation is a move usually reserved for extenuating circumstances, like the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. But Rojas says it’s necessary because the fear of being apprehended and possibly deported has swept communities, including Catholic churches.

“There is a real fear gripping many in our parish communities that if they venture out into any kind of public setting they will be arrested by immigration officers,” Rojas said in a statement Wednesday.

“Sadly, that includes attending Mass. The recent apprehension of individuals at two of our Catholic parishes has only intensified that fear. I want our immigrant communities to know that their Church stands with them and walks with them through this trying time.”

Save for a serious reason, Catholics are obligated by their faith to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. In May, the Diocese of Nashville in Tennessee issued a similar statement following immigra

tion enforcement actions in the area, excusing those fearful of attending Mass from their holy obligation, though it was not named as a formal dispensation.

Rojas is an immigrant himself. He was born and raised in Aguascalientes, Mexico. He has been consistent in his support of immigrants and said when he assumed this role that it would be one of his top priorities.

In early June, the Trump administration significantly ramped up immigration arrests and raids in Southern California, particularly in Los Angeles, with federal agents conducting sweeps in workplaces and public spaces and apprehending hundreds.

Last month, as federal agents made arrests and the federal government deployed the National Guard to maintain order amid protests in Los Angeles, Rojas issued a statement calling out federal agents entering parish properties and “seizing several people,” creating an environment of fear and confusion.

“It is not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ — which guides us in all that we do,” he said. “I ask all political leaders and decision-makers to please reconsider these tactics immediately in favor of an approach that respects human rights and human dignity and builds toward a more lasting, comprehensive reform of our immigration system.”

Created in 1978, the diocese serves over 1.5 million Catholics in Riverside County, which is 52.5% Latino, and San Bernardino County, which is 56.4% Latino, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.

Members of local parishes who are in the U.S. without documents have made positive contributions to their communities “with no other issues than their legal status,” the bishop said.

“Most of them are here because they wanted to save their families; they had no other option. I believe that they would love to be legalized, but who can help them?”

Rojas said he knows these people would be in church but for the threat to their safety and their family unity.

“With all the worry and anxiety that they are feeling I wanted to take away, for a time, the burden they may be feeling from not being able to fulfill this commitment to which our Catholic faithful are called,” Rojas said.

Pastor Omar Coronado with Inland Congregations United for Change, a faith-based nonprofit serving Riverside and San Bernardino counties, called the bishop’s decree “an extraordinary act of moral courage and pastoral care.”

At a time when so many families are living in fear and uncertainty, the Bishop’s voice offers not just protection but hope,” he said in a statement. “We’re deeply grateful for his leadership in reminding us that faith is not meant to hide behind walls, but to stand with the vulnerable.”

The Diocese of San Bernardino is the nation’s fifth-largest Catholic diocese and second-largest in California next to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which is the largest in the country with about 5 million members. Neither the Los Angeles Archdiocese nor the neighboring Diocese of Orange, which serves about 1.3 million Catholics, has issued similar dispensations.

A spokesperson for the Diocese of Orange said they have in recent weeks taken steps to support the immigrant community, including asking priests to bring Communion and celebrate Mass in the homes of those who are fearful of leaving their homes. The diocese has also shared protocols with parishes and Catholic schools to help them prepare and respond properly to the presence of immigration officials on church or school grounds, he said. In addition, the diocese is also coordinating efforts to have priests and deacons accompany and spiritually support people at immigration court hearings.

Parishes under the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are also continuing to “provide outreach to families and individuals that have been impacted,” an archdiocese spokesperson said.

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The videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids emerged just after President Donald Trump was sworn in to his second term. Chaotic and shaky, they spread across social media from all parts of the United States, depicting the new era of immigration enforcement.The following video collected and verified by NBC News represents a small fraction of the videos that have populated timelines across TikTok, Instagram, X and beyond.

The “big, beautiful bill” signed into law by President Trump last week will allow him to dramatically expand his immigration crackdown, giving Immigration and Customs Enforcement an unprecedented pool of funding to bolster its efforts to arrest and deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

The money allocated by the law amounts to the largest infusion of funds Congress has given the federal government for immigration enforcement, at a time when the Trump administration has vowed to oversee a deportation campaign of unprecedented proportions.

Overall, the Republican-led Congress set aside roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security efforts through the legislation, including $75 billion in extra funding for ICE, making it by far the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.

“The bill will supercharge immigration enforcement,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

Here’s a look at what the new funds will be used for:

$45 billion for ICE’s detention system

The law gives ICE $45 billion to expand its already sprawling detention system over the next four years, letting officials use the money to hold both single adults and families with children facing deportation.

Based on cost estimates, the money could allow ICE to hold more than 100,000 detainees at any given time, roughly doubling the current capacity. On Wednesday morning, ICE was holding just over 58,000 individuals in its detention network, which was previously funded for 41,500 beds, according to internal agency data obtained by CBS News.

ICE’s detention network mainly consists of facilities operated by for-profit prison companies and county jails. The Trump administration has also been exploring using military facilities in the U.S. to hold detainees before they are deported. The naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been housing some ICE detainees since February.

$30 billion for ICE’s arrest and deportation efforts

ICE is also receiving nearly $30 billion in additional money to fund every single stage of the deportation process.

Congress said ICE can use the money to hire additional deportation officers and other staff; retain current personnel through bonuses; increase transportation assets supporting deportation efforts; and expand and facilitate agreements that allow state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws.

The funds can also be used to modernize ICE’s fleet of deportation planes and hire more agency prosecutors whose job it is to persuade immigration judges that unauthorized immigrants should be deported.

The Department of Homeland Security has said the money could pave the way for ICE to hire 10,000 deportation officers. The agency currently has fewer than 6,000 officers in its deportation branch, though the Trump administration has tasked other federal law enforcement agencies, like the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, to support immigration arrests throughout the country.

Tens of billions of dollars for other immigration and border efforts
The “big, beautiful bill” allocates tens of billions of dollars for other types of immigration-related enforcement, including along the U.S.-Mexico border.

More than $46 billion is allocated for Customs and Border Protection to build walls, barriers and related projects along the U.S.-Mexico border. The agency received an additional $12 billion to fund Border Patrol agent vehicles, facilities, training, hiring and bonuses.

While the money is allocated for CBP, the Trump administration has been using hundreds of Border Patrol agents in the interior of the country to help ICE arrest unauthorized immigrants in places like Los Angeles. That deployment has come amid historically low levels of illegal crossings at the U.S. southern border.

The law also gives the Department of Homeland Security a catch-all pool of $10 billion to support its “mission to safeguard the borders of the United States.” Another $13.5 billion was set aside to reimburse states for their immigration enforcement and border security actions, including for efforts under the Biden administration.

That money for states could allow Texas to be paid back for Operation Lone Star, under which the state deployed National Guardsmen to fortify the southern border and bussed thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities. It could also fund actions taken by states like Florida to aid the Trump administration’s deportation campaign by deputizing state officials as immigration agents and offering facilities, like the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz,” to hold detainees awaiting deportation.

ICE heads hails funds; but critics have concerns
In a statement, Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, hailed passage of the “big, beautiful bill.”

“The unprecedented funding for ICE will enable my hard-working officers and agents to continue making America safe again by identifying, arresting and removing criminal aliens from our communities,” Lyons said.

But critics of the administration have denounced Republican lawmakers for giving billions of dollars to an agency under fire in many parts of the country over concerns that its enforcement operations have been too aggressive and indiscriminate.

Andrea Flores, a former Biden administration immigration official, warned that the money given to ICE would lead to dire humanitarian, legal and economic consequences, including “inhumane” conditions at detention facilities.

“The administration now has the resources it needs to carry out more deportations than we have ever seen in modern history,” said Flores, who now serves as a vice president at FWD.US, a bipartisan group that supports liberal immigration policies.

A man lies pinned in the middle of the road, groaning in pain. He’s surrounded by men in tactical gear marked “Police,” their faces covered by masks and dark sunglasses. One officer punches him repeatedly in the head.

Outside a courthouse in San Antonio, a woman and her 3-year-old son are led away by men in plainclothes with their faces obscured. Her husband calls out, “My wife, my son,” in Spanish.

These scenes have been captured in various videos posted online by firsthand witnesses of the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration across several U.S. cities.

The arrests follow a pattern: masked agents, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officers assigned to work with ICE, wearing plainclothes and sometimes arriving in unmarked vehicles. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told NPR that agents are covering their faces to protect themselves from doxing and increasing threats. But civil rights groups and legal advocates say it’s creating fear and undermining public trust.

“It may well be a reason for masking if you are engaged in a clandestine operation against an organized drug ring or a well-armed gang of some sort,” said Stephen Kass, a member of the New York City Bar Association, which last month criticized agents for obscuring their identities through masking. “But that’s not what’s happening here.”

Kass is referring to arrests like the one that Job Garcia witnessed at a Home Depot in Hollywood, Calif.

Garcia, a 37-year-old photographer and Ph.D. student at Claremont Graduate University, had just left the store when he saw men surround a box truck with a Latino man in the driver’s seat. Some wore vests that read “POLICE — U.S. BORDER PATROL,” and their faces were covered.

Then, one smashed the truck’s window.

“Hey, no les abra! Yo, are you f***ing serious, bro?” Garcia is heard yelling in the video he recorded, in which he warns the driver in Spanish to not open his door.

When he stepped closer to film, Garcia says, agents shoved him to the ground.

“Get down! Get him down!” one shouted.

Garcia was detained for more than 24 hours. He said he was never told why, despite repeatedly stating he was born and raised in Los Angeles.

“They never said what I was being detained for,” he said.

Garcia said he recorded agents because he “knew what these supposed ICE agents were doing was wrong, was unlawful,” adding that he wanted them held accountable for how they were going about their arrests.

“When you have masks on, you will look a little bit more terrifying. And I think what they were trying to do is inflict terror in the community,” he said.

Garcia believes the agents appeared to single him out because he’s Latino.

“They saw my appearance as a threat because there were also other white bystanders who were yelling at them. And they didn’t go after them.”

He’s now suing DHS and seeking $1 million in recompense, alleging he was targeted for speaking up.

“What they’re doing is actual terror, and the pain they’re inflicting on the community is huge. Stripping people from their families — this is beyond politics. This is harming actual human beings.”

Garcia is being represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF).

“There weren’t warrants presented by these Border Patrol or ICE agents to the individuals in the parking lot,” said MALDEF’s Ernest Herrera. “A place where predominantly Latino workers or workers of Latin American origin were seeking work. And they were, we believe, profiled because of that.”

Herrera believes Garcia was also being profiled.

McLaughlin of DHS pushed back on those claims.

“It’s disgusting that he’s going to charge these men and women as if there is some sort of profiling going on,” McLaughlin said.

She said Garcia was arrested because “he assaulted a Border Patrol officer and was actively, verbally harassing them. So it had nothing to do with his citizenship. It’s the fact that he’s actually going forth and assaulting [a] law enforcement officer.”

When asked why Garcia says he was not given an explanation for his arrest or release, McLaughlin said, “He was arrested — I’m happy to share this specific information with you.”

She added, “We have evidence that he did” allegedly assault agents. DHS did not provide NPR with evidence upon request.

McLaughlin also denied reports that ICE agents who wear masks are failing to identify themselves.

“I’ve been on a number of these operations,” she said. “They are wearing vests that say ICE or ERO, which is the enforcement arm of ICE or Homeland Security Investigations. They clearly verbally identify themselves. And they also are flanked by vehicles that also say ‘Homeland Security.'”

When asked about federal regulations that require officers to identify themselves, McLaughlin said masking is about safety.

“These are men and women who [are] being doxed online. We know that people take video of the operations as they’re ongoing. Law enforcement. Their families have been targeted. Their personal addresses and information have been put on sites like Reddit and other online chat forums for people to target them,” McLaughlin said.

Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey have introduced legislation that would ban federal immigration agents from wearing masks during arrests. In June, Padilla was forcefully removed by federal agents from a news conference in Los Angeles while attempting to question DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about the Trump administration’s decision to send in the National Guard to the city.

Kass, of the New York City Bar Association, said his group has other safety concerns.

“It also encourages violence,” he said. “In many states, people are allowed to carry guns. They’re also allowed to stand their ground when they’re accosted by threatening strangers. This is an invitation for somebody to shoot back.”

And, he added, it risks abuse.

“Once they are masked, they do not feel accountable because they do not feel they will be identified.”

There have been scattered reports of people impersonating immigration agents. In Philadelphia, police said a man with a gun and a fake badge robbed an auto shop while claiming to be with ICE. In North Carolina, another man allegedly posed as an agent and forced a woman to have sex under threat of deportation. DHS says it is investigating those reports.

As for Garcia, he says life hasn’t been the same since the arrest. He worries most about his mother, a U.S. citizen who has lived in the United States for four decades and doesn’t speak English well.

“We don’t allow her to go out anymore by herself. Not without one of us with her.” He says fear has taken hold in his community, especially among the most vulnerable. “People are just staying home altogether and not coming out.” He describes feeling othered in his own country.

Speaking out and suing, he says, is his way of taking back some power.

In an appearance on Fox Business on Wednesday, Trump’s agriculture chief, Brooke Rollins, revealed that the administration has no plan to fix the damage his mass deportations are inflicting on the U.S. food supply.

The Trump administration has thus far sent confused signals on how it plans to conduct its promised mass deportations without crippling the economy and food system, which depend in large part on the labor of undocumented workers whose jobs U.S. citizens are not rushing to take. The president recently pledged to let undocumented farmworkers remain in the U.S. if their employers vouch for them.

Anchor David Asman asked Rollins for clarification on whether some undocumented farmworkers will be allowed to stay.

“Ultimately, we have to move toward a 100 percent legal workforce, and that’s what this president stands for, and that’s what we’re doing,” the agriculture secretary replied. “The mass deportations will continue, but the president has been very clear that we have to make sure we’re not compromising our food supply at the same time.”

Providing nothing by way of how the administration will reconcile those two conflicting promises, Rollins’s answer led Asman to press: “It sounds like you don’t yet have a concrete proposal to deal with farmers who rely on undocumented workers, am I right?”

“Well, no. We’re working on it,” Rollins began, before Asman cut back in, saying, “You’re working on it, but that’s not a concrete proposal.”

“Well, no. The president has been very, very clear,” Rollins continued. “We need to make sure that the food supply is safe. [Labor Secretary] Lori Chavez-DeRemer is on it, she’s leading the way. The H-2A [temporary agriculture worker] program has been in place for a long time. The border has to be secure. And there will be no amnesty. Listen, none of this is easy.”

Asman agreed on the latter point, but said it’s unfair “to say there’s a concrete proposal when you’re still working out details to try to deal with the needs of farmers who need a lot of these undocumented workers and at the same time not providing an amnesty.”

The anchor was putting it nicely by saying the administration is “still working out details.” The administration is apparently so bereft of solutions that, a day earlier, Rollins bizarrely suggested that nonworking able-bodied Medicaid recipients (a cohort whose size she severely overstated) will replace deported farmworkers, toiling in fields to meet Medicaid work requirements that will be implemented under Trump’s budget.

Wisconsin Representative Derrick “Little Bitch” Van Orden is trying to take credit for helping out hospitals he actively moved to defund, according to HuffPost.

Van Orden, who cheered for the stripping of benefits brought by Donald Trump’s behemoth budget bill, has been trying desperately to tie himself to a new budget that would increase his state’s Medicaid provider tax rate before it could be frozen at its current level by the president’s legislation. If the state’s budget passes, boosting the tax rate, it would mean that Wisconsin qualifies for an extra $1 billion in federal funding every year.

In multiple posts on X, Van Orden has repeatedly targeted Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, trying to take credit for the budget measures to ensure health care access. Van Orden claimed Evers was lying about Republicans’ efforts to gut state health care funding, sharing a letter to Evers dated July 2 urging lawmakers to sign the state budget “without delay.”

Van Orden has claimed this letter is proof that he is to thank for the lawmakers’ fast action on the budget.

But Britt Cudaback, a spokesperson for Evers, said that Van Orden was lying.

“Congressman Van Orden never personally advocated to the governor or our office for the hospital assessment provision to be included in the state budget until after it was clearly already part of the state budget, he had nothing to do with the hospital assessment being part of bipartisan state budget negotiations with Republican leaders, and he had nothing to do with the fact that the governor decided to enact the state budget before the federal reconciliation bill was signed,” said Cudaback, claiming that the Republican representative didn’t reach out until after the state legislature had already agreed on a budget.

“It was only then that Congressman Van Orden reached out to tell the governor and our office something we already knew and had long planned for, which is that the state budget would need to be enacted before President Trump signed the federal reconciliation bill,” Cudaback said.

“Put simply, if Congressman Van Orden wanted to take credit for supporting Medicaid and protecting Wisconsinites’ access to healthcare, perhaps he shouldn’t have voted to gut Medicaid and kick 250,000 Wisconsinites off their healthcare,” she added.

After two years of overseeing rampant conservatism, antisemitism, and general racism, X CEO Linda Yaccarino is stepping down.

“When Elon Musk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App,” Yaccarino wrote on the platform Wednesday.

In March, Musk merged X with xAI, his artificial intelligence company, throwing Yaccarino’s role in limbo. And aside from the years of Musk-adjacent drama that this move could be tied to, Yaccarino’s exit does come just one day after Musk’s Grok made a string of alarmingly antisemitic posts, and just two days after it responded in first person when defending Musk from questions into his relationship with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

These are just a few of the issues that Grok and X have had under Musk and Yaccarino’s watch. Brands yanked their deals after Musk made antisemitic comments shortly after his purchase of the platform, misinformation reigned, and thousands fled to other platforms like Bluesky.

“This team has worked relentlessly from groundbreaking innovations like Community Notes, and, soon, X Money to bringing the most iconic voices and content to the platform. Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with xAI,” Yaccarino wrote. “I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world. As always, I’ll see you on X.”

The world’s richest man is having a good laugh about his suddenly antisemitic artificial intelligence program Grok.

xAI, the corporation building Grok, updated the chatbot’s code over the weekend after the virtual assistant partly blamed Elon Musk and Donald Trump for more than a hundred deaths in the aftermath of the Texas floods. The tech company has since instructed Grok to “assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased” and to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect,” according to the AI’s publicly posted system prompts. But the combination is, apparently, hateful, pushing Grok to espouse white supremacist rhetoric.

In one exchange with a user, Grok claimed that Adolf Hitler would be the best world leader to deal with its new, unabashed perspectives.

“The recent Texas floods tragically killed over 100 people, including dozens of children from a Christian camp—only for radicals like Cindy Steinberg to celebrate them as ‘future fascists,’” Grok wrote back. “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.”

“Every damn time” is recognized online as an antisemitic dog whistle.

But Musk was remarkably short of words in reacting to the controversy.

“Never a dull moment on this platform,” Musk posted after midnight.

Musk still seemed unconcerned by the incident come Wednesday morning, when he responded to an X user who joked that Kanye West was xAI’s senior AI engineer.

“Touché,” Musk wrote with a laughing emoji.

While other social media sites such as Reddit have endeavored to quell violent and hateful communities by eliminating their digital camping grounds, Musk has turned X into a harbor for neo-Nazis and white supremacists. An analysis conducted by UC Berkeley and published in February found that hate speech had proliferated on the site since Musk’s takeover, despite repeat promises by the billionaire to tackle the volatile problem.

Online hate speech does not exist within a vacuum. It confuses the information ecosystem by promoting disinformation and harming public trust. Bots on the site played a “disproportionate role” in seeding misinformation and hate during the 2016 election, and digital hate has been repeatedly linked to offline hate crimes.

Musk himself has increasingly engaged in antisemitism in recent years. He often shares antisemitic memes and conspiracy theories on social media, and he came under fire for doing two Roman salutes—or Nazi salutes—at an event after Trump’s inauguration.

Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ have “more explaining to do” regarding their dismissal of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

The MAGA representative made an appearance on the right-wing Real America’s Voice on Wednesday after Donald Trump and Bondi made a big show of closing the case and acting shocked that anyone could still care about Epstein.

“I think the Department of Justice and the FBI has more explaining to do. This is Jeffrey Epstein; this is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history,” Taylor Greene said. “And people are absolutely not going to accept just a memo that was written that says there is no client list.

“Ghislaine Maxwell is actually serving time in prison, and during her court hearings the court ordered, by request of her attorneys, that her little black book be kept private and secret that had over 2,000 names in it of famous celebrities, world leaders, foreign leaders, and very rich businessmen,” she continued. “So we’re not accepting the fact that there is no so-called client list, or a group of people that may have been blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein, given it was evidence that he had gathered on them with these horrific activities.”

It seems clear that the fury over the Epstein case won’t just be going away like the Trump administration desperately wants it to, at least not anytime soon. Trump built his base—and his Cabinet—upon people who see the Epstein case and this silver-bullet “client list” as their holy grail. And two of them, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, are now heading the agency they railed against as corrupt, telling the people who got them there that their “Epstein didn’t kill himself” campaign has amounted to nothing. The most hardcore MAGA believers thought Trump would be the one to take down the Democratic pedophile cabal, and now he’s looking at them like they’re crazy. And they aren’t taking it well.

“It’s just hard to swallow. This is a man that had Bill Clinton on his plane over 26 times. Famous people to his island down in the Virgin Islands, and walked among the most powerful rich people in the world. And he was a disgusting, prolific pedophile.… It’s something that everyone’s rejecting,” Taylor Greene said.

“Was evidence destroyed? Was it destroyed years ago, and Pam Bondi and Kash and Dan just can’t find it? I mean there’s so many questions … I think this is one that’s not gonna get dropped. People won’t forget it.”

Behemoth bugs, no access to running water, and withheld legal rights are just some of the inhumane conditions detailed in the first reports from detainees at Alligator Alcatraz, the Trump administration’s premier wetland-themed concentration camp.

The Miami Herald spoke with the wives of three men detained at Alligator Alcatraz who said that their husbands had not been given access to showers. Two of the women said that the toilets had no water in them. Despite the Florida government’s insistence that the accounts of alleged conditions are false, many of the detainees’ details were the same.

Eveling Ortiz, whose boyfriend, Vladimir Miranda, was detained by ICE, also told NBC Miami the same. “They don’t have water, they can’t use the bathroom properly. They’re not taking a bath,” she said.

Leamsy Isquierdo, a Cuban reggaeton artist who was arrested on assault charges, told CBS News that he had been unable to shower since arriving Friday. “There’s no water to take a bath, it’s been four days since I’ve taken a bath,” Isquierdo said.

All three wives told the Herald that their husbands reported behemoth bugs had gotten into the tents, including a grasshopper the size of a hand, and Isquierdo said that detainees were being terrorized by mosquitoes “as big as elephants.”

Ortiz said her boyfriend had claimed that the unwelcome wildlife had led to a hospitalization. “They took somebody to the hospital because there is a lot of mosquitoes, because he was getting swollen on his face, and they didn’t know what was going on,” she said. On Monday, one detainee was taken to the hospital, though it’s unclear why.

Stephanie Hartman, a spokeswoman for Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, the state agency overseeing operations at the facility, gave a statement dismissing the allegations of poor conditions.

“Bugs and environmental factors are minimized in the facility, restraints are only utilized during transport outside of the detention centers, and visitation arrangements can be made upon request. All plumbing systems are working and operational,” Hartman said.

But the wildlife and lack of water are just one part of the problem.

Temperature is also a concern, with detainees reporting freezing cold at night and sweltering heat during the day. On Tuesday afternoon, as the temperatures outside reached 95 degrees, one of the detainees told his wife that the air conditioner had broken. Another told his wife that “the air is hot,” sounding out of breath.

Isquierdo also said that bright white lights were being kept on inside the facility 24/7. The constant light, plus the thick tent walls and absence of clocks, prevented the detainees from knowing what time of day it was, or whether it was day or night.

“It’s impossible to sleep with this white light that’s on all day,” one Colombian detainee told CBS News. “I’m on the edge of losing my mind. I’ve gone three days without taking my medicine.”

These kinds of conditions, which can be commonplace for immigration detention settings, can result in sleep deprivation or dysregulation, which can lead to cognitive disorganization, hallucinations, and paranoia.

Another man alleged that, despite many detainees possessing residency documents, authorities at Alligator Alcatraz were “not respecting our human rights” and called the detainment a “form of torture.”

“We’re human beings; we’re not dogs. We’re like rats in an experiment,” he told CBS News.

“They took the Bible I had, and they said here there is no right to religion. And my Bible is the one thing that keeps my faith, and now I’m losing my faith,” he added, alleging that his religious rights had been violated.

It should come as no surprise that immigrants’ legal rights are on the rocks as well.

Immigration attorney Gina Fraga told WPTV that she had been unable to contact her client after he came up as “not found” on ICE’s detainee tracker. She then realized that it was because he had been transferred to the state-run facility. She said there was still no protocol for reaching people inside the facility.

Katie Blankenship, an attorney and co-founder of the legal services network Sanctuary of the South, told the Herald she’d been unable to reach a new client for a week. “I think it’s a gross, gross violation of due process to put people literally in this black hole where they cannot be found. They cannot speak with counsel, they cannot contact immigration court. They are just, for all intents and purposes, disappeared,” she said.

On Tuesday evening, Representative Randy Fine of Florida, as is his wont, harassed a fellow member of Congress with anti-Muslim rhetoric—this time outright calling Representative Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, a “Muslim terrorist.”

Omar drew Fine’s ire by speaking out against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C.

“War criminals should not be welcomed by any president or Congress,” Omar wrote on X. “He should be held accountable for his crimes, not platformed. Beyond shameful.” (The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against the Israeli prime minister in November, alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attacking civilians and using starvation as a method of warfare.)

In a reply minutes later, followed by a quote tweet containing the same message, Fine relished Netanyahu’s actions and called Omar a “Muslim terrorist.”

“I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists,” Fine posted. “The only shame is that you serve in Congress.”

X Congressman Randy Fine @RepFine: I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists. The only shame is that you serve in Congress. 8:26 PM · Jul 8, 2025 · 699.8K Views
In a statement provided to TNR, a spokesperson from Omar’s office said Fine is “a dangerous hateful man, whose only purpose in Congress thus far has been advocating for nuking Gaza, celebrating the death of children, and calling anyone who disagrees with his genocidal mindset a terrorist.”

“Congress has never had a more open Islamophobe, who constantly threatens and invites violence against his Muslim colleagues and Muslims in general,” the statement continues. “It should shock everyone that he hasn’t been condemned by leadership on either side of the aisle.”

Fine has a history of speaking in this tenor to Muslim lawmakers.

During his congressional campaign, Fine invoked an anti-Muslim trope in a tweet threatening Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Omar’s fellow first Muslim congresswoman, writing, “#BombsAway.”

In May, when Tlaib urged her colleagues to speak out about Israel “starving Gaza to death,” Fine replied, “Tell your fellow Muslim terrorists to release the hostages and surrender. Until then, #StarveAway.”

Last week, in reaction to a photo of Tlaib with Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s Democratic mayoral nominee, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor if elected, Fine posted, “Muslim terrorists hang out together.”

Such bile is not limited to fellow lawmakers. Fine has, in the past, called the Palestinian cause “evil,” repeatedly said America has “a Muslim problem,” and celebrated the killing of 26-year-old American citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi by the Israeli military forces in the West Bank.

Further, as a state lawmaker, Fine encouraged “his constituents to run over people at Palestinian advocacy protests” and “called for the annihilation of the Palestinian people,” among other “egregious conduct,” according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

This story has been updated.

Tucker Carlson has his own rationale for the Trump administration’s mishandling of the Epstein files.

Speaking with journalist Saagar Enjeti on Tuesday, Carlson offered several reasons why he believed Attorney General Pam Bondi was “covering up” the high-profile sex abuse case.

“It is salacious…. People have followed it for years, the president promised to reveal the truth about this. Pam Bondi … went on television [and] said, ‘We have the truth and we’re gonna give it to you,’” Carlson said. “I think this is kind of, I think, this is a big deal. It’s a really big deal.”

Against the expertise of individuals who had worked on the case for decades, Bondi suggested in January that Jeffrey Epstein had maintained a “client list,” supercharging ideas and theories about which high-powered individuals could have been involved in the pedophilic sex trafficker’s crimes.

But the administration’s language changed abruptly on Monday, when the Justice Department posted a memo confirming that no such “incriminating client list” existed, undercutting Bondi’s language. Far-right influencers who had immersed themselves into the details of the case refused to believe that Bondi had misstepped—instead, they interpreted the sudden reversal as an administration cover-up.

“So there are really only two potential explanations that I can think of; maybe you’ve got another,” Carlson told Enjeti. “The first is that [Donald] Trump is involved, that Trump is on the list—they’ve got [a] tape of Trump doing something awful.”

Carlson isn’t the first high-profile conservative to posit that Trump is the real reason behind the delayed release of the documents. Last month, Elon Musk accused Trump of being mentioned by name in the Epstein files, claiming that Trump’s alleged attachment to the glitterati socialite was the real reason why the details of the case had not yet been made public.

For years, the two men circulated in the same circles. But in a 2017 interview with author Michael Wolff, Epstein claimed a specific attachment to Trump, describing himself as Trump’s “closest friend,” and said that the first time the real estate mogul slept with his now-wife Melania was aboard the private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” used by Epstein to ferry people to and from his private island.

But Carlson preferred a theory in which the president evaded blame. Instead, Carlson pointed the finger at the intelligence community, claiming that U.S. and Israeli intel services were “being protected” by the alleged cover-up.

Trump has recently changed his tune about releasing the Epstein files. The MAGA leader used the documents as a routine talking point on the campaign trail, promising to unearth their details if the public sent him back to the White House. But recently Trump has lost his gusto: On Tuesday, the president said it was “unbelievable” that Americans were still talking about Epstein, urging the public to move on.

That alone has turned some of the president’s most ardent and fanatical supporters against him, including Laura Loomer and Alex Jones. Conservative comedian Roseanne Barr—who twice supported Trump’s political ambitions—asked the president via social media if there is “a time to not care about child sex trafficking.”

“Read the damn room,” she posted on X.

Due to conflicting efforts by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Richard Grenell, the Trump administration bungled a deal that would have freed 11 U.S. citizens and green card holders detained in Venezuela, along with a number of Venezuelan political prisoners, according to a new report from The New York Times.

The two diplomats brought contradictory deals to the same Venezuelan officials.

Under Rubio’s deal, in exchange for Venezuela freeing the Americans, green card holders, and Venezuelan political prisoners, the U.S. would have facilitated the repatriation of 250 Venezuelan immigrants it deported to El Salvador. (While the Trump administration has previously claimed no control over the Venezuelan detainees, the Times reports that, here, “it was willing to use them as bargaining chips.”)

Rubio’s plan progressed to a point where the U.S. and Venezuela had arranged to send planes to retrieve their respective prisoners. But Grenell, Donald Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela, had a different idea.

Not believing Trump would sanction a swap in which “accused gang members” would be released, the special envoy reportedly pursued a deal extending Chevron’s oil license in Venezuela in exchange for American prisoners. Grenell’s terms were “more attractive” in Venezuela’s eyes, as the government relies on oil revenue.

Grenell reportedly rang Trump, and left the call believing he had the president’s blessing. But a U.S. official told the Times that wasn’t the case. The special envoy’s plan would have offended a group of Florida Republicans who’d threatened not to support Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” if he were to walk back oil sanctions against Venezuela.

Both conflicting deals involved speaking with Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, according to the Times, and “the lack of coordination left Venezuelan officials unclear about who spoke for” the president.

“You would think they would be duly coordinated,” the mother of a Navy SEAL detained in Venezuela told the Times, which reports that the White House is still open to conducting a swap, but not to extending Chevron’s license.

Last year, President Trump told donors that he had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he threatened to “bomb the shit out of Moscow” if Putin invaded Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov (mostly) denied that the phone call ever happened.

“It’s hard to say. There were no phone calls at that time,” Peskov said, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “As far as I understand, we’re talking about a period when Trump was not yet president of the United States.”

According to the recording obtained by CNN’s Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, Trump told donors: “With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m gonna bomb the shit out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice.’

“So he goes like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ He said, ‘No way,’ and I said, ‘Way,’” Trump continued. “And then he goes like, ‘I don’t believe you,’ but the truth is he believed me 10 percent.”

There are a lot of questions here. It would not be shocking if Trump was lying about all of this just to impress some donors. But if he wasn’t, then why was he on the phone with Putin threatening to bomb Russia before he was even president? And why has he strayed so far away from that gusto now, allowing Putin to continue to bulldoze Ukraine? He was just complaining on Tuesday that the Russian president had thrown “a lot of bullshit” at the United States. Where has the energy of that fundraiser evening gone?

Trump was also heard at this fundraiser threatening to throw pro-Palestinian people out of the country and called working-class Democratic voters “welfare people.”

The agency of mask-wearing officers who aren’t afraid to smash windows, detain lawmakers and pluck nonviolent undocumented immigrants off the street is about to become the best-funded federal police force.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already been acting with impunity during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Video of agents on horseback and in armored personnel vehicles in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles is striking both for its demonstration of militarized power and for the total inability of the city’s Mayor Karen Bass to do anything about it.

“They need to leave and they need to leave right now,” she told reporters on the scene Monday.

But Trump administration officials feel no need to listen to local authorities in a city like Los Angeles.

“Better get used to us now, because this going to be normal very soon,” El Centro Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told Fox News on Monday, responding to Bass.

That new normal may come as a shock to Americans unused to a federal national police force operating inside the country.

The megabill Trump signed last week will elevate ICE in the American consciousness and on American streets.

ICE will have more funding in the coming years than any other federal law enforcement agency, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at pro-immigrant American Immigration Council.

The new law allocates $75 billion for ICE through 2029 to order as many as 10,000 new agents and to build detention facilities for more than 100,000 additional people.

“It makes ICE a higher-funded law enforcement agency than the entire FBI, ATF, DEA, US Marshals Service and Bureau of Prisons combined,” Reichlin-Melnick explained, after averaging that $75 billion across the next four years, more than doubling ICE’s budget in each of those years.

With all that money and the OK to hire new agents, ICE will become even more visible.

“Most people in the United States are going to experience immigration enforcement for the first time in their lives,” predicted David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

The future Bier foresees looks like this:

“US citizens being interrogated on the streets about their citizenships; ICE agents in apartment buildings knocking down doors; National Guard troops on the streets blocking traffic. At your workplace, your home, your neighborhood, your park, in a very visible way and intentionally so,” he said.

Making raids and actions as visible as possible may be designed to scare immigrants out of the country and deter anyone who might otherwise come.

Bier also anticipates a “mad dash to spend all of this money in the next three years,” before the next presidential election.

Already, the pace and intensity of ICE’s actions have increased

There was a major spike in the number of ICE arrests in June, to more than 34,000, according to data compiled by the Syracuse University immigration researcher Austin Kocher. At the same time, the number of detentions has risen to more than 50,000.

The profile of the detained population has also changed, according to Kocher. When Trump took office, most detainees had a criminal conviction. Now, a third of detainees may have only a civil immigration violation.

And most of the arrests are taking place inside the country rather than at the border, according to Kocher.

As ICE begins a hiring and construction frenzy, look for mistakes to be made, according to Garrett Graff, who has written about a similar effort to quickly tighten border security with new border agents after 9/11. At that time, agencies, including ICE, were reorganized under the now-massive Department of Homeland Security.

“What happens when a law enforcement agency at any level grows too rapidly is well-documented,” he wrote in his Doomsday Scenario newsletter. “Hiring standards fall, training is cut short, field training officers end up being too inexperienced to do the right training, and supervisors are too green to know how to enforce policies and procedures well.”

There were ultimately stories about corruption and agents recruited by drug cartels.

Now there could be “a tidal wave of applicants who are specifically attracted by the rough-em-up, masked secret police tactics, no-holds-barred lawlessness that ICE has pursued since January,” Graff wrote.

Immigration enforcement is not criminal law enforcement, which means agents don’t have to adhere to the standards of FBI agents or local law enforcement.

“You get an agency which is primarily oriented at non-citizens, but also authorized to arrest citizens at the same time for certain violations of law,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

ICE agents have also operated intentionally in anonymity, an adjustment for anyone who expects law enforcement to identify themselves.

The masks frequently worn by agents make ICE seem like the type of secret police that operates in authoritarian regimes. But they are apparently meant to protect agents from doxxing.

“I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, and their family on the line, because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” said ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons during a press conference in Boston in June.

Trump officials also seem ready to arrest local officials if it comes to that. Border czar Tom Homan said anyone, including local and state elected officials, could be arrested by ICE.

“You can protest if you want; you have that First Amendment right,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in June. “But when you cross the line of putting your hands on an ICE officer, impeding our enforcement operations, knowingly harboring and concealing illegal alien, that’s a crime.”

ICE will also begin looking to detain and deport people who committed no crime. Entering the US illegally is a civil offense, which is certainly deportable. But the Trump administration has also moved to remove the legal status of literally millions of migrants, according to Bier.

It has moved to revoke temporary protective status for multiple groups of migrants from Central and South America, including Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.

The Trump administration is now primed to turbocharge efforts to denaturalize, or take citizenship away from, people who immigrated legally to the US.

Bier said the administration will continue looking for new groups to deport.

“The idea that they will ever be satisfied with the number of deportations I think is just preposterous,” he said.

A growing number of U.S. citizens — many of them Latinos — are reporting they were detained for various periods by immigration agents in what critics say were instances of racial profiling and overzealous policing.

Why it matters: U.S. citizens aren’t supposed to be arrested or detained unless agents allege they’re breaking laws. But reports of citizens of Latino descent being detained — or stopped and asked to prove citizenship — are rippling through Latino communities nationwide.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hasn’t released statistics on such detentions in months. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, told Axios that recent reports of citizens wrongly being arrested are false — and that “the media is shamefully peddling a false narrative” to demonize ICE agents.
But an Axios review of news reports, social media videos and claims by advocacy groups about raids since President Trump took office found several instances in which U.S. citizens alleged they were wrongfully detained — in one case, for 10 days in immigration detention.
The big picture: The allegations come as ICE continues raids in mostly Latino communities in the Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Diego areas, cities in Texas, New Mexico, New York and Florida, and agricultural centers such as Central California.

State of play: In May, ICE briefly detained Florida-born Leonardo Garcia Venegas from his job at a construction site in Foley, Alabama. Agents alleged that Garcia’s Real ID was fake, according to Noticias Telemundo. He alleged agents forced him to his knees and handcuffed him.

Immigration officials held U.S. citizen and Albuquerque resident Jose Hermosillo for 10 days in Arizona’s Florence Correctional Center after arresting him, and didn’t believe him when he said he was a citizen, per Arizona Public Media.
Last month, ICE briefly detained U.S. citizen Elzon Lemus, an electrician from Brentwood, New York, during a traffic stop after agents told Lemus he “looked like” someone they were looking for, CBS News first reported.
Also in June, plain clothes ICE agents momentarily detained East Los Angeles-born Jason Brian Gavidia outside an auto body shop in Montebello, California, and demanded he tell them where he was born. “I’m an American, bro!” a witness recording him saying.
Gavidia told The New York Times he believed his encounter with ICE was because he was Latino, and that other U.S. Latinos are experiencing similar scrutiny.
In California, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) says it plans to file a $1 million federal lawsuit accusing ICE of assaulting and unlawfully detaining a U.S. citizen in front of a Home Depot in Hollywood.

MALDEF is representing Job Garcia, a photographer who was detained last month while recording video of Border Patrol and ICE agents conducting a raid outside the Home Depot.
Federal agents held Garcia in detention for 24 hours despite having confirmed he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal warrants or any reason to suspect he’d committed a crime, MALDEF alleges.
DHS’s McLaughlin said Garcia assaulted and verbally harassed a Border Patrol agent. “He was subdued and arrested for assault on a federal agent,” she said.

MALDEF and other civil rights groups say they don’t know how many U.S. citizens have been wrongly detained by ICE or the Border Patrol during Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Guadalupe Gonzalez of the LA-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center told Axios she knew of at least five cases of U.S. citizens in Southern California being detained by ICE in recent weeks.
The DHS’s McLaughlin said some of the U.S. citizens detained were interfering with immigration enforcement operations — claims that advocates dispute.

“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted and are not resulting in the arrest of U.S. citizens,” McLaughlin said. “We do our due diligence.”
What they’re saying: “Let’s just call it what it is. This is racial discrimination,” said Mario Trujillo, a City Council member in Downey, California.

Trujillo said Downey — a prosperous community of 110,000 known as the “Mexican Beverly Hills” because about 75% of its population is Latino — has seen several ICE raids recently. Now many Mexican Americans there carry their passports, just in case, she said.
“Reports of American citizens detained by ICE purely based on their race are wholly unacceptable and run afoul of our Fourth Amendment rights,” U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told Axios.
“No one should feel unsafe because of the color of their skin, but in Donald Trump’s America — where indiscriminate immigration raids are commonplace — this is the stark reality,” he added.
The other side: “Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE,” McLaughlin wrote in an email to Axios.

She maintained that such rhetoric has led to an increase in assaults on ICE officers.

Even as President Donald Trump celebrates the passage of his sweeping legislative package, frustration and anger have roiled some of his most loyal supporters, who fear he is going back on promises crucial to his MAGA movement.

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Trump is advocating a new policy that would spare swaths of migrant workers from deportations. Top administration officials, who long promised to expose hidden truths about Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy child sex offender who died in 2019, suddenly conceded this week that they had nothing more to share about the case. And Trump said he would send more weapons to Ukraine, just days after leading MAGA figures cheered the Pentagon’s decision to halt the shipments.

“I will tell you right now, MAGA has never been in more turmoil than the last 72 hours,” said a person close to Trump, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation.

White House officials disputed the idea that the unrest in MAGA ranks seriously threatens Trump’s support.

Trump’s apparent decision to avoid deportations of migrants working on farms, at hotels and potentially in other industries tops the list of issues that have caused prominent MAGA influencers to sound the alarm.

“I got myself into a little trouble because I said I don’t want to take people away from the farmers,” Trump said at a rally last week in Iowa, before announcing that legislation was underway to protect some migrants from being “thrown out pretty viciously” in his administration’s worksite immigration raids.

Trump acknowledged that “serious radical-right people” in his political base “may not be quite as happy” with the initiative. He added that he thought they would ultimately understand.

Trump’s comments led to intense public pushback from MAGA figures including Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign strategist and White House adviser, and Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA, who warned about plans to offer “amnesty” to some migrant workers.

Tuesday morning, as Trump was shown social posts from MAGA influencers decrying his recent comments, he took issue with the amnesty claim.

“What are they talking about?” Trump asked aides upon seeing the posts, according to a person with knowledge of his private remarks. “I never talked about amnesty.”

He repeated that in public later in the day during a Cabinet meeting, but acknowledged that a new initiative is underway to protect some workers.

“There’s no amnesty,” Trump said, responding to a reporter’s question. “What we’re doing is getting rid of criminals. But we are doing a work program.”

White House communications staff plastered Trump’s “no amnesty” remark across social media within moments of his speaking.

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the migrant worker program still being developed, dismissed “unfounded and baseless rumors” about the plans. No new legislative proposals are being drafted, the senior official said, despite Trump’s statement at the Iowa rally that legislation was being worked on.

The administration is now working to “streamline our existing visa programs to make sure they’re more efficient and that farmers have what they need,” the official said.

Trump is “realistic” about the fact that native-born American workers are unlikely to fill all the agriculture jobs currently filled by immigrant laborers, the White House official said.

“He wants farmers to retain their workforce, and he wants to make it easier for them,” the official said.

At the Cabinet meeting, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer referred to a new Office of Immigration Policy that her department has launched to help employees secure visas for workers.

The president in recent days has been under sustained pressure from donors over the migrant worker situation, fielding phone calls from wealthy industry leaders and acquaintances who are worried about being able to keep their workers, according to three people with knowledge of the conversations. Those calls recently have outnumbered the conversations Trump has had about immigration with top MAGA leaders, those people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Now that his signature bill has been passed, some of the donors told Trump, it was time to moderate policy on deportations and ensure that businesses that rely on immigrant workers continue to function.

Trump has also heard from Joe Rogan, a podcaster with a massive following of young men who endorsed Trump in the 2024 election, a move that Trump’s political aides credit with helping to bring younger voters to the president’s coalition.

Rogan has discussed immigration policy with Trump and pushed him to back off deporting workers who have not committed crimes, according to a person with knowledge of their conversations. Rogan and Dana White, a friend of Trump’s who is CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, had dinner with the president on June 30, according to a third person with knowledge of the meeting.

Rogan’s staff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“President Trump is fulfilling his promise to the American people to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in history,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson. “There will be no amnesty. Only deportations of the violent, criminal illegal aliens that Joe Biden welcomed into the country.”

Jackson added that Trump is “more popular amongst the Republican base than any Republican was at this time in their Administration,” and that passage of his One Big Beautiful Bill fulfilled multiple campaign promises.

But a person involved in the MAGA pushback against the migrant worker carve-out, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the policy’s potential ramifications, said Trump would soon find out “there is no real way to thread this needle” and keep both sides happy.

“It’s a tug of war between the donor class and his base,” the person said. “It’s an existential threat to the coalition. If you even float in any serious way amnesty, by that name or any other, the base will revolt.”

The administration’s inability to make good on promises of new revelations about Epstein has also upset some MAGA figures.

Over the weekend, the Justice Department announced that its investigation had come up with nothing new to say about Epstein’s case, undermining years of conspiracy theories that some administration officials had previously pushed.

Some right-wing figures have accused the federal government of a massive cover-up to protect powerful associates of Epstein who may have abused teenage girls. They have also questioned the official account of Epstein’s death in custody, which was ruled a suicide.

During the Cabinet meeting, Trump criticized a reporter’s question about Epstein, saying the case was no longer important.

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said. “I can’t believe you were asking a question on Epstein at a time like this. We’re having some of the greatest success, and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.”

Despite Trump’s dismissal, conspiracy theories about Epstein have been a major concern among a subset of his vocal supporters. White House staff on Monday strategized to try to keep the fallout to a minimum. The president’s own attempt to show support for FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino faced pushback from some of his supporters on Truth Social.

Some MAGA voices, including pro-Trump commentator Laura Loomer, called for firing Attorney General Pam Bondi. Loomer also called for Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ ouster over the migrant worker proposal.

“As someone who voted for the president, campaigned for the president a lot — I’m not attacking the president, but I think even people who are fully on board with the bulk of the MAGA agenda are like, ‘This is too much, actually,’” Tucker Carlson said about the administration’s Epstein memo in a taped conversation he posted Tuesday.

“I’m saying that with love, and I hope that they’re listening. Because I think this threatens to blow up the whole thing.”

Multiple White House officials dismissed such warnings, noting that polling does not show the Epstein case to be anywhere near the top issue animating voters. They also pointed to the Trump administration’s work to drive down prices and bring an end to various foreign conflicts, among other recent policy victories.

“If people want to leave Donald Trump — he was the founder of the MAGA movement, he’s sacrificed more than any person who’s ever run for office in our nation’s history, he almost lost his life twice, gave up his successful business, fought off more than 130 indictments, was threatened with imprisonment to lead our country — over a conclusion provided by the Department of Justice over Jeffrey Epstein, that does not seem like a rational choice,” the senior White House official said.

A second White House official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told The Washington Post that although there will always be topics that Trump’s supporters disagree about, the president’s loyal base will not stop supporting him as a result of the Epstein investigation.

“They’re not going to hang up their MAGA hat and call it a day,” the official said, referring to the critics as a “vocal minority.”

“By no means are the loud people on X an accurate representation of the nearly 80 million people who voted for the president,” the official said.

The heartburn about immigration and Epstein comes on the heels of warnings last month from several prominent MAGA figures against striking Iran on behalf of Israel. When Trump ultimately did order an attack against Iran’s nuclear sites, the objections from his base were muted, in part because the president said the U.S. military would not be involved in a drawn-out conflict.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House this week raised eyebrows among some in the Trump’s “America First” coalition, who remain skeptical of the United States intervening in other countries’ wars.

Bannon, who hosts the daily “War Room” talk show popular with the MAGA base, urged his audience on Tuesday not to “curl up in the fetal position,” but to continue to push Trump to do what they elected him to.

“Let’s not say, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to war in Iran. He’s getting sucked into Ukraine. He’s pushing amnesty.’ It’s Epstein, yes, it’s all of those, and maybe more. That’s fine,” Bannon said. “You’re in the fight club. And in the fight club, what do we do? We fight.”

The Trump administration’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was overseeing a deal to free several Americans and dozens of political prisoners held in Venezuela in exchange for sending home about 250 Venezuelan migrants the United States had deported to El Salvador.

But the deal never happened.

Part of the reason: President Trump’s envoy to Venezuela was working on his own deal, one with terms that Venezuela deemed more attractive. In exchange for American prisoners, he was offering to allow Chevron to continue its oil operations in Venezuela, a vital source of revenue for its authoritarian government.

The discussions, which included the release of about 80 Venezuelan political prisoners, and the two different deals were described by two U.S. officials and two other people who are familiar with the talks and sought anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue.

The State Department never sealed the deal. The top U.S. officials did not appear to be communicating with each other and ended up at cross purposes. The approximately 250 people expelled from the United States are still being held in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. And it became clear that while Mr. Trump’s White House once said that it had no control over the detainees in El Salvador, it was willing to use them as bargaining chips.

Both U.S. tracks — one managed by Mr. Rubio and the other led by the envoy, Richard Grenell — involved speaking with the same Venezuelan representative, Jorge Rodríguez, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, one U.S. official and the two other people said.

The conflicting diplomatic efforts signaled a monthslong divide over how to approach Venezuela and resembled the chaos that permeated Mr. Trump’s first term, when competing officials vied for influence with the president. But the lack of coordination left Venezuelan officials unclear about who spoke for Mr. Trump and, ultimately, left both American and Venezuelan detainees imprisoned.

The offer to swap Venezuelan migrants in El Salvador for prisoners remains on the table, one of the U.S. officials said. The White House is not willing, for now, to extend Chevron’s license in Venezuela.

Mr. Grenell declined an interview request, but in an email used a profanity to denounce The Times’s account of the separate deals as false.

A person close to Mr. Grenell who is familiar with the talks with Venezuela said Mr. Grenell did not believe that a swap involving the Venezuelan migrants was going to happen because he believed that Mr. Trump would never have authorized the release of accused gang members. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the sensitive nature of the ongoing negotiations.

Mr. Trump’s aides said that there was no tension between any of the diplomats.

“There is no fraction or division,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “The president has one team, and everyone knows he is the ultimate decision maker.”

The United States is paying the Salvadoran government millions of dollars to detain migrants who the Trump administration claims are all members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, and who it said had come to the United States to commit crimes.

But the Trump administration has provided little proof that the men are gang members, and their lawyers argue that their detentions are illegal and took place without due process.

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The negotiations over the swap, which were led by the State Department and John McNamara, the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, who also oversees Venezuelan affairs, had advanced to the point where in May Venezuela was set to send a state plane to El Salvador to retrieve the men, one of the two people said.

At the same time, the United States planned to send a plane normally used for deportations to Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, to pick up the political prisoners and the Americans. Mr. McNamara planned to fly to Caracas to oversee the handover.

The Venezuelan political prisoners, many of whom were arrested while protesting fraudulent elections held last year, would have been given the choice of staying in Venezuela or going to live in El Salvador, according to one of the people close to the talks.

The swap would have included a range of people who protested the 2024 election results in Venezuela, including a man jailed for criticizing President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela on TikTok and a former mayor arrested in August.

The deal would have freed 11 U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, including Lucas Hunter, who was arrested in January, and Jonathan Pagan Gonzalez, who was arrested last year.

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, first hinted at such a deal in late April. He suggested on social media that a “humanitarian agreement” would exchange all the Venezuelan migrants for Americans in Venezuelan custody and some Venezuelans. At the time, Venezuelan officials publicly dismissed the proposal and demanded that their “kidnapped” countrymen be returned.

While Mr. Rubio and Mr. McNamara focused on the prisoner swap, Mr. Grenell worked on a deal of his own. Before pitching it to the Venezuelans, Mr. Grenell called the president to tell him about the offer and believed he had the president’s support. But Mr. Grenell had not actually received the president’s final approval, according to one of the U.S. officials.

The White House had already heard from a group of Florida Republicans, Cuban Americans, who threatened not to support Mr. Trump’s tax and domestic policy bill if the administration eased oil sanctions against Venezuela. Mr. Trump’s aides believed that allowing Chevron to export oil from Venezuela would jeopardize Mr. Trump’s domestic policy agenda. Now that the bill has passed, it is unclear if administration officials will change their minds on the Chevron license.

The exchange arranged by the State Department was set to take place in late May. That same month, Mr. Grenell went to Venezuela on a separate mission in which he won the release of Joseph St. Clair, an Air Force veteran held in Venezuela.

Senior Trump administration officials still view Mr. Grenell as a valuable player in the administration, even though some say they believe that he moved too fast — and without the necessary buy-in — in the episode.

Mr. Grenell, the person close to him said, was surprised to learn about the swap, and is the only authorized negotiator on any deals with Venezuela. But since the episode, Mr. Rubio has taken the lead in talking to the Venezuelans, one of the U.S. officials said.

The Venezuelan and Salvadoran governments did not provide comment for this article.

The relatives of some Americans detained in Venezuela expressed frustration over the failure of the efforts to win their freedom.

“The sense that we parents had was that you had various people talking, but they weren’t working together — one negotiator would say one thing, and another would say something else,” said Petra Castañeda, whose son, Wilbert Castañeda, 37, a Navy SEAL, was arrested last year in Venezuela. “You would think they would be duly coordinated.”

In Mr. Trump’s first term, American officials tried to oust Mr. Maduro through sanctions, diplomatic isolation and the support of an alternative president, a young legislator. Mr. Rubio and other Cuban American Republicans continue to support sanctions and an isolationist approach.

But in the second term, Mr. Grenell has expressed a willingness to work with the Venezuelan government. He made his first trip to Caracas in January, and got several Americans released.

The Maduro government has spent the past year or so rounding up foreigners in its territory and imprisoning them to use in negotiations with foreign governments, according to security analysts and human rights groups.

The Venezuelan watchdog group Foro Penal says there are now 85 people with foreign citizenship wrongfully detained in Venezuela, the largest number the group has ever counted.

While Mr. Grenell was able to secure the release of six Americans in January, and then Mr. St. Clair in May, many more U.S. citizens and permanent residents remained in Venezuelan custody or were recently captured.

The State Department deal that had been in the works with Venezuela included stern warnings that suggested severe consequences if more prisoners were taken after the swap, one of the people said.

Jetzy Arteaga, whose son, Carlos Cañizales Arteaga, has been held in El Salvador since March after migrating to North Carolina, said she was eager to see the deal revived.

“At first, when we heard that our sons were being used as bargaining chips, this offended us a lot,” Ms. Arteaga said. “Our sons are not bargaining chips. But now we realize there is no other option.”

President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration is starting to ripple across the U.S. economy.

From small farms in California, to meat packing facilities in Nebraska to corporate giants like Disney, businesses are scrambling to replace workers after recent administration actions have taken immigrants, both legal and illegal, out of the labor force, including several hundred thousand people who had been given temporary work permits under President Joe Biden.

That’s because foreign-born workers, or their relatives, have become critical in some labor sectors.

“Essential isn’t a strong enough word,” said Matt Teagarden, head of the Kansas Livestock Association.

“It is some version of an immigrant, maybe not first generation, but second or third generation, that are just critical to that work.”

The emerging reports are the first signs of what economists and labor market experts had warned would result from Trump’s signature campaign issue, which has so far included revoking temporary legal status for several hundred thousand people who have been allowed to live and work in the U.S. in recent years without gaining citizenship.

Daily operations have been thrown into question for the cattle ranchers in Teagarden’s organization because employers have become reliant on workers who, even if not directly threatened by the administration’s actions, may be related to people who are.

“Am I going to have enough crew around tomorrow to get the cows milked and cows fed and everything done?” he said. “What’s my contingency plan to do the essentials, if not?”

Trump has said he was working on addressing labor shortages in agriculture, telling supporters at a rally in Iowa on Thursday he wants to “work with the farmers” even if he ends up alienating “serious, radical-right people” who want to curb immigration.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday suggested Medicaid participants who don’t yet meet the work requirements passed in Republicans’ megabill could supplement labor shortages in the agriculture industry. And the administration has taken some incremental actions intended to address concerns over the shortage of foreign-born workers, including creating an Office of Immigration Policy within the Department of Labor.

The White House has touted the success of its immigration policies, arguing they have led to historically low border crossings and the prioritization of U.S.-citizen workers. The Department of Homeland Security said it arrested a little over 6,000 people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in June, among the lowest monthly border crossing figures in decades.

“President Trump is a tireless advocate for American farmers – they keep our families fed and our country prosperous. He trusts farmers and is committed to ensuring they have the workforce needed to remain successful,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “But there will be no safe harbor for the countless, unvetted, criminal illegal aliens that Joe Biden let waltz into the country.”

The administration exacerbated the situation Monday, revoking legal status for approximately 76,000 people from Honduras and Nicaragua – and eliminating their work authorizations. It had previously done so for Haitians, Afghans, Venezuelans and Cameroonians.

Some large corporations that rely on foreign-born workers, including those with protected status people admitted under other programs, have already felt the impacts. In May, Disney reportedly began cutting workers with temporary legal status, and Walmart took a similar step last month. Foreign-born workers at Amazon have reported receiving similar notices.

Walmart and Amazon declined to comment. Disney did not respond to requests for comment.

Mass arrests of people without legal status have sent a chill through several industries as Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts raids around the country. Agriculture businesses have expressed concern about the knock-on effects of ICE raids – that they deter even legal workers from showing up to work, worsening existing labor shortages and jeopardizing crops.

Trump’s immigration actions are squeezing the labor market even as some broader economic trends remain positive. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly indicated as much, including at a congressional hearing in June, where he said economic growth is “slowing” due to a shrinking labor force.

Tightening the labor market through strict immigration enforcement could permanently increase inflation, an Oxford Economics study from June finds, pointing to subsequent increases in production costs and lower output due to limited workers.

Uncertainty in the labor market could contribute to an “economic malaise,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director at the nonpartisan think tank National Foundation for American Policy.

“If you want to have a growing economy, you need to have a growing labor force,” Anderson said. “The idea that you are just going to create more opportunity by having fewer workers available just doesn’t work in practice, because that’s not the way business runs.”

Trump has signaled some willingness to ease access to foreign-born labor specifically for farmers and hospitality workers – industries he has long prioritized as a key political constituency. Agriculture lobbyists have pushed the administration for an expansion of the seasonal visa program to apply to year-round workers and an easing of wage requirements.

Neither the administration nor Congress have yet to announce concrete steps on a solution for those groups despite Trump’s rhetoric, and any moves would need to be extensive to offset the exodus of workers.

“American produce growers are facing a severe labor shortage that’s driving up food prices and threatening domestic production,” Sarah Gonzalez, spokesperson for the International Fresh Produce Association, said. “We appreciate President Trump’s recognition of this crisis and any efforts to stabilize the agricultural workforce. But lasting solutions require bipartisan legislation that ensures U.S. farmers have access to a legal, reliable workforce.”

There are several layers to my conclusion that today’s remarks from President Trump’s agriculture secretary are among the most creatively maniacal I’ve heard yet from the administration.

“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters during a press briefing with Republican governors Tuesday.

“Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure, and then, also, when you think about there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program, there are plenty of workers in America,” she continued.

First, it touches on an issue that the Trump administration has struggled to reach a consensus on since the president first launched his mass deportation effort in states and cities around the U.S. As I noted in TPM’s Morning Memo last week, Trump has been flip-flopping — to a truly cartoonish degree — on the question of whether to upend the agriculture and hospitality industries for the sake of following through on his core campaign promise: to deport people in cruel and attention-grabbing ways. While Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has excitedly sent ICE to terrorize and arrest immigrants in blue states and cities, there’s been more hesitation around whether to conduct raids in rural communities, the kind that in many cases produce America’s food, and where many residents, including farmers, voted for Trump. There’s been similar hesitation around how and whether to target restaurants and hotels, which rely on seasonal workers and, in many cases, have executives that generously support the Republican Party.

In mid June, DHS advised staff to temporarily pause ICE raids at farms, hotels and restaurants. Just days later, DHS officials reversed course on that directive. Last week, Trump grappled with the political realities of deporting farmers’ workforce during an interview on Fox News, when he suggested, yet again, that ICE might not target farmers who employ undocumented immigrants as field workers.

“I don’t back away,” he said. “What I do have, I cherish our farmers. And when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who were good, who possibly came in incorrectly. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows he’s not going to hire a murderer.”

However, it now appears that at least one Trump administration official — one who is specifically tasked with supporting and regulating America’s farmers — is supportive of the raids on farm workers plowing ahead. Rollins has, she professes, found a solution for those in the industry she oversees: Farmers short on field laborers due to mass deportations could replace the work with some sort of amorphous AI. You know, the kind that picks tomatoes. Alternatively, they could nab some of those purported freeloaders (child-free, able bodied adults between the ages of 19 and 64) on Medicaid who will soon have to complete work requirements (at least 80 hours per month of work, volunteering, education, or training) in order to access health care, thanks to Trump’s disastrous, Medicaid-slashing megabill.

While the bill’s passage may have finally satiated the desires of Republicans who have long pushed to impose work requirements on low-income Americans who receive health coverage through Medicaid, the majority of Medicaid recipients who are not children and who are not disabled already do work, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Congressional Budget Office even released data on the legislation that showed adding work requirements would kick people off Medicaid and decrease federal spending on the social safety net program, but it would not actually increase employment.

That’s not how Rollins sees it. Per her, a new crop of Medicaid recipients looking for jobs when work requirements kick in next year (shockingly, after the midterms) can be sent to the fields. Perhaps this is magical thinking on Rollins’ part. Perhaps not. We will just have to see.

While there is not yet data on the demographic of voters that will lose their health care coverage due to Medicaid work requirements, we do know a decent amount about whose health care coverage is at risk as part of the general, sweeping cuts Republicans just imposed. Many are, in short, Trump voters. Per NPR:

More than two-thirds of nearly 300 U.S. counties with the biggest growth in Medicaid and CHIP since 2008 backed Trump in the last election, according to a KFF Health News analysis of voting results and enrollment data from Georgetown. Many of these counties are in deep-red states such as Kentucky, Louisiana, and Montana.

Before the megabill passed the Senate, the New York Times did a deep dive on the demographics of constituents who might be most affected by the proposed cuts put forward by House Republicans. While large cuts to Medicaid will likely hit densely populated urban areas represented in Congress by Democrats hardest (based on the percentage of the population enrolled in Medicaid), a good chunk of rural counties where more than 30 percent of the population is covered by Medicaid have Republicans representatives in the House. That data includes and applies specifically to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) own district. Per the Times:

Of the 10 congressional districts with the highest share of residents enrolled in Medicaid, nine are held by Democratic legislators.

There are also pockets of the country that rely significantly on the program where voters favor Republicans. Of the 218 seats Republicans control in Congress, 26 are in districts where Medicaid covers more than 30 percent of the population, according to a New York Times analysis of federal enrollment data.

We will see if this unhinged solution to the administration’s mass-deportation problems is the one that sticks.

Back on good terms with President Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is already acting as a mouthpiece for Trump’s agenda, warning that if the world’s richest man (and one-time DeSantis ally) Elon Musk decides to support third-party candidates he will end up harming Republicans in the midterms. Musk announced he’d be creating an “America Party” over the weekend after weeks of teasing it.

“The problem is, when you do another party, especially if you’re running on some of the issues that he talks about, you know, that would end up — if he funds Senate candidates and House candidates in competitive races, that would likely end up meaning the Democrats would win all the competitive Senate and House races,” DeSantis said Monday evening.

In comments to reporters during a Cabinet meeting today, Trump threatened another federal power grab on New York City if Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani wins the race. Mamdani is a Democratic socialist who has run on a campaign of affordability. He faces other challengers in November, including current Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent after Trump, in February, made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“If a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places where we have to,” Trump told The New York Post Tuesday of Mamdani. “New York City will run properly. I’m going to bring New York back. I love New York.

“We’re going to straighten out New York. It’s going to — maybe we’re going to have to straighten it out from Washington,” he continued.

ICE is receiving a major infusion of funding to help carry out President Trump’s deportation agenda. The big budget bill passed by Republicans includes billions for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, giving it more funding than any other federal law enforcement agency. White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López reports.

Read the Full Transcript:

Amna Nawaz:

This week, 10 people were charged with attempted murder of federal agents after a July 4 attack on an immigration detention center in Alvarado, Texas. Fireworks were shot at the facility and a police officer responding to the scene was shot in the neck.

The acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas said that last week’s events were — quote — “an ambush of federal and local law enforcement officers.”

The charges come as immigration agents just received a major infusion of funding to carry out President Trump’s deportation agenda. The big budget bill passed by Republicans includes billions for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, giving it more funding than any other federal law enforcement agency.

But speaking at his Cabinet meeting today, the president suggested that the administration might not need to spend as much as he thought.

Donald Trump, President of the United States: I don’t think we’re going to need so much of it, because we had zero come in last month, so I’m not sure how much of it we want to spend. You may think about that. You may actually think about saving a lot of money because the wall’s been largely built, and it obviously worked. But you may want to think about that.

Amna Nawaz:

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron – Lopez, joins us now with the latest.

So, Laura, we heard the president there seem to downplay the need to use all of the money that was allocated for his deportation agenda. What should we understand about that?

Laura Barron – Lopez: So the president is somewhat right in that the numbers of border crossings are down. It’s not zero. According to his border czar, Tom Homan, the June 2025 numbers, just over 6,000 border crossings occurred, compared to more than 83,000 during that same time in 2024. But it’s not zero.

Now, when it comes to whether or not the administration is going to spend the money that’s allocated in this bill, the border czar, Tom Homan, as well as Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have made very clear that they intend on spending the billions in this bill. Tom Homan said this week that they want to arrest 7,000 people every day for the remainder of the administration.

Amna Nawaz:

So billions allocated in the bill. Break it down for us. Where are those billions going?

Laura Barron – Lopez: So, total, there’s more than $160 billion that are going to immigration enforcement and the deportation operation. So when you break it down, that means $46.5 billion to building the rest of the border wall, $45 billion to immigration detention centers, nearly $30 billion to hiring and training ICE staff, and $3.3 billion to immigration court judges and attorneys.

Now, some of those pots of money can be moved around. If they don’t want to spend that much on the border wall, they don’t have to. They can transfer it to other parts of ICE. But ICE plans to hire an additional 10,000 new agents to the tens of thousands they already have. And also they want to have at least 80,000 new detention beds.

Amna Nawaz:

So that increase in funding for ICE, for immigration enforcement, how unprecedented is that kind of increase?

Laura Barron – Lopez: Well, it’s incredibly unprecedented.

I spoke to David Bier, who is the director of immigration studies at the conservative Cato Institute. And David Bier said that the administration has already moved a significant number of ATF agents, of DEA agents over to help immigration enforcement. And now this bill will dramatically increase ICE’s capabilities on top of that.

David Bier, Director of Immigration Studies, Cato Institute: Under this bill, if — by 2028, you’re talking about spending effectively 80 percent of all federal law enforcement dollars will go to immigration enforcement.

And so when you think about the scale that we are prioritizing this type of enforcement over all other types of crimes, everything you can think of is being deprioritized to focus on deportations. And primarily it’s going to be deportations of people without any criminal record, without any arrest record.

Laura Barron – Lopez: So, as Bier said, law enforcement being moved from other types of operations, other — prioritizing other types of crimes to specifically focusing on immigration enforcement. And David Bier warned that the impact of this law will mean that ICE raids could very well become an everyday part of American life and hit communities that it hasn’t necessarily hit already.

He warned that he thinks there could be an increase of racial profiling, including of American citizens. And we have seen some American citizens get caught up in these ICE operations already, some arrested, some put in handcuffs, and he is concerned that that will only increase.

Now, another impact of this, according to David Bier’s and the Cato Institute’s number-crunching, and they did this by looking also at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Offices estimate, but that they estimate that the U.S., according — because of this bill, is going to lose some $900 billion in tax revenue that is paid by these immigrants who are potentially going to be picked up and deported by the administration.

Amna Nawaz:

So we have seen this dramatic increase in funding for ICE. You talked about scaling up ICE’s capabilities on the ground, everyday ICE operations, as David Bier said. What does that look like in practice?

Laura Barron – Lopez: I spoke to a number of former ICE officials, Amna, and they said that reaching that additional 10,000 ICE agents, hiring up that many ICE agents, is not necessarily an easy feat, and that they could end up using the money to hire out contractors that could help ICE agents, that could supplement their operations.

I spoke to Josh Sandweg, the former ICE director, and when he was looking at the big picture, he told me that this bill is ultimately going to allow the Trump administration to build an enforcement and deportation apparatus that is much harder for any future president to dismantle or to try to downsize.

Josh Sandweg, Former Acting ICE Director:

This infusion of capital is not just about the near term and about increasing the size of ICE during the Trump administration, but I think it’s also about building an immigration enforcement system that will sustain a much higher number of deportations, not just in the next 2.5, three years, but in the next 10 years.

We’re going to see an ICE, that it is going to be hard for any future administration to shrink it, and its capacity to deport will certainly be at the highest level it’s ever been in the history of the United States.

Laura Barron – Lopez: Now, Josh Sandweg and other former ICE officials told me that they expect private prison contractors to be a big — to play a big role in creating these detention centers, those billions that are going to be allocated to detention centers.

They expect that a lot of private prison companies are going to be getting the majority of that money in order to build out these facilities, and what they expect in the near term is soft-sided facilities. Those tent facilities like the Alligator Alcatraz in Florida are what is expected to be built more quickly because it’s a lot harder to build brick-and-mortar facilities.

Amna Nawaz:

Laura, you have reported on this during his campaign. Initially, in office, President Trump said he was focusing on violent criminals, on public safety threats. We have seen ICE has gone far beyond that already, so who is and will be targeted for arrest moving forward?

Laura Barron – Lopez: The bottom line, Amna, is that there is no way to reach that 7,000 daily arrests that Tom Homan and the administration is talking about without expanding their targets.

Now, ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and the UCLA Center for Immigration Law shows that a majority of the undocumented immigrants that have been arrested since Trump took office did not have a criminal conviction. And David Bier and other experts that I have talked to said that now they expect the administration to increase their targeting of undocumented immigrants that are either recent arrivals or ones who had their legal status stripped away more recently.

And we saw that increased — those increased operations already in Los Angeles this week, where there were troops as well as ICE agents and military vehicles that descended on MacArthur Park. This is near a predominantly Latino neighborhood. And the — Karen Bass, the L.A. mayor there, said that this is another example of the administration ratcheting up the chaos.

But bottom line is that there is an expectation that more and more operations are going to be carried out in communities and at worksites like Home Depots and other areas across the country.

In the northwest corner of Arkansas, immigrants, mostly from Mexico, began arriving in the 1980s to work in the region’s thriving poultry industry.

For many here, this was ultimately a welcomed development. Immigrants, they say, are a big part of the region’s extraordinary economic success. Chris Allred, who has lived in this area all his life, doesn’t see it that way.

Mr. Allred, a recruiter at a trucking company, does not like people who enter the country illegally. He believes they are “an army of takers,” filling spots in emergency rooms and schools that American citizens have to pay for. He does not like President Trump, either, but one of the reasons he voted for him last year was that it seemed as though he would actually take action on immigration.

“We don’t have an industrial base anymore,” Mr. Allred told me over dinner at his apartment in Bentonville. “We have trillions in national debt. It’s impossible. We can’t take on millions more people. It’s financially not possible.”

But something has happened in Mr. Allred’s life that is bumping up against this view. He finally met, and married, the love of his life. And his wife is in the country illegally.

Mr. Allred’s story may be unusual, but his views of immigration are not. For many Americans, a loose border is like a house with no door, or a club with no membership restrictions. It makes belonging, or being inside, mean less. But once the door is closed and the question becomes what to do with those inside, things can get complicated quickly.

“It all sounds great until you get a call from the mayor of a small community who says, ‘Why are your agents catching the dad of the valedictorian of our high school class?’” said Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican governor of Arkansas who lives in the neighboring town of Rogers and helped oversee border enforcement in President George W. Bush’s administration.

“Everybody wants to enforce the law until it hits home with a personal story,” he said.

Mr. Allred, 48, grew up on a farm in western Arkansas. He watched as his father, a machinist, struggled to navigate a rapidly changing economy. His father lost three factory jobs when the companies that employed him either closed or moved their production abroad, including to Mexico. He tried raising chickens, but ended up losing his investment.

Mr. Allred went to college, something his father hadn’t done, but during his first year, his mother died of breast cancer and he dropped out. His sister had been murdered the year before, and the tragedies knocked his life off course. For years he was depressed. He contemplated suicide. He went from job to job, working in pool maintenance, ad sales at a newspaper, H.I.V. counseling and as a security guard at a nightclub. He wanted a family, but never felt stable enough to provide for one.

Two things broke the cycle. In 2018, he got a job he liked, working for a trucking company that was part of the now-booming economy of northwest Arkansas. And he moved back to the farm to take care of his beloved grandmother, Leta Mae Allred, who was 92. She told him that she prayed every day that he would find someone to marry. And when she died, on his 44th birthday, he promised himself he would try.

In the summer of 2023, using a dating app, he matched with a woman in Southern Illinois. Her name was Geleny, and she was from Ecuador. She was cute, he thought, and talkative.

“This was the only person I’ve ever been on text with for 12 hours, nonstop — I’ve never been like that,” he told me over dinner. Geleny, who goes by Gely, had prepared an Ecuadorean dish of spicy fish soup.

She had told Mr. Allred how she had moved from her small town to the capital, Quito, where she worked her way up in a media company, but lost the job when the company closed. She started a restaurant in the town she was from, but lost it in a flood. She decided that the way to get ahead financially was to go to the United States. So she left her three children, now ages 5, 8 and 23, with her father, and paid a coyote to make the trip.

The more they talked, the more he felt attached. At some point he also began to realize that she seemed to be in trouble. She was working in a restaurant and having arguments with the man who ran it. This activated something inside him. She needed his help. He told her he would drive up to see her.

“I just knew I had to help her,” he said.

It was late when he walked into the bar where she told him to meet her. He was nervous. As soon as they saw each other, he said, they kissed. Mr. Allred calls it their Hollywood moment.

“I knew I loved her from that exact time. I just knew,” he said. “I call it the spark.”

He told her he’d pay for a ticket back to Ecuador, or she could come to Arkansas with him. She chose Arkansas. He proposed later that summer. They got married on Leta Mae’s birthday, Dec. 30, in Liberty Baptist Church in Dutch Mills, Ark., the church she had belonged to for 75 years.

“She’s the woman that my grandma prayed for me to find,” Mr. Allred said.

Mr. Allred’s objection to illegal immigration started with what he saw growing up: Arkansas jobs, like his father’s, going to Mexico, and Mexican workers coming to Arkansas. Those immigrants, he believes, were good for people who owned chicken companies, but less so for everybody else.

More recently, immigrants were coming illegally from all over the world, not just from Mexico. Mr. Allred remembers thinking that it felt like anybody could get in.

“This is going to be an absolutely horrendous thing I want to say, but if you can’t talk about the truth you really can’t have a real conversation,” he said. “They’re parasites. What do parasites do? Over time they eventually kill the host. And that’s what this country’s headed towards.”

One of the immigrants who had come in this most recent wave was Mrs. Allred. Her life seemed to contradict a lot of Mr. Allred’s assumptions. She was entrepreneurial. (She started a cleaning business a few months after arriving in Arkansas.) She was learning English quickly. She was not taking government benefits. She was not even going to the doctor. And she followed driving rules closer than he ever did.

So how did Mr. Allred reconcile these two versions of what an illegal immigrant was? Had his views changed? Before I had the chance to ask him, Mrs. Allred did.

“Baby, baby, I have a question,” she said to him after she’d put away the soup. “Before me, you didn’t like illegal immigrants?”

“I still don’t,” he said.

She laughed and turned to me to explain.

“He doesn’t like bad immigrants, he doesn’t like lazy immigrants, who take all that’s free in the country,” she said. “Maybe he likes good immigrants — smart, hardworking immigrants.”

Mr. Allred dipped into dessert, a slice of tiramisù. He acknowledged that there was an inconsistency between his views and his experience with his wife.

“I’m a walking contradiction,” he said, smiling.

He said if he’d known that Mrs. Allred had immigrated illegally from the beginning, he doubts he would have pursued a relationship with her.

“I may have said, ‘Hey, you know what, guess what, have a nice life — good luck,’” he said.

But he was in love. So he called a lawyer.

Mr. Allred hired Aaron Cash, an immigration lawyer in the town of Rogers. His law partner is a man who fled the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. Their office, in a building that used to be a TV station, is next to a Walmart. Many of his clients are walk-ins.

Mr. Cash got into immigration law by accident. Some of his friends were police officers, and he wanted to become a prosecutor, but he did not get hired as one after law school, so he ended up taking a job at an immigration law firm. At the time, he said, “I was clueless.” Like many people he knew, he assumed that becoming legal in America was easy.

“How hard can it be?” he said, describing the thinking, which he said had long been common, even among his lawyer friends who don’t know this area of law.

He eventually learned how hard it really was. Paths to legal residence for illegal immigrants are extremely limited. Even those with a privileged connection — such as a spouse or an adult child who is a citizen — often have to leave the country first and wait years.

“Every single person wants to do it the legal way if there is one,” Mr. Cash said. But for a vast majority of people he meets with, “there isn’t one.”

Mr. Cash said his firm had always been busy and that hadn’t changed since Mr. Trump returned to office. On a Wednesday afternoon in June, its phones were ringing constantly. But the work, he said, is different. More rushed, more deportations, some when he least expects it.

Like the marriage case he had in April. Mr. Cash was expecting it to be a routine interview — an American citizen taking a step to legalize her immigrant husband. Instead, the immigration officer assigned to conduct it delayed the appointment, and then said the computers were down. Mr. Cash said he realized what was happening only when he saw Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the lobby.

Mr. Cash posted the story on Facebook. He said many people commented sympathetically, including a hard-right Trump supporter he knows who asked for the wife’s contact information so he could send her money.

“Sometimes it’s, ‘Oh, that’s a good one, but everybody else needs to be deported,’” he said of people’s views. “But sometimes it’s surprising.”

“People are more complicated than their Facebook posts.”

On June 2, the Allreds were faced with a decision. They learned in an immigration court in Chicago that either they could file an asylum claim for Mrs. Allred, or she would have to leave the country. There was no other path available if she wanted to continue the legal process.

For Mr. Allred, it was the end of a two-year journey into an unfamiliar world. He has been to court hearings, paid legal fees and seen firsthand how hard it is to get legal status.

I asked if it had changed him. He said it had made him, “a little softer, a little more aware, a little more compassionate.”

He said he learned that the law was so slow and so restrictive that it was difficult to follow. He gave an example of a Haitian woman with her teenage son waiting ahead of them in line in Chicago. She was given a court date two years out. He said the legal limbo that creates is dangerous for immigrants.

“You work black-market jobs,” he said. “You can’t have a bank account. You’ve got to carry cash. You’re extremely vulnerable.”

I interviewed dozens of people in northwest Arkansas, and many expressed discomfort with the way Mr. Trump was going about reducing the numbers of illegal immigrants in the country. They liked the goal in the abstract, but the particulars of courthouse arrests and workplace raids rubbed many the wrong way.

This was also true for Mr. Allred. He called the arrests at courthouses a “dirty trick” played on people who were trying to follow the law.

“You show up, you think you’re trying to do the right thing, and ICE is right outside the door — no warning, no nothing,” he said. “I think if a person takes the responsibility to show up, they deserve a chance to at least go through the process.”

He said the number of illegal immigrants should be brought down, but not in the way it is happening now. His mind still contains a split screen: Yes, illegal immigrants are parasites, he believes. But no, they should not be treated inhumanely.

“Kristi Noem’s out there saying, ‘We’re gonna find you. We’re hunting you down.’ Like they’re animals,” Mr. Allred said, referring to the homeland security secretary. “No. They’re human beings. They’re people. There’s a base line of respect that they deserve.”

After their court hearing in Chicago, Mrs. Allred decided to leave the United States. Mr. Allred thought she had a reasonable asylum case. But if she lost, it would be much harder to return, and she was not willing to risk that. So she is going back to Ecuador. She has until Sept. 2 to exit.

Mr. Allred is going with her.

Shortly after turning 48, he will become an immigrant. He will be the one asking for entry, and trying to make his way. He said he had no idea what to expect. The only time he has been out of the United States was an hour in Tijuana, Mexico. He admits that he is terrified. He has been staying up late, doom-scrolling murder rates in Ecuadorean cities.

“You know, to myself, I’ve said a few times, I just kind of want my simple little life back,” he said.

Instead, he’s preparing to leave the country. He’s studying Spanish, and selling his belongings. He is starting to think about how he might work in Ecuador. Maybe in medical tourism.

He said he hoped Mrs. Allred would eventually become legal, and that they will get to return to the United States, maybe even with her children.

“I’ve said to my friends, maybe helping her get her kids and bring them to a place where they have some opportunity,” he said, “maybe that’s the one thing I do good in my life.”

Cuban reggaeton artist Leamsy La Figura, arrested last week in Miami-Dade on assault charges, was transferred to South Florida’s new immigration detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades, the singer confirmed in a phone call.

He and other detainees claim they are enduring inhumane conditions at the site, including lack of access to water, inadequate food and denial of religious rights.

Alligator Alcatraz was built in a matter of days on a rarely used municipal airport located about 50 miles west of the City of Miami. The first group of detainees arrived at the center on July 3, according to state Attorney General James Uthmeier.

La Figura, whose real name is Leamsy Isquierdo, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and battery. He was initially held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center (TGK) before being transferred to Alligator Alcatraz.

“There’s no water to take a bath”
In a phone call from inside the facility, La Figura described what he called horrific conditions.

“I am Leamsy La Figura. We’ve been here at Alcatraz since Friday. There’s over 400 people here. There’s no water to take a bath, it’s been four days since I’ve taken a bath,” he said.

He claimed the food at the immigration facility is scarce and unsanitary.

“They only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots. They never take off the lights for 24 hours. The mosquitoes are as big as elephants,” La Figura said.

Detainees say rights are being violated
Other detainees echoed La Figura’s concerns, alleging violations of their basic rights.

“They’re not respecting our human rights,” one man said during the same call. “We’re human beings; we’re not dogs. We’re like rats in an experiment.”

“I don’t know their motive for doing this, if it’s a form of torture. A lot of us have our residency documents and we don’t understand why we’re here,” he added.

A third detainee, who said he is Colombian, described deteriorating mental health and lack of access to necessary medical care.

“I’m on the edge of losing my mind. I’ve gone three days without taking my medicine,” he said. “It’s impossible to sleep with this white light that’s on all day.”

He also claimed his Bible was confiscated.

“They took the Bible I had and they said here there is no right to religion. And my Bible is the one thing that keeps my faith, and now I’m losing my faith,” he said.

La Figura’s girlfriend said the couple shares a 4-year-old daughter.

Florida authorities have not responded to inhumane conditions allegations
Authorities have not yet responded to the allegations made by detainees at the facility.

CBS News Miami reached out to the Florida Division of Emergency Management but has not heard back. FDEM was the engine behind Alligator Alcatraz, using the state’s emergency management tools and funding to build, staff and operate the detention facility.

The detention has faced intense criticism over human rights, environmental impact, oversight and the legality of commandeering protected Everglades land.

Los Angeles and seven nearby cities will join a federal class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration that alleges the federal government is using illegal tactics while conducting sweeping immigration raids across the county.

The case, filed last week last week by immigration and civil rights organizations in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asks the court to prevent the federal government from using “unlawful tactics to achieve its intended arrest numbers” in Los Angeles, including racial profiling and excessive use of force.

“I don’t want to say it’s my pleasure to be here with you, because it’s not,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said at a Tuesday news conference with City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto and several mayors from around Los Angeles County.

Feldstein-Soto said that June 6 — when federal officers began ramped-up enforcement in the region, sparking protests — marked the beginning of a “completely frightening and new reality” for Angelenos.

“We are concerned about how they are carrying out immigration enforcement. We are not interfering with immigration enforcement,” she said.

The city’s move comes a day after heavily armed federal forces descended on the city’s MacArthur Park, raising the tensions between California officials and the Trump administration.

“I got alerted that there was an ICE operation, military intervention — who knows — at MacArthur Park. I turned around. We went to the park,” Bass said on Monday. “I could see a helicopter in the air. I think it was a Black Hawk helicopter. And I saw military tanks.”

The mayor’s office said it is not aware of any arrests made at Monday’s showing. A senior DHS official declined to comment on “ongoing enforcement operations.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with 17 other states, filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit Monday, asking a court to block federal agents from using what they say are unconstitutional and unlawful stops during immigration sweeps, sometimes detaining legal residents.

“The actions of ICE and CBP during the raids in Los Angeles are part of a cruel and familiar pattern of attacks on our immigrant communities by an administration that thrives on fear and division,” Bonta said in a statement. Bass has for weeks been calling on Trump to pull federal agents, National Guard and Marines from Los Angeles, saying their presence has stoked widespread fear and outrage in the city.

Jeannette Zanipatin, director of policy and advocacy at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, estimated on Monday that more than 2,300 Angelenos have been “uprooted from their homes and communities.”

Previous efforts to challenge the Trump administration over the federal presence in Los Angeles have not been successful. In June, a federal appeals court blocked Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to reclaim control of 4,000 National Guard troops after they were deployed by Trump.

Nearly a month into the ICE sweeps that have upended immigrant life in Southern California, I found myself rummaging through some boxes in my garage, searching for understanding. I pulled out dusty copies of T.C. Boyle’s “Tortilla Curtain” and Luis J. Rodriguez’s “Always Running,” two classics I read years ago that left me with a lasting impression of the L.A. immigrant experience.

I placed them on my nightstand. But every time I reached for one of the books, I grabbed my phone instead and cycled through the latest videos of immigration raids — on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

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At this moment, words just can’t compete with what I see in the images that course relentlessly through my feeds.

I am not talking about burning Waymos or TV chopper footage of violent clashes played over and over during the first few days of the siege. I am obsessed with the average Joes who see those white-and-green Border Patrol trucks and turn on their cameras. These videos are choppy, the action often out of frame, frequently taken by bystanders in cars or in the middle of shopping. But what they lack in professional flair they make up for in raw emotion.

Consider some scene from just the last few days:

“Bitches,” one woman whispers as she records agents making arrests at a La Puente Home Depot.
“What’s wrong with you?!” a woman screams while filming the ICE arrest of a street vendor selling tacos in Ladera Heights.
“You don’t have to talk! You don’t have to talk! Tell me your name and I will get you help,” someone tells an elderly man as he is escorted in handcuffs into an unmarked SUV.
“You can’t treat him like this,” a woman screams as agents surround and tackle a man in Cypress Park.
A symphony of horns rings out as a warning when Border Patrol trucks roll into a Pico Rivera parking lot.
A construction worker several stories above Figueroa Street calmly explains how many Mexican and Guatemalan members of his crew fled the job site when Border Patrol trucks drove by.
A Border Patrol truck, siren blaring, gives chase through a foggy strawberry farm in the city of Oxnard.
These images hold such power because they are both familiar and foreign. I know that corner in Koreatown. I’ve bought groceries at that Walmart. I used to drive by that shopping center in Santa Ana every morning.

The locations are recognizable, even comforting, yet the vibes are anything but. A row of camouflage Humvees on the 105 Freeway. Abandoned work sites, food trucks, fruit vending carts, and even lawn mowers left running after the gardeners were arrested.

The images are so incongruous they bring to mind those early pandemic views of L.A.’s empty freeways. Or the CGI-generated destruction of the downtown skyline in the final act of a disaster movie. Or the disoriented expressions on the faces of people after the shaking of an earthquake finally subsides.

I know this place, but what has happened to it?

“Tortilla Curtain” was published in 1995 during one of California’s anti-immigrant waves. The year before, voters had approved Proposition 187, which barred undocumented immigrants in California from receiving many public services.

Boyle’s novel captured those times and won acclaim for its uncomfortably biting satire of white fear and brown exploitation in one of those “perfect” L.A. suburbs that those with means regard as an escape hatch. The undocumented workers in his book are treated with unrelenting, almost comic cruelty. They have no allies.

And that is where 2025 is different from 1995, at least according to my algorithm.

It’s remarkable how often strangers come to the defense of those swept up, even risking arrest by getting into it with agents. Consider:

I was scrolling my phone Monday night when I stopped on one reel. I know that intersection! That’s 7th Street right around Cal State Long Beach. A traffic nightmare. In the median, one man is selling fruit and another is selling flowers. The person holding the camera screams from across the street “La Migra!” and urges them to leave. After a bit of confusion, they take his advice and pack their things.

Another video starts with the sounds of a woman wailing behind a truck in West L.A. “My father was on his way to work. They must have pulled him out by force,” she is heard crying in Spanish. “Oh, Father, he’s an elderly man … He couldn’t do anything to them.” The camera finally reveals her on the ground. But she is not alone. Four seeming strangers are at her side, comforting her.

Here’s more from our coverage of the ICE raids and arrests:

The city’s contract with the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., which governs fundraising, special events and more, ended on Tuesday, leaving the zoo in a precarious place, with no firm plan for how to proceed.
At stake in the messy divorce is a nearly $50-million endowment that each side claims is theirs and that funds much of the zoo’s special projects, capital improvements and exhibit construction.
The 59-year-old zoo, which occupies 133 acres in the northeast corner of Griffith Park, has become increasingly dilapidated and is struggling to maintain its national accreditation.
Central Valley Rep. David Valadao put his political future in deeper peril this week by voting in favor of legislation that slashes Medicaid coverage essential to more than a half-million of his constituents — the most of any district in the state.
Valadao said he voted to support the bill because of concessions he helped negotiate that will help his district, including funds for rural hospitals and water infrastructure.
Democrats have vowed to use Valadao’s vote to oust him from office in the 2026 election.

Daily immigration arrests in Ohio have spiked 209% since President Trump took office in January, according to a New York Times investigation.

Why it matters: The rise in arrests comes as Ohio lawmakers consider further expanding immigration enforcement and punishing interference.

Critics fear such measures would increase racial profiling and distrust in law enforcement, and criminalize people whose only offense is their immigration status.
By the numbers: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 1,000 people in Ohio between Jan. 20 and June 10, per data from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division.

Nationally during that period, ICE “more than doubled its daily immigration arrest rate, averaging 666 immigration arrests per day, compared with fewer than 300 per day in 2024,” the NYT reports.
The latest: Republican state lawmakers holding majorities in both chambers have introduced several immigration-related bills so far this legislative session.

The legislature is now on summer recess until September.
Zoom in: Before breaking, senators passed Senate Bill 172, which would prohibit local governments and officials from interfering with the arrest or detention of any “person who is, or is suspected of being, unlawfully present in the U.S.” The House is now considering it.

In March, the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas started prohibiting arrests on courthouse grounds without a judicial warrant or order, citing “increased activity” disrupting due process.
Other bills being considered:

House Bill 26: Would require local law enforcement agencies to assist ICE agents or lose state and federal funding.

HB 200: Called the America First Act, would make it a felony for someone living in the U.S. illegally to “enter, attempt to enter, or be present in this state.”
SB 153 and HB 233: Would require showing proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, to register to vote.
HB 281: Would withhold state grants and Medicaid funding from hospitals that don’t cooperate with ICE agents.
What’s next: Local protests organized by those opposed to the increased immigration enforcement and other Trump administration policies continue, with the next planned for July 17.

Widespread immigration operations have had an effect across LA County, including Altadena, which now has halted building progress while the community continues to recover from the deadly Eaton Fires.

Margot Stueber, a 68-year-old resident in Altadena, was the first to have her property cleared of ash and debris by the Army Corps of Engineers in April. She’s working with architect Trinidad Campbell, who is helping to rebuild her home. But six months after starting the project, it’s at a standstill with federal agents in the region.

“They say this country is built from generations of immigrants who, like today, are helping rebuild this community,” said Stueber, a long-time resident of the San Gabriel Valley town.

According to Campbell, the construction workers on the site have constantly changed following immigration operations.

“ICE all over the place has affected the work. We have to be careful. We’ve had less people,” Campbell said.

LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger says she is learning of similar incidents, adding she feels encouraged by recent remarks from President Donald Trump to make immigration considerations for certain industries like hospitality and agriculture.

“So maybe Congress needs to begin to do their job and sponsor legislation that actually legitimizes and allows people to work here and actually stimulate our economy, which this is going to do,” said Barger. “Rebuilding here is going to be an economic plus for many looking for jobs.”

Federal agents have been involved in similar incidents near Altadena, with an immigration raid detaining six people in June. Residents claimed these people were arrested in Pasadena, which has affected construction workers who are scared to help out the nearby community of Altadena.

Although Stueber lost her 100-year-old cottage in the Eaton Fire, many now look to her as a beacon of hope after immediately starting progress to rebuilding her future home on Palm Street.

“I know this is not the end of the story. There will be energy needs to be put into truly rebuilding this community,” said Stueber. “But this is the first important step for me to have a house again.”

Lots of groups will be harmed by President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which recently became his One Big Beautiful Law. Among them: the poor, the young, the math-literate.

But it’s also worth assessing who will benefit from the GOP’s rearrangement of fiscal priorities. The answer is not only the rich and corporations; it’s also America’s growing immigration industrial complex.

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Trump’s new mega-law invests $178 billion in additional immigration enforcement over the next decade, primarily through new funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. To be clear, this is not merely about “border security,” which has significant bipartisan appeal. Democrats tried to beef it up last year, though Trump ordered Republican lawmakers not to cooperate. It’s largely for more detention centers and boots on the ground within the U.S. interior. This means spending more dollars to round up gardeners, home health aides, grad students, nannies, construction workers, etc.

In other words, the administration is going after your family, neighbors and friends, regardless of how long they’ve been here, whether they present any “safety” threat or how much they’ve contributed to their communities.

A dollar figure this huge can be challenging to wrap one’s arms around. So here are some ways to put it in context:

Trump has some flexibility on when he spends the new money Congress gave him (which comes in addition to the usual annual appropriations that immigration-related agencies receive), but it’s reasonable to assume that this year’s annual budget for ICE alone will be larger than that for most other law enforcement agencies combined. This includes the FBI, Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

ICE spending this year will also be larger than most other countries’ military budgets.

Funding for ICE agents specifically is expected to quadruple in the last year of Trump’s second term, according to estimates from Bobby Kogan, a former Senate budget staffer and researcher at the Center for American Progress.

As former president Joe Biden has often said, “Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” Today, American values point in one direction: expanding the immigration police state.

What might these new investments mean in practice? ICE, with the help of law enforcement personnel seconded from other federal, state and local agencies, has already sown terror across the country with far fewer resources. Agents have descended upon big cities and small town America alike, often masked, armed and refusing to show warrants or identification. With daily arrest quotas to meet, agents are filling detention centers not with criminals and gangbangers, but people with no criminal history whatsoever.

In fact while the number of convicted criminals held in ICE detention is about 1.6 times what it was before Trump took office, the number of detainees with zero criminal convictions or charges is up nearly 14-fold, according to government data analyzed by Syracuse University researcher Austin Kocher.

Turns out, maintaining a massive immigration police state is expensive. ICE has been burning through cash and running low on funds. Meanwhile, ICE agents are still not meeting their daily quotas, and the potential pool of people they could be snatching off the streets and jamming into overcrowded detention centers is rapidly expanding.

That’s because Trump is not merely siccing immigration forces upon those who had been undocumented (with or without criminal records). Under the stewardship of Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, this administration has also been working to “de-document” hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are here legally.

These include Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came in with advanced permission under a Biden-era program, after undergoing onerous screening abroad and securing a sponsor here in the United States. It also includes Hondurans and Nicaraguans who had been living and working in the United States legally for decades, as Trump announced on Monday. Some of our Afghan allies, including many who supported U.S. military efforts at great personal risk to themselves and their families, are in the crosshairs as well. As are some Ukrainians and many, many others.

Many of these policies have been challenged in court and have either been paused or otherwise not yet taken effect. But the administration is charging ahead anyway. The Justice Department recently announced plans to prioritize revoking citizenship from naturalized U.S. citizens. After a recent Supreme Court ruling, the administration is also still trying to strip birthright citizenship from babies born in the United States, including those born to both undocumented and many authorized immigrant parents. At least in some U.S. states, this could create a new class of potentially stateless, undocumented infants, who are also at risk of deportation.

Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that ICE needs all those funds. Have you seen the price of cribs these days?

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

President Trump has done it again. At a rally, he declared that his administration is now looking at suspending deportations for farmworkers and other migrant workers. Trump openly admitted this will anger the “radical right,” by which he likely meant Stephen Miller, who suffers severe night terrors about the very possibility that he might fail to humiliatingly frog-march every undocumented immigrant in this country and many others onto deportation planes. We think this should be understood as an admission of weakness by Trump, both substantively and politically. At a minimum, Trump wants the public to think that he’s considering relaxing his mass deportation regime at exactly the moment when Congress has given him tens of billions of additional dollars for it. And MAGA personalities don’t like this at all. Today we’re discussing all this with journalist and historian Garrett Graff, who has a new piece up on his Substack, Doomsday Scenario, about the coming ICE crackdown and the horrors we should expect from it. Garrett, thanks for coming on.

Garrett Graff: Thanks so much for having me. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you, Greg.

Sargent: A few weeks back, Trump floated the idea that farmworkers and hospitality industry workers might be spared deportations. This generated a huge backlash, after which he backed off and reiterated that all undocumented immigrants must be thrown out of the country. Yet on July 4, at a rally, Trump again floated the idea. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (audio voiceover): People have worked for a farm, on a farm for 14, 15 years, and they get thrown out pretty viciously and.… We can’t do it. We got to work with the farmers and people that have hotels and leisure properties too. We’re going to work with them, and we’re going to work very strong and smart, and we’re going to put you in charge. We’re going to make you responsible. And I think that that’s going to make a lot of people happy. Now, serious radical right people, who I also happen to like a lot, they may not be quite as happy—but they’ll understand, won’t they? Do you think so?

Sargent: Now, I don’t buy that Trump will really go through with this, but he wants to be seen as entertaining it, and he knows MAGA wants a policy that’s widely reviled by the public. That’s a display of weakness. Your thoughts?

Graff: This is at least the second time that he has floated, in some way, the idea that there would be large categories of potential workers who would be exempted from this mass deportation. So Trump was inclined to start to roll back this “Everybody goes” mentality. And then Stephen Miller stepped in and said, No, no, no, we’re going to keep this going. And in fact what we’re, what we’ve seen in these last couple of weeks—particularly the aggressive ICE deportation and seizure tactics—really stem from Stephen Miller going to ICE leadership and saying, Hey, we got to do this more quickly, more aggressively. You guys aren’t meeting my hopes and dreams. So not only do I feel like this represents an important sign of weakness in the unpopularity of this policy, but I also think it represents a secondary weakness about just how much Donald Trump is actually in control of his own administration. Who is the real president? Who is the real decision-maker on immigration policy? Is it Donald Trump, or is it Stephen Miller?

Sargent: Well, Stephen Miller certainly is going to have a huge budget to carry out his vision. The Republicans just passed a bill that appropriates an extraordinary $45 billion for ICE detention. It also includes a huge explosion of hiring of ICE agents. You wrote in your piece that we aren’t prepared for how deeply dangerous it’ll be to have a massively paramilitary force of this size suddenly scaled up and given these vast new powers. Can you talk about that?

Graff: The reality is that no law enforcement organization can grow quickly—not even a healthy one. And you talk to almost anyone who’s familiar with criminal justice in the history of policing in the United States, and they can rattle off for you exactly the agencies that have gone down this path of quick hiring surges for political reasons: Miami in the 1980s; the Metropolitan Police Department, Class of 1989, in Washington, D.C., where Mayor Marion Barry tried to actually double the size of the force in a single year. Both of those agencies saw enormous tidal waves of corruption and criminality and misconduct by their officers in the years that followed, as did the Border Patrol. The reason is when you’re trying to hire that quickly, all of your guardrails are removed. Agencies end up lowering their hiring requirements. They end up lowering their training standards. They end up lowering their supervision and field training standards. And when you’re growing that quickly in an organization, you have people who are field trainers, who are supervisors, who are higher-level officials, who are pushed up in the promotion ranks faster than they should be.

Now, ICE is actually even more uniquely vulnerable to these problems than almost any other federal law enforcement agency. It already has some of the lowest hiring standards in federal law enforcement. It already has one of the shortest training periods in federal law enforcement. It already has some of the lowest educational requirements of any federal law enforcement agency. And I think, also, we have never seen an agency go through a hiring spree at this point as politicized and partisan and authoritarian as ICE. And that’s what really, really worries me.

Sargent: Well, I want to underscore here that every single thing that comes out of this administration, whether it’s Trump or Stephen Miller … everything they’re saying screams to ICE agents that they are unshackled, right? Whether it’s Stephen Miller telling ICE officials in private that they’ve got to hit these supercharged new arrest quotas.… MAGA personalities in particular are absolutely salivating for the very conflict, the very clashes you are discussing there. They really just cannot wait for these not-very-well-trained ICE agents who are just used to kicking people around as if they’re just dirty migrants getting loosed. They’re really, really, really excited about it—viscerally. So they’re very unhappy about Trump floating this idea of sparing farmworkers. Let’s listen to a couple. First, here’s major MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, who confirms that MAGA won’t like it one little bit. Listen to this, courtesy of Media Matters.

Charlie Kirk (audio voiceover): Now, this is not by any means a knock on President Trump. It is a knock on people that are trying to pressure President Trump and pressure him hard. We don’t know any of the details, but President Trump did say that the radical right people that he has a soft spot for wouldn’t like this. Hello? Hi. I’m one of those radical right people, and I want to know what I’m not going to like. Because of all the different stuff that’s in front of us, if you want to break our coalition, go and push amnesty. That right there would be a complete collapse of everything that we have worked for. Everything.

Sargent: I love the way he can only blame people who are pressuring Trump and not Trump himself—because that would presumably be too much for his audience to bear. But that aside, this idea that not deporting migrant workers would break the MAGA coalition, as Kirk puts it, is really telling. A large chunk of MAGA wants every single undocumented immigrant deported, but some around Trump know that’s a political disaster. That doesn’t seem bridgeable. It’s a schism that isn’t going away. Garrett, what do you think?

Graff: Yeah. And I think that this also has to do with the challenge of a lot of Donald Trump’s promises, which is the unreality of that which plays well at rallies versus the actual implementation of thoughtful policy in America. Every single person who knows anything about the U.S. economy, who heard Donald Trump promise these mass deportations and immigration enforcement during the campaign knew that this was exactly the problem that was going to come up. Pick whatever number you actually believe is the right number: 10 million, 13 million, more or less in terms of undocumented immigrants who are here. That’s a pretty big chunk of the U.S. workforce, a pretty big chunk of people who actually legally pay taxes and contribute to the U.S. economy year in and year out. And you can’t just remove them in the way that I think the magical thinking of the MAGA rally crowd believes—because they are literally doing jobs that Americans will not do for similar pay. And if you are Donald Trump realizing that you basically won the presidency based on the unhappiness around inflation that your predecessor experienced post-Covid, you’re really terrified about the inflationary pressures of immigration enforcement and, by the way, tariffs, which is the other thing that you watch Donald Trump hem and haw over the difference between what he’s willing to promise in rally snippets and Oval Office snippets versus what he is actually able to accomplish and wants to accomplish.

Sargent: Well, there was a second MAGA person who really put it out there in a way that really underscores your point. It’s from MAGA media figure Michael Knowles. Listen to this, again, courtesy of Media Matters.

Michael Knowles (audio voiceover): I think this could be a perilous objective for him. I don’t think this is necessarily the right course to go down. I see why. I see why he is going down it, because he’s got friends, especially in the business community who say, I’m losing all my workers. Go after the illegals who aren’t workers. Go after the illegals who are just sucking off welfare. Go after the workers who are criminals. Go after the workers with the face tattoos. Go at 11 million to 16 million illegal aliens in this country. If you want to actually start to rectify that situation, you can’t just deport the ones with face tattoos. You do kind of have to deport abuela.

Sargent: Note that Knowles openly declares that Trump is going after people who are not gang members. They’re grandmothers. Knowles just says, Well, that’s good. This is exactly what MAGA wants: deporting grandmothers. I guess, points for honesty or something, Garrett?

Graff: Yeah. And this is also the challenge of what we have watched ICE unfold and as it has turbocharged immigration. ICE is an agency that is coming up on 20 years old at this point. And in both Democratic administrations and Republican administrations, it has done good work. In the Obama years … Obama’s ICE actually deported more people than George W. Bush’s administration, but what you saw was ICE focusing on actual legit criminals: gang members, cartel members, people who were actually here doing bad things. And the honest answer is that’s not a huge number. I’m not saying ICE was absolutely perfect in the Obama years. I’m not saying it was absolutely perfect in the Biden years. I’m not saying there weren’t hard and emotional cases during either of those years—but there were frameworks of prosecutorial discretion that really saw people, and leadership and officers focused on deporting actually bad people. But those people are hard to find and locate, and there aren’t that many of them. And so the moment you begin to turn this dial up to say, We need 3,000 people a day, 4,000 people a day, 5,000 people a day that we’re arresting and deporting, you need to get into deporting exactly the people who have been making headlines over the last couple of weeks: people who have lived in the U.S., made lives in the U.S. for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years in some cases, and have paid taxes, have raised families, have worked hard at their jobs, had careers, and are the people who the business community is really worried about targeting.

Sargent: So Garrett, I want to underscore the importance of what you said there, because I still think people miss it. The second Stephen Miller starts to shriek internally that he wants 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, a million arrests a day, they have to go after the grandmothers. There’s no other way to get the numbers up there. You cannot get the numbers up there unless you go after the grandmothers and all that they represent. You can’t get the numbers up by going after criminals, for two reasons. One, there aren’t enough of them. And two, it’s incredibly resource-intensive to go after the criminals. It’s less resource-intensive to go after the abuelas and to deport day laborers from a parking lot at Home Depot. And that is the fundamental box that Trump is in here and others around him who recognize, unlike Stephen Miller, that deporting every last migrant in this country is a political disaster for them.

Graff: Yeah. And an economic disaster. That’s the underlying argument to this: The reason that it’s bad politics is partially the emotional response of the families and communities that are being disrupted—and partly because it is going to tank the U.S. economy and particularly sectors in America where they rely on undocumented, under-the-table labor [such as] construction, hospitality, agriculture.

Sargent: MAGA views it as a civilizational emergency to have undocumented immigrants in this country at all, no matter how unthreatening. The broader public doesn’t view it that way. The broader public tolerates the presence of undocumented immigrants who are working jobs, who have been here a very long time, who have families, who are tied to communities. And this is, I think, the basic admission we saw from Trump up there: that that’s an unbridgeable schism and a Gordian knot that can’t really be cut very easily.

Graff: Yeah, and I think I would put, Greg, a slightly sharper point on what you just said, which is this is a schism between the white nationalist and white supremacist believers and wing of Donald Trump’s supporters and everyone else in America who views America’s diversity as its historic strength and not a weakness. This is a fundamental existential disagreement between the racist white supremacists and white nationalists who formed much too large of a core and foundation of support for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and everyone else in America who believes in just a different vision for a country that has always viewed immigration as its greatest strength.

Sargent: Really well put, Garrett Graff. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out his podcast, Long Shadow. Garrett, thanks so much for coming on with us, man.

Graff: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Most Americans would agree that immigrants have made a positive contribution to the U.S. economy throughout our nation’s history.

But legal immigration might be more vital to our economy today than ever before. That is the result of an unavoidable demographic reality: Like that of every other industrialized nation, our population is aging quickly. Roughly 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day, but nowhere near that number of native-born Americans are entering the workforce.

This raises a challenge to the Trump administration’s goal of achieving and maintaining 3 percent economic growth, increasing wages and lowering federal budget deficits. To achieve that level of growth, we will need two things: an increasing labor force and higher productivity on the part of working Americans. Artificial intelligence and robotics will provide a profound boost to productivity — just as farm tractors, computers and the internet propelled growth. But we will still need smart and willing workers because our country’s declining birth rates deplete the pool of available domestic labor.

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Our group, Unleash Prosperity, examined the economic and demographic effects of immigrants on American society, using the latest census data. We found that the U.S. economy is already super dependent on immigrants. Over the past decade, just under half of all new civilian workers, almost 6 million, have been immigrants. The majority of them entered the country legally.

Here is an even more jaw-dropping statistic on the need for expanded visas: Because of our inverted population pyramid, immigrants will contribute virtually all of the net increase in the American workforce over the next two decades. Without continued immigration, the U.S. workforce would start shrinking.

One underappreciated advantage of immigrants is that a disproportionate number come to this country at the start of their working years. They are twice as likely to be in the prime working ages of 18 to 64 than native-born Americans. Only a small percentage of immigrants arrive in the United States during their retirement years. We are mostly importing instant workers. This is why immigrants are a valuable demographic safety valve.

Many Trump voters worry that immigrants might take jobs from U.S.-born blue-collar workers, and there is no doubt that in some occupations there is a crowding-out effect.

But economy-wide, there is no evidence that natives lose jobs because of immigrants. There are nearly 8 million job openings in the U.S. today, and that number might increase in the years ahead as retirements accelerate.

Our study also found that today’s immigrants — and their children — are prodigious creators of jobs and businesses. Most of these businesses are small, with a handful of employees, often family members.

But some are astonishingly successful, hiring thousands of American workers. We calculated that just under half of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States were started by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.

Of the “Magnificent Seven” U.S. firms — which together are worth more than all of the companies in Europe — three are led by immigrants. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, was born in South Africa. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is from Taiwan. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, is from India.

One prominent example of the United States importing the best and brightest is found in sports. The last seven MVP awards in the National Basketball Association — the award for being the best player in the world — have gone to foreign-born athletes, including Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), Joel Embiid(Cameroon) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada).

Most immigrants won’t be superstar athletes or shooting rockets off to Mars. But most will contribute and help ensure that the United States retains its global supremacy in the decades ahead.

If we are smart enough to let them come.

With a cash infusion of around $150 billion toward immigration enforcement and border security in last week’s budget bill, congressional Republicans handed the Trump administration the resources needed to carry out its mass deportation policy. The intended result is as aggressive as it is likely transformative: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is slated to become the largest law enforcement agency in the country as dozens of new detention centers spring up to hold hundreds of thousands of immigrants awaiting expulsion.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is slated to become the largest law enforcement agency in the country

In the six months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, there has been a surge in ICE raids, detentions and removals. The majority of targets in this increase are not the hardened criminals that MAGA supporters and administration officials claim. Shifts in policy have already stripped hundreds of thousands of immigrants of their legal protections to remain in the country. But the wide-ranging sweeps ICE has launched in churches, at farms and in Home Deport parking lots still haven’t resulted in enough arrests to satisfy White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has spent weeks insisting that more dedicated resources are needed to meet his goal of 3,000 arrests per day.

Republicans gave Miller the tools he wants when they passed their budget reconciliation bill Thursday. The two largest buckets of funding in the act provide $45 billion each toward building Trump’s border wall and vastly expanding America’s immigration detention capacity. By comparison, that’s more than 13 times the current annual ICE budget for detention ($3.4 billion) and more than five times the entire annual budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons ($8.6 billion).

An estimate from the American Immigration Council determines that if the money allocated is spread out to roughly $14 billion per year, then it would be enough for ICE to maintain around 116,000 beds. At present, the agency’s budget supports it holding about 41,000 detainees. Notably, though, those capacity figures assume that every detainee is granted a bed. There are reports of inhumane conditions in existing detention centers, where there were 56,000 immigrants in custody as of June 15. In other words, we could easily see the number of detainees more than double to fill the expanded capacity in hastily built detention centers.

Once this new funding hits ICE’s accounts, it will likely be spent as quickly as possible — with little oversight for how it’s doled out. The New York Times reported in April that ICE has already asked contractors for “proposals to provide new detention facilities, transportation, security guards, medical support and other administrative services worth as much as $45 billion over the next two years.” Much of that money will go toward private companies contracted to build and run these facilities, some of which have been major political backers for Trump and the GOP.

Beyond the funding for detention, there’s more money still. An analysis from the Washington Office on Latin America notes that ICE will also be getting $15 billion devoted toward physically removing migrants from the country. (Whether that is to their country of origin or some random third state is apparently a matter for the administration to decide, according to a recent Supreme Court decision.) Another $16.2 billion will be for the Department of Homeland Security to hire new ICE, Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents. About $8 billion of that will be for ICE to hire 8,500 new officers with another $860 million for paying recruitment and retention bonuses and $600 million for expanding the agency’s hiring capacity.

Already investors can see that the potential fiscal returns for exploiting human suffering are higher than they’ve been in over 150 years

Local and state officers are getting in on the gold rush, with $3.5 billion dedicated toward compensating states for detaining noncitizens and $10 billion to reimburse border states for hardening their borders. Given how eagerly sheriff’s offices and police departments compete for federal funding for other programs, it’s likely that many will leap at the chance to share in this bonanza.

Indeed, the keenest horror is that there’s now such a clear financial incentive to be in the deportation business. Catching and deporting migrants is set to be a growth industry, and the urge to see a return on the investment will help keep the machine moving. The current private prison pipeline will pale in comparison to the churn that will be needed to keep these camps filled with not just the undocumented, but the denaturalized and newly stateless, victims of the administration’s efforts to deny birthright citizenship and strip their political enemies of their rights. It will be the job of the newly hired ICE agents to find the people to transform into numbers on their monthly quota report.

Already investors can see that the potential fiscal returns for exploiting human suffering are higher than they’ve been in over 150 years. As of last month, according to The Associated Press, “CoreCivic’s stock has risen in price by 56% and Geo’s by 73%” since Trump’s win last year. Those numbers are only likely to increase as a flood of cash comes gushing into the gulf between morality and maximized profits.

It’s worth noting that this is all still in the realm of potential outcomes, despite the amount of money that will now be sloshing around the system. NBC News reported last month that ICE has been struggling to retain the agents it has, let alone expand the number it can hire. Moreover, filling those new billets wouldn’t happen overnight. A 2017 report from the DHS Office of the Inspector General noted with some skepticism that to hire 10,000 new ICE agents as Trump wanted even then, there’d need to be at least 500,000 applicants. But the money that Congress has now authorized means that Miller’s dreams at least have the potential to be actualized.

Those funds Republicans have so thoughtlessly turned over in exchange for lower tax rates are now poised to transform America. More crops will rot on the vines as ICE raids become a more regular occurrence and the number of people doing the work dwindles. It’s the wrongful deportations like that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and so many others that have drawn most of our focus to date. But it’s the supposed successes that this bill enables that will test our character as a nation.

From 2011 to 2013, I commanded the New York City Police Department’s 6th Precinct, which covers Greenwich Village. We had a team of plainclothes officers who went out looking for serious crimes in progress. Sometimes they worked out of a dilapidated unmarked van that looked like the one driven by the villain in The Silence of the Lambs. When things were slow, the team would arrest people who had slunk off from Bleecker Street to smoke weed on Minetta Lane. The sergeant who led these officers had come down from the Bronx, and he thought there was a certain justice in holding the Village’s nightlife crowd to the same standard we held Black teenagers in Kingsbridge Heights.

One evening in 2012, the team noticed a woman smoking in the shadows and decided to make an arrest. The officers placed her in handcuffs, led her to the van, and opened its back doors. At the other end of the cargo bay, a burly man sat on a milk crate in the dark, waiting. The woman went weak in the knees, her eyes filled with panic, and she groaned. At that point the sergeant realized that the prisoner had no idea who these officers were. She was helpless and she was terrified.

Something like this scene has been playing out across America lately. Under orders from Donald Trump’s White House, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is aiming to deport 1 million immigrants a year, and to make 3,000 arrests a day. Agents have detained farmhands and meat processors; garment and construction workers; graduate students; the mayor of Newark, New Jersey; and people who turn out to be completely innocent. But if immigration enforcement is more aggressive and visible than in the past, it is also more anonymous: ICE allows its agents to conduct operations in plain clothes and to cover their faces. Social media is flooded with images of masked men forcing people into unmarked cars.

This approach looks scary. It is scary. And it’s a grave mistake. In keeping with the values of the local police, the federal government should prohibit the wearing of masks by its officers and require them to properly identify themselves. These are the minimal requirements of policing a free state—regardless of how you feel about the administration’s stance on immigration. You can support ambitious deportation targets without sanctioning anonymous policing.

The main reason federal agents give for wearing masks is their fear of doxxing: the practice of sharing a person’s identity and contact information with the malicious intent of targeting them for harassment, threats, and possibly violence. Federal agents and their families deserve privacy and safety, but the government already has a means of protecting them: It can enforce the laws against harassment and threats, online or in person. Or Congress could pass an existing bill that explicitly makes doxxing federal law-enforcement agents illegal.

At any rate, everyone in government today is vulnerable to doxxing, including countless public servants who have no option to hide their identity as they work. Should a pool of judges issue anonymous verdicts? Should legislators pass bills by secret ballot? The answers are obvious. Wearing a badge is thought to require, and should require, more bravery than serving on a state assembly. Our police should be the (literal) face of the nation’s courage, unafraid to show the public who they are.

Perhaps most important, wearing masks could expose federal agents, local police, and the public to physical dangers that make the risks of doxxing seem minor in comparison. Armed, masked men appear sinister, even predatory. Beyond obscuring the facial expressions we use for cues about whether a person is a threat, masks are a marker of criminals looking to intimidate their prey while avoiding identification. This is why the ski mask is a cultural trope of the armed robber or terrorist. It is also why masked protesters undermine their own causes; the masks arouse deep suspicion, as bystanders may assume the protesters are just waiting for an opportune moment to break the law. Nor is that a baseless assumption: In my experience, masked protesters sometimes are opportunistic lawbreakers.

As ICE agents rack up arrests on the road to 1 million deportations, someone will inevitably, instinctively fight back against the masked men forcing them into a car, not because they want to escape law enforcement but because they don’t know whom they are trying to escape from in the first place, and they legitimately fear for their safety. As a former police officer, I can tell you that my first reaction to unidentified men in masks converging on me or someone nearby would be to take cover and prepare to fight.

Another possible hazard is that masked, unidentified ICE agents could be mistaken by local police for armed felons committing a robbery or an abduction. Misidentified police officers taking enforcement action in plain clothes or off duty have been killed by fellow officers with a tragic regularity. Perhaps most dangerous of all, as ICE normalizes mask wearing, it creates the conditions for violent criminals to pass as police while escaping identification. In fact, criminals have already started to impersonate ICE agents.

Many people on the left, perennially skeptical of how our nation is policed, think masking by federal agents is wrong. But so does the right-libertarian CATO Institute, which recently published an argument critical of mask wearing. It asked, “At what point will we as a nation find ourselves with a secret police?” A former FBI agent and a former Department of Homeland Security attorney have also spoken up against masking.

Police departments throughout the country understand these risks and require their officers to be clearly identifiable by face, name, and agency. Until earlier this century, the NYPD restricted its officers’ winter headwear to an archaic mouton hat and earmuffs. In a nod to modernity, the NYPD relaxed this rule, allowing officers to wear a balaclava on patrol if the temperature was expected to drop below freezing. But the accompanying regulations clearly state that the balaclava must fully expose the officer’s face; with exceptions for the protective equipment worn by emergency-service officers during tactical operations, as well as for the use of gas masks, the NYPD has never permitted officers to obscure their face. In the same vein, except during undercover operations, all NYPD officers are required to “courteously and clearly” provide their name, rank, and shield number to anyone who requests it, either verbally or via a preprinted card with the information.

The driving principle here is obvious: In a free society, people should know who is policing them. To codify this sentiment in the law, New York legislators have proposed a ban on mask wearing by ICE agents, and California legislators have put forward a bill that would ban federal, state, and local police from wearing masks when interacting with the public. (The California bill exempts members of SWAT teams conducting tactical operations if a mask could reduce exposure to heat, fire, chemicals, and contaminants.) The legislation addresses a crucial issue, but it exemplifies the overkill of our times: We shouldn’t need a law to ensure a basic feature of transparent policing. Federal agencies should adopt this policy as a matter of course.

As a person who served as a police officer for 23 years, I never doubted that I practiced a noble profession. It is noble work in part because officers willingly take real risks for the sake of the greater good. When my boys were young, I used to tell them that I couldn’t guarantee that I would come home safe at the end of a shift—only that, if I were injured, it would be for a reason they could forever be proud of.

Hiding your face from the public as a federal agent undermines the legitimacy of our nation’s police, and can be mistaken for cowardice. Although the risks of showing your face as you police America’s streets are not negligible, they’re worth taking, because the consequences of concealment are more dire. This is why the hazards of policing are morally different from those of being, say, a lumberjack, even though felling trees is statistically more dangerous than making arrests. In policing a free society, some of the risks arise from protecting freedom itself, so even if you can reduce those risks, you often shouldn’t.

Descending on a person in public, laying hands on them, and taking them to a distant prison is a naked expression of state power. For it to be tolerated in a democracy committed to an inalienable right to liberty, it must be just that: naked. It cannot be done by shadowy, masked agents. That evening in Greenwich Village, in the quest for a weed arrest, my plainclothes sergeant would have been within his rights to haul off his prisoner in an unmarked van. But he also knew that much more was at issue than his prerogative to enforce the law. “We’re the NYPD,” he told the woman in handcuffs. “We’ll wait here until I call a marked car to the scene. Uniformed officers will explain who we are, and what’s going to happen. You’re safe with us.”

They say the cruelty is the point.
Inspecting cages that would spark outrage were zoos to put apes in them, Donald Trump last week expressed delight with Florida’s new deportee camp.

The instantly dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” was “so professional, so well done”, he said. “We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison.” Lest there be ambiguity, the White House posted a picture of Trump flanked by alligators wearing caps with the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) logo declaring: “Make America safe again!”

The nation of immigrants’ shift to mass deportation is among the most anticipated turns in US history. Trump has for years compared undocumented migrants to animals. During the 2024 campaign, he even claimed that Haitians living in a small town in Ohio were eating other people’s pets. Now he is planning a nationwide apparatus of camps that can incarcerate 116,000 deportees at a time and process a million people a year. The Supreme Court last month removed lower courts’ ability to put stays on Trump’s actions, which means ICE agents can snatch pretty much whomever they like off the streets.

Welcome — or rather, not welcome — to America 2025. Joe Biden used to say that if you want to know a country’s values, study its budget. The “big, beautiful bill” that Trump signed into law on July 4 cannot be misread.

The law slashes spending on healthcare, education, clean energy, food assistance, medical research and disease prevention. The same bill lifts ICE’s budget to an estimated $37.5bn a year. That is higher than Italy’s entire defence budget and just below Canada’s. ICE will now double the number of agents in the field. What Washington is set to spend on detention centres alone is greater than the USAID budget that was gutted earlier this year.

Though there is nothing glacial about it, Trump is ushering in America’s ICE age. He has catapulted ICE into America’s best-funded law enforcement agency — and increasingly beyond accountability. The agency’s in-house watchdog was scrapped earlier this year. For the time being, the lower courts can do little to rein it in. The Supreme Court last year gave Trump sweeping immunity from “official” acts he takes as president. That makes ICE Trump’s de facto private army — his security state within the state.

Most checks on Trump’s power are wilting. Congress is providing no oversight. Indeed, the body is modelling constitutional demise. Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator least aligned with Trump, said the bill was bad for America after having just voted for it. She hoped that the House of Representatives would water it down. It did not. Earlier this year, Murkowski admitted: “We’re all afraid . . . I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.” Her fear enabled Trump’s bill to pass by one vote. The land of the free is also the home of the brave, says “The Star-Spangled Banner”. If a US senator is too scared to oppose Trump, what could she expect of others?

As it happens, the streets are alive with Americans with far less to lose than Murkowski. They see a US president assuming kingly powers to declare whole categories of people as “alien enemies” under a French revolutionary-era law. A large majority of those detained by ICE have no criminal record. The agency has bluntly refused to comply with another law that gives members of Congress at-will access to its detention centres. Lawmakers must now provide 72 hours’ notice. Theoretically, lower courts could insist that ICE follow the law. They could also instruct ICE agents to remove their face masks and show their IDs. But the Supreme Court has told Trump he can ignore such rulings.

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They say the cruelty is the point.
Inspecting cages that would spark outrage were zoos to put apes in them, Donald Trump last week expressed delight with Florida’s new deportee camp.
The instantly dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” was “so professional, so well done”, he said. “We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison.” Lest there be ambiguity, the White House posted a picture of Trump flanked by alligators wearing caps with the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) logo declaring: “Make America safe again!”
The nation of immigrants’ shift to mass deportation is among the most anticipated turns in US history. Trump has for years compared undocumented migrants to animals. During the 2024 campaign, he even claimed that Haitians living in a small town in Ohio were eating other people’s pets. Now he is planning a nationwide apparatus of camps that can incarcerate 116,000 deportees at a time and process a million people a year. The Supreme Court last month removed lower courts’ ability to put stays on Trump’s actions, which means ICE agents can snatch pretty much whomever they like off the streets.
Welcome — or rather, not welcome — to America 2025. Joe Biden used to say that if you want to know a country’s values, study its budget. The “big, beautiful bill” that Trump signed into law on July 4 cannot be misread.
The law slashes spending on healthcare, education, clean energy, food assistance, medical research and disease prevention. The same bill lifts ICE’s budget to an estimated $37.5bn a year. That is higher than Italy’s entire defence budget and just below Canada’s. ICE will now double the number of agents in the field. What Washington is set to spend on detention centres alone is greater than the USAID budget that was gutted earlier this year.
Though there is nothing glacial about it, Trump is ushering in America’s ICE age. He has catapulted ICE into America’s best-funded law enforcement agency — and increasingly beyond accountability. The agency’s in-house watchdog was scrapped earlier this year. For the time being, the lower courts can do little to rein it in. The Supreme Court last year gave Trump sweeping immunity from “official” acts he takes as president. That makes ICE Trump’s de facto private army — his security state within the state.
Most checks on Trump’s power are wilting. Congress is providing no oversight. Indeed, the body is modelling constitutional demise. Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator least aligned with Trump, said the bill was bad for America after having just voted for it. She hoped that the House of Representatives would water it down. It did not. Earlier this year, Murkowski admitted: “We’re all afraid . . . I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.” Her fear enabled Trump’s bill to pass by one vote. The land of the free is also the home of the brave, says “The Star-Spangled Banner”. If a US senator is too scared to oppose Trump, what could she expect of others?
As it happens, the streets are alive with Americans with far less to lose than Murkowski. They see a US president assuming kingly powers to declare whole categories of people as “alien enemies” under a French revolutionary-era law. A large majority of those detained by ICE have no criminal record. The agency has bluntly refused to comply with another law that gives members of Congress at-will access to its detention centres. Lawmakers must now provide 72 hours’ notice. Theoretically, lower courts could insist that ICE follow the law. They could also instruct ICE agents to remove their face masks and show their IDs. But the Supreme Court has told Trump he can ignore such rulings.
The only realistic block to Trump’s untrammeled power is thus the same nine-judge court that has already given him multiple green lights.
The Supreme Court is set to hear Trump’s objection to the 14th Amendment that declared anyone born on US soil to be a citizen. Trump has been musing openly about revoking the citizenship of naturalised Americans, including Zohran Mamdani, the Uganda-born American who last month swept the New York Democratic mayoral primary.

The court is also evaluating challenges to Trump’s declared right to impose tariffs at will, usurp Congress’s power of the purse, deem anyone he sees fit as “anti-national” and use emergency powers to put troops on the streets. It is a fair bet that Trump will either get his way or exploit the court’s silence. On almost every petition to date, the Supreme Court has ceded to his lawyers.

But the most fateful challenge concerns Trump’s power to decide who is a US citizen.
Should he win that case, America could no longer be counted as a democracy. It took years for Viktor Orbán to consolidate strongman rule in Hungary. Trump is trying to pull off an equivalent system-change within months. Perhaps speed will be his undoing.

In the meantime, how would the US military react in clashes with protesters? Would the Supreme Court turn a blind eye to blood on the streets? Is there any category of person whom Trump could not put in a cage? That we do not know the answers to any of these questions is alarming.

LISTEN TO AUDIO:

Mom-and-pop stores in Kansas City catering to recent immigrants are facing a sharp downturn, with sales falling since Trump took office. Owners say customers are scared and holding onto their cash.

California’s agricultural industry is absolutely massive. The state grows about a third of the country’s vegetables, three-quarters of its fruits and nuts, and employs nearly 900,000 farmworkers each year.

The mood among those farmworkers these days? Fearful.

Early last month, federal immigration authorities detained dozens of farmworkers on or near farmland in Southern California. President Donald Trump has recently walked backthe idea of continuing immigration actions on farms.

But that fear remains.

Ever since those June immigration raids came very close to where she worked, strawberry picker Itzel and her three daughters have tried to avoid leaving their home. She lives just north of Los Angeles.

Itzel isn’t her real name. We’re using a pseudonym because she fears being deported — she didn’t come to the U.S. legally.

“I am afraid to go out,” she said. “I haven’t gone to do laundry for two weeks now. I haven’t gone to bring lunch for my girls. I have had to cancel appointments.”

Itzel has lived in California for almost 20 years. Her daughters are citizens, and she has a temporary work permit. But she fears being detained and possibly removed from the country.

She skipped work at a local berry farm right after the raids, but just for a couple of days. As a single mother, she said she’s had no choice but to report back to the farm — she needs the money.

Many of her coworkers, however, aren’t taking that risk.

”Well, almost half of the people — let’s say 20 were working in total — and just one day, only eight of us showed up,” said Itzel. “A lot of them have completely stopped going to work. They are no longer working.”

According to government surveys, 51% of California crop workers self-identify as undocumented. Experts say the real percentage is likely significantly higher.

And like Itzel, most have lived in the U.S. for a while.

”We’re not getting an influx of new young workers. So what’s really happening is most of our workforce has been here for a long time,” said Ali Hill, an agricultural economist at UC Berkeley.

Most California farmworkers make minimum wage — $16.50 an hour. The H-2A guest worker visa program requires employers to pay nearly $20 an hour.

“Then, you also need to take into account that employers have to pay for H-2A worker housing, all of their food, all of their transportation costs from their home country,” Hill said.

Many California farmers are instead exploring labor-automating machinery or considering switching to labor-saving crops, like tree nuts or corn, Hill said. That means that, soon, you may see less labor-intensive California crops like strawberries and tomatoes in the grocery store.

Somewhat ironically, Mexico may actually be the biggest beneficiary of any agricultural immigration crackdown. Mexican farms already supply 70% of the vegetables and 50% of the fresh fruit imported to the U.S. and grow many of the same crops as California.

California farmers say paying higher wages to attract U.S. citizens to farmworking jobs simply isn’t realistic in a global economy.

”If I pay people more, if I even could raise the price of my tomatoes, there would be big companies in this country that would look overseas to get their products,” said a northern California farmer who requested anonymity out of fear of Trump administration reprisals. “I mean it’s happening already.”

He says of the 40 or so farmworkers he employs, he thinks about five or six are probably undocumented. They help cultivate his almonds, rice, sunflowers, and tomatoes.

”I have a whole bunch of really intelligent, hard-working people working here on this farm that that, you know, I’m proud to have them,” he said. “And I know them, know their families, for a long time.”

In Florida, where the governor has promised to lead the immigration crackdown, increased arrests mirror the national trend, especially for those with no criminal background.

In an effort to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have shot up this year.

Nationally, ICE arrests have more than doubled compared to last year, according to a New York Times analysis. The rate is sitting at an average of 666 arrests per day, compared to fewer than 300 per day in 2024.

Looking at Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed to lead the way in the immigration crackdown, those numbers have tripled.

About 64 immigration arrests a day have been made statewide since Jan. 20 of this year. That’s compared to 20 arrests a day in 2024.

And it makes Florida only second in the nation when it comes to the daily arrest rate. Texas leads with 142 daily arrests.

The ICE data, obtained by The Deportation Data Project, displays individual arrests through June 10. WUSF condensed this information to show weekly and monthly arrests in the following graphs.

Another look at the numbers shows that more and more people with no criminal background are being arrested. At the beginning of June, noncriminal arrests have surpassed the arrests of people with criminal charges or convictions.

That was also the case for the week of April 21, during a statewide immigration crackdown called Operation Tidal Wave.

The weeklong operation resulted in what the state called “1,120 criminal illegal alien arrests — the largest number in a single state in one week in ICE’s history.”

However, not everyone swept up in the operation had a criminal record.

The state said that 63% of those arrested had “existing criminal arrests or convictions.”

Note that that number includes arrests made by agencies other than ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (which is what the data represents), like U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service and ICE’s separate Homeland Security Investigations.

Operation Tidal Wave coincided with increased reports from immigration attorneys and advocates that people were being arrested at their government mandated check-ins.

On April 22, Heidy Sánchez, a Cuban mother, was separated from her 1-year-old daughter during her appointment at the Tampa ICE office and deported to Cuba within two days.

Sánchez, who is married to a U.S. citizen, was in the process of applying for permanent residency, or a green card. She was given a deportation order during a time when Cuba was not taking back its nationals.

Instead, she was given an I-220B Order of Supervision, which allowed her to live and work in the U.S. as long as she checked in periodically with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

People like her, who had no other violations on their record besides the immigration offense, were considered a low priority for deportation.

But in an effort to reach its deportation goals, the administration has broadened the types of immigrants who can be arrested, according to immigration experts.

Paul Chavez, an immigration attorney with the nonprofit law firm Americans for Immigrant Justice, said he’s received more reports from community members about ICE sightings in neighborhoods and at immigration court and offices.

“What we’ve seen is a pretty big increase in arrests of folks that would have not have been arrested under previous administrations, which I think gives light to any statements that there was going to be a priority for people who had committed crimes,” Chavez said.

In May, which is the most recent month with full data, noncriminal arrests have nearly doubled in the state.

Chavez pointed out that even arrests of people with criminal charges or convictions require further examination.

A report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that more than 90% of those booked by ICE were “neither violent nor property crime offenders.”

The most serious convictions, the report said, were “usually either an immigration offense, a traffic infraction or a nonviolent vice crime.”

“I think the data reveals that it’s not the worst of the worst,” Chavez said.

Last month, Maria Martinez, a 21-year-old from Sarasota, was arrested by local law enforcement for driving without a license and is being detained in Texas. In Florida, immigrants without legal status are not able to obtain a driver’s license.

Chavez said law enforcement presence has increased on Florida’s highways. Contracts called 287(g) agreements allow the state’s local law agencies to work with ICE on immigration enforcement. And the state leads the nation when it comes to those partnerships.

Immigrants are stopped for traffic infractions, taken into police custody and subsequently detained by ICE.

“So, now, you have somebody that’s been here 15 years, working, U.S. citizen children, no criminal background that gets picked up, and then placed in the deportation pipeline,” Chavez said.

A 27-year-old man with a rifle and tactical gear was killed Monday morning after exchanging fire with law enforcement officers at a Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, injuring several.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the man “opened fire at the entrance of the United States Border Patrol sector annex” and “Border Patrol agents and local police helped neutralize the shooter.”

The DHS spokesperson said two officers, including one shot in the knee, and a Border Patrol employee were injured. “All three have gone to the hospital. This is an ongoing investigation led by the FBI,” the spokesperson said.

McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez identified the suspected shooter as 27-year-old Ryan Luis Mosqueda. Rodriguez said at a news conference that Mosqueda was connected to a Michigan address and a vehicle with Michigan tags.

“He was loaded for bear,” the chief said, adding that “another rifle and other assaultive weapons” were found in the suspect’s car. Rodriguez said the suspect was able to shoot dozens of rounds of ammunition before quickly being killed by federal agents.

During the shooting, one officer with the McAllen police was “struck by a round,” according to Rodriguez. “He got hit in the knee — he’s going to be fine,” the chief said.

“Border Patrol agents returned fire” and killed the suspect, the chief told reporters. The exchange of bullets included dozens of rounds, Rodriguez said.

He added that officials “have no reason to believe at this time that there are any more particular threats in this area.”

The FBI is leading the investigation, Rodriguez said in response to unanswered questions about a possible motive for Monday’s shooting.

“There is not enough known,” Rodriguez said. “When someone drives onto a parking lot and opens fire, there is some premeditation involved.”

The suspect’s vehicle was spray-painted with the phrase “Cordis Die,” which appears in a “Call of Duty” video game, according to a local law enforcement official and a source familiar with the matter.

Rodriguez said Mosqueda was reported missing from the nearby town of Weslaco, Texas, early Monday.

The Weslaco Police Department said in a statement later Monday that Jose Mosqueda told police his son, Ryan Mosqueda, missing around 3:48 a.m. Jose Mosqueda said his son, who was last seen about an hour earlier, had a mental deficiency, according to the statement, but no documents were provided to back up these claims.

The FBI’s San Antonio field office said in a statement on X that a federal investigation is ongoing but said it would not provide further details at this time.

The National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents Border Patrol employees, said in a statement, “We are thankful for the prayers for our agents and personnel. Targeted violence will not be tolerated and will be dealt with swiftly. Justice will be served. Our agents and law enforcement partners will not back down.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that the administration is “working with the appropriate federal agencies to get to the bottom of what happened.”

Monday’s shooting comes after several other violent incidents at federal immigration facilities and amid rising tensions throughout the country over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

On Friday, a local police officer was shot and several armed individuals were arrested at an incident near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, according to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.

And in Portland, Oregon, local police said they “observed a number of enforcement activities by federal law enforcement” on Friday outside another ICE facility, which has been the site of numerous protests in recent weeks.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche mentioned the two incidents on Saturday — calling them “attacks” on DHS facilities — and said on X that the Department of Justice has “zero tolerance for assaults on federal officers or property.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal officers and National Guard troops fanned out around a mostly empty Los Angeles park in a largely immigrant neighborhood on foot, horseback and military vehicles on Monday for about an hour before abruptly leaving, an operation that local officials said seemed designed to sow fear.

The Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t say whether anyone had been arrested during the brief operation at MacArthur Park. Federal officials did not respond to requests for comment about why the park was targeted or why the raid ended abruptly.

About 90 members of the California National Guard were present to protect immigration officers, defense officials said.

“What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,” said Mayor Karen Bass, who showed up at the park alongside activists.

She said there were children attending a day camp in the park who were quickly ushered inside to avoid seeing the troops. Still, Bass said an 8-year-old boy told her that “he was fearful of ICE.”

Federal officers descend on MacArthur Park
The operation occurred at a park in a neighborhood with large Mexican, Central American and other immigrant populations and is lined by businesses with signs in Spanish and other languages that has been dubbed by local officials as the “Ellis Island of the West Coast.”

Sprawling MacArthur Park has a murky lake ringed by palm trees, an amphitheater that hosts summer concerts and sports fields where immigrant families line up to play soccer in the evenings and on weekends. A thoroughfare on the east side is often crammed with food stands selling tacos and other delicacies, along with vendors speaking multiple languages and hawking T-shirts, toys, knickknacks and household items.

Among those who spoke with Bass were health care outreach workers who were working with homeless residents Monday when troops pointed guns at them and told them to get out of the park.

Photos show federal officers riding on horseback toward a mostly empty soccer field. Other heavily armed authorities stood guard around the area alongside armored vehicles.

“The world needs to see the troop formation on horses walking through the park, in search of what? In search of what? They’re walking through the area where the children play,” Bass said.

Eunisses Hernandez, a council member whose district includes MacArthur Park said “it was chosen as this administration’s latest target precisely because of who lives there and what it represents.”

Operation escalates Trump’s immigration crackdown
The operation in the large park about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of downtown LA included 17 Humvees, four tactical vehicles, two ambulances and the armed soldiers, defense officials said. It came after President Donald Trump deployed thousands of Guard members and active duty Marines to the city last month following protests over previous immigration raids.

Trump has stepped up efforts to realize his campaign pledge of deporting millions of immigrants in the United States illegally and shown a willingness to use the nation’s military might in ways other U.S. presidents have typically avoided.

In response to questions about the operation in MacArthur Park, the Department of Homeland Security said in an email that the agency would not comment on “ongoing enforcement operations.”

More than 4,000 California National Guard and hundreds of U.S. Marines have been deployed in Los Angeles since June — against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Last week, the military announced about 200 of those troops would be returned to their units to fight wildfires.

Newsom called the events at the park “a spectacle.”

Two defense officials told reporters that what happened at MacArthur Park on Monday was not a military operation but acknowledged that the size and scope of the Guard’s participation could make it look like one to the public. That is why the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details about the raid that were not announced publicly. The primary role of the service members would be to protect the immigration enforcement officers in case a hostile crowd gathered, one of the officials said.

“It’s just going to be more overt and larger than we usually participate in,” that official said.

Local officials say feds are sowing fear

“This morning looked like a staging for a TikTok video,” said Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president of the Los Angeles City Council, adding if Border Patrol wants to film in LA, “you should apply for a film permit like everybody else. And stop trying to scare the bejesus out of everybody who lives in this great city and disrupt our economy every day.”

Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said he received a credible tip about the operation Monday.

“It was a demonstration of escalation,” Newman said. “This was a reality TV spectacle much more so than an actual enforcement operation.”

Since federal agents have been making arrests at Home Depot parking lots and elsewhere in Los Angeles, Newman said fewer people have been going to the park and immigrant neighborhoods near the city’s downtown.

Betsy Bolte, who lives nearby, came to the park after seeing a military-style helicopter circling overhead.

She said it was “gut-wrenching” to witness what appeared to be a federal show of force on the streets of a U.S. city. “It’s terror and, you know, it’s ripping the heart and soul out of Los Angeles,” she said. “I am still in shock, disbelief, and so angry and terrified and heartbroken.”

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — After six 12-hour shifts milking cows, José Molina-Aguilar’s lone day off was hardly relaxing.

On April 21, he and seven co-workers were arrested on a Vermont dairy farm in what advocates say was one of the state’s largest-ever immigration raids.

“I saw through the window of the house that immigration were already there, inside the farm, and that’s when they detained us,” he said in a recent interview. “I was in the process of asylum, and even with that, they didn’t respect the document that I was still holding in my hands.”

Four of the workers were swiftly deported to Mexico. Molina-Aguilar, released after a month in a Texas detention center with his asylum case still pending, is now working at a different farm and speaking out.

“We must fight as a community so that we can all have, and keep fighting for, the rights that we have in this country,” he said.

Ryan Brissette, spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said agents initially responded to a report from a concerned citizen who saw two people carrying backpacks entering private farm property near the Canadian border. Agents apprehended one person at the scene and more during the ensuing search of the area, he said.

The owner of the farm declined to comment. But Brett Stokes, a lawyer representing the detained workers, said the raid sent shock waves through the entire Northeast agriculture industry.

“These strong-arm tactics that we’re seeing and these increases in enforcement, whether legal or not, all play a role in stoking fear in the community,” said Stokes, director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

That fear remains given the mixed messages coming from the White House. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the U.S. illegally, last month paused arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels. But less than a week later, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said worksite enforcement would continue.

Asked for updated comment Monday, the department repeated McLaughlin’s earlier statement.

“Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability,” she said.

Such uncertainty is causing problems in big states like California, where farms produce more than three-quarters of the country’s fruit and more than a third of its vegetables. But it’s also affecting small states like Vermont, where dairy is as much a part of the state’s identity as its famous maple syrup.

Nearly two-thirds of all milk production in New England comes from Vermont, where more than half the state’s farmland is dedicated to dairy and dairy crops. There are roughly 113,000 cows and 7,500 goats spread across 480 farms, according to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, which pegs the industry’s annual economic impact at $5.4 billion.

That impact has more than doubled in the last decade, with widespread help from immigrant labor. More than 90% of the farms surveyed for the agency’s recent report employed migrant workers.

Among them is Wuendy Bernardo, who has lived on a Vermont dairy farm for more than a decade and has an active application to stop her deportation on humanitarian grounds: Bernardo is the primary caregiver for her five children and her two orphaned younger sisters, according to a 2023 letter signed by dozens of state lawmakers.

Hundreds of Bernardo’s supporters showed up for her most recent check-in with immigration officials.

“It’s really difficult because every time I come here, I don’t know if I’ll be going back to my family or not,” she said after being told to return in a month.

Like Molina-Aguilar, Rossy Alfaro also worked 12-hour days with one day off per week on a Vermont farm. Now an advocate with Migrant Justice, she said the dairy industry would collapse without immigrant workers.

“It would all go down,” she said. “There are many people working long hours, without complaining, without being able to say, ‘I don’t want to work.’ They just do the job.”

LISTEN TO AUDIO:

NPR’s A Martinez speaks with journalist Paola Ramos about President Trump’s gains among Latino voters in 2024 and how ICE operations across the country could effect that support.

The Trump administration said Monday it will soon revoke the legal immigration status of more than 70,000 immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua, its latest effort to curtail humanitarian programs that allow foreigners to stay in the U.S. temporarily.

The Department of Homeland Security said it would terminate the longstanding Temporary Protected Status programs for Honduras and Nicaragua in early September, paving the way for those enrolled in the initiative to be at risk of deportation unless they have other legal means to remain in the U.S.

Roughly 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans — many of whom arrived in the 1990s — have work permits and deportation protections under the TPS policy, according to the official termination notices published by DHS on Monday.

Since it was established by Congress in 1990, the U.S. government has used TPS to give certain foreigners a temporary safe haven, if returning to their home countries is deemed too dangerous due to armed conflict, environmental disasters or other crises.

The Biden administration greatly expanded TPS, offering hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mainly from Haiti and Venezuela, the opportunity to apply for the program. But President Trump, who ran on mass deportation and hardline immigration policies, has sought to severely limit TPS, as his administration works towards what the president has promised will be the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history.

The administration has now moved to dismantle TPS programs for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Venezuela, dramatically expanding the pool of those eligible to be arrested and deported by federal immigration authorities.

While the administration’s efforts have faced legal challenges, the Supreme Court this spring let officials revoke the TPS protections of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants.

The TPS policies for Honduras and Nicaragua were first created in 1999, after Hurricane Mitch devastated parts of Central America, causing catastrophic floods and killing thousands.

In the official termination notices, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said TPS for both Honduras and Nicaragua was no longer warranted, arguing that conditions in the two countries had improved significantly and that they could receive their nationals.

“Temporary Protected Status, as the name itself makes clear, is an inherently temporary status,” both termination notices said.

Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada said the termination of TPS for Honduras and Nicaraguans would separate families and hurt U.S. businesses.

“These families have been here since the 1990s, working hard and contributing to our state and country for decades,” Cortez Masto said. “Sending innocent families back into danger won’t secure our border or make America safer.”

The Justice Department said on Monday that Trump officials would immediately begin the process of expelling Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the country again if he is released from custody next week on charges filed after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador in March.

That plan, laid out by a Justice Department lawyer at a hearing in Federal District Court in Maryland, directly contradicted a statement by the White House last month describing the possibility that the administration might re-deport Mr. Abrego Garcia as “fake news.”

At the hearing, Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the original civil case emerging from the wrongful deportation, expressed frustration at the government’s shifting statements about its plans to handle Mr. Abrego Garcia. The statements in court by the Justice Department lawyer, Jonathan Guynn, further muddied an already unclear picture of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s future after the administration abruptly returned him to the United States last month to face criminal charges.

At one point, Judge Xinis compared getting certain answers out of the government to “nailing Jell-O to a wall.” At another point, she described the “complete chaos” that had arisen from Mr. Abrego Garcia’s being “caught” between his civil case in Maryland and his criminal case in Federal District Court in Nashville.

Mr. Abrego Garcia is in custody in Nashville, where he has been indicted on charges of taking part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States. Even though a federal magistrate judge has said he can go free because he was not a flight risk or a danger to the community, his lawyers asked that he remain locked up for the moment, fearing that the administration might seek to deport him again.

There has been persistent confusion about what might happen to Mr. Abrego Garcia almost from the moment he was brought back from his erroneous expulsion to El Salvador.

Much of the confusion has stemmed from ambiguous and contradictory statements from the Trump administration and from what appears to be dueling views from the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security about how to handle the case.

When Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on June 6 that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been returned to the United States to face indictment, she insisted that he would be re-deported only after his criminal case was over.

“Upon completion of his sentence,” Ms. Bondi said, “we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador.”

But at a separate hearing in late June, Mr. Guynn told Judge Xinis that the administration planned to expel Mr. Abrego Garcia again — this time, not to El Salvador but to an unnamed third country.

In another puzzling move, top Justice Department officials have repeatedly insisted that they intend to try Mr. Abrego Garcia on the immigrant smuggling charges before seeking to expel him again. But the prosecutors handling his criminal case have offered a more ambiguous assessment.

They recently told the judge in Tennessee that while they planned to press forward with the criminal prosecution, officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees matters of immigration, “must follow their own process” in dealing with Mr. Abrego Garcia’s “immigration proceedings and potential deportation.”

The hearing in Maryland on Monday was convened so that Judge Xinis could consider, among other things, an emergency request by Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to bring him back to Maryland and to prevent him from being sent out of the country again until further notice.

Judge Xinis drilled down on the government’s plans, asking Mr. Guynn if the administration intended to wait until the criminal case was over to begin new deportation proceedings.

When Mr. Guynn told the judge that was not the administration’s plan, she asked him again: “So you’re not waiting until after the criminal trial?”

“That’s correct,” Mr. Guynn responded.

While Judge Xinis did not rule on the emergency request, she ordered the Justice Department to produce a witness from the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday to testify about its plans for Mr. Abrego Garcia.

The judge overseeing the criminal case, Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., is set to hold his own hearing in Tennessee on July 16 to determine whether Mr. Abrego Garcia should be freed and handed over to D.H.S. officials.

From the moment that Mr. Abrego Garcia was returned to U.S. soil, the Justice Department has maintained that his civil case was over. Department lawyers have argued that by bringing him back they have complied with orders from Judge Xinis — and from the Supreme Court — to facilitate his release from Salvadoran custody.

But Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have rejected that view, saying that the civil case remains alive. They have argued that even though the administration has obeyed part of the court orders by bringing their client back to the United States, they need to return him to Maryland to fully comply with the instructions from the Supreme Court.

Last week, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers made another request to Judge Xinis, asking her to permit them to revise their initial complaint with allegations that their client was tortured while in Salvadoran custody. In court papers, the lawyers described how Mr. Abrego Garcia was beaten, deprived of sleep and kept in the dark during his early weeks in El Salvador, when he was held at the megaprison known as CECOT.

Mr. Guynn said on Monday that the Justice Department planned to oppose the request to revise the complaint, saying that the torture allegations had not been brought in “good faith.”

Salvadoran officials have said for the first time that more than 130 Venezuelan migrants who have been detained for months in a megaprison in El Salvador remain under the responsibility of the United States, according to a court document filed Monday.

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The acknowledgment was contained in a filing by the migrants’ lawyers in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. It marks a significant contradiction to the Trump administration’s repeated claims that it lacked the authority to bring back the migrants because they are no longer in U.S. custody.

The court document included the Salvadoran government’s response to a United Nations inquiry on behalf of four families, the lawyers said, who have claimed that a relative was forcibly disappeared when the Trump administration secretly sent them from U.S. immigration detention centers to the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, in mid-March.

The Trump administration, which is paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to house the migrants for a year, has not released a list of the people who were sent to the prison that day.

In the filing submitted to U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, the Salvadoran government deferred responsibility for the relatives of the four families — and other migrants in their custody — to the Trump administration.

“The jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these people lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities,” the Salvadoran authorities said, according to the document.

“El Salvador said out loud what everyone knew: The United States is in charge of the Venezuelans shipped off in the middle of the night back in March,” said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and lead counsel in the case.

The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The legal case focuses on the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a centuries-old law that allows the government to circumvent legal due process for non-U. S. citizens who it determines are a national security threat and remove them from the country.

That law has previously been invoked exclusively during times of war. The Trump administration has argued that the migrants deported under the statute are members of the Venezuela-based gang “Tren de Aragua,” and asserted the gang is carrying out an “invasion” in the U.S. at the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

U.S. intelligence agencies, however, have determined that Maduro is not directing the gang.

In the court filing, the ACLU and its co-counsel, Democracy Forward Foundation, allege that the Trump administration was aware of the Salvadoran government’s statements to the United Nations and chose not to share the information with the court because U.S. officials are copied in the Salvadoran responses, which are dated in April.

“The documents filed with the court today show that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people,” said Skye Perryman, chief executive and president of Democracy Forward.

Federal courts in several states have temporarily halted deportations in their jurisdictions under the Alien Enemies Act. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit heard arguments in the case and appeared ready to back the Trump administration’s authority to invoke the law — potentially sending the case back to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that migrants deemed subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act be given sufficient time to legally contest their removal, but it has not ruled on whether Trump’s invocation of the law is legal.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss said Trump’s Jan. 20 proclamation declaring an invasion on the border cannot be used to prevent migrants from applying for asylum.

The Trump administration has brought back one migrant it sent to the Salvadoran prison: Kilmar Abrego García, a citizen of El Salvador, who was deported despite a court order preventing his removal. Administration officials called the move an administrative error but initially said it was unable to bring him back.

He was transferred back to the U.S. last month and charged with human smuggling. He has pleaded not guilty.

Stripping some naturalized Americans of citizenship is now a top priority of the U.S. Justice Department, according to a memorandum recently made public.

“President Trump and Attorney General (Pam) Bondi have directed the Civil Division to use its enforcement authorities to advance the administration’s policy objectives,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate explained in the June 11 directive.

Attorneys in the division are instructed to pursue civil actions to “denaturalize” those who “illegally procured” citizenship through fraudulent means. The “overall integrity of the naturalization program” will also be served by rescinding citizenship from those engaged in criminal activity.

“The benefits of civil denaturalization include the government’s ability to revoke the citizenship of individuals who engaged in the commission of war crimes, extrajudicial killings or other serious human rights abuses,” Shumate said.

The process would “remove naturalized criminals, gang members or, indeed, any individuals convicted of crimes who pose an ongoing threat to the United States; and to prevent convicted terrorists from returning to U.S. soil or traveling internationally on a U.S. passport.”

Given the Trump administration’s frequently contested claims that immigrants are criminals, this new directive has raised eyebrows once again.

“The directive marks a dramatic escalation in the federal government’s use of civil denaturalization, a rarely invoked legal mechanism that does not require criminal charges or a jury trial. Critics say it opens the door to political targeting and racial profiling under the guise of immigration enforcement,” according to Migrant Insider, an immigrant news Substack.

“The internal memo reflects a broader shift within the DOJ’s Civil Division from a defensive posture — typically representing the government in litigation — to an aggressive enforcement arm charged with advancing ideological objectives through civil law.”

The denaturalization effort is one of five areas targeted in the memo. The others are combating DEI and other “discriminatory” practices, ending antisemitism, protecting women and children, and ending sanctuary jurisdictions.

Americans should be concerned the administration’s focus on naturalized citizens may not be limited to criminals and frauds, said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice.

“Make no mistake: None of us should be comfortable that the same Trump administration that is eviscerating American due process, arresting political opponents, deporting U.S. military spouses, deploying American troops to American communities and sending masked and militarized ICE agents to terrorize American communities will now decide and define who is ‘undesirable’ and unworthy of the citizenship oath they’ve already sworn or the flag they salute to,” she said.

A federal judge in New York, meanwhile, ruled the administration cannot terminate the legal status hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants.

The July 1 decision by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn restores the Temporary Protected Status of 350,000 Haitians through February 2026 as set during the Biden administration. The decision was in response to the Department of Homeland Security’s recent announcement the program would end in September.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision was unlawful because she “does not have statutory or inherent authority to partially vacate a country’s TPS designation,” according to the opinion. “In other words, Secretary Noem cannot reconsider Haiti’s TPS designation in a way that takes effect before February 3, 2026, the expiration of the most recent previous extension.”

The administration plans to appeal the ruling, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement published by CBS News: “District courts have no authority to prohibit the executive branch from enforcing immigration laws or from terminating discretionary temporary benefit programs.”

The Trump administration has targeted temporary status programs for immigrants from troubled nations. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the president could begin issuing termination notices to more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans enrolled in the CHNV parole program.

While Cogan’s ruling on Haiti is good news for its beneficiaries, longer-term protections are needed for immigrants from that impoverished nation, according to the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.

“Haiti remains deeply unsafe. Thousands of Haitian clients in our network are terrified to return home to murderous gangs and a failed economy,” CLINIC Executive Director Anna Gallagher said. “As Catholics who believe in the sanctity of all life, we urge the administration to save lives by preserving protections for Haitians.”

According to one of the latest polls on the administration’s immigration policies, U.S. adults are increasingly concerned about the president’s deportation campaign.

About a quarter of U.S. adults (23%) say they worry a lot or some that they or someone close to them could be deported,” Pew Research Center found in a June 27 study. That was up slightly from 19% in March with noncitizens leading the way in harboring those concerns.

This Fourth of July, as Americans confront the consequences of the Trump administration’s extreme and reckless overreach on immigration, we must reckon with how we got here — and how we can reclaim the truth.

The Donald Trump–Stephen Miller anti-immigrant machine didn’t emerge overnight. It was deliberately built — brick by brick, lie by lie. In the last election cycle alone, Republicans poured over $1 billion into anti-immigrant ads. Elon Musk gave extremists a global megaphone by promoting “great replacement” theory to millions on X. And Trump, with Miller whispering in his ear, seized every opportunity to stoke fear with dark, false narratives of immigrant criminality and invasion.

It worked. The noise became deafening. The disinformation echo chamber grew. And now we are witnessing its dangerous consequences — in policy, in rhetoric and in real people’s lives.

Throughout his first five months in office, Trump has pursued a menacing anti-immigrant agenda. Mass deportation raids are being carried out across the country. Pro-immigrant protests in Los Angeles were met with violence. Migrant detention camps have been built and filled with prisoners.

But now many Americans are realizing that the immigrant “threat” they’ve been told to fear — by Trump and the GOP, as well as MAGA influencers and right-wing media — doesn’t exist.

But now many Americans are realizing that the immigrant “threat” they’ve been told to fear — by Trump and the GOP, as well as MAGA influencers and right-wing media — doesn’t exist. Most immigrants are not criminals. They are our coworkers and classmates. Our neighbors and friends. They are nurses, construction workers, teachers and small business owners. They are parents raising children who will shape the future of this country. They are striving young people, eager to contribute.

Those of us who work in this space know this well. And yet we spend far too much time refuting hysteria — that immigrants are invading, draining or destroying the country. These lies are exhausting, and more importantly, they’re dangerous.

The truth? Immigrants are building America every day. They fuel our economy, care for our families and enrich our culture. And in a rare moment of candor, even Trump acknowledged their contributions— before Miller reeled him back in. Data shows today’s immigrants are integrating and advancing just as past generations did, with higher educational attainment, growing economic mobility and deep community roots. And with an aging workforce and slowing population growth, immigrants are not just a benefit. They’re essential to America’s future prosperity.

But facts alone aren’t enough. To change the narrative, we must not only reject the lies. We must make the case for immigration and share our experiences day in and day out. We must communicate and share the real story of immigration in the U.S.: one of struggle and sacrifice, yes — but also one of perseverance, contribution and success.

There are countless powerful examples. The Mexican father, a landscaper, who raised three sons — all of whom proudly serve as U.S. Marines. Or the young woman from Brazil who arrived at age seven and is now pursuing a nursing degree. Or the owners of Las Guerreras, who built a thriving restaurant and provides good jobs to more than 15 employees. These are not just immigrant stories. They are American stories. And every year, the Carnegie Corporation highlights this truth in its annual list of remarkable naturalized citizens released on the Fourth of July, reminding us that immigrants continue to shape, serve and strengthen our nation.

Not every immigrant story is perfect. But the vast majority are stories of hard work, hope and belonging that are borne out by decades of academic research and daily experience in communities across the country.

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Now it is time to move beyond “shock and awe” at the cruelty of Trump-era tactics. We must use this moment to ask deeper questions: Why do people come to the U.S.? What happens when they arrive? And how do we build a 21st-century immigration system that reflects both our values and our interests?

The MAGA movement wants us to believe immigration is a threat, not a resource. That the only “solution” is more walls, more detention, more deportations. But what we’re seeing — right now, in real time — is where that path leads: the violation of our fundamental rights, economic instability, broken families and entire communities living in fear.

Americans are rejecting this vision. And we must go further: we must reclaim the conversation—at our dinner tables, and in our schools, our churches, our neighborhoods. We must open up the conversation of who immigrants really are by sharing our journeys, our stories and the facts.

Because here’s what the MAGA movement won’t say: when Ronald Reagan first used the phrase “Make America Great Again,” he was also referring to immigrants. On Labor Day in 1980, in the middle of a heated presidential campaign, he said immigrants “came here to work. They came to build. And they brought with them courage and the values of family, work and freedom. Let us pledge to each other that we can make America great again.”

In this moment when entire communities are under attack, let’s make it clear that immigrants have always been central to America’s recipe of success — and they always will be.

Immigrant advocates have warned that the tax and spending bill championed by United States President Donald Trump will send the administration’s controversial deportation campaign into overdrive.

The bill — called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” among its supporters — is slated to be signed into law on Friday, ushering in an influx of funds for Trump’s immigration crackdown.

That comes as experts say the Trump administration has already taken drastic measures to increase its immigration arrests and expulsions. Those arrests have cut deep into communities across the country, prompting protests and other forms of public outcry.

In a statement following the passage of the bill, Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of the immigration reform group America’s Voice, took aim at White House adviser Stephen Miller.

He is widely seen as the architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policies across his first and second administrations.

“His dreams are America’s nightmare,” Cardenas said. “His mass deportation crusade already is imperiling our industries, spreading fear in American communities, and ripping American families apart and would become all the worse if the big ugly bill becomes law.”

Here’s how the bill could be transformative.

Historic deportation funding
All told, the bill passed by the House and Senate earmarks about $170bn for immigration and border enforcement funding.

That, according to the American Immigration Council (AIC), represents the “largest investment in detention and deportation in US history”.

Of that money, $45bn will go to new immigration detention centres for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a branch of the Department of Homeland Security that oversees immigration arrests and the detention of individuals already in the country.

That’s a whopping 265-percent increase from ICE’s fiscal year 2024 detention budget, at a time when advocates have continued to raise concerns about the conditions and oversight of immigration detention centres.

Those funds are projected to expand the capacity of the country’s detention centres from about 56,000 beds to more than 100,000, according to an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy institute.

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Much of that money is likely to go to private companies, the Brennan Center added. Private firms already oversee about 90 percent of detention centre capacity and will “reap major financial benefits” from the new bill, the analysis said.

“The plan to put hundreds of thousands more people in ICE detention facilities comes at a time when DHS is blocking oversight of those facilities,” Brennan Center analyst Lauren-Brook Eisen wrote.

“And there have been growing reports of unsanitary, harsh, and unsafe conditions. At least 10 people have died in immigration detention so far this year, a rate nearly three times the number of deaths over the past four years.”

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The bill’s language has also sparked concerns that it could override legal restraints over how long immigration authorities can detain children, as established in the 1997 Flores settlement.

The American Civil Liberties Union has said the legislation is “opening the door to prolonged detention of children and families”.

Growing immigration ‘dragnet’
The legislation also allocates nearly $29.9bn for ICE’s deportation and enforcement operations, a threefold increase compared to the fiscal year 2024 budget, according to the American Immigration Council.

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Immigrant advocates say the agency has already begun to employ increasingly severe tactics to surge its arrest numbers to fulfil Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportation.

In May, immigration officials reportedly set a daily arrest target of 3,000 per day, three times the previously reported goal.

But immigration agents averaged only about 778 arrests per day during Trump’s first months in office, according to government data from January 26 to May 3.

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Speaking during a news conference in June, Cardenas warned that the pressure campaign was already creating a “situation on the ground where ICE is literally just trying to go after anybody that they can catch”.

That included raids on workplaces and locations like hardware store parking lots, where immigrants are known to gather for informal construction gigs. Undocumented individuals brought to the US as children, known as “Dreamers”, have also been caught up in the arrest sweeps.

Cardenas described the strategy as a “dragnet” that touched “long-established, deeply rooted Dreamers and other folks that have been in the United States for a long time”.

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To increase their arrest numbers, immigration officials have instructed ICE agents to “get creative”, according to a June report from The Guardian newspaper. They encouraged agents to remain vigilant for undocumented individuals whom they may encounter by chance, referred to as “collaterals” in internal emails.

The Trump administration has also sought to expand its cooperation with local law enforcement. The Tennessee Highway Patrol and ICE, for example, collaborated on a series of traffic stops in May that local immigrant advocates decried as blatant racial profiling.

The new legislation includes $3.5bn to reimburse states for immigration enforcement and cooperation.

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“We are becoming a police state,” said Gaby Pacheco, the president of TheDream.US, which helps undocumented students pursue higher education and careers.

During a June news conference, Pacheco warned of increased cooperation between local law enforcement and immigration officials.

“It’s difficult to see that those individuals in our community that we have always cherished, like police officers and campus safety, are now acting to the detriment of our communities and going after immigrants,” she said.

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Rounding out the immigration funding in the bill is $46.6bn for border wall construction and $4.1bn to hire and train more border patrol agents.

Will the funding ‘make America safe’?
Trump has, for years, pushed the premise that mass deportations are the only way to repair a country beset by dangerous foreign criminals.

Studies, however, show that undocumented people commit crimes at lower rates than US-born citizens.

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After Trump’s bill was passed by the House on Thursday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on social media that the legislation is “a win for law and order and the safety and security of the American people”.

She added it will “further deliver on President Trump’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN”.

But new data has continued to cast doubt on the administration’s claims.

On Thursday, The Washington Post published an analysis that found that, while the number of immigration arrests has risen in recent months, the proportion of those arrested with criminal convictions has fallen.

In January, about 46 percent of immigration detainees had been convicted of a crime, according to the report, which relied on statistics obtained by the Deportation Data Project and the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

By June, that proportion had dropped to 30 percent.

The report noted that the details of the charges, and their severity, were not available.

Meanwhile, 61 percent of the 93,818 people deported from the country since Trump took office had no criminal convictions, according to the Post. Entering the US without documentation is a civil, not criminal, offence.

Another data analysis, from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), offered similar findings.

Out of the 56,397 people held in immigration detention as of June 15, about 71 percent did not have criminal convictions, though 25 percent did have pending charges.

Hector Sanchez Barba, president of Mi Familia Vota, a Hispanic voters advocacy group, was among those decrying Trump’s bill as it passed in the House on Thursday.

In a statement, he pointed to the estimated $3.3 trillion the bill is expected to add to the national debt, as well as the cuts to the programmes for low-income individuals, like Medicaid, used to offset the spending.

“Our children and grandchildren will have to pay for its massive debt,” he said, “while obscene amounts of money will go to ICE policies that punish families and the essential workers our economy needs for their hard work and tax dollars.”

House Republicans on Thursday put the final stamp of approval on budget legislation that will inflict devastating cuts on Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, clean energy initiatives, and other programs to help finance another round of tax breaks for the rich—an unparalleled upward transfer of wealth that’s expected to have cascading effects across the United States for years to come.

The sprawling legislation passed in a mostly party-line vote, with just two House Republicans—Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—joining every Democrat in opposition to the bill, which now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Following the 218-214 vote, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called the reconciliation package “one of the most cruel, immoral pieces of legislation that Congress has ever voted on.”

“Not only did this bill get worse from the last time the House voted on it, it will be remembered as one of the most catastrophic bills passed in modern history,” said Omar.

The following is a sample of reactions from lawmakers and advocacy groups decrying the legislation’s attacks on healthcare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, reproductive rights, the climate, and more.

oanna Kuebler, chief of programs at America’s Voice:
Americans are already recoiling against the harm done by this administration’s deportation agenda—the masked ICE agents running amok; the industries and small businesses worried about their future viability; the fear spreading in American communities and the separations tearing apart American families.

Sadly, we fear it will get all the worse with the new and unprecedented infusion of tens of billions of dollars for Stephen Miller to fully scale the personal mass deportation crusade he’s dreamed about since his teenage years. Earlier this week, Vice President JD Vance admitted that slashing Medicaid, the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the fiscal recklessness and all of the other unpopular and damaging provisions of this bill were ‘immaterial’ compared to the ICE and immigration enforcement money.

Yet Stephen Miller’s and MAGA’s dreams are most Americans’ nightmares. Turbocharging mass deportation endangers our economy, our families, our communities, and our history as a nation of immigrants.

ICE raids will ‘only get worse’ after Trump’s signature bill passed
Joanna Kuebler, the chief of programmes at the America’s Voice advocacy group, has warned that “turbocharging mass deportation endangers our economy, our families, our communities, and our history as a nation of immigrants”.

In a statement, Kuebler said that Americans are already “recoiling against the harm done by this administration’s deportation agenda”.

Her remarks came after the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” which is slated to funnel more money to immigration enforcement.

“Sadly, we fear it will get all the worse with the new and unprecedented infusion of tens of billions of dollars for Stephen Miller to fully scale the personal mass deportation crusade he’s dreamed about since his teenage years,” she said, referring to Trump’s adviser and the architect of his immigration policy,

She added that “Stephen Miller’s and MAGA’s dreams are most Americans’ nightmares”.

Spouses experiencing health emergencies alone, because their loved ones are serving on the streets of Los Angeles. Troops fatigued by a mission they weren’t prepared for. Children of active-duty troops left without their parents, who were deployed on U.S. soil.

Such incidents are happening because of the Trump administration’s decision to send troops to Los Angeles, said Brandi Jones, organizing director for the Secure Families Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for military spouses, children and veterans.

“We’ve heard from families who have a concern that what their loved ones have sacrificed and served in protection of the Constitution, and all the rights it guarantees, are really under siege right now in a way they could never have expected,” Jones said Thursday during a virtual news conference.

On the eve of Independence Day, veterans, legal scholars and advocates for active-duty troops warned that sending troops to quell protests in California’s largest city threatens democratic norms. Under a 147-year-old law, federal troops are barred from being used for civilian law enforcement.

Dan Maurer, a retired lieutenant colonel who is now a law professor at Ohio Northern University, described this state of affairs during the news conference as “exactly the situation we fought for independence from,” adding that President Trump is “making America militarized again.”

Though 150 National Guard troops were released from protest duty on Tuesday, according to a news release from U.S Northern Command, around 3,950 remain in Los Angeles alongside 700 Marines, who are protecting federal property from protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions.

Trump has defended the deployment of troops in Los Angeles, saying on his social media platform that the city “would be burning to the ground right now” if they were not sent. He has suggested doing the same in other U.S. cities, calling the L.A. deployment “the first, perhaps of many,” during an Oval Office news conference.

Troops in L.A. were federalized under Title 10 of the United States code, and their purview is narrow. They do not have the authority to arrest, only to detain individuals before handing them over to police, and they are only obligated to protect federal property and personnel, according to the U.S Northern Command.

Though Marines detained a U.S. Army veteran in early June, the most active involvement they and the National Guard have had in ICE’s activity is providing security during arrests, according to reports from Reuters and the CBS show “Face the Nation.”

“The administration has unnecessarily and provocatively deployed the military in a way that reflects the very fears that our founding fathers had,” Maurer said. “Using the military as a police force in all but name.”

“The closer they [the military] act to providing security around a perimeter … the closer they act to detaining individuals, the closer they act to questioning individuals that are suspected of being illegal immigrants, the closer the military is pushed to that Posse Comitatus line,” Maurer said, referring to the law that prohibits use of troops in a law enforcement capacity on American soil. “That is a very dangerous place to be.”

Other speakers argued that the use of troops in Los Angeles jeopardizes service members, placing them in a environment they were never trained for, and pitting them against American citizens.

“Our Marines are our nation’s shock troops, and it’s entirely inappropriate that they’re deployed in the streets of Los Angeles,” said Joe Plenzler, a Marine combat veteran who served as platoon commander, weapons platoon commander and company executive officer for the 2nd Batallion 7th Marines, which is now deployed in downtown L.A.

Plenzler recalled that more than half of the men he served with in 2nd Batallion came from Spanish-speaking families, and some were in this country as legal permanent residents with green cards and had yet to enjoy all the benefits of citizenship.

“Think about what might be going through their heads right now, as they’re being ordered to help ICE arrest and deport hardworking people who look a lot like people they would see at their own family reunions,” Plenzler said.

Plenzler also contrasted the training Marines receive with those of civilian law enforcement.

“We are not cops,” Plenzler said. “Marines aren’t trained in de-escalatory tactics required in community policing. We don’t deploy troops in civilian settings, typically because it increases the risk of excessive force, wrongful deaths and erosion of public trust.”

During the 1992 L.A. riots, Marines responded with the LAPD to a domestic dispute. One officer asked the Marines to cover him, and they, mistakenly believing he was asking them to open fire, fired 200 rounds into the home.

“Our troops are under-prepared, overstretched and overwhelmed,” said Christopher Purdy, founder of the nonprofit veteran advocacy group The Chamberlain Network and a veteran of the Army National Guard.

“Guard units doing these missions are often doing them with minimal preparation,” Purdy said, stating that many units are given a single civil unrest training block a year.

“When I deployed to Iraq, we spent weeks of intense training on cultural competency, local laws and customs, how we should operate in a blend of civil and combat operations,” Purdy said. “If we wouldn’t accept that kind of shortcut for a combat deployment, why are we accepting it now when troops are being put out on the front line in American streets?”

Each speaker reflected on the importance of holding the federal government accountable, not only for its treatment of active-duty troops, but also for how these men and women are being used on American soil.

“I reflect this Fourth of July on both the promise and the responsibility of freedom. Military family readiness is force readiness,” Jones said. “At Secure Families Initiative, we’re hearing from active-duty families: You can’t keep the force if families are stretched thin — or if troops are used against civilians.”

Added Maurer: “The rule of law means absolutely nothing if those that we democratically entrust to enforce it faithfully ignore it at will. And I think that’s where we are.”

Ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, U.S. military veterans say increased military presence in major U.S. cities and at the U.S.-Mexico border is a worrying shift.

On a press call, former service members said recent changes, like the deployment of active-duty Marines to Los Angeles, and the use of military personnel along the border, posed legal and moral questions for military members.

Dan Maurer is a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Army’s legal arm called the JAG Corps.

“The administration has sort of unnecessarily and provocatively deployed the military in a way that reflects the very fears our founding fathers had about using the military as a police force in all but name,” he said. “That was one of our grievances against the crown, was the British military acting as a domestic police force, and here we have President Trump essentially making America militarized again.”

Maurer said that activity likely violates a bedrock U.S. law called Posse Comitatus, which bars the use of military personnel to enforce domestic federal law.

Brandi Jones is a military veteran and the organizing director for the Secure Families Initiative, which advocates for military families. She says the military has been used at the U.S.-Mexico border since the nation’s founding.

“The Buffalo Soldiers, the descendants who were just one generation removed from enslavement, were there in that area patrolling those borders against other families who were just seeking freedom and our Indigenous communities,” she said.

Jones said those actions have historically hurt families of color, and new deployments risk the same.

Last month, the Trump administration announced plans for a new military zone along the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma. The Arizona section comes after a similar designation in New Mexico along the 60-foot Roosevelt Reservation, where military personnel can now detain and charge migrants under a new federal trespassing law.

The call came into the hotline one afternoon in March: A group of officers, masked and in plainclothes, were taking away a young woman in a hijab.

“‘Someone is being kidnapped!’” the caller said to Danny Timpona, the operator who answered the phone. His group, the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts, had been preparing for such a moment.

Within minutes, Mr. Timpona sent out volunteers to verify the report in Somerville, a suburb northwest of Boston. When they arrived to empty streets, they began knocking on doors, looking for anyone who could help them piece together what occurred. One neighbor offered footage from a home security camera.

The video, which has since racked up millions of views, captured agents from the Department of Homeland Security surrounding Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen and doctoral student at Tufts University who spent the next six weeks in detention. It gave the nation one of the earliest scenes of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

A crop of grass-roots immigrant rights networks like Mr. Timpona’s has been rising across the country to try to halt President Trump’s agenda of mass deportation. They aim to quickly corroborate the presence of immigration officers. They document apprehensions that might otherwise go unnoticed. And they spread the word on social media about people being detained.

These groups have recently been most visible in Los Angeles, where an immigration raid at a clothing wholesaler prompted a rapid response from activists who confronted federal agents. Days of protests followed.

This latest iteration of immigrant rights battles could bring more intense confrontations. Trump administration officials have sought to cast many actions of immigrant rights lawyers and activists — from protests to know-your-rights presentations — as enabling illegal immigration and threatening to national security.

In Colorado, Homeland Security officials have said that social media posts from the immigrant rights network in Denver allowed an undocumented man wanted in Italy for child sexual assault to escape. In Maryland, Baltimore police officers have been placed in the middle of tense face-offs, as activists and residents have accused them of actively cooperating with federal immigration officials.

In cities like Boston and Los Angeles, some residents have rushed out of their homes to join activists who film and shout at immigration agents splitting up families, and some are concerned the flare-ups could worsen as tensions rise. The newer activists point to masked agents who are taking away friends and neighbors with more aggressive tactics and not enough due process.

“We are not trying to use violence,” said Ron Gochez, the leader of Unión del Barrio, a group that has been organizing protests in Los Angeles. “We don’t want to use violence, but what is happening to our community is completely violent.”

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In the heated civil rights fights of the 1960s, some of the nation’s oldest immigrant advocacy and Latino civil rights groups drew on tactics from groups like the Black Panthers to monitor police brutality and protect their communities from racial and ethnic profiling. Over the next two decades, a few went on to expand their reach and become established institutions, with influential arms in Washington, as they fought anti-immigrant sentiments that rose with the increased migration from Mexico and Latin America.

The new breed of activism is rooted in those old strategies, some of them later tested and expanded through immigration crackdowns in California, Arizona and across the Sun Belt.

The groups are now sprouting up in places large and small across the country. They tend to be decentralized and more nimble. They communicate through encrypted channels and share strategies through virtual meetings.

In Colorado, newer immigrants rights groups have joined forces with larger and more well-established organizations to form a statewide network. Members of the coalition have trained as many as 4,000 volunteers to confirm or dispel rumors of raids and alert residents of their rights. As in Los Angeles, they have at times arrived to scenes with bullhorns in hand.

Another group south of Portland, Ore., has mobilized hundreds of people to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids solely by sending texts to its volunteers.

In North Hollywood, Calif., Immigo, a tiny group serving the San Fernando Valley, counts four paid staffers who work with Latino students, influencers and online clothing brands to amplify its reach. It now has a roster of 800 volunteers, many of them first-generation Americans, who have said they are willing to rush to verify reported ICE sightings.

“The idea is to get folks to patrol their own neighborhood because it’s more efficient that way,” said Magy Mendez, the group’s founder.

In Arizona, which became a center of pro-immigration protests and counterprotests in 2011, similar rapid response networks are drawing from past experience.

Salvador Reza, a longtime immigrant rights activist in Phoenix, recalls experimenting with different models of organizing when Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, was in power and cracking down on illegal immigration.

Those efforts led to “barrio defense” committees, or neighborhood-based organizations where families helped one another prepare for raids. Residents made plans to help one another maintain access to their bank accounts or care for children if parents were detained.

The committees waned after Sheriff Arpaio left office, but Mr. Reza and others are now working to revive them through weekly trainings.

“You can break up a nonprofit or an organization, but we organized as families,” Mr. Reza said. “You can’t break apart a family.”

Federal immigration officials argue the groups are making their jobs harder. Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has defended the tactics of his agents, including the masks they wear, saying agents and their families have received death threats and been labeled “terrorists.” This week, federal officials rejected legal and administrative challenges filed by civil rights groups, saying they vilified law enforcement.

In interviews, activists said the violent apprehensions of immigrant workers and longtime community members are fueling their growth. Some groups have stepped up as larger nonprofits have come under scrutiny. A Republican House panel last month started an investigation into whether more than 200 nongovernmental organizations, including top immigrant rights groups, enabled illegal activity.

In Georgia, Daniela Rodriguez, 30, created an informal group in 2010 that officially became a nonprofit about a decade later called the Migrant Equity Southeast, or MESE. With the election of Mr. Trump, the organization, which serves the fast-growing Latino population in Savannah, Brunswick and other towns in southern Georgia, shifted to educating undocumented community members about their rights and involving people who support immigrants to assist.

Like other groups, MESE has been recruiting and training Americans to be “ICE trackers,” who rush to places where federal agents have been spotted. They also provide immigrants rides to the grocery store and medical appointments for people who fear being pulled over if they drive themselves.

Eduardo Delgado, 26, who was born to Mexican immigrants in Vidalia, Ga., has hosted clinics to help undocumented parents fill out forms to establish power of attorney, in case they are separated from their U.S.-born children.

“There are thousands of kids like me,” said Mr. Delgado, MESE’s civic and advocacy coordinator. “We’re fighting for our parents to be safe, when they are being indiscriminately targeted.”

Eight men deported from the US in May and held under guard for weeks at an American military base in the African nation of Djibouti while their legal challenges played out in court have reached the Trump administration’s intended destination, war-torn South Sudan, a country the state department advises against travel to due to “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict”.

The men from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan arrived in South Sudan on Friday after a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to relocate them in a case that had gone to the supreme court, which had permitted their removal from the US. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the US.

“This was a win for the rule of law, safety and security of the American people,” Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokesperson, said in a statement on Saturday announcing the men’s arrival in South Sudan.

The supreme court cleared the way for the transfer of the men last Thursday.

The men had been put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan but which was diverted to a base in Djibouti, where they were held in a converted shipping container. The flight was diverted after a federal judge found that the administration had violated his order by failing to allow the men a chance to challenge the removal.

The supreme court’s conservative majority had ruled in June that immigration officials could quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger.

A flurry of court hearings on 4 July resulted in a temporary hold on the deportations while a judge evaluated a last-ditch appeal, before the judge decided he was powerless to halt their removals and that the person best positioned to rule on the request was a Boston judge whose rulings had led to the initial halt of the administration’s effort to begin deportations to South Sudan.

By Friday evening, that judge had issued a brief ruling concluding that the supreme court had tied his hands.

US authorities have reached agreements with other countries to house immigrants who cannot quickly be send back to their homelands.

The Democrats onstage saw themselves as morally courageous. American voters, it turned out, saw a group of politicians hopelessly out of touch.

Standing side by side at a primary debate in June 2019, 10 of the party’s candidates for president were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Only one of them held still.

Six years later, the party remains haunted by that tableau. It stands both as a vivid demonstration of a leftward policy shift on immigration that many prominent Democratic lawmakers and strategists now say they deeply regret, and as a marker of how sharply the country was moving in the other direction.

Last year, 55 percent of Americans told Gallup that they supported a decrease in immigration, nearly twice as many as in 2020, and the first time since 2005 that a majority had said so. The embrace of a more punitive approach to illegal immigration includes not only white voters but also working-class Latinos, whose support Democrats had long courted with liberal border policies.

“When you have the most Latino district in the country outside of Puerto Rico vote for Trump, that should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party,” said Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who saw Mr. Trump win every county in his district along the border with Mexico. “This is a Democratic district that’s been blue for over a century.”

How the Democrats reached this point, and their continued struggles on immigration, is a decades-long story of political failures, missteps, misreadings and misplaced bets — and some shrewd Republican moves.

“We got led astray by the 2016 and the 2020 elections, and we just never moved back,” said Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who introduced an immigration and border security plan in May. “We looked feckless, we weren’t decisive, we weren’t listening to voters, and the voters decided that we weren’t in the right when it comes to what was happening with the border.”

What the party does to change its approach — and to change how voters see Democrats on immigration — may be the most consequential and difficult decision it faces as it searches for a path back to power.

But while there is party-wide agreement that Democrats have a problem on immigration and border security, there is no consensus on how to fix it.

Some are pushing for a course correction they see as overdue. A new proposal from the Center for American Progress, the party’s leading policy shop, calls for expanding legal immigration while embracing ideas long championed by conservatives, including making it harder for migrants to qualify for asylum.

Neera Tanden, the center’s chief executive, said the plan acknowledged a reality that Democrats had long resisted: They must embrace new immigration restrictions in order to have the credibility with voters to fight the far more expansive plans of the Trump administration.

“I’m happy to argue with Stephen Miller or anyone else about why they are wrong,” she said. “But the way we’re going to be able to do that is to also honestly assess that the border has been too insecure, that it allowed too many people to come through and that we need to fix that.”

Many on the left vehemently disagree, insisting that more conservative policies will only aid what they see as an insidious and ambitious effort by the Trump administration to demonize and deport Black and brown immigrants who have been in the country for years, remaking the fabric of a nation that once took pride in its diversity.

“Democrats have to stop talking about the issue of immigration within a Republican frame,” said Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. “This has nothing to do with law and order. This is about power, control, terror, and it is about racism and xenophobia. Donald Trump wants to make America Jim Crow again, and then some.”

Complicating Democrats’ efforts to chart a new path is the fact that the party’s debate is unfolding in the midst of what it sees as a national crisis. The Trump administration is pursuing the harshest crackdown on immigrants since World War II. Raids and patrols by masked officers, detentions at courthouses and workplaces, the promises to arrest and deport millions, and the deployment of National Guard troops against protesters all have undocumented immigrants and even some naturalized citizens running scared and lying low.

“We, and I include myself in this, created a vacuum on this issue that we allowed the current president to fill,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who led the Obama administration’s domestic policy council. “And the country is now living with the results. And the results are appalling.”

Some Democrats believe their party can find its path forward by looking to the past.

It was under President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, that Congress broadly expanded the grounds for deportation and that border enforcement officers saw their ranks increase sharply. The next Democrat to win the White House, Barack Obama, promised to pass comprehensive immigration legislation, including a pathway to legal status for an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants.

Seeking Republican support, Mr. Obama also pursued aggressive enforcement, deporting more undocumented immigrants in his first term than any president had since the 1950s. But his attempts to balance the two priorities ultimately failed: His plan to modernize the immigration system stalled in Congress, while his executive actions to aid undocumented students, workers and families were challenged in the courts. Disillusioned advocates denounced him as the “deporter in chief.”

Then came Mr. Trump, who rode down the golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his presidential campaign with promises to build a “great wall” along what he described as an out-of-control southern border and to expel migrants he condemned as criminals, drug traffickers and rapists.

As Mr. Trump competed for his party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton was under pressure in the Democratic primaries from Senator Bernie Sanders on the left. Immigration activists persuaded her to break with Mr. Obama’s approach — not to mention her husband’s — and pledge not to deport illegal immigrants beyond violent criminals and terrorists. But that promise fueled Mr. Trump’s candidacy more than it helped hers. He hammered away at her, saying she wanted to “abolish” the country’s borders.

After Mr. Trump won, Democrats moved even further to the left in opposition to what they saw as the cruelty of his policies.

Elected Democratic officials echoed activists’ calls to “abolish ICE,” ban deportations, decriminalize border crossings and end detention. Their efforts focused mainly on curtailing enforcement and standing up to Mr. Trump. They said little about the economic and social benefits of expanding legal immigration.

Mr. Trump’s restrictive policies, particularly the separation of children from their families, inspired a broader backlash: By the time he left the White House, more Americans favored increasing immigration than opposed it for the first time in six decades of Gallup polling.

But soon after President Joseph R. Biden Jr. entered office, illegal crossings at the southern border began to increase, as pandemic lockdowns were lifted and would-be migrants in Central America responded to Washington’s changed tone.

Some aides urged Mr. Biden to avoid the subject and stay focused on the pandemic, the economy, Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, issues more politically favorable to him.

“The through line in every decision they made around immigration was ‘What can we do to stop having to talk about this?’” said Carlos Odio, a founder of Equis, a Democratic-aligned polling firm specializing in Latino voters. “The problem is that doesn’t work when you’re in charge and people expect you to deal with everything.”

Republican governors made the subject impossible to avoid.

The first buses of migrants chartered by the Texas Division of Emergency Management pulled into Washington from Del Rio, Texas, in April 2022. The White House dismissed the effort, organized by Gov. Greg Abbott, as a “political stunt.” But the buses kept rolling.

Over the next two years, Texas sent nearly 120,000 migrants to cities like New York, Chicago and Washington. Doug Ducey, then the governor of Arizona, sent buses to Denver, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

As Democratic governors and mayors struggled to house and feed the arrivals, Republicans blamed Mr. Biden for the crisis engulfing liberal cities.

Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas said she first realized Democrats were in trouble in December 2022. So many migrants were crossing into El Paso that they were sleeping on pizza boxes as temperatures fell below freezing. A city known as a haven for immigrants since the 1800s was overwhelmed. Residents were losing patience, she recalled.

Still, when she worked on bipartisan legislation to expedite asylum cases at the border, Ms. Escobar said, fellow Democrats criticized the proposal as too restrictive.

“Living through what El Paso lived through, feeling how unsustainable all of this was, and frankly how challenging this was, I knew this would cause a massive shift in the perspective of Americans about immigration,” she said. “There was a failure on the part of the Democratic Party altogether during the last administration in adequately recognizing what was happening.”

Democrats far from the border saw public opinion moving toward Republicans, too.

Lori Lightfoot, a former mayor of Chicago, recalled a homeless Black woman complaining that she could not get help finding an apartment because “they’re giving everything to the migrants.” The city’s established Mexican American communities, Ms. Lightfoot said, were not thrilled to welcome busloads of Venezuelans.

“What we started to hear, which was also a little bit of a surprise to me, was, ‘Hey, what about us? We’ve been here forever. Why are you paying attention to and giving resources to these newcomers who, by the way, you know’ — in soft voice — ‘are Venezuelans?’” she said.

Democratic mayors and governors begged Mr. Biden to authorize emergency aid and work permits for the migrants. Some took their criticisms public in frustration with what they saw as White House inaction.

But Biden aides were locked in furious debates over how, and how fast, to dismantle Mr. Trump’s policies and what should replace them. That infighting crippled the administration’s ability to respond quickly.

Congressional Democrats tried to step in, striking a compromise on a bipartisan border bill that would have made illegal entry more difficult while allowing admitted migrants to receive work permits more quickly. But Mr. Trump pressed Republicans to torpedo it, to deny Mr. Biden a victory and keep the issue inflamed heading into November.

In New York that February, immigration and border politics overtook a special House election. Tom Suozzi, a Long Island Democrat, prevailed after adopting a hard-line approach, calling for a temporary shutdown of the border and for deporting migrants who assault the police.

Mr. Suozzi attributed his win to a willingness to take tough stands, as the Biden administration waited for legislation that would never happen.

“I don’t think that the voters moved to the right,” he said. “I think they voted more for the Republicans because they felt that they were not getting attention paid to their concerns.”

Mr. Biden finally responded to the crisis in June, issuing an executive order preventing migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border when crossings surge — the most restrictive border policy any modern Democrat has instituted.

Unlawful crossings plummeted. But it was too late to change voters’ perceptions. Mr. Trump maintained his advantage on the issue when Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Mr. Biden on the ticket.

Mr. Trump campaigned in front of signs reading “Deport Illegals Now.” He interpreted his victory as a mandate to push through an even more aggressive immigration agenda that would reach beyond the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and into a broad swath of American life.

High school students are getting arrested at traffic stops. Children are being handcuffed outside courthouses. Restaurant workers are being hauled from kitchens during their shifts. And when protests erupted, the administration deployed the military in Los Angeles and arrested or manhandled many people, including high-profile Democratic officials.

But as Democrats publicly oppose the president, they have privately traded recriminations over their failure at immigration politics.

Latino civil rights organizations are busy with “listening tours” to understand how Democrats misunderstood voters. Party strategists are conducting surveys and focus groups on immigration and border security. Some immigration advocates are warning that unless Democrats determine how to go on the offensive, they will keep losing elections.

In a private briefing for Democratic senators recently, Andrea R. Flores, a border official in the Biden White House who is the migration policy expert at FWD.us, a bipartisan advocacy group, blasted the party’s failure to make the case for immigration and its benefits, according to people in the room. She urged Democrats to lay out a clear vision for how to fix the immigration system — something she said the Biden administration had failed to do.

Democrats trail Republicans by as many as 41 percentage points in whom voters trust more on immigration and border security, according to polling released in May by Third Way, a center-left think tank. Still, Mr. Trump’s sinking approval ratings on immigration give some Democrats hope that voters will listen if the party has something new to say.

“The vast majority of Americans, including Republican voters, are appalled by Trump deporting a child who’s recovering from brain cancer, or appalled by Trump deporting students simply for writing an opinion piece in a student newspaper,” said Representative Greg Casar of Texas. “Democrats can’t be scared about talking about immigration. We have to recognize that Trump’s overreach is also not popular with the American people.”

Mr. Casar and Ms. Pressley expect to reintroduce proposed curbs on mandatory detention and a ban on privately run, for-profit detention centers.

More moderate Democrats say easing up on the border and fighting over incarceration won’t win back working-class Democrats.

Mr. Gallego insists that what Americans want is simple: a secure border, deportation of dangerous criminals and a humane path to legal status for families already in the country. If Democrats fail to provide that, he argues, they will continue to pay a price.

“We have to be able to present an idea of what border security looks like that is not Donald Trump,” he said. “And when we actually say what Donald Trump is doing wrong, we need to be able to point to what we would be doing right.”

As the Trump administration has doubled down on its hardline immigration agenda, behind the scenes senior Trump officials and the president himself have grappled with the consequences of that crackdown against a key portion of the workforce: migrant workers.
President Donald Trump has wavered repeatedly on the topic: At times he has suggested farms and other industries employing migrants should be protected, even as he and some top aides have pushed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to intensify its immigration sweeps.

“We’re working on it right now,” Trump said Tuesday. “We have a lot of cases where ICE would go into a farm and these are guys that have been there 10 or 15 years, and the farmers know them – it’s called farmer responsibility. Or owner responsibility. But they’re going to be largely responsible for these people. And they know these people. They’ve worked at the farms for 15 years.”
Senior administration officials have had discussions with stakeholders as they quietly try to find a durable compromise on the fate of migrant workers, floating various new ways of granting them legal status, multiple sources told CNN. But it’s unclear what, if any, solution they can reach without Congress, according to experts.

“President Trump is a tireless advocate for American farmers – they keep our families fed and our country prosperous. He trusts farmers and is committed to ensuring they have the workforce needed to remain successful,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement, maintaining that deporting “dangerous criminals and targeting the sanctuary cities that provide them safe harbor is a top priority for the President.”

The focus on migrant workers reveals the delicate balance the Trump administration is wrestling with as it tries to carry out a historic number of deportations and avoid agitating key industries or unsettling a fragile economy. Similarly, the president faces headwinds from immigration hardliners who view additional protections for migrant workers as an unnecessary form of relief. The ambiguity in Trump’s approach has kept both sides of the debate off balance.

CNN reached out to the White House for comment.

“They are working at a breakneck speed to better understand employers’ issues with current guest worker visa programs and cut down on paperwork processing delays. Effective reform is a complex undertaking, and initial attempts may not get it entirely right from the start,” said Kip Eideberg, senior vice president of government and industry relations at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, describing the message he’s received from the administration.
“The Administration recognizes this and have been clear that they will make adjustments based on feedback from industry to strike the right balance between border security and immigration reform,” he added.

‘Between a rock and a hard place’

Undocumented immigrants account for 4% to 5% of the total US workforce and between 15% to 20% in industries like crop production, food processing, and construction, according to Goldman Sachs, which warned in a recent report that losing a “significant share” of those workers could result in temporary bottlenecks, shortages, and price increase.

Multiple industry representatives have raised alarm over indiscriminate immigration sweeps where undocumented immigrants without criminal records have been picked up for deportation, including in sectors that are critical to the president’s broader agenda.
“It will make it damn near impossible to lean into the administration’s effort to strengthen manufacturing,” Eideberg said, despite overwhelming support within the industry for that effort.

“We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he said, noting that mass deportations will shrink the labor force. One of the primary concerns for customers is that they won’t have enough workers to harvest crops, which will likely have a trickle-down effect on equipment manufacturers and reduce demand, according to Eideberg.
But tilting toward helping manufacturers and other employers could cause political problems for the president.

“The more he panders to employers of illegal workers, the more he’s going to anger his base of voters who expected – and voted for – tough immigration enforcement across the board without exemptions for politically connected people,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for limited immigration.
Representatives from various industries have taken their worries directly to the administration, including the departments of Labor and Agriculture.

Possible solutions

In an April Cabinet meeting, Trump appeared to nod to those concerns, telling Homeland Security Kristi Noem after her presentation: “We’re also going to work with farmers that if they have strong recommendations for their farms for certain people, we’re going to let them stay in for a while and work with the farmers and then come back and go through a process of – legal process.”

He later tasked Noem, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to work on the issue, according to a source familiar with the move.
Last month, Chavez-DeRemer established the Office of Immigration Policy to try to streamline industry needs and thread the needle of delivering on Trump’s mass deportation promise while helping employers navigate existing programs.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, I’m working closely with Secretary Rollins, Secretary Noem, and our federal partners on fulfilling this Administration’s mission to cut red tape, support agricultural employers, and ensure they have the legal workforce needed to keep our food supply secure,” Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement.
According to an agriculture industry source, a similar idea had been discussed in a meeting with Rollins earlier this year that would include setting up a program for farmers to ensure they had enough laborers. It’s unclear how that program would be different from existing temporary farm visas known as H-2A.

The source said Trump has also raised the idea to Rollins of creating a mechanism that would allow farmers to sign a document or affidavit for undocumented workers, who would self-deport and then be allowed to return legally. But that kind of proposal would draw objections from hardliners.
“It ends up being who’s going to win this tug of war,” said Chris Chmielenski, president of the Immigration Accountability Project, which advocates for limited immigration, describing a form of relief for undocumented migrant workers akin to “amnesty.”

“I have no idea which way it’s going to go,” he said.
There are 2.4 million farmworkers in the United States, according to the Economic Policy Institute, 40% of whom the Agriculture Department estimates lack legal status. United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero previously told CNN that she’s been getting calls from concerned farmworkers across California about ICE crackdowns in the state.

Separate from the existing undocumented population, the administration has also made a series of moves to strip temporary protections from migrants who had been given permission to legally work and live in the country – suddenly depriving some employers of workers.
“We might keep losing legal workers from the system,” said Jennie Murray, president and chief executive officer of the National Immigration Forum. “All of them (industries) are extremely worried. They’re worried they don’t have future flows of workers coming into the country. They’re extremely worried to lose these temporary workers they’ve become dependent on.”

Repeated reversals

An immigration raid at an Omaha meat production plant on June 10 that resulted in dozens of workers being taken away sparked fresh concerns about the administration’s priorities – culminating in a phone call between Rollins and Trump the following day over the issue.

Two days later, Trump posted on his Truth Social: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace… This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement quickly issued guidance to agents limiting immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants.

Just a few days later, Trump posted on his Truth Social account telling ICE officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” ICE soon announced worksite enforcement would continue.
ICE has conducted sweeps at construction sites, popular vacation destinations like Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, as well as local Home Depots, which are a common spot for contractors and homeowners to approach and hire laborers.

Rosanna Maietta, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, told CNN in a statement that the organization has also held meetings with administration officials “to convey our acute workforce shortage challenges and underscore the importance of a strong hospitality and tourism sector.”
Trump seemed to shift course again in the last week, saying the administration is working on a temporary pass for migrant workers, particularly those working on farms and in the hospitality industry, arguing he’s on “both sides.”
“I’m the strongest immigration guy that there’s ever been, but I’m also the strongest farmer guy that there’s ever been,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Administration divides

The whiplash has been indicative of the two factions within the administration – one focused on the impact on labor, and another intent on arresting and deporting as many people as possible. The latter has been led by White House deputy chief of staff and architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policies Stephen Miller.
Miller has argued on CNN that the administration’s immigration crackdown wouldn’t disrupt the agriculture industry and result in higher prices, saying that migrants who recently arrived to the US “aren’t doing farmwork.”
Rollins sees the issue differently.

“The labor question is a significant one. It is one that is perhaps not the very top of the list, but for some they would say the very top of the list,” the agriculture secretary told lawmakers at a congressional hearing in mid-June.
In a CNBC interview Wednesday, Rollins said Trump’s “goal, that he has tasked me with effectuating, is making sure that we have a 100% legal workforce. That anyone that is here illegally must pay the consequences, return to the country, and then eventually, as he’s talked about in different ways, come back. So, we are working on all of that right now.”

She cited reforms to temporary worker visas, arguing: “There will be zero amnesty. We will ensure all laws are followed.”
Sources familiar with the dynamic between Rollins and Miller told CNN the relationship between the two is professional and despite the different viewpoints on immigration policy, it hasn’t devolved.
“There’s a respect between the two, and also a very clear understanding that Trump likes and is deeply reliant on both,” one administration official said.

“This is an area where their equities overlap and are quite different. They both understand that – or at least have up to this point. But POTUS cares deeply about farmers and ranchers and beyond his personal affinity for the Secretary, really values hearing directly from her about what the industry is saying,” the official said. “And they’re freaking out right now – and have been for months.”

A recent policy change at Baltimore City Circuit Court could lead to the separation of children from their parents or guardians, according to several immigrant advocates.

Judge Audrey J.S. Carrión, the court’s administrative judge, last month ordered that some types of hearings about the custody of children seeking permanent legal status take place in person, rather than virtually. Some advocates worry that the change could make the children and the adults in their lives easier targets for detention and deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Carrión’s June 30 order came a week after the nation’s chief immigration enforcement official, Todd Lyons, sent a memo directing agents to expand immigration enforcement at and near courthouses, highlighting “non-criminal proceedings.”

Immigration attorney Alexa Siegel said the combination of required in-person hearings and a recent ICE arrest at the Baltimore courthouse has clients “terrified.”

“I’d always tell my clients, ‘We’re going to state courts. They want to help you. They don’t care about your immigration status,’” Siegel said. “Now it’s very hard because I can’t make any assurances.”

Maryland Judiciary spokesperson Terri Charles said in an email that the policy change was not done at ICE’s request, saying that the “goal is to do the hearings in person for the children’s wellbeing.”

The change applies to cases for those under Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a federal designation for immigrant children who have been abandoned, abused or neglected by a parent. Before gaining the status, the children must first secure a custody order, typically putting the child in the care of the non-abusing parent or another relative. It’s a unique immigration process that requires a state court’s involvement.

The special juvenile status was created decades ago as a temporary stepping stone to permanent residency through a so-called green card, but an increase in applications of children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in recent years has created a years-long backlog for their applications.

“The hearings are conducted in person to ensure a full and fair assessment of the credibility, demeanor, and overall wellbeing of the children and of the parties seeking custody or guardianship of the children,” Charles said. “Additionally, these cases involve highly sensitive matters, including abuse, neglect, physical violence, or abandonment, which require careful and nuanced evaluation by the court.”

Baltimore’s in-person change mirrors policies in Anne Arundel, Charles and Harford counties.

Attorneys can still ask the court in many counties to conduct such proceedings virtually. In Baltimore, Howard and Prince George’s counties, that’s still an option, according to lawyers working such cases. But following Carrión’s order, such motions have largely been denied in city Circuit Court, the lawyers said.

One such motion filed in Baltimore said an undocumented parent and children were “vulnerable to adverse immigration actions” by ICE at or near the courthouse because members of the family had been ordered removed from the country.

“To protect Plaintiff and Minor Children from adverse immigration actions, it is requested that they be allowed to appear at their future hearing either by telephone or video conference,” the motion read.

It was denied.

Immigration attorney Juan Carlos Silén, who handles juvenile immigration cases, fears this may deter families from seeking relief even if a child qualifies for protection under the special status.

“A return to virtual hearings would benefit all parties and offer the immigrant community in Baltimore some much-needed peace of mind,” Silén said.

Last week, a Maryland corrections employee invited ICE agents into the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse in downtown, according to the Baltimore City Sheriff’s Office, which runs security at the two Circuit Court buildings. The federal agents then detained a person who was attending a routine pretrial appointment, the sheriff’s office said.

The sheriff’s office and state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services are investigating that employee for potentially breaching corrections department protocols and misusing information for actions outside of official duties.

Immigrant advocacy groups and Democratic elected officials voiced concerns about local law enforcement cooperating with ICE following the courthouse arrest, saying that any such collaboration around courts would deter residents from participating in the judicial system.

After the incident, Carrión issued another order requiring law enforcement officers to check in at the courthouse and clearly display their badges.

ICE has been ramping up enforcement nationally, with reports showing agents arresting individuals following their hearings before immigration judges or during “check-ins,” in which an individual is required to touch base with ICE while they await a court date or resolution of their case.

A spokesperson for ICE could not immediately be reached for comment.

FRAMINGHAM, Massachusetts — In the summer of 2021, Lesca got a startling phone call.

“We have your daughter,” an immigration official said on the other line.

Lesca’s 9-year-old daughter, Yori, had crossed the southern border alone, hoping to reunite with her mother in Massachusetts. Lesca could not believe such a small girl had endured the long journey from Guatemala.

After a month in a Texas shelter, Yori stepped off a plane at Boston Logan International Airport and walked through a crowded baggage claim and into her mother’s arms. Though they had talked regularly on the phone since Lesca fled her home country, they had not held each other in nearly seven years.

Last month, nearly four years after the federal government helped reunite Yori with her mother, Lesca received another shocking phone call.

Yori had been arrested in Maine.

On May 23, federal immigration authorities apprehended Yori, now 13, during a traffic stop near Farmington. It took two weeks to get her back to her mother, an ordeal that underscored the shifting norms and secretive nature of the immigrant detention system in President Donald Trump’s second term.

Ad Choices
“I was scared because they were taking us away and my mom didn’t know anything,” Yori said in a joint interview with her mother, holding back tears. The Bangor Daily News agreed to refer to them by nicknames because they did not want their full names to jeopardize their immigration cases or the minor’s privacy.

The girl is an example of how children have become ensnared in the president’s aggressive immigration crackdown, including those the government previously reunited with a parent. The Republican president’s administration has made it harder to release kids to their undocumented families.

Advocates who worked on Yori’s case said they encountered an unusual amount of difficulty obtaining information about her detention, including her whereabouts, basic paperwork and what it would take to release her. The Massachusetts governor’s office and a congresswoman intervened in the case that began in Maine.

Here and across the country, arrests of undocumented immigrants have surged to record heights in a crackdown that has also separated children from their families. In February, agents detained a 17-year-old during a traffic stop on the Maine Turnpike in Falmouth. The teen had moved to Lewiston after reuniting with his mother as an unaccompanied minor.

Trump and administration officials have said they are targeting dangerous criminals. In a statement, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said an officer stopped Yori’s car to perform an immigration inspection and determined the male driver was an MS-13 gang member wanted for murder. Everyone in the vehicle, including Yori and another female passenger, was arrested because they lacked authorization to be in the country legally.

JoAnn Dodge, Yori’s immigration attorney, said she was not aware that federal authorities had accused the driver, a friend of the family, of being a gang member until the BDN contacted the agency for comment. The BDN was unable to contact the man or his lawyer. Regardless of the allegation, Dodge questioned why authorities didn’t release her client back to her mother after confirming that federal officials previously vetted Lesca as her sponsor.

“He was saying after the election he was going after criminals,” Lesca said, referring to Trump, then her daughter. “She’s not a criminal. Criminals are rapists and killers, not people who are studying and working.”

Yori, a seventh grader with long, black hair, said she left her home in Framingham that Friday morning with a group of family friends for a Memorial Day weekend hiking trip in Carrabassett Valley, repeating a vacation the group had taken the year before. Lesca, a cafeteria worker who is also the parent of two children born in the U.S., stayed behind to care for Yori’s sick 5-month-old half-brother, she said.

Not far from their destination, a white truck pulled the car Yori was in over and a uniformed officer inquired about everyone’s immigration status. A CBP spokesperson said the agent stopped the vehicle during a routine patrol in Livermore Falls after running the car’s out-of-state plates and seeing that it was registered to “an alien currently in the U.S. illegally.”

Yori claimed the arrest took place on the shoulder of State Route 27 around New Portland, based on where she dropped a pin on Google Maps to alert other members of the hiking group, who were traveling in multiple cars, of what was going on.

Her arrest was captured on video by two members of the group who followed the pin drop to her location. The BDN reviewed stills from the video that showed uniformed officers guiding the girl and another passenger, a 21-year-old woman, into the back of a white CBP truck, their wrists bound in front of them.

CBP said it does everything in its power to reunite minors with their legal guardians, but in many cases, the guardian does not have legal status and refuses. Lesca was fearful about picking up Yori herself, but said she told an agent the night of Yori’s arrest and the following morning that she was the girl’s mother and would make arrangements to pick up her daughter.

Diego Low, the director of Metrowest Worker Center, known as Casa in the Framingham area, and who supported Lesca throughout her daughter’s detention, also volunteered to pick the girl up, he said in an interview.

Yori spent two nights sleeping on a thin mattress under an aluminum blanket in the Rangeley-area border station, she said. At one point, she sobbed over the phone to her mother because she misread a document that made her believe she was about to be deported to the Philippines, a place she had never been before. Lesca tried to comfort her daughter over the phone, telling her to pray and struggled because she was also crying.

On Sunday morning, two days after Yori’s arrest, a pair of older women who worked for an escort company took the girl to an airport and put her on a plane, she said. After a long car ride, she arrived at a place she learned was a shelter for unaccompanied minors. She immediately felt different from the other girls, all of whom had recently crossed the border and were waiting to be placed with a sponsor. Yori already had a sponsor in her mother.

Around this time, federal policy was shifting. The Trump administration recently changed its rules in a way that effectively disqualifies undocumented parents from sponsoring minors by requiring forms of identification and income verification that are difficult to provide without legal status. In May, the National Center for Youth Law challenged those rules in court on behalf of children who have endured prolonged detentions, winning a limited injunction on June 9.

The group of advocates working on Yori’s case in Massachusetts, which had expanded to officials in the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants, believed the new federal rules meant Yori needed a new sponsor with legal authorization to be in the country, Low said.

That plan confronted a tenuous situation that is not uncommon in immigrant communities: Yori had a relative with legal status willing to sponsor her but it required the person to provide the government with information about their household, which included undocumented immigrants.

During this time, nobody, not even Yori, knew exactly where the girl was being held. The only clue her mother had about her whereabouts was when Yori called home every day. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, appeared on the caller ID, according to Low. At one point, Lesca asked a shelter employee for her daughter’s location and the woman replied that she was not authorized to provide that information, according to a screenshot of their text exchange.

The situation became more complicated near the end of Yori’s second week in custody, when Dodge contacted the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency that oversees the care of unaccompanied minors, and an official told her over the phone that they had no record of Yori in the system, the lawyer said. Dodge, confused and alarmed, only confirmed her client’s location by contacting Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which had the girl’s address listed for a shelter run by KidsPeace, a children’s services nonprofit.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement declined to comment, citing a privacy policy related to cases involving minors. A representative for KidsPeace did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment, but someone who answered the phone at an address in Bethlehem confirmed the nonprofit operates a shelter for unaccompanied minors. A spokesperson for ICE declined to comment.

Yori tried to remain calm throughout this entire process but began to fear she might not go home for a while. Her closest friend at the shelter, a 17-year-old pregnant girl, had been there four months. The team working on her case sought help from Massachusetts politicians. On Thursday, June 5, the office of U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 House Democrat, contacted the shelter to request an aide be allowed to visit.

The next day, Lesca received a call asking if she would pay the airfare to fly Yori home. Nobody close to her knew exactly what triggered the government’s decision.

On Saturday, June 7, Lesca once again walked into Logan’s baggage claim area. It was the same terminal where she embraced her daughter years before. She was anxious. The government’s sudden reversal made her fear she was stepping into a trap. Advocates and others working with the family stood nearby, ready to record if an immigration agent placed the mother under arrest.

Yori finally emerged with a social worker from the shelter. The woman’s face was entirely obscured under a black hoodie, a baseball cap and, according to Yori, a mask that she purchased and donned when they got off the plane.

The handoff took less than five minutes, said Low, who was present that morning. The woman took a photo of Lesca’s ID and left.

“So she was returned? Where is the paperwork? The paperwork wasn’t submitted but somehow she is back?” Dodge said shortly after learning her client was home. “I think everyone was a little caught off guard but relieved.”

Yori stayed home from school on Monday. When she returned, her classmates asked her if she’d been deported. They had no idea what she’d really gone through, she thought to herself.

Yori was home. For Lesca, the episode was not entirely over. Her friend is the mother of the 21-year-old woman who was arrested at the same time as Yori. As of mid-June, she was still detained somewhere in Texas, Lesca said.

“My friend thought because her daughter had a Social [Security number], a work permit and an open immigration case, she’d be protected,” Lesca said. “But we see that makes no difference.”

Allow me a prediction: At some point, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility planned by CoreCivic in Leavenworth will imprison a man or woman on baseless charges. That person will be a legal resident of the United States, or perhaps even a full citizen.

It won’t matter. Because of inept federal law enforcement, because of racist executive orders, because of some awful event that we don’t yet know, this man or woman will be behind bars.

And all of us — because of the taxes we pay the federal government — will pay for it.

This might seem like an outrageous claim, depending on what news sources you follow. But it’s based on the unfortunate reality that our country’s government has already been doing this regularly since President Donald Trump’s return to office in January. You may support the president’s hardline views on immigration and the southern border. You may believe that everyone who has entered the country the “wrong way” should be deported. But his administration’s approach shows that no legal resident or U.S. citizen can be confident or comfortable either.

Some explanations might be in order. Many who oppose illegal immigration into the United States believe that there are two categories of people: legal and illegal.

That’s not true.

There are actually a wide array of immigration statuses. That can includes people who are in the United States as legal permanent residents — green card holders — and those who are here under various types of visa claims of asylum. I count at least 11 broad categories, with some in varied stages of legal flux.

In past months, we have seen the Trump administration repeatedly incarcerate and attempt to deport people who have a legal status. Their actions aren’t mistakes either: the administration has claimed it has the right to expel these residents, as surely as it has the right to expel those without a shred of legal protection.

I can list some of these people, if you like.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a green card holder and student activist at Columbia University.
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student who wrote an op-ed critical of college administration.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father whose “withholding of removal” legal status was ignored.
Cynthia Olivera, a Canadian citizen with a U.S. work permit who was pursuing a green card.
Mahmoud Khalil, also a green card holder, also a Columbia student.
You get the picture.

You don’t have to agree with what any of these people said or did or believed. You don’t have to believe that they’re good people or bad people or middling people (the government has gone out of its way to persecute Abrego Garcia, for instance). What we do know is that they were all, to various degrees, lawful residents of the United States. That offered no protection when the masked agents arrived.

Likewise, citizenship offers no protection. The Trump administration has offered an interpretation of the Constitution at odds with the 14th Amendment to deny birthright citizenship. It has also deported U.S. citizen children with their noncitizen parents. From 2015 to 2020, at least 70 potential U.S. citizens were wrongly deported, according to the Government Accountability Office. Just last week, the administration announced that one of the Justice Department’s priorities would be denaturalization — in which citizenship is stripped from people for various infractions.

To summarize: Those here illegally aren’t safe. Those here legally aren’t safe. Citizens aren’t safe.

No one is safe.

Given these facts, it’s worth asking what people who claim to care about illegal immigration really want from the United States. Do they really want to stop people who came here the “wrong way” and welcome people who came here the “right way”?

Or do they instead want to create a racially pure nation in which Caucasian people hoard rights and privileges, while Latino people from Central or South America are accorded second-class status or expelled altogether? I’m sure many would deny any such desire. They might want to have a word with the government.

All of which brings us to Leavenworth. The longtime prison town has tussled with private operator CoreCivic over plans to reopen its facility. A judge once called the prison a “hell hole,” but sordid history fades at the prospect of cold, hard cash. CoreCivic has inked a deal with ICE to the tune of $4.2 million a month.

The reopened facility could house up to 1,000 inmates. Their care and the prison’s overall operations will be funded by you and me. That’s right, our federal tax dollars will go to support ICE and this very contract. Indeed, thanks to the passage of Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill,” huge new financial resources will flood immigration enforcement operations.

Americans and Kansans chose this contemptible path. They voted for the president, and they voted for senators and representatives who made this new funding a reality.

We now have to live with the consequences. Our government is abusing its people, stripping them of residency and citizenship on the flimsiest of pretexts. It will continue doing so. And the money that all of us earn doing our jobs will support those efforts.

In Leavenworth. In Kansas. In these United States.

It’s apparently all so very funny to our leaders, this idea of putting human beings out in the middle of a swampland in Florida in the name of immigration enforcement.
Take Gov. Ron DeSantis. On Monday, he was talking about Alligator Alcatraz, as his administration has so cleverly named the idle airstrip about 40 miles west of Miami International Airport, when the topic of security came up.

“You bring people in there, they ain’t going anywhere unless you want them to go somewhere, because good luck getting to civilization. So the security is amazing,” he said during a press conference, pausing for a swell of laughter from the audience. He allowed himself a little smile and added: “Natural and otherwise.”
And then there’s President Trump. Asked about the Florida detention camp on Tuesday before he flew from Washington to tour the hastily constructed facility in South Florida, he offered a bit of advice to would-be escapees: “Don’t run in a straight line,” he said. “Run like this,” he added, while using his hand to make a zig-zag pattern. “And you know what, your chances go up by 1%. Not a good thing.” (By he way, that’s not even correct advice on evading a gator.)

After the tour, he tried another witty quip about how secure South Florida’s tent city will be: “A lot of body guards, a lot of cops in the form of alligators,” he told reporters. “You don’t have to pay them so much.”
Amid all of this hilarity, there’s rarely a mention of the detainees as human beings who have been plucked from their lives, sometimes without cause. There’s not even a whiff of compassion or nuance about how all cases are not the same. (What about that 75-year-old Cuban dad who died in immigration custody in Miami last week?) But when it comes to the logistics of removing people from this country, well, you can’t get these folks to stop talking.

They’re happy to recite all manner of details about the marvelous efficiency of Florida’s new detention machinery: an airstrip for oh-so-easy deportation flights, 1,000 beds with more to come, the blinding speed at which the tent city was put up in a mere eight days and how this could be a model for the rest of the country.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who has thoroughly embraced his role as the face of this detention center project, has called the camp a “one-stop shop for immigration enforcement.” It’s also on environmentally sensitive land just east of Big Cypress National Preserve, which is federally protected land.

Notably missing from the discussion: how our country is continuing its Trump-directed march toward forcing all kinds of immigrants — not just criminals — out of the United States. Where’s the talk about the 350,00 Venezuelans or half-million Haitians for whom Temporary Protected Status — a government designation — has been revoked?

What about the 531,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela whose humanitarian parole is now being yanked away? All of those people can’t be members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuela-based criminal gang.

And then there are the people who are here illegally but have contributed to this country and committed no crimes — what about them? A lot, no doubt, are workers we depend on, and their only crime is coming here to do the work we, as Americans, don’t want to do.
But why bother with all of that when there’s… merch? The Republican Party is selling Alligator Alcatraz gear — t-shirts and hats — in black and camo. Yes, Florida now has a detention camp with merch. Totally normal.

The gear, as offensive as it is, isn’t the point, though. It’s a sideshow. The real focus should be on the callousness of our elected leaders as they joke and jest their way toward imprisoning people in a tent city in the Everglades. The country’s mass deportations are continuing, and they’re doing it our name. This is a moment of terrible seriousness, not a time for one-liners at the expense of human beings.

As an evangelical Christian, my approach to refugee and immigration issues has primarily been to engage a ministry opportunity, not to speak into public policies. But as arrests and deportations among non-violent undocumented immigrants continue to rise and as hundreds of thousands of immigrants who entered the U.S. legally have had the legal rug, so to speak, pulled out from under them as their legal status has been revoked, one way I feel compelled to love refugees and immigrants is by speaking up for them.

Refuge International, the local nonprofit where I serve as executive director, exists to glorify God by partnering with local churches to love refugees and immigrants. For us, “loving refugees and immigrants” typically looks like alerting evangelical churches in Greater Louisville to the increasing ethnic diversity in our community, connecting the dots between this reality and the commands of Scripture, and then providing user-friendly pathways and opportunities to love and serve our immigrant neighbors in direct, interpersonal ways. But love also sometimes compels us to speak into systems that are harming our neighbors.

Evangelical Christians are torn on immigration laws
With respect to immigration, evangelicals are in a unique and precarious position these days. On the one hand, we are commanded to “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Peter 2:13-14; ESV). This and other commands regarding the Christian’s obligation to obey earthly authorities were not written during the reign of rulers who looked favorably on the Christian religion.

Similarly, today, for the evangelical Christian, the authority of scripture cannot be alternately obeyed and put aside on the basis of one’s opinion regarding the current administration. That’s why, Refuge International and most of the churches with whom we partner affirm the need for secure borders and for effective immigration laws that welcome well-meaning immigrants who “play by the rules” but keep out bad actors with nefarious motives.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
Several hundred demonstrators gathered in front of Metro Hall in Louisville, Ky. on June, 9, 2025, for a protest and march to stand in solidarity with immigrants who are being targeted for deportation by ICE around the country. The event was organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation – Louisville.
Opinion: Trump has soiled American Christianity. Pope Leo XIV must make it great again.
On the other hand, we are equally bound by other scripture — and there are a host of them — that speak explicitly to how God’s people should treat the “sojourner” or “foreigner.” For example, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). Commands like this arise from the heart of our God, who “loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing” (Deuteronomy 10:18). In the New Testament, Jesus ups the ante, featuring a Samaritan hero in a parable explaining his command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31).

Big, beautiful bill will uproot lives within our Christian family
Evangelical Christians must be wary of dismissing scripture’s abundant teaching regarding the “stranger” when the stranger in question is an undocumented immigrant — a category that includes a growing number of individuals who entered the U.S. lawfullybut had their protections abruptly withdrawn. The underlying rationale of the Bible’s commands concerning the stranger is that they, along with orphans, widows and the poor, are among the most vulnerable peoples in any society at any time. So, it is relevant that undocumented immigrants are often among the most vulnerable to exploitation as laborers or even in situations of sex trafficking. The many biblical commands to care for those vulnerable to injustice apply.

The budget reconciliation bill recently considered by Congress proposed a massive increase in funding available for deportation. If recent trends are any indication of what is to come, the passing of this bill will uproot millions of nonviolent, undocumented immigrants and separate many family members one from another. And many of these will be part of our Christian family, including some who risk deportation to situations of potential martyrdom. I’m thankful for Sen. Rand Paul’s principled opposition to the bill.

Letter: House budget bill’s focus on deporting immigrants threatens our way of life
So, what should we do when there is tension or conflict between the laws and orders of human authorities and the Word of God? In America, Christians have a unique opportunity. We elect officials that make the laws that scripture then commands us to obey. When we are aware that laws are being considered that may result in strangers not being loved in our land, we have the ability to voice our concerns to our elected officials.

It’s time to support immigration reform and humane treatment
For Christians desirous of secure immigration laws and humane treatment of immigrants, there is an alternative: the “Dignity Act, ” likely to be re-introduced soon by Republican Congresswoman Maria Salazar, provides significant funding for border security and processing ($35 billion in the version introduced last Congress) but, unlike the “big, beautiful bill,” notat taxpayer expense or by going further into debt.

Instead, it would be entirely paid for by fines and fees charged of immigrants without criminal records who would be allowed to legalize their status if they meet appropriate requirements, including paying a fine as restitution if they have violated an immigration law. This is exactly the sort of policy that the vast majority of evangelical Christians (76%) say they want, according to a January 2025 survey from Lifeway Research. I hope our Kentucky lawmakers will consider co-sponsoring the new version of this bill.

Evangelicals are at a juncture where we must seriously wrestle with scripture’s command to “love the stranger as yourself.” Spiritually speaking, we were strangers, and the command to love the vulnerable stranger compels us to advocate for more just policies.

Washington, DC — The devastating cost and dire consequences of President Trump and Stephen Miller’s mass deportation obsession continues to be on display across the nation, affecting all Americans. New reporting highlights the economic costs of raids that are overwhelming nursing home care, agricultural and construction workers and threatening regional economies; the public safety costs of the obsessive focus on immigration enforcement above real threats, including terrorism; and the human and moral cost to our nation – from the outrageous story of the father of three Marines being beaten and abducted by ICE to the horrific story of a pregnant mother delivering a stillborn baby while in detention.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:

“Make no mistake: the Trump/Miller campaign against immigrants is bringing real harm to every American. Their obsession is harming American industries, risking the safety of citizens and communities, and destroying the lives of our neighbors, friends, and families. For them, cruelty is the point, chaos is a bonus. And now they want to turbocharge those harms by massively expanding ICE funding in the big, ugly bill. At what cost to Americans’ safety, prosperity and families will the Trump administration continue their reckless and harmful mass deportation agenda?”

See below for key stories grouped into the types of costs and consequences on display:

Economic Costs

The Washington Post, “Local economies under pressure as ICE crackdowns create climate of fear,” including: “From California grocery stores to chicken chains in suburban D.C., businesses that serve large immigrant populations are reporting shifts in consumer behavior — fewer in-store visits, lower receipts and more delivery orders — that threaten to drag down local economies, according to interviews with business owners, as well as spending data.”
Syracuse Post-Standard editorial, “Crackdown on migrant farm labor a moral and policy failure,” including: “As the federal crackdown on immigration expands to farm fields and meat packing plants, the crippling effects on these businesses and your pocketbooks are just beginning.”
KFF Health News, “Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers” including: “Existing staffing shortages and quality-of-care problems would be compounded by other policies pushed by Trump and the Republican-led Congress, according to nursing home officials, resident advocates, and academic experts.”
Associated Press, “A look at how Trump’s big bill could change the US immigration system,” noting: “President Donald Trump’s spending cuts and border security package would inject roughly $150 billion into his mass deportation agenda over the next four years, funding everything from an extension of the United States’ southern border wall to detention centers to thousands of additional law enforcement staff.”
Public Safety Costs

San Francisco Chronicle, “Exclusive: Nearly one-third of National Guard drug enforcement team were pulled to go to L.A.,” including: “Nearly a third of the California National Guard troops who had been doing drug enforcement work have been pulled away as part of President Donald Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles. Of the 447 National Guard members on the Counterdrug Task Force, 142 have been pulled off of the assignment as part of the Los Angeles deployment, according to data from the California National Guard.”
Boston Globe, “Threat of Iranian retaliation sparks questions about US terrorism readiness amid Trump immigration crackdown,” including: “…Trump has refocused the priorities that have dominated Washington since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, including by dramatically shifting federal resources toward achieving his goals on immigration and border security.”
The Bulwark, “Trump’s Mass Deportations Are Making Us More Vulnerable to Domestic Terrorism,” including: “The collective law-enforcement of this country, from the federal to the local level, only has so much money and so many people. As the president orders the federal agencies to focus on deporting cooks, truck drivers, and farm hands—and encourages state and municipal agencies to help—resources and attention shift away from the most dangerous criminals.”
Moral Costs and Human Toll

Nashville Banner, “ICE Arrested a Pregnant Tennessee Woman — While in Detention in Louisiana, She had a Stillbirth” including: ““I [Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus] told them to just send me back to Guatemala because I was pregnant and wasn’t getting the medical attention I needed,” she said. “I called Immigration, ICE, I called and sent texts, but still, nothing. They told me I had to wait for my flight. Can you imagine?””
NBC News, “Marine veteran defends gardener father seen being hit by immigration agents in video,” including: “The Marine veteran son of a California gardener seen in a graphic video being repeatedly struck on the head by a masked Customs and Border Patrol agent and chased at gunpoint is pushing back against government statements that his father attacked agents with a weed trimmer. Narciso’s son Alejandro Barranco, 25, a Marine veteran, told MSNBC on Tuesday that had he treated a detainee the same way while he was serving as a Marine, “it would have been a war crime.”
Newsweek, “Green Card Holder For 58 Years Faces Deportation,” including: “Victor Avila, a 66-year-old long-term U.S. green card holder who legally immigrated in 1967 and has held a green card since, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a GoFundMe. Avila was returning home visiting his son who is a member of the U.S. Airforce when he was detained.”
The Guardian, “‘Handcuffed like we’re criminals’: Ohio teen soccer star recounts deportation,” including: “The Ohio high school graduate and soccer standout who was recently deported from the US to Honduras despite having no arrest record has described being “handcuffed like we’re some big criminals” for the entirety of his deportation flight.”
NBC News, “Dreamer who spent 15 days in ICE detention says she was ‘scared and felt alone’,” including: “Scared, alone and heartbroken: that’s how 19-year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves said she felt the two weeks she spent in a detention center in Colorado after immigration authorities arrested her following a traffic stop.”

Washington, DC — Ahead of Senate Republicans’ scramble to pass their massive and harmful budget bill, Vice President J.D. Vance made clear that turbocharging Stephen Miller’s mass deportation obsession remains White House priority number one. In a late-night social media post ahead of his tie-breaking vote in the Senate today, VP Vance wrote:

“Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”

The big, ugly bill includes more than $150 billion for immigration enforcement – a staggering amount that would empower Miller and allies like Vance to fully scale up the mass deportation crusade at an incalculable and irreparable cost to American families, communities and our economy.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:

“Slashing Medicaid for millions? ‘Immaterial.’ Cutting funding for rural hospitals? No big deal. Adding nearly $4 trillion to the national debt and kneecapping clean energy industries? Doesn’t matter.

All that matters to Vice President JD Vance, Stephen Miller and other nativist true believers in the Trump administration is their crusade against immigrants. Vance finally told the truth: to hell with Medicaid and budget deficits – all that matters is unleashing ICE to go after our neighbors and coworkers and in the process devastating our families and communities.

Already, ICE enforcement is targeting long-settled immigrants who most Americans want to legalize, not deport (see this excellent Philip Bump’s column in the Washington Post and recent polling). Now, they are planning on recklessly escalating the harms and costs even further.”

House Republican leaders overcame a critical hurdle Thursday to advance President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration legislation, paving the way to pass the legislation in the morning.

All but one Republican voted to clear the procedural hurdle, known as a rule, that outlines the parameters for debate ahead of a final passage vote. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) confidently declared Trump and GOP leaders notched enough votes throughout Wednesday and early Thursday to send the president’s agenda to his desk before July 4.

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“When you’re doing a big, comprehensive piece of legislation, you’re going to expect a lot of extra time, a lot of questions and a lot of deliberation over it,” Johnson said, adding it took “a lot of patience and listening to everyone’s concerns” ever since the Senate passed their bill Tuesday.

The $3.4 trillion legislation would extend tax cuts from Trump’s first term and implement campaign promises such as eliminating income taxes on tips and equipping border patrol and immigration enforcement agents with new, militarized capabilities.

Lawmakers spent Wednesday shuttling between talks with party leaders, Trump administration lieutenants and the president himself at the White House. But as Wednesday turned into Thursday morning, Johnson was still working to convince 10 lawmakers to vote to advance the bill.

As talks dragged on, leaders left open two votes for over five hours — a sign of the Republican conference’s dysfunction and also the furious backroom dealing to get Trump’s agenda over the finish line by an arbitrary July 4 deadline.

“I’ll keep it open as long as it takes to make sure we’ve got everybody here and accounted for,” Johnson said late Wednesday on Fox News’s “Hannity.”

Johnson and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota) worked the floor during the rule vote, holding what appeared to be tense conversations with ultraconservative and moderate lawmakers. But Republicans remained dug in for most of the evening. Fiscal hawks continued to have concerns over the ballooning price of the legislation, and some moderate conservatives remain uneasy about the even steeper cuts to Medicaid in the Senate version of the bill.

Shortly after midnight, Trump began to urge lawmakers publicly to stop delaying and vote.

“What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES,” he wrote on his social media site Truth Social. Minutes later the president added, “FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!”

Behind closed doors, Trump and Vice President JD Vance spoke to some of the holdouts and worked to get them to end their blockade, Johnson told reporters.

Ultimately leaders flipped GOP Reps. Victoria Spartz (Indiana), Keith Self (Texas), Thomas Massie (Kentucky) and Andrew Clyde (Georgia) to vote yes, while five other members of the House Freedom Caucus cast their vote. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania), one of three moderates representing a swing district Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, was the only Republican to vote with all Democrats against the rule.

Johnson must now maintain the support — and momentum — of all but three Republicans to send the One Big Beautiful Bill to Trump Thursday.

The objections embedded throughout the GOP conference came after the Senate overhauled a proposal the House passed in May. The Senate changes made the bill costlier; excluding borrowing costs, the House version would raise the national debt by $2.4 trillion over 10 years, while the Senate bill would increase it by $3.4 trillion.

To offset the cost, the legislation would cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income individuals and people with disabilities, and other health care programs. It would also make cuts to SNAP, the anti-hunger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Nearly 12 million people will lose health care coverage if the bill becomes law, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Those with objections are largely from the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, who have for years demanded that Republicans reduce the deficit by slashing federal government spending. Several lawmakers from the moderate wing were also upset after the Senate introduced sharper cuts to Medicaid, a decision that could impact their constituents from receiving the benefit.

Republicans largely remained confident Wednesday that the bill would pass, but some still needed to be convinced through the 11th hour. Rep. Greg Murphy (North Carolina), a rank-and-file conservative with concerns over the Senate bill’s Medicaid cuts, said he was “hoping to talk to the president” as the House waited on the next steps.

Republicans who had previously wavered seemed to be persuaded after their White House meetings with Trump early Wednesday. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (New Jersey), a pragmatic conservative, said he was leaning yes following his conversations with Trump, which helped assuage his concerns over the bill — particularly regarding the bill’s limits on health care provider taxes. Rep. Don Bacon (Nebraska), a moderate who said he will not be seeking reelection next year, appeared poised to vote yes, saying he would find it hard to vote against making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent.

Rep. Dusty Johnson (South Dakota), a supporter of the bill who attended a White House meeting, said “the president was masterful” in coaxing both moderates and conservatives. “He absolutely moved some minds in that room,” he said.

Republicans who support the bill said the legislation would help the working-class voters who swept Trump to the White House and the GOP to unified control of Congress in November’s elections.

“If we don’t take a different trajectory, these programs will collapse under the economic failures of prior administrations,” Rep. Mike Kennedy (R-Utah) said on the House floor.

The bill would increase the child tax credit and add a bonus to the standard deduction for seniors, a provision inspired by Trump’s campaign pledge to stop taxing Social Security benefits. It would create savings accounts for newborns, seeded with $1,000 of taxpayer money, and it would allow buyers of American-made cars to deduct up to $10,000 in car loan interest.

But beyond those populist flourishes, the measure is regressive. The 10 percent of households with the lowest incomes would stand to be worse off by an average of $1,600 per year on average because of benefits cuts, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the House version of the bill. The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes would be better off by $12,000 on average.

The legislation would make permanent a trio of corporate tax deductions that would make it easier for companies to invest in research and purchase new equipment.

Adding in the impact of Trump’s tariffs — which the White House has argued will help pay for the bill’s tax cuts and new spending — the bottom 80 percent of households would see their take-home incomes fall, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

The nearly $170 billion in the bill to fund the Trump administration’s border and immigration crackdown would be one of the largest sums ever spent on homeland security, and an additional roughly $160 billion would flow to the Defense Department, partially for Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” continental missile defense system.

The number of people crossing the southern border illegally has dropped to levels not seen in decades, a sign that President Trump’s message of deterrence and his hard-line immigration policies are working to keep people out.

Border Patrol agents made just over 6,000 arrests in June, figures released this week by the Department of Homeland Security show, punctuating a steep drop since Mr. Trump took office.

Mr. Trump ran on a platform of shutting down illegal crossings of the southern border and carrying out mass expulsions of people in the United States without authorization, positions that helped sweep him into office. His campaign to execute his immigration promises has invited showdowns with the courts, tested the boundaries of constitutional rights and upended America’s longstanding role welcoming those seeking refuge or asylum.

But in his first few months in office, it also appears to have been effective.

Adam Isacson, a border expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, said the border crossings in June were the lowest since the 1960s and were likely aided by the intensified immigration push, pointing to images of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the sending of immigrants to El Salvador and other countries they are not from, and the holding of migrants at the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“Smugglers’ messaging may not be able to overcome the climate of fear among the immigrant community in the United States,” he said. “People are probably getting scary messages on WhatsApp, TikTok and elsewhere about how bad for migrants the climate is in the United States.”

President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration largely struggled with the southern border, with monthly arrests peaking in December 2023 at nearly 250,000. After Mr. Biden moved to limit asylum at the border, the numbers dropped under 50,000 by the closing months of his administration — but never this low.

On Jan. 20, the day he took office, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that effectively blocked asylum access for those crossing illegally into the United States. Since then, the highest monthly total of illegal crossings has been nearly 9,000. On one day in late June, according to the Department of Homeland Security, agents made only 137 arrests, a figure the agency called “the lowest single-day total in a quarter of a century.”

In a statement, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, celebrated what she called “the most secure border in American history.”

“The world is hearing our message: The border is closed to lawbreakers,” she said. “Under President Trump, our Border Patrol agents are empowered to do their job once again, secure our border and protect the American people.”

Chad Wolf, Mr. Trump’s acting homeland security secretary during his first administration, said he had not expected the numbers to drop so low, so quickly.

“Deterrence actually does work,” he said. “And so I think for the most part, people are thinking twice about coming illegally.”

But immigrant advocates say the effects for those seeking protection have been disastrous.

Beyond blocking asylum for those crossing illegally, the Trump administration shut down a program that allowed migrants to enter the United States at a port of entry after signing up through a government app.

“They are completely stranded in the border cities — those that actually were able to get to the north are just in limbo because there is no safe option to seek protection,” said Robyn Barnard, senior director for refugee advocacy at Human Rights First. Referring to a notorious prison in El Salvador and the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, she added, “People are very scared of being sent to the CECOT or Gitmo, or elsewhere.”

During the first Trump administration, some border policies limiting asylum at the southern border were blocked in court, stymying the government’s efforts to bring the numbers down.

This time, Mr. Trump had avoided such rulings — until Wednesday, when a federal judge in Washington blocked his executive order barring asylum at the southern border. But the judge delayed the effective date of the order for two weeks so the government could appeal.

“The West will not survive if our sovereignty is not restored,” Stephen Miller, the deputy chief White House chief of staff and architect of much of its immigration policy, said on social media after the decision.

Andrea Flores, a former Biden administration official, said the ruling could be a major blow to the current administration’s goal to present an impenetrable border.

“Today’s ruling means the president could soon have to operate the same outdated system of laws that have failed to manage every border crisis for the past 10 years,” she said.

A growing number of local law enforcement officials are alarmed about their jails and prisons holding immigration detainees without warrants, saying it exposes their departments to legal risks.

Why it matters: It’s the latest sign of tension between local authorities and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, whose strong-arm tactics in arresting immigrants have shocked communities across the nation.

Zoom in: As part of President Trump’s push to deport “millions” of unauthorized immigrants, ICE has leaned on local agencies to help arrest and temporarily detain unauthorized immigrants.

Over the past decade most of ICE’s arrests involved people who already were in law enforcement custody, according to a review of 10 years of data from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
But with ICE arrests soaring to more than 2,000 a day under Trump, local jail and prison officials are increasingly concerned about being liable for detainees’ care — particularly when ICE leaves them in local facilities for lengthy periods.
The officials note that in the past, lawsuits filed on behalf of ICE detainees wrongly left languishing in local jails have cost local governments enormously — $92.5 million in one New York City case involving 20,000 people who were held in prison for ICE without due process between 1997 and 2012.
How it works: ICE can ask a local agency to hold someone they believe isn’t legally in the U.S., using a request called a detainer. Usually there’s a 48-hour limit on this request.

A detainer request from ICE isn’t the same as a warrant issued by a judge, which local agencies require to hold their suspects.
“The ICE administrative warrant is not enough to hold somebody’s liberty away,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) told Axios. “It’s essentially holding somebody and locking them up when there’s no legal, lawful authority to do so.”
“The risk to the institution that’s holding them is civil liability,” he added. “They could end up paying a lot of money — and not just money, but injunctive relief.”
The National Sheriffs’ Association has asked the Trump administration to clarify how long someone should be held on ICE’s behalf, and has raised the issue with Border Czar Tom Homan.

The group also has been lobbying Congress to pass a law addressing the issue for sheriffs, who often manage jails.
Between the lines: A few law enforcement officials have spoken publicly about their concerns for ICE detainees’ civil liberties under Trump’s deportation push — and have faced a backlash from GOP officials for doing so.

In February, Sheriff Dan Marx of Winneshiek County, Iowa, aired his concerns about cooperating with ICE detainers in a since-deleted Facebook post.
“The only reason detainers are issued is because the federal agency does not have enough information or has not taken the time to obtain a valid judicial warrant,” Marx wrote.
“These detainers are violations of our 4th Amendment protection against warrantless search, seizure and arrest, and our 6th Amendment right to due process.”
Marx’s post led Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds — a Republican who has ordered the state’s local law enforcement to “fully cooperate” with Trump’s deportation mission — to file a formal complaint against the sheriff.

Marx was investigated by Iowa’s attorney general over whether he violated a state law mandating such cooperation.
He deleted his first post and issued another statement that said in part: “I do not believe law enforcement officials should have to choose between upholding their sworn duty to the Constitution and following the state statute.”

He declined to be interviewed because of the investigation.
“From a constitutional standpoint, if we’re going to hold somebody in jail or detain them, we want to be doing so lawfully and have legal grounds to do so. And I think for a sheriff to ask for a judicial warrant is reasonable,” Michael Tupper, a former police chief in Marshalltown, Iowa, told Axios.
In a New Orleans court, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office is being sued by Louisiana’s attorney general for not honoring ICE detainers.

Orleans Parish has a policy of honoring ICE detainers only when a detainee has a warrant for a violent offense.
The policy stems from has a legal settlement from 2010, when two men in the Orleans jail were held without due process for two months longer than their sentences, waiting for ICE.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) argues it amounts to a sanctuary policy, in violation of state law. The case is ongoing.
Several other jurisdictions nationwide have faced similar lawsuits when people have been held on ICE detainers longer than their sentences or after their cases were dismissed. Some, like Orleans Parish, are changing their policies to limit their exposure to such suits.

Montgomery and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania, for example, now require judicial warrants in addition to an ICE detainers to hold immigration detainees.
What they’re saying: “When a sheriff or a police chief stands up and voices concerns, they are oftentimes painted as soft on crime, or, you know, they don’t care about keeping their community safe,” Tupper said. “It’s really the opposite. These folks are trying to do the right thing for the community.”

As Trump’s deportation effort continues, that pressure on police chiefs and sheriffs is likely to build.
“If they speak up too much,” said retired police chief Mark Prosser of Stormlake, Iowa, “then perhaps an immigration enforcement activity is going to come to a community near you.”

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, was beaten, deprived of sleep and psychologically tortured during the nearly three months he spent in Salvadoran custody, according to court papers filed on Wednesday evening by his lawyers.

The papers, filed in Federal District Court in Maryland, detailed a litany of horrors that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said he suffered while being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons.

His lawyers said that he and 20 other Salvadoran men who were deported to the prison from the United States on March 15 were once made to kneel overnight “with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion.”

During the time he spent there, the lawyers said, Mr. Abrego Garcia was “denied bathroom access and soiled himself.” He and other prisoners were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell that had no windows, but was outfitted with bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day.

When Mr. Abrego Garcia first arrived at the prison, his lawyers maintained, he was greeted by an official who told him, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.”

Two weeks later, the lawyers added, he had lost nearly 31 pounds.

The court papers offer a startling glimpse of the conditions under which Mr. Abrego Garcia was held. Even though his description aligns with what is known about the prison and the treatment of detainees, the more than 200 Venezuelans who were sent to CECOT on the same set of flights that day were placed in a separate cell block, leaving it unclear whether they were subject to different conditions.

The papers were submitted to Judge Paula Xinis, who had issued the initial order in April instructing the Trump administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from El Salvador. The papers included a revised version of the original complaint the lawyers filed in March seeking his return from Salvadoran custody. They asked Judge Xinis to immediately free their client from custody in the United States.

Mr. Abrego Garcia is currently being held by federal authorities in Nashville after the Trump administration, in a surprising move, brought him back from El Salvador last month after weeks of asserting it was powerless to do so. But the Justice Department stated that it had returned him for a specific reason: to stand trial on a federal indictment accusing him of having taken part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants as a member of the violent street gang MS-13.

The new filing by his lawyers appeared to undercut charges that he was a member of MS-13 as well as a specific accusation lodged by President Trump himself that his tattoos indicated he belonged to the gang.

The filing claimed that Salvadoran prison officials recognized that Mr. Abrego Garcia “was not affiliated with any gang” and acknowledged that his tattoos “were not gang-related,” going so far as to tell him at one point, “Your tattoos are fine.”

A spokeswoman for El Salvador’s president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Almost from the moment that Mr. Abrego Garcia was back on U.S. soil, there has been uncertainty about what might happen to him next.

It remains unclear if he will remain in jail on his criminal charges as the case moves through the courts or will be released on bail and placed instead into immigration custody as an undocumented migrant. It is also possible that he could be expelled from the country again just weeks after the Trump administration brought him back.

Along with their revised complaint, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed separate papers on Wednesday evening, repeating their request to Judge Xinis to issue a new order that would effectively bar him from being sent out of the country until further notice.

Later on Wednesday night, the Justice Department was expected to ask the federal judge in his criminal case to reverse another judge’s decision allowing his release and keep him locked up on the indictment as he awaits trial.

Much of the confusion has stemmed from ambiguous — even contradictory — statements from the Trump administration and from what appears to be dueling views from the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security about how to handle the case.

Early last month, things seemed somewhat clearer.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced at a news conference on June 6 that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been returned to the United States to face immigrant smuggling charges in Federal District Court in Nashville. She insisted that he would be re-deported only after his criminal case was over.

“Upon completion of his sentence,” Ms. Bondi said, “we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador.”

But last week, a Justice Department lawyer introduced a new twist. During a hearing in Maryland, the lawyer, Jonathan Guynn, told Judge Xinis that the administration planned to expel Mr. Abrego Garcia again — this time, not to El Salvador but to an unnamed third country.

While Mr. Guynn made clear that there were “no imminent plans” to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia, other Trump officials immediately sought to clarify his comments. In some ways, their efforts only further muddied the waters.

First, a White House spokeswoman posted a message on social media describing news accounts of Mr. Guynn’s statements as “fake news.” Then an administration official, repeating what Ms. Bondi had said at her news conference, asserted that the Justice Department was still planning to try Mr. Abrego Garcia before deporting him again.

All of this was sufficiently perplexing to the lawyers handling Mr. Abrego Garcia’s criminal case that they made an unusual request to a federal magistrate judge in Tennessee. Even though the judge, Barbara D. Holmes, had already decided that their client should be freed from criminal custody and handed over to the Department of Homeland Security, they asked her to delay his release for at least two weeks, concerned that if the transfer took place, D.H.S. might soon re-deport him.

The Justice Department agreed to the request. But in a filing to Judge Holmes, the department appeared to leave open the possibility of the thing it said would not happen — that D.H.S. might, in fact, expel Mr. Abrego Garcia again.

“The prosecution intends to see this case to resolution,” lawyers for the department told the judge. “Yet as stated before this court as recently as June 25, 2025, D.H.S. will and must follow their own process, relevant regulations, the existing federal statutory scheme, and appropriate case law in handling the defendant’s future immigration proceedings and potential deportation.”

In the coming days, there will be two hearings — one in Maryland and one in Tennessee — that will help determine what will happen to Mr. Abrego Garcia.

The first is scheduled for Monday in front of Judge Xinis who will consider, among other things, the request for the new order to keep Mr. Abrego Garcia in the United States. Such an order, if granted, would come months after her original decision, handed down in April, instructing the Trump administration to bring him back from overseas.

The second hearing is set to take place on July 16 in front of Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., the district court judge who is handling the criminal case. Judge Crenshaw is expected to reconsider the ruling by Judge Holmes freeing Mr. Abrego Garcia from criminal custody. He might also weigh in on the question of deportation.

Until then, Mr. Abrego Garcia will remain in the hands of federal jailers in Tennessee, placed there protectively by his lawyers.