Denial of due process in immigration enforcement
Denial of due process in immigration enforcement is the conduct of removal, detention, asylum, and related proceedings in ways that bypass the procedural protections required by statute, regulation, and constitutional minima. Concrete forms include summary removals where individualized adjudication is required, the holding of people incommunicado, the conduct of hearings without language access or counsel access, and the denial of access to evidence the government will use against the respondent.
2026 Events (154)
San Francisco Chronicle investigation revealed CBP held dozens of SFO detainees, including green-card holders, beyond 72-hour legal limit
A San Francisco Chronicle investigation published September 1, 2026 found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has held at least 25 people beyond its own 72-hour detention limit at San Francisco International Airport through July 2026, 19 of them lawful permanent residents; one detainee spent eight days without a bed or shower, and another went without diabetes medication for eight days until paramedics were called. Rep. Kevin Mullin, whose district includes SFO, conducted an unannounced oversight visit the same day and said CBP officers acknowledged the extended holds reflect "a definitive policy shift from the Trump administration."
Colorado Newsline reported ICE held protected T-visa applicant 120+ days, then released him out of state without ID
Colorado Newsline reported on August 31, 2026 that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement held Rudy Villeda Mejía, a Honduran national with a pending T-visa application, at its Aurora, Colorado facility for more than 120 days despite a May 2026 federal court order barring ICE from detaining pending T-visa applicants. ICE transported him to a staging facility in Louisiana in early August, and shortly after his arrival a judge ordered his release on August 3 and barred his re-detention, but ICE released him there without his passport or work permit, leaving his family and attorney unable to locate him for a period before he was able to return home.
ICE-led raid detained 100+ people at Memphis nightclub without individualized suspicion, witnesses said
Before dawn on August 30, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation conducted a raid at El Corralón, a bar in Memphis' Berclair neighborhood, detaining more than 100 patrons and employees and loading them onto buses and vans. Federal officials characterized the action as execution of a search warrant tied to a gambling-machine and drug investigation, but witnesses and advocacy groups said the operation swept up people regardless of individual involvement, separating parents from children. Memphis Police said they had no role in planning or executing the raid, responding only to assist with traffic and crowd control.
ProPublica investigation revealed Pinellas County Jail systematically rebooked immigrant detainees to evade 72-hour ICE hold limit
A ProPublica investigation published August 27, 2026 found that Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater, Florida repeatedly released and re-admitted immigrant detainees at 72-hour intervals to evade the legal limit on how long county jails may hold people on civil ICE detainers, rebooking at least 174 immigrants two or more times between July 2025 and July 2026 -- a volume unmatched by any other jail nationwide. Soumia Bensalah, a French-Moroccan woman with a pending green-card application, was shuttled to an ICE hold room and back five times in December 2025 before being deported to France, while a separate Mexican woman was rebooked ten times, spending a cumulative 26 days in the jail. DHS and the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office defended the jail's practices on the record, while legal experts called the pattern unconstitutional detention that typically occurs in secret.
DOJ's Chicago immigration court ordered removal of six unaccompanied minors with pending SIJS applications
On August 26, 2026, an immigration judge presiding over Chicago's downtown immigration court ordered the removal of six unaccompanied immigrant children, ages 12 to 17, despite each having a pending Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) application -- a status Congress created to protect immigrant children who were abused, abandoned, or neglected. Advocates said the court has, since June 2026, been requiring these children to appear every two weeks instead of the periodic check-ins historically used while SIJS applications are pending, and a DOJ spokesperson defended the accelerated pace as needed to reduce the immigration court's case backlog.
Border Patrol arrested Key West father of deployed USS Lincoln sailor; DHS held him for deportation despite no criminal record
On August 22, 2026, U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, a 48-year-old Key West, Florida handyman, during a traffic stop while his son Joshua was nine months into a deployment aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Aviles, a Nicaragua native who has lived in the U.S. for about 19 years, was placed in ICE custody pending deportation; his wife said he holds a work permit and the family says he has no criminal record, while DHS confirmed the arrest, said he entered the country illegally, and did not dispute the absence of a criminal record. DHS said in a statement that "having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation's laws."
Polk County deputies and ICE detained injured Ecuadorian mother and daughter at Florida hospital, refusing to show a warrant
On August 21, 2026, Polk County Sheriff's deputies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents handcuffed and removed Grace Stephanie Calero Cabanilla, 39, and her daughter Giulianna Mía Carriel Calero, 19, from HCA Florida Poinciana Hospital in Kissimmee, one day after a car crash left both women hospitalized. A deputy questioned Calero Cabanilla about her immigration status while she was still being treated, then contacted ICE, which lodged detainers describing both women as having overstayed their visas; family members say Calero Cabanilla held a pending asylum case and work permit and that her daughter's visa was valid until 2030, claims neither ICE nor the sheriff's office has addressed.
Deportees say ICE agents assaulted, restrained, and denied them medical care and bathroom access on Liberia deportation flight
On August 20, 2026, deportees said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents beat, restrained, and denied them medical care and bathroom access during a roughly 14-hour deportation flight from Louisiana to Monrovia, Liberia, the first of an expected 1,200 people to be sent to Liberia under a third-country deportation arrangement. Deportees said agents beat those who resisted, denied a Cuban national with a surgically repaired abdominal wound access to a toilet and later knelt on his abdomen on the tarmac, and held others for days without beds in an unheated room. The Department of Homeland Security denied several of these specific claims on the record but did not address most of the deportees' other allegations.
ICE arrested two people en route to medical appointments in Santa Fe clinic parking lot
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Edgar Chacon-Miranda and Adriana Ruiz in Santa Fe, New Mexico on August 19, 2026, as both were on their way to medical appointments. Chacon-Miranda was detained in the parking lot of La Familia Health's Alto Street clinic in front of his 11-year-old daughter; DHS cited a prior criminal charge that Chacon-Miranda's attorney says was dismissed and that does not preclude the lawful permanent resident status he qualifies for. Ruiz was separately taken into custody after agents allegedly gave a false vehicle description to identify her; her family could not confirm her whereabouts or whether she received medical care afterward.
ICE detained Padres coach Oswaldo Pirela at El Paso airport; family says his 2014 asylum case is still pending
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Oswaldo Jose Pirela, a Venezuelan-born San Diego Padres minor-league catching coordinator, at El Paso International Airport at approximately 5 a.m. on August 16, 2026, while he was traveling for work. The Department of Homeland Security said Pirela's authorized stay expired in February 2018 and that he lacked legal immigration documentation when encountered; his family says he filed for asylum in 2014 and that the case has remained pending since. He remained in ICE custody as of August 18, 2026, pending removal proceedings.
NPR reported ICE detained Venezuelan soccer pro Homero Calderon for nearly six months despite two pending visa applications
NPR reported on August 15, 2026 that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held professional soccer player Homero Calderon in detention for nearly six months after he was pulled over in Marion County, Florida in late February 2026, despite two pending immigration applications -- a tourist-visa extension and an EB-1A extraordinary-ability visa. The Department of Homeland Security told NPR on the record that Calderon "overstayed his welcome in violation of our nation's laws" and said he will remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of his immigration proceedings.
ICE detained Werner Kunkel under a removal order tied to his vacated murder conviction, hours after a judge ordered his release
ICE took Werner Kunkel, 65, into federal immigration custody at the Devils Lake, North Dakota jail on August 13, 2026, one day after North Dakota District Judge Ted Sandberg ordered him released on a $25,000 personal-recognizance bond with electronic monitoring. The detainer ICE invoked traces to a 1996 removal order based on the same 1995 murder conviction a state court vacated in February 2026 after finding prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence. ICE transferred Kunkel to the Grand Forks County Jail to await deportation proceedings, and no bond hearing had been scheduled as of this recording.
Capital & Main investigation reveals ICE deported hundreds of unaccompanied Mexican children to unfamiliar cities in southern Mexico
An Aug. 11, 2026 Capital & Main investigation found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has, since December 2025, flown hundreds of unaccompanied Mexican children to southern Mexico cities including Tapachula, Villahermosa, and Mérida, far from their home regions near the U.S. border, departing from the prior practice of returning them to border-area child-welfare services. Human Rights First and partner organizations told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Aug. 3, 2026 that they had confirmed more than 350 cases and that some deported children have disappeared, with unconfirmed reports of possible deaths.
ICE detained green-card holder Venkata Vasamsetty months after her removal case was dismissed
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Venkata Vasamsetty, a Wake County, North Carolina schoolteacher and lawful permanent resident since 2013, at a scheduled check-in at ICE's Charlotte field office on Aug. 11, 2026, months after an immigration judge dismissed the government's removal case against her on May 19, 2026. ICE transferred Vasamsetty to the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, and her attorney said the agency's own records had not been updated to reflect the dismissal before her legal team filed an emergency habeas corpus petition on Aug. 12, 2026.
CBP arrested a Billings parent and his 9-year-old child without a warrant and held them at the Havre Border Patrol Station
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents arrested Adrián Espinoza De La Cruz, a four-year Billings resident, and his 9-year-old child on Aug. 11, 2026 without a judicial warrant and took them to the Havre Border Patrol Station in northern Montana, where both remained in custody nine days later. Attorneys with Upper Seven Law petitioned the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana for their release, arguing the Havre station is not built for long-term detention and that a detained minor is entitled to specific protections the government has not shown it is meeting. The U.S. Attorney's Office acknowledged in a court filing that agents made the arrest without a warrant and without evidence the two posed an escape risk, and argued that releasing them would nonetheless not be appropriate.
DHS escalated deportation pursuit of noncitizens on voter rolls, including inadvertent, non-fraudulent registrants
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services intensified deportation pursuit of noncitizens found on voter rolls, The Seattle Times reported August 10, 2026, reopening closed voter-fraud cases, investigating voter-registration drives in major cities, and detaining suspected registrants at border checkpoints, even when registration was inadvertent and no ballot was cast. Washington state green-card holder Abdullah Emre Basar, registered without his knowledge after a 2014 motor-vehicle-office visit and who never voted, was denied citizenship and placed into removal proceedings in April 2026 after disclosing the registration at his USCIS interview.
ICE Director David Venturella unilaterally reversed torture protections, deported Mexican nationals
ICE Director David Venturella unilaterally reversed torture-based deportation protections for a group of Mexican nationals who had proven to an immigration court they would likely face torture if returned, and the Trump administration deported them in early August 2026. DHS said the move relied on Mexican government assurances the deportees would not be harmed.
ICE detained Kosovo-born former CIA informant Blerim Skoro despite 2022 torture-risk protection order
On August 3, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Blerim Skoro, a Kosovo-born Staten Island taxi driver and self-described former CIA and FBI informant, at ICE's immigration office in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he had gone to renew his paperwork. Skoro holds a November 2022 federal court order granting deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture due to the risk of torture or death if returned to Kosovo, and his attorney says ICE was required to obtain judicial permission before deporting him, which it did not do. His attorney filed a habeas corpus petition challenging the detention the following day.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied a British Dartmouth student reentry and refused for weeks to explain why
On August 2, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied British citizen and Dartmouth College sophomore Taha Tariq reentry to the United States at the Derby Line, Vermont border crossing, while the three American classmates traveling with him were admitted within hours. CBP told The Dartmouth only that Tariq underwent "additional inspection" and was found inadmissible, and in two subsequent on-the-record statements over the following three weeks declined to say whether he had been issued an expedited removal order or to explain the basis for the denial. Tariq's attorney said CBP "lacked proper grounds to deny re-entry," and as of the most recent reporting Tariq remained stranded in Canada, finishing his summer coursework remotely.
ICE detained Maine nurse with legal work authorization at Boston's Logan Airport, planned transfer to Louisiana
On July 30, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Debora Kapisha, a Maine Medical Center nurse with a pending asylum claim, at Boston's Logan International Airport; her employer and union said she held legal work authorization, while DHS said she had overstayed a visa. The union said ICE planned to transfer her from Massachusetts to a detention facility in Louisiana. Kapisha was released from ICE custody on August 6 following public pressure from coworkers and her union.
ICE deported Cuban asylum seeker to Central African Republic on 71-person flight without disclosing destination
On July 30, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Aristides Fernandez Garcia, a 37-year-old Cuban asylum seeker held for seven months in immigration detention, from Fort Worth, Texas on a 71-person third-country removal flight to the Central African Republic — one of the largest known third-country removal flights to date. Fernandez Garcia and other passengers said ICE did not tell them their destination until the flight was already underway, and that they were shackled and denied lavatory access during the more-than-21-hour journey. DHS confirmed his arrest and removal dates on the record but did not dispute the lack-of-notice or in-flight conditions accounts.
CBP arrested Worden, Montana man without a warrant, held him unlawfully for over a week
On July 30, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents arrested Jesus Verde Hernandez, a 10-year Worden, Montana resident with no criminal history, in Lewistown without a warrant or probable cause, then transported him through multiple facilities before holding him at the Cascade County Detention Center in Great Falls. On August 8, 2026, Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Morris ordered Hernandez's release, finding the government had pursued a detention policy "deemed unlawful by the majority of courts." Hernandez was one of roughly 17 people his attorneys say were held in Cascade County on the same allegedly unlawful basis.
ICE arrested Johns Hopkins researcher at BWI, blocked counsel access, transferred her 1,000 miles to Louisiana
On July 28, 2026, ICE agents arrested Fatima Ameaka, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health senior analyst and former Fulbright scholar, at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport as she boarded a domestic flight, citing a civil visa-overstay violation with no criminal charge. Neither her family nor her attorney could reach her for days as ICE moved her roughly 1,000 miles to a Louisiana detention facility, canceling a scheduled attorney video interview in the process. Ameaka held a work authorization permit valid until 2029 and had a pending asylum application at the time of her arrest.
DHS eliminated pre-referral asylum interviews, fast-tracking up to 444,000 cases to immigration court
On July 27, 2026, DHS and USCIS announced an interim final rule ending the longstanding practice of interviewing affirmative asylum applicants before deciding whether to refer their cases to immigration court, effective July 28. USCIS said the change would "reduce the backlog" of 1.4 million pending asylum cases, estimating up to 444,000 could be affected and about 132,000 new applicants a year would now go straight to adversarial removal proceedings without the non-adversarial screening interview immigration lawyers say has protected genuine claims.
ICE launched targeted enforcement operation against Haitian migrants in Ohio as TPS expired, planning rapid deportation flights
On July 26, 2026, CBS News reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had developed and begun executing a targeted enforcement operation against Haitian migrants in Ohio, timed to expiration of Temporary Protected Status after the Supreme Court's certified judgment authorized TPS termination for Haitians and Syrians. Internal agency documents reviewed by CBS News and statements from ICE officials confirmed plans to concentrate operations on the Springfield, Ohio area and to rapidly deport Haitian migrants, with speed of removal designed to limit time available to seek legal counsel or contest removal orders.
Board of Immigration Appeals ruled asylum fee non-payment fatal to claims despite documented notice failures nationwide
On July 24, 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedent decision, Matter of L-F-R-, holding that failure to pay the $100 annual asylum fee created by the 2025 reconciliation law is fatal to an asylum application. The ruling formalizes a dismissal mechanism already applied in cases where no payment method existed or notice of the fee was not reliably delivered, including a documented San Diego case. The Board limited the fee's reach to asylum claims alone, remanding the respondent's related withholding-of-removal and Convention Against Torture claims for separate consideration.
USCIS announced work authorization restrictions targeting asylum seekers and TPS holders under One Big Beautiful Bill
On July 23, 2026, USCIS policies implementing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act were set to take effect, which would have allowed the agency to reject asylum applications and terminate work permits when applicants failed to pay a new fee without adequate notice or appeal, removed the 30-day adjudication requirement for asylum work authorization, and retroactively restricted work authorization for TPS holders from El Salvador, Sudan, and Ukraine. A federal judge in Boston issued an emergency order blocking the policies the day before they were to take effect, finding them likely adopted in violation of Administrative Procedure Act notice-and-comment requirements.
ICE detained Russian asylum-seeker at Buffalo airport, held her nearly a month
ICE officers detained Alevtina Soboleva, a 59-year-old Russian asylum-seeker from Sunnyvale, California, at the Buffalo airport on July 20, 2026, as she and her daughter prepared to fly home from a trip to Niagara Falls, despite her asylum application still being under review. Her daughter says Soboleva was shackled, held in a cage, and denied water and bathroom access while being transferred between detention facilities, and was held for nearly a month at a federal facility in Louisiana before an immigration judge set a $10,000 bond and she was released.
ICE held Venezuelan asylum-seeker eight days past its own 72-hour standard in unsanitary conditions, then barred a congresswoman from seeing her
Claudia Rodriguez Caglianone, a 28-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker with a nine-year pending case and no criminal record, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on July 19, 2026 and held for eight days at ICE's Miramar field office — more than double the 72-hour limit ICE told Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz applies to that check-in facility — before being transferred to the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach and released on bond August 3, 2026. Rodriguez described sleeping on an uncleaned floor without a shower for eight days and said staff discouraged medical exams for pregnant detainees; separately, ICE barred Wasserman Schultz from an in-person visit to Rodriguez during a surprise facility inspection despite a signed family privacy release, requiring her to speak to Rodriguez by phone instead.
ICE detained Chicago Public Schools custodian Josue Pire Hidalgo and family at scheduled asylum appointment
On July 17, 2026, ICE detained Josue Pire Hidalgo, a Venezuelan asylum applicant and Chicago Public Schools custodian, along with his wife and two children, when the family arrived for their asylum check-in appointment at ICE's downtown Chicago office. Only Pire Hidalgo remained in custody, transferred to a jail in Clay County, Indiana, while his wife and children were released the same day under an ankle monitor because their 6-year-old daughter has asthma. Neither parent has a criminal record or an existing deportation order, and the family had waited more than three years for the appointment.
ICE removed an estimated 116 immigration detainees from South Florida in violation of federal habeas orders, judge found
At a July 16, 2026 hearing in Miami, Department of Justice attorneys told U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore that ICE had removed an estimated 116 immigration detainees from the Southern District of Florida in direct violation of federal habeas corpus orders barring their transfer pending bond hearings, up from an initial count of 47 discovered after a Krome Detention Facility evacuation during nearby brushfires. Moore ordered immediate bond hearings for nine cases before him and set a follow-up hearing for August 6 to confirm the full scope.
ICE arrested a Bronx asylum seeker at a Manhattan immigration court in continued defiance of a judge's order barring such arrests
On July 16, 2026, ICE agents arrested Bronx resident Matar Ndiaye immediately after his hearing at the immigration court at 290 Broadway in Manhattan, at least the sixth such courthouse arrest since U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel's May 18, 2026 order barred them absent a national-security or public-safety threat. Ndiaye's attorneys, who say he has no criminal record and was never deemed a flight risk, filed a habeas corpus petition after he was transferred to Delaney Hall, New Jersey.
Justice Department activated the 30-year-dormant Alien Terrorist Removal Court for the first time
On July 15, 2026, the Justice Department filed the first application in the 30-year history of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, a specialized tribunal Congress created in 1996 as part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act but which had never previously been used. The identity of the respondent and the nature of the allegations remain sealed; the presiding judge questioned the government's legal theory and requested further briefing. Legal experts noted the ATRC structure significantly curtails due process relative to standard immigration removal proceedings by permitting the government to keep its classified evidence secret from the respondent.
ICE detained Russian national with pending accepted green card petition at Burbank Airport
ICE agents detained Galina Bobreneva, a Russian national married to a U.S. citizen, at Burbank Airport on July 13, 2026, despite her marriage-based green card petition having already been accepted for processing with fingerprinting completed; DHS characterized her as having overstayed her visa, while her attorney maintains she was never out of lawful status. She was held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility for over two weeks before being released on July 29 on a $35,000 bond with an ankle monitor, with her immigration case still pending.
ICE arrested Philadelphia woman mid-status-adjustment at airport checkpoint, part of a wider airport-arrest pattern
On July 11, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Iliana Noeli Lick, a 30-year-old Argentine nanny who was in the process of legally adjusting her immigration status, at a security checkpoint inside Philadelphia International Airport as she attempted to board a flight. Advocates say Lick is one of at least seven people ICE has arrested at the airport since mid-July 2026, part of a broader pattern of ICE using Transportation Security Administration checkpoint screening to detain travelers nationwide. DHS confirmed the shift, stating it reversed a prior policy that had allowed such travel.
ICE deported 11 migrants to Eswatini on fourth third-country flight, including two with legal protections
On July 8, 2026, eleven migrants deported by the United States arrived in Eswatini, the fourth group the U.S. has sent to the southern African kingdom since its third-country removal arrangement began in July 2025. An immigration attorney familiar with some of the cases said the group includes at least two people with legal protections against removal to their home countries; of the 19 deportees sent before this flight, 17 remain held without charge in a high-security Eswatini prison.
ICE detained Fort Polk soldier's wife at Alabama green-card interview, enforcing a removal order she never received notice of
On July 8, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Maisa Lopes Eliaser, the Brazilian-born wife of 11-year Army veteran Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo, during what the family believed was a routine USCIS status interview in Montgomery, Alabama, separating her from her husband and their five-year-old son. Eliaser was taken into custody under an in-absentia removal order issued after she missed a biometrics appointment; her attorney says the notice was mailed to a prior address the family had already left when Jaramillo was transferred to Fort Polk, Louisiana, and was never received. She remains detained at a Louisiana correctional facility while her appeal is pending.
ICE kept detaining Nevada immigrants without bond hearings past a court-ordered release deadline, defying a judge's March ruling
On July 6, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to release seven Nevada immigration detainees by a court-ordered deadline, continuing to enforce a "mandatory detention" policy that federal judge Richard Boulware II had ruled unlawful in March. Boulware, citing a broader pattern of noncompliance including an April cross-district transfer and a May detention without lawful basis, wrote that the government was "rebelling" against binding court orders and ordered the seven plaintiffs released without bond hearings pending their removal proceedings.
Texas Tribune reveals Trump administration asked Texas criminal-defense commission to take over immigrant children's deportation cases
In mid-June 2026, top officials working with the Trump administration — including James McHenry, the Justice Department's chief administrative hearing officer — asked the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, a state body the Legislature created solely for criminal defense, to take over legal representation of unaccompanied immigrant children in their deportation proceedings. The outreach, which the commission's director said fell outside its legal mandate, came as the administration moved to end the federally mandated legal-services contract held by the Acacia Center for Justice (set to expire July 31 with no required transition notice), stopped paying subcontractors, and sent federal agents to the offices of children's legal-aid nonprofits. Advocates and a Justice Department spokesperson confirmed the request; critics said it was designed to concentrate unaccompanied children in a border state with higher asylum-denial rates to speed their removal.
ICE detained as many as 100 people during week-long enforcement operations in Gallatin County, Montana
Over the week of roughly June 25 through July 2, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a series of enforcement operations across Gallatin County, Montana, detaining an estimated several dozen to more than 100 people, according to local immigrant-resource organizations. Community members reported people being pulled over in their vehicles and detained along with other occupants, including bystanders in the same vehicle, and agents knocking on doors in search of specific individuals. The largest single-day wave, more than 80 detentions, was reported on Wednesday, July 1.
ICE arrested Guatemalan man at New York City immigration court in defiance of federal court orders, including a June 23 nationwide ban
On June 30, 2026, ICE agents arrested a Guatemalan man at the New York City immigration court at 290 Broadway, in what lawyers described as a continuing violation of two federal court orders barring such arrests: a May 18 order from the Southern District of New York covering three Manhattan courts, and a June 23 nationwide order from a federal court in California. The man was transferred to an out-of-state detention facility. The arrest came four days after ICE agents arrested two other immigrants at New York City immigration courts in apparent defiance of the same orders.
ICE officer Travis Erdman defied federal court order protecting Iowa student-visa holder; judge found civil contempt
On June 30, 2026, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger held ICE Deportation Officer Travis Erdman in civil contempt for knowingly defying a court order that blocked the transfer of Pardeep Saini, a 22-year-old student-visa holder, out of the district. Erdman transferred Saini to Nebraska on April 1, 2026, despite the order, and testified at the contempt hearing that he was aware of the violation and had sought guidance only from ICE's own legal office, which twice told him to keep Saini in Nebraska. Judge Ebinger ruled that Erdman had made "no effort, at any point, to bring his agency into compliance," calling the conduct "astonishing" and "exceedingly unacceptable."
ICE contracted private prison firm LaSalle Corrections to build 528-bed Louisiana family/child holding facility, bypassing ORR custody
In late June 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed a contract to build a 528-bed holding facility for migrant families and unaccompanied children next to Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana. The facility, intended as a "staging area" for people awaiting deportation, will be operated by the LaSalle Family Foundation, a nonprofit arm of private prison contractor LaSalle Corrections, bypassing the Office of Refugee Resettlement's statutory custody role over unaccompanied children.
ICE transferred Delaney Hall detainee to Mississippi two days after his alleged rape in custody, without explanation
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred Hieison Ultengo, a 37-year-old detainee at the Delaney Hall immigration facility in Newark, New Jersey, to the Adams County Correctional Center in Mississippi on June 27, 2026 — two days after he was allegedly raped by another detainee and briefly hospitalized. ICE gave no explanation for the transfer to Ultengo, his attorney, or his family, who learned of the move from other detainees. His attorney, Catherine Reilly, said the transfer has hampered his ability to fight a pending deportation order and disrupted his access to HIV medication.
ICE arrested two immigrants at New York City immigration courts in defiance of federal court orders, including a June 23 nationwide ban
On June 26, 2026, ICE agents arrested two immigrants at New York City immigration courts in what lawyers described as the first serious violations of two federal court orders barring such arrests: a May 18 order from the Southern District of New York covering three Manhattan courts, and a June 23 nationwide order from a federal court in California. Agents arrested an Ecuadorian man at 26 Federal Plaza and a Dominican man at 290 Broadway; both were transferred to out-of-state detention facilities. ICE denied violating any court order but provided no explanation of how the arrests fit the narrow exceptions permitted by the judges.
ICE detained South Sudanese refugee Nyamuoch Duoth for months past her final removal order despite no country willing to take her
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement redetained Nyamuoch Thomas Duoth, a South Sudan-born lawful permanent resident, in March 2025 despite a 2022 finding that there was no significant likelihood the government could remove her to South Sudan or Ethiopia. Her removal order became final on December 26, 2025, and by June 26, 2026 — six months later, the point past which continued immigration detention is presumptively unlawful absent a significant likelihood of removal — ICE had provided no evidence of progress toward deporting her and continued to hold her at the Pottawattamie County Jail in Council Bluffs, Iowa. U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher later granted her habeas petition and ordered her immediate release on July 16, 2026, calling the government's justification for continued detention "hard to take seriously."
HHS/ORR compiled expedited removal list for 500+ unaccompanied migrant children, bypassing TVPRA individual case process
On June 25, 2026, the Trump administration's Department of Health and Human Services, through its Office of Refugee Resettlement, identified more than 500 unaccompanied migrant children in federal custody for expedited mass removal. Senator Ron Wyden publicly warned that the planned removal would bypass the individualized case management, legal referral, and sponsor-placement process that the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act requires for each child. Multiple major outlets confirmed the list had been compiled and removal was imminent.
Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that CBP metering policy does not violate asylum law, eliminating asylum seekers' principal legal challenge avenue
On June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado that U.S. Customs and Border Protection's "metering" policy — systematically turning asylum seekers away at ports of entry before they physically cross the border line — does not violate federal asylum law. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that noncitizens physically blocked at a port of entry have not "arrived in the United States" within the meaning of 8 U.S.C. § 1158 and therefore have no statutory right to apply for asylum. The decision forecloses the primary legal avenue that had permitted asylum seekers to challenge their systematic exclusion at the border.
Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that criminal suspicion alone justifies immigration parole of lawful permanent residents
On June 23, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the Trump administration, holding that an immigration officer's unverified allegation of criminal wrongdoing is sufficient to place a lawful permanent resident on immigration parole at a border crossing. The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, found that border officers need not establish criminal activity by clear and convincing evidence before restricting a green card holder's rights. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent, joined by both other liberal justices, warned the ruling handed the government a "massive blank check" to weaken due-process protections for the approximately 13.5 million lawful permanent residents in the United States.
ICE detained Colombian asylum-seeker Diana Socha Torres and her 8-year-old son at their Wisconsin Dells home, transferring them to a Texas facility
On June 23, 2026, ICE agents detained Diana Socha Torres, a 43-year-old Colombian asylum-seeker with a pending case, and her 8-year-old son at their Wisconsin Dells home after telling the family they were coming to change her ankle monitor. The pair were taken to ICE's Milwaukee office and, by the next morning, the online detainee locator listed Socha Torres at the Dilley immigration processing center in Texas. ICE cited an in-absentia removal order entered after she missed a hearing; she says she never received notice of it.
United States deported about a dozen court-protected asylum seekers to Sierra Leone on second third-country flight
On June 18, 2026, about a dozen asylum seekers deported by the United States arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on the second U.S. deportation flight to the country under a third-country removal agreement. According to an attorney for one deportee and documents reviewed by the Associated Press, the migrants held U.S. court orders barring their removal to their home countries after judges found they faced credible fears of persecution. A briefing pamphlet distributed on arrival by a private contractor describes Sierra Leone as a "temporary transit location" where deportees are to be moved onward within 14 to 30 days, raising the prospect of return to the countries U.S. courts barred.
Rubio signed memo citing Colombian activist's criticism of Trump-backed candidate as deportation grounds; ICE arrested him same day
On June 16, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a memorandum, under a rarely-used 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act provision, determining that Colombian activist Franklin Humberto "Beto" Coral Garrido's presence in the U.S. was harmful to U.S. foreign policy because he had criticized Trump-endorsed Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo De La Espriella and supported President Gustavo Petro. Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested Coral at his Phoenix home that day and canceled a work permit tied to his pending asylum application.
EOIR held first 'mega master' immigration hearing in San Diego, ordered 50 deported in absentia
The Executive Office for Immigration Review's San Diego Immigration Court held its first "mega master" hearing on June 12, 2026, compressing more than 100 previously-scheduled cases onto a single judge's docket as part of a scheduling practice EOIR has expanded to immigration courts nationwide since attorneys began reporting it in mid-May 2026. Immigration Judge Catherine Halliday-Roberts ordered 50 people deported in absentia in a group hearing that took about eight minutes, in a courtroom with a posted capacity of 36 people; those present included a woman who spoke neither English nor Spanish and did not understand the proceedings.
DHS deported migrants with court-ordered protections to Central African Republic on first operational third-country flight
A U.S. deportation flight carrying roughly two dozen migrants — including nationals of Iran, Jordan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia, and Afghanistan — departed Louisiana on June 11, 2026 and arrived in Bangui, Central African Republic on June 12, the first operational flight under the Trump administration's third-country deportation agreement with that country. Immigration lawyers said at least three Iranian women and an elderly Syrian man had been granted U.S. immigration-court protection against removal based on credible fear of persecution, yet were scheduled for removal to CAR anyway; two of the Iranian women and the Syrian man secured emergency court orders halting their removal only after the flight had already departed.
ICE deports Adelanto hunger-strike organizer Kyon Swaso to Belize after no-notice out-of-state transfers
On June 12, 2026, ICE deported Kyon Shakeel Swaso — a Belizean national and lead organizer of the hunger strike at California's GEO Group-run Adelanto ICE Processing Center — to Belize, following a series of no-notice transfers to facilities in Texas and Louisiana that his attorneys say violated Central District of California General Order 26-05's advance-notice requirement. The deportation proceeded despite a pending Stay of Removal and Motion to Reopen. The removal came eleven days after Swaso met with members of Congress to report inhumane conditions at Adelanto; DHS disputes that a hunger strike is occurring and characterizes the removal as routine.
Trump administration defies court order to resume immigration processing for 39 countries
Six days after U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. vacated the administration's freeze on asylum decisions, green cards, work permits, and other immigration adjudications for nationals of 39 countries, the government had still not resumed processing. On June 11, 2026, after a coalition of unions and nonprofits filed an emergency motion to enforce, McConnell ordered the administration to file a status report within 24 hours detailing its compliance and wrote that "there is no excuse this time."
Jamaica signed MOU with United States to transit third-country deportees
Jamaica's National Security Minister Horace Chang confirmed June 17, 2026 that Jamaica had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with DHS to accept up to 25 third-country nationals every two weeks, framing it as a temporary "transit" arrangement. The full text has never been publicly disclosed, and a federal court had already ruled the underlying third-country removal policy unlawful in February 2026 for failing to provide proper notice — a ruling the administration continued enforcing pending appeal.
ICE arrested Cumberland County jail officer despite valid work authorization; third such detention in a year
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Bassikissa Bounguiena, a Cumberland County Jail corrections officer, in South Portland, Maine, on June 9, 2026, despite his holding work authorization valid through 2030 and no filed criminal charges. Cumberland County officials disputed ICE's description of him as a "criminal illegal alien," confirming only an unfiled 2019 domestic-violence arrest. Bounguiena is the third Cumberland County Jail corrections officer ICE has detained in about a year.
ICE re-detained and moved to deport Palestinian grandfather in defiance of federal release order
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement re-arrested Akram Mahmoud Omar, a 77-year-old Louisiana resident, at his home on June 8, 2026, and moved to place him on a deportation flight, ten days after a federal judge had ordered his release and found his prior detention unconstitutional. Omar's attorney filed an emergency motion the same day, and the judge again ordered ICE to release him, which it did that evening.
CBP deports more than 200 Filipino sailors on unproven child sexual abuse material accusations
An NPR investigation published June 6, 2026 documented that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has deported more than 200 Filipino professional mariners since 2025 after accusing them — without charges, prosecutions, or presented evidence — of possessing child sexual abuse material. Agents board cruise and commercial ships in port, search crew members' phones, revoke their crew visas, and remove them to Manila within roughly 24 hours, with 10-year entry bans in at least some cases. The Pilipino Workers Center has tracked at least 212 such cases, all visa revocations with no criminal charges.
AP investigation found DHS and ICE re-separated dozens of children from parents in violation of 2023 court settlement
An Associated Press investigation published June 4, 2026 found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security have re-separated dozens of children from parents already separated once during Trump's first term, despite a 2023 federal settlement in Ms. L v. ICE that guaranteed the families legal protections, asylum pathways, and support services through December 2031. Documented cases include Ederson Galicia Alva, re-separated when his mother Mirsy Maricela Alva López was arrested and the family deported to Guatemala for 11 months before a judge ordered their return, and an unnamed father held at "Alligator Alcatraz" and Camp East Montana, where he reported moldy, worm-infested food, before an ACLU motion secured his release.
HRW: 4,353 Cubans deported to Mexico under undisclosed US deal, denied due process
In a report released May 27, 2026, Human Rights Watch documented that between January 20, 2025 and March 9, 2026 the Trump administration deported more than 18,000 third-country nationals, nearly 13,000 of them to Mexico under an undisclosed US-Mexico agreement; Cubans were the largest group, with 4,353 sent to Mexico. HRW found that none of the 53 deportees it interviewed were given any opportunity to contest their country of removal, a violation of due-process requirements under the Immigration and Nationality Act and international law, and that detainees faced overcrowding, denial of medical care, and guard violence in US custody before being left stranded in southern Mexico.
DOJ swore in active-duty military JAG officers as temporary immigration judges
On May 20, 2026, the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) held an investiture at the DOJ Great Hall swearing in 77 permanent and 5 temporary immigration judges — the largest single class in the agency's history. The 5 temporary judges are active-duty military Judge Advocate General (JAG) attorneys, the first cohort detailed under an August 2025 Pentagon authorization to assign up to 600 military lawyers to the immigration courts. The buildout follows the removal of more than 100 sitting immigration judges and the hiring of enforcement-aligned replacements, and is explicitly aimed at accelerating deportation cases.
CBP detained pregnant Ghanaian woman and disabled son at Dulles Airport for over a week
On May 19, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detained Annabella Gyasi, a pregnant 38-year-old Ghanaian woman traveling on a valid visa with her young son for a medical appointment, at Washington Dulles International Airport after she said she feared returning to Ghana. DHS and CBP held the pair for more than a week in a windowless holding room, during which Gyasi was hospitalized twice for pregnancy complications.
ICE detained Nashville nursing mother in violation of its own postpartum-detention policy
On May 19, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained a Guatemalan-born nursing mother, identified by advocates only as Maria Perez, at her Nashville home while serving a federal warrant naming the father of her children, separating her from her breastfeeding 10-month-old and a 2-year-old with Down syndrome. Advocates say the detention violates ICE's own directive barring detention of pregnant, postpartum, or nursing people absent exceptional circumstances; as of late July 2026 she remained held in Louisiana, roughly 700 miles from her children, and had not seen them since her arrest.
US State Department adds Central African Republic to its third-country deportation program
The U.S. State Department has negotiated an agreement for the Central African Republic to receive migrants of other nationalities deported by the United States — the latest expansion of the Trump administration's third-country deportation program. Rights groups and Senate Democrats say the program removes migrants who had secured immigration-court protections against repatriation, routing them to unrelated countries to circumvent those protections. The deal was struck at a May 18, 2026 meeting in Bangui led by State Department deputy assistant secretary Christian Jové Ehrhardt and reported by Reuters on June 7; a federal judge's May 22 restraining order shows US officials had already planned to remove a Turkish national to the country on May 26.
ICE agents enter Tucson home without judicial warrant and arrest DACA recipient Karla Toledo
On the morning of May 18, 2026, federal immigration agents arrested Karla Toledo, a 31-year-old longtime Tucson, Arizona resident and DACA recipient, at her home. Video shared by her family shows occupants repeatedly asking agents to produce a warrant, and her family and attorney say no judicial warrant was presented before agents entered. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Toledo was taken in a "targeted immigration enforcement operation" and, with the Department of Homeland Security, asserted that DACA confers no legal status, that she entered the country unlawfully in October 2024, and that she assaulted an agent — claims her attorney disputes, citing surveillance footage. Toledo was moved to ICE detention in Eloy, Arizona, where her bond was set at $1,500 and her attorney expected her release within days.
ICE arrested immigrants at three Manhattan federal courthouses for over a year without internal legal authority, a federal judge found
On May 18, 2026, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel (Southern District of New York) issued a 15-page stay barring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting most immigrants inside or around three federal courthouses in lower Manhattan — 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick Street, and 290 Broadway — except in narrow circumstances involving imminent national-security or public-safety threats. The court's findings document the underlying abuse this entry records: ICE had conducted courthouse arrests at substantial scale for over a year despite, as federal prosecutors admitted in March 2026, having no internal agency rules establishing the legal authority for the practice, and the agency had continued the arrests after conceding this to prosecutors. A masked-agent arrest was witnessed at 26 Federal Plaza on the morning of May 18, hours before the stay took effect.
Judge found ICE materially violated Colorado injunction restricting warrantless immigration arrests
U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled May 12, 2026, that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Colorado materially violated a November 2025 preliminary injunction in Ramirez Ovando v. Noem that barred warrantless arrests without an individualized, pre-arrest flight-risk determination. The judge's 60-page order, issued after a two-day evidentiary hearing, found ICE continued warrantless arrests -- including of people with no criminal history, longtime residents, asylum seekers, and U.S. citizens' children -- while obtaining "field warrants" after the fact and providing training she found insufficient. She ordered ICE to retrain officers, bar untrained agents from warrantless arrests, and pay the plaintiffs' attorney fees.
Dominican Republic reversed refusal, agreed to accept US third-country deportees
The Dominican Republic's Foreign Ministry announced on May 12, 2026 that it had signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with the United States to temporarily accept a limited number of third-country nationals — reversing President Luis Abinader's prior public refusal to take anyone but Dominican citizens. The agreement, part of the administration's "Shield of the Americas" initiative, excludes Haitian nationals and unaccompanied minors and had produced no confirmed transfers as of this filing.
BIA fast-tracked Mahmoud Khalil's deportation case in 9-day 'unprecedented' turnaround
Internal Department of Justice case-tracking documents obtained by The New York Times and reported publicly on May 11, 2026 reveal that the Board of Immigration Appeals — an appellate body housed within the DOJ — fast-tracked the deportation case of Palestinian Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil along a procedural track that a former BIA member called "unprecedented." Per the internal documents, the case was flagged high-priority before the board officially received it; a staff note instructed handling Khalil's case as if he were still in detention even though he had been released several days earlier; the BIA's April 9, 2026 decision authorizing Khalil's deportation came just nine days after paperwork was submitted; and at least three judges recused themselves from the proceedings.
BIA reinstates deportation proceedings against Columbia activist Mohsen Mahdawi
The Board of Immigration Appeals reinstated removal proceedings against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian lawful permanent resident and Columbia University student activist, overturning an immigration judge's February dismissal of the case. The government had pursued Mahdawi's deportation under a rarely used foreign-policy provision invoked by the Secretary of State, after he was detained in 2025 over his pro-Palestinian advocacy and released by a federal court without being charged with any crime.
ICE agent surveilled and arrested a person inside Cook County's Domestic Violence Courthouse, privileged from civil arrest under Illinois law
On May 1, 2026, around 9:30 a.m., a federal immigration agent entered the Cook County Domestic Violence Courthouse at 555 W. Harrison Street in Chicago, telling courthouse security he "was conducting surveillance," according to an internal Cook County Department of Emergency Management and Regional Security alert. Separately, Cook County Public Defender's Office tracking of the same morning found that federal agents detained at least one person inside the courthouse. The visit was part of a pattern of at least 26 confirmed ICE appearances at Cook County courthouses between February 27 and May 8, 2026, most frequently at the domestic violence courthouse.
ICE deported Axel Rios, an 18-year-old Dunwoody High School student, to Honduras after denying a stay of removal
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Axel Rios, an 18-year-old Dunwoody High School student, to Honduras on April 30, 2026, after detaining him in March following a traffic stop in DeKalb County, Georgia. Rios's attorney had filed to reopen his 2015 asylum case, but ICE denied a stay of removal and carried out the deportation while that request was pending.
Washington Post investigation found DOJ hired immigration judges for ideological alignment, two-thirds lacking immigration-law experience
A Washington Post investigation published April 27, 2026, found that the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review has been hiring immigration judges chosen for alignment with the administration's mass-deportation agenda rather than legal qualification. Since January 2025 the DOJ has fired more than 100 immigration judges and appointed over 140 new ones, two-thirds of whom list no immigration-law experience and more than three-quarters of whom never worked at the DOJ, ICE, or the immigration courts. Recent hires include a men's-rights divorce attorney with no immigration background, an attorney who promoted debunked conspiracy theories, and a former judge whose past asylum ruling an appeals court found was distorted by anti-gay stereotyping.
ICE detained mother, two children at Texas school bus stop after acknowledging mistaken identity
On April 27, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stopped Maria Betania Uzcategui Castillo at a school bus stop in Alamo Heights, San Antonio, Texas, searching for a woman who merely resembled her. After acknowledging the mistaken identity, agents detained her and her two stepchildren, ages 11 and 8, when she declined an ankle monitor, transporting the family to the Dilley immigration detention facility. A federal judge granted the family's habeas corpus petition on May 13, 2026, finding their detention violated due process, and ordered their release.
ICE re-arrests El Gamal family at first check-in, attempts deportation in defiance of federal release order
On April 25, 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents re-arrested Hayam El Gamal and her five children at the family's first required post-release check-in in Colorado Springs, two days after U.S. District Judge Fred Biery of the Western District of Texas ordered them freed pending their asylum proceedings. ICE routed the family onto a flight bound for Michigan and told them they would be deported to Egypt; the plane reversed course mid-air only after Judge Biery and U.S. District Judge Nina Wang of Colorado issued emergency orders Saturday evening directing that the family not be removed. The mother and her five children — held at the Dilley, Texas family detention center for more than ten months and never charged with any crime — were released again just after midnight on April 26.
ICE detained two Congolese teenage brothers on lawful student visas outside their Mississippi home
On April 21, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained brothers Israel Makoka, 18, and Max Makoka, 15, nationals of the Republic of Congo, as the teenagers left their guardians' home in Diamondhead, Mississippi to catch the school bus. The brothers held F-1 student visas that had lapsed after they transferred from a private boarding school to a public high school that could not host visa holders; agents dismissed their guardians' court-granted guardianship papers and moved the teenagers to separate detention facilities in Louisiana and Texas. The Department of Homeland Security said the brothers had violated their visas by failing to attend classes at their original school.
NY1 investigation found 132 noncitizens deported before immigration judges issued required final removal orders
On April 21, 2026, the New York news channel NY1 published an investigation finding 132 cases in which noncitizens were physically deported and received a final removal order from an immigration judge only afterward — the reverse of the legally required sequence. Immigration attorneys in New York, Louisiana, Texas, and Illinois and a former Justice Department chief immigration judge told NY1 the practice was illegal. The report documented Mario Mata Cruz, a Salvadoran man with Special Immigrant Juvenile status and a pending green card, whom ICE arrested on Long Island and deported to El Salvador without a final removal order.
ICE kept Venezuelan woman detained after an immigration judge dismissed her removal case, despite her marriage to a U.S. citizen
On April 20, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Gabriela Sousa, a Venezuelan woman who entered the United States legally on humanitarian parole in 2023, detained at an immigration facility in the Jacksonville, Florida area after an immigration judge dismissed her removal case. ICE held her while the government weighed whether to use its 30-day window to appeal the dismissal, even though she is married to U.S. citizen Brandon Garrison and had a spousal petition pending since November 2025. She had been held for roughly six months following an October 2025 domestic-dispute arrest that produced no criminal charges.
ICE deported Colombian woman to DR Congo after Congolese officials refused her on medical grounds
On April 16, 2026, ICE placed Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata — a 55-year-old Colombian woman with diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypothyroidism — on a removal flight to the Democratic Republic of the Congo two days after Congolese officials had formally refused to accept her because they could not guarantee the medical care her conditions required. On May 13, 2026, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon (D.D.C.) granted a 14-day temporary restraining order finding the deportation likely unlawful under the Immigration and Nationality Act and directing the Trump administration to facilitate her return, citing her "daily risk of medical complications, up to and including death." Judge Leon modified that order on June 5, 2026, after finding her lawyers had not established that ICE received the Congolese refusal before the flight departed. She remained in the DRC.
ICE deported Colombian man shielded from return to Colombia to DR Congo under third-country removal deal
On April 15, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed Jorge Andres Cubillos, a Colombian man who had lived in St. Cloud, Florida with his wife and four children since 2018, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, despite a 2022 immigration judge's grant of withholding of removal that barred his return to Colombia. Cubillos was flagged after ICE lodged a detainer following his arrest on a domestic battery charge, and he was sent to the DRC as part of the first group of Latin American migrants deported there under a new U.S. third-country arrangement. He arrived to be held in a hotel near Kinshasa, separated from his family and reporting deteriorating health while authorities decided his fate.
ICE detained the wife of an active-duty Army sergeant at an El Paso immigration appointment as military-family leniency ended
On April 14, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Deisy Rivera Ortega, an El Salvador native married to active-duty Army Sgt. 1st Class Jose Serrano, as the couple attended a routine immigration appointment in El Paso, Texas, tied to a "parole in place" application for military families. Rivera Ortega held a valid work permit and had previously been granted withholding of removal to El Salvador, yet the Department of Homeland Security moved to deport her and she challenged the detention in federal court. The arrest followed DHS's 2025 elimination of a policy that had treated a family member's military service as a mitigating factor against enforcement.
ICE detains Iranian Ph.D. student Yousof Azizi and moves to deport him after BBC Persian commentary on U.S.–Iran war
Federal immigration agents detained Yousof Azizi, a 40-year-old Iranian Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech, outside his Germantown, Maryland home on April 13, 2026, and the Trump administration is moving to deport him. ICE has transferred him through facilities in Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona; his wife, his lawyers, and CAIR say the action is retaliation for his Persian-language media commentary on the U.S. war on Iran, while DHS says he misstated prior involvement with Iran's Student Basij Organization on his visa application and that his student visa was terminated after he failed to re-enroll at Virginia Tech for Fall 2025.
Border Patrol detained physician Dr. Rubeliz Bolivar and her US-citizen daughter at McAllen airport
On April 11, 2026, U.S. Border Patrol agents detained Dr. Rubeliz Bolivar, a Venezuelan-born emergency-room physician with a pending asylum claim, and her 5-year-old U.S.-citizen daughter at McAllen International Airport as they traveled to a scheduled asylum interview in California. Bolivar was transferred to ICE custody the next day and held for weeks; ICE said she had overstayed a 2016 visitor visa, while her family, employer, and medical advocacy groups said she held a valid work-authorization card tied to her and her husband's pending asylum and green-card applications.
State Dept revoked green cards of Ebtekar's son's family, ICE detained them on kinship alone
On April 11, 2026, the State Department announced it had terminated the lawful permanent resident status of Los Angeles-area residents Seyed Eissa Hashemi, his wife Maryam Tahmasebi, and their teenage son, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the family into custody. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department cited no criminal or hostile conduct by the three, only Hashemi's parentage as the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, a former Iranian vice president who served as a 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis spokeswoman.
Kansas Legislature overrode veto to enact 25-foot police buffer law and expanded local ICE detention authority
On April 10, 2026, the Kansas Legislature voted to override Gov. Laura Kelly's veto and enact House Bill 2372, the "Halo Act," making it a misdemeanor to come within 25 feet of a law enforcement or first-responder officer performing official duties. Senate President Ty Masterson said the buffer would protect officers and bystanders, while critics including the Kansas Press Association warned the vague standard would be used to obstruct journalists and bystanders from documenting police and ICE conduct.
ICE deported Brian Morales Garcia, who says he is a U.S. citizen, to Mexico after a Texas traffic stop
After Texas troopers stopped a pickup near Fredericksburg for a window-tint violation on April 3, 2026, and called in federal immigration agents when passenger Brian Jose Morales Garcia could not produce identification, ICE and Border Patrol detained him for five days and removed him to Mexico on April 7 despite his repeated statements that he was a U.S. citizen born in Denver. Morales says he was denied the chance to retrieve his birth certificate and Social Security card and signed a quick-departure form only because he feared months in detention. The Department of Homeland Security disputes his citizenship and claims he admitted entering the country illegally.
CBP detained Venezuelan physician Dr. Ezequiel Veliz at Texas checkpoint over disputed status
On April 6, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents detained Dr. Ezequiel Veliz, a Venezuelan-born family-medicine resident physician at Knapp Medical Center in Weslaco, at the Sarita Border Patrol checkpoint in South Texas while he and his husband, Joseph Williams, drove from the Rio Grande Valley to Houston. Veliz had lived in the U.S. for about nine years and lost his work authorization in late 2025 when the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals, though he had a pending green card application based on his marriage to Williams, a U.S. citizen; agents took him to a migrant detention facility in McAllen to await an immigration court hearing.
State Department canceled former Emory University professor's visa over father's Iranian government ties, without individual hearing
In January 2026, Emory University announced that Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, an assistant professor at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health, was no longer employed there, after public pressure mounted following disclosure that her father is a senior Iranian government official and after the U.S. sanctioned him on January 15, 2026. In April 2026, the U.S. Department of State canceled her visa, terminating her legal immigration status. No individual adjudication or judicial proceeding preceded the revocation; the cancellation was made on the basis of her familial connection to an Iranian official.
ICE detained U-visa crime-victim Kevin Ramirez Mancia for four months despite approved work permit and deferred action
On April 4, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Kevin Ramirez Mancia in Willmar, Minnesota, immediately after local police released him from a traffic-stop arrest, despite Ramirez Mancia holding an ICE-approved U-visa work permit and deferred action granted in 2023 for cooperating with police as a crime victim. ICE held him for four months at the Freeborn County Jail under a January 2025 agency memo that reversed longstanding policy protecting pending U- and T-visa holders from detention. He is one of at least 75 Minnesotans identified through habeas petitions as similarly detained under the same memo during Operation Metro Surge.
State Dept revokes Iranian asylees' green cards on debunked Soleimani-relation claim
On April 3, 2026, ICE arrested Iranian asylees Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her adult daughter Sarina Hosseiny outside Los Angeles after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their green cards in a public statement identifying them as the niece and grandniece of slain Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. A subsequent Drop Site News investigation reviewing Iranian birth records, identification papers, and family wills found no familial connection to the late general — a finding corroborated by Soleimani's own surviving daughters in Iran. The women remain held at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in San Antonio pending removal to Iran, where Hamideh, who has autoimmune hemolytic anemia, is reportedly being denied the transfusion treatment her condition requires.
ICE detains Army sergeant's newlywed wife inside Fort Polk during benefits registration
On April 2, 2026, federal immigration agents detained Annie Ramos, the 22-year-old newlywed wife of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank, inside Fort Polk, Louisiana, where the couple had gone to register her for a military ID and spouse benefits. Ramos, born in Honduras and brought to the U.S. before age 2, was held on a final removal order issued in absentia in 2005, when she was a toddler, despite a DACA application pending since 2020. After five days in detention she was released April 7 on an order of supervision with a GPS monitor, with removal proceedings continuing.
Judge found Border Patrol defied her injunction with boilerplate forms in Sacramento arrests
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston ruled in an order unsealed April 1, 2026, that U.S. Border Patrol agents defied her April 2025 preliminary injunction barring detentions without documented reasonable suspicion and warrantless arrests without a flight-risk finding. In a July 2025 sweep at a Sacramento Home Depot, agents arrested 12 people — 11 noncitizens and one U.S. citizen — using essentially identical, boilerplate I-213 forms that failed to document the required articulable facts. She ordered agents to write signed, individualized narrative reports supporting each stop.
ICE detains Milwaukee Islamic Society president Salah Sarsour over decades-old West Bank record
Roughly a dozen ICE vehicles surrounded Salah Sarsour — a lawful permanent resident of more than 30 years and five-year board president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's largest Islamic organization — on Milwaukee's south side, where by his family's account a plainclothes officer pointed a gun at him before identifying the arrest as immigration custody. He was moved to the Broadview Detention Center in Illinois and then to a county jail in Indiana, and DHS publicly branded him a "terrorist" and an "illegal alien from Jordan," resting on an Israeli military-court conviction from his teenage years that his counsel says the government knew about when it admitted him in 1993. His attorneys say the government is also invoking the foreign-policy-threat ground used against Mahmoud Khalil and that the case is retaliation for his Palestinian-rights advocacy.
DHS deported valid DACA recipient Jessica Treviño, then cited her own deportation to try to terminate her status
On March 25, 2026, U.S. immigration authorities deported Jessica Treviño, a 34-year-old DACA recipient and mother of three U.S.-citizen children, to Mexico despite her holding valid DACA status through April 2027. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services subsequently issued a notice of intent to terminate her DACA status on the grounds of "unauthorized travel outside of the United States" — the very deportation the Department of Homeland Security itself had carried out. Treviño's attorney filed a federal lawsuit in Brownsville seeking a declaration that her removal was unlawful, her return to the United States, and restoration of her DACA status.
ICE detained breastfeeding Nashville mother with valid work permit, denied her release
On March 20, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Misslenys Hernandez Zabala, a Venezuelan asylum seeker with a valid work permit and Social Security number, in Nashville, Tennessee, moments after she dropped off her breastfeeding 10-month-old son with a nanny on her way to work. Despite pleas from immigrant-rights advocates citing her nursing infant and a pending court date not scheduled until 2028, ICE declined to release her.
DHS letter disclosed ICE detained 265, deported 132 abuse-survivor immigrant youths after ending SIJS deferred-action protections
A DHS letter to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, obtained exclusively by NBC News, disclosed that ICE detained 265 and deported 132 young immigrants holding Special Immigrant Juvenile Status between January 20 and December 22, 2025. The administration ended the deferred-action policy that had generally protected SIJS recipients from deportation since 2022, and DHS did not disclose whether any of the 132 deported had criminal charges or convictions, while characterizing SIJS status as "infected with fraud."
ICE detained Afghan war ally Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, who died in custody the next day after agents denied his inhaler
Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, a 41-year-old Afghan national who served alongside U.S. Army Special Forces, was detained by ICE agents outside his Richardson, Texas home on March 13, 2026, and died the next day at a Dallas hospital after suffering anaphylaxis and an asthma exacerbation in ICE custody. A death certificate reported July 6, 2026 lists the death as accidental, citing an unidentified adverse drug reaction; his family disputes the finding.
U.S. Border Patrol and ICE detained Canadian mother and her 7-year-old autistic daughter for 19 days despite valid work visa
On March 14, 2026, U.S. Border Patrol agents detained Canadian citizen Tania Warner and her seven-year-old autistic daughter, Ayla Lucas, at a checkpoint in Sarita, Texas, and ICE held them for 19 days at processing and family-detention facilities in Texas despite Warner holding a work visa valid through 2030. Neither DHS nor CBP explained the legal basis for the detention; a federal immigration judge released the pair on $9,500 bond on April 2, 2026, after finding they were not a flight risk.
ICE deported four migrants to Eswatini on third third-country removal flight, bringing total to 19
On March 12, 2026, four migrants deported by the United States arrived in Eswatini, the third flight under the Trump administration's third-country removal arrangement, bringing the total transferred to the country to 19. Eswatini's government said the group included two Somali nationals and one each from Sudan and Tanzania, and confirmed they would be held at Matsapha Correctional Complex; human rights lawyers' court challenge to the removal arrangement had been dismissed at first instance, with an appeal pending.
VTDigger reporting revealed Vermont prisons restricted immigration attorneys' access to ICE detainees under Commissioner Murad
VTDigger reporting published March 12, 2026, revealed that the Vermont Department of Corrections progressively restricted immigration attorneys' access to ICE detainees in state prisons after Jon Murad became interim, and later permanent, Commissioner in August 2025. Attorneys with the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project said the department stopped providing detainees' alien registration numbers in September 2025 and, in late October 2025, barred attorneys from bringing personal devices or volunteer paralegals into Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington and Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town for interpretation, leaving them to share a single landline. Murad disputed the characterization, saying he was enforcing preexisting policy rather than imposing new restrictions.
ICE rammed Vermont home on mistaken identity, detained three innocent immigrants whose subsequent detentions courts ruled unlawful
On March 11, 2026, ICE agents pursued a suspect to a home on Dorset Street in South Burlington, Vermont, obtained a search warrant, pulled activists from the front steps, and rammed through the front door — but did not find the man they were seeking. Instead, agents detained three other immigrant residents; federal and immigration judges later ruled all three detentions unlawful and ordered the men released. In a revised criminal complaint filed March 24, ICE agent Colton Riley acknowledged the agency no longer believed the man they chased had even been in the vehicle that triggered the pursuit — because one of the men detained in the raid told the FBI he was the actual driver.
ICE detained 14-year-old Brazilian girl in parked car in Marlboro, Mass.; held overnight without guardian
ICE agents detained a 14-year-old Brazilian girl with an expired visitor visa in a parked car in Marlboro, Massachusetts on March 11, 2026, holding her roughly 10 hours before transporting her overnight to a New York detention facility with no appropriate guardian present. U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin ordered her immediate return the next day, and she was reunited with her U.S.-citizen aunt on March 13.
ICE re-detained Sheboygan Falls mother at routine check-in despite prior court-granted cancellation of removal
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement re-detained Elvira Benitez-Suarez, a 51-year-old Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin mother of four U.S. citizen children, during a routine supervision check-in at ICE's Milwaukee field office on March 10, 2026, months after an immigration judge granted her cancellation of removal and a path to permanent residency. It was the second time Benitez-Suarez, who has lived in the U.S. for 35 years with no criminal record, had been taken into ICE custody; she was transferred to the Campbell County Detention Center in Kentucky while the Department of Homeland Security appealed the judge's ruling. Her attorney filed a federal habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky seeking her release.
Trump administration began forced third-country deportations to Moldova
ICE sent the first group of third-country nationals to Moldova on an ICE Air charter flight on March 10, 2026, the first such removal to the country, according to Human Rights First's ICE Flight Monitor. No agreement between the U.S. and Moldova has ever been disclosed; among those sent were Russian asylum seekers, including anti-war activists and draft evaders, some of whom did not speak Moldovan or have any connection to the country.
ICE re-detained Baltimore man in defiance of federal release order, moved him toward deportation to Eswatini
On March 9, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement re-detained Ibrahim Mohammed, a Baltimore-area Ethiopian man, roughly five weeks after a federal judge in Louisiana had ordered his release and found ICE's prior detention of him unconstitutional. ICE served Mohammed a Notice of Revocation of Release on March 10 and moved him toward the airport for removal to Eswatini, a country he had never been to, before U.S. District Judge John deGravelles issued an emergency five-day restraining order blocking his deportation. DeGravelles found no evidence Mohammed had been given the process his own order required before either the re-detention or the planned third-country removal.
ICE conducts targeted, warrantless arrest of Nashville journalist Estefany Rodríguez
On March 4, 2026, ICE agents carried out a targeted, warrantless arrest of Estefany Rodríguez, the lead immigration reporter for Nashville's Spanish-language outlet Nashville Noticias, one day after she published a widely viewed video showing the identifiable faces of agents conducting a Middle Tennessee operation. Officers were found to have a photo of her logo-marked car and repeatedly identified her in custody as "the journalist"; she was held in isolation, transferred out of state to Alabama and Louisiana, and kept from her attorney from March 4 to March 14 before her release on $10,000 bond on March 19. A federal court ordered ICE to justify the arrest, and government attorneys argued that First Amendment protections "may not even be applicable to an illegal alien."
ICE deported deaf 6-year-old and his family to Colombia during a routine check-in, without his hearing devices
On March 3, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in San Francisco told asylum seeker Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez she was reporting for a routine check-in and photo renewal, then fingerprinted, detained, and deported her and her two children — including her six-year-old deaf son, Joseph — to Colombia within minutes, without allowing her to retrieve Joseph's hearing devices or granting her access to counsel. California's state superintendent and the family's attorney said the deportation was conducted under false pretenses and in violation of due process; ICE said the mother had a 2024 final removal order and chose to be removed with her children.
Judge found 32 warrantless Operation Midway Blitz arrests violated Castañon Nava consent decree, ordered releases
On February 27, 2026, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ruled that at least 32 warrantless arrests made by immigration agents during Operation Midway Blitz in the Chicago area violated the 2022 Castañon Nava consent decree, which permits warrantless immigration arrests only when agents have probable cause that a person is unlawfully present and a flight risk. Cummings ordered the government to release the affected detainees by noon the following Thursday; it was the second time in five months that Cummings found the same operation violated the decree.
ICE staged sham bond hearing for Iowa detainee Suraj Vasal with 30 minutes' notice and no opportunity to secure counsel
On February 27, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement gave Suraj Vasal, an Indian asylum-seeker detained at Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, approximately 30 minutes' notice before a court-ordered bond hearing conducted via Zoom, with no information about its purpose until the call began. Vasal asked for time to secure an attorney; immigration officials denied the request and used the hearing to deny him bond. U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher later ruled that ICE's conduct violated Vasal's due process rights, finding the government had staged a "sham" hearing to satisfy a court order while ensuring Vasal remained detained.
ICE used a false missing-child pretext to detain Columbia senior Ellie Aghayeva without a warrant
Around 6 a.m. on February 26, 2026, five federal ICE agents entered an off-campus Columbia University residential building without a judicial warrant by telling building staff they were police searching for a missing child, then arrested Elmina "Ellie" Aghayeva, a 29-year-old Columbia senior from Azerbaijan. Columbia said security-camera footage captured the agents using the missing-child story to gain entry; the Department of Homeland Security said her student visa had been revoked in 2016 and disputed assertions that agents impersonated NYPD officers. Aghayeva was released the same afternoon after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani appealed directly to President Trump, and was placed in removal proceedings.
Federal judge declared Trump administration's third-country deportation policy unlawful
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ruled on February 25, 2026 that DHS's policy of deporting people to countries other than the one designated in their removal proceedings — without meaningful notice or a chance to raise a fear of persecution there — violated the Administrative Procedure Act and due process, vacating the policy nationwide. The ruling capped nearly a year of litigation that began after DHS attempted to deport a group of men to South Sudan in violation of a standing injunction, forcing them into weeks of detention at a U.S. naval base in Djibouti; the government secured a stay from the First Circuit within weeks and continued third-country removals while its appeal remained pending as of this filing.
ICE detained McAllen mariachi student brothers and their parents at a routine check-in, held them at Dilley for two weeks
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained McAllen, Texas high school mariachi musicians Antonio and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, their younger brother Joshua, and their parents on February 25, 2026, during what family members and Rep. Nanette Barragán described as a routine immigration check-in. The family, who had passed a credible fear interview and had an outstanding asylum case with no missed court dates, was held at the Dilley detention facility for roughly two weeks.
Memphis Police coordinated with ICE to detain 18-year-old soccer player during traffic stop, contradicting mayor's account
On February 20, 2026, the Memphis Police Department and Tennessee Highway Patrol coordinated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations unit during a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee, leading to the two-month immigration detention of 18-year-old high school soccer player Yasser Lopez Soza. Video obtained by MLK50 through public-records requests shows an HSI agent riding along in the MPD cruiser that made the stop, contradicting Memphis Mayor Paul Young's public account that federal immigration officials had arrived only after independently monitoring police radio. A federal judge ordered Lopez Soza's immediate release in April 2026, finding the Department of Homeland Security had failed to provide bond as required by law.
ICE detained DACA recipient Juan Chavez Velasco despite his active legal status
ICE agents detained Juan Chavez Velasco, a DACA recipient who had held continuous status for 13 years, outside his Weslaco, Texas neighborhood on February 18, 2026, as he drove breast milk to his premature newborn daughter in a hospital NICU. He told agents he had active DACA status; they told him it didn't matter, and DHS later said DACA does not confer legal status or protection from deportation. He was held for nearly three months at the Webb County Detention Center in Laredo, developing kidney stones and lacking adequate food and clean water, before being released to his family in May 2026.
ICE arrested DACA recipient at her permanent residency interview and deported her the next day under a decades-old removal order
On February 18, 2026, ICE agents arrested Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, a 27-year Sacramento resident with active DACA status, at a scheduled permanent residency interview and deported her to Mexico the following day under a 1998 removal order, denying her any notice or opportunity to contest the removal. U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins found the deportation a "flagrant violation" of Estrada Juarez's DACA protections and on March 24 issued a temporary restraining order requiring her return within seven days. She was reunited with her family in Sacramento by March 31, 2026.
USCIS and ICE directed agents to detain refugees who miss one-year green-card deadline
On February 18, 2026, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued a joint memo directing immigration agents to arrest and detain refugees who have not obtained a green card within one year of admission to the United States, rescinding 2010 ICE guidance under which that delay was not grounds for detention. The memo, disclosed in a federal court filing tied to refugee detentions in Minnesota, lets agents hold affected refugees in immigration detention while their green-card applications are pending.
ICE denied humanitarian parole to 79-year-old dementia patient, holding her at Eloy nine months
An Arizona Daily Star investigation published February 15, 2026 found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has largely stopped exercising discretion to release medically vulnerable detainees on humanitarian parole, instead issuing what immigration attorneys describe as blanket denials. The investigation centered on Julia Benitez, a 79-year-old Cuban asylum seeker with dementia who uses a wheelchair, whom ICE held at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona for nine months despite her family's repeated parole requests and her rapidly deteriorating mental condition. Detentions of people 65 and older rose 150% in the first five months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, according to a Lee Enterprises analysis of ICE detention data.
Judge ordered release of 4 Operation Midway Blitz detainees, rejected ICE directive expanding warrantless-arrest discretion
On February 13, 2026, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the Department of Homeland Security to release four people who had been arrested without warrants during Operation Midway Blitz, and separately rejected a recent ICE directive — a memo from Acting Director Todd Lyons — that sought to give agents more discretion to make warrantless arrests, finding it inconsistent with the 2022 Castañon Nava consent decree. The ruling followed a federal appeals court's earlier rejection of Cummings' original October 2025 order to release hundreds of people arrested without warrants under the same operation.
United States signed third-country deportation agreement with Burundi, setting no cap on transfers
On February 12, 2026, the United States and Burundi signed a Memorandum of Understanding permitting the U.S. to deport third-country nationals -- migrants who are not Burundian citizens -- to Burundi, after Burundi had previously declined to sign without additional U.S. funding for the International Organization for Migration. The agreement, negotiated by the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security, was not made public until it appeared on the State Department's website in June 2026; it sets no cap on the number of transfers and states Burundi will not accept people with violent-crime records. As of this entry's recording, no transfers under the agreement are known to have occurred.
ICE detained pregnant Massachusetts woman in bedless holding cell, denied care until hospitalization forced her release
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Djeniffer Benvinda Ribeiro Semedo, a 22-year-old Cape Verdean national who was 24 weeks pregnant, at Brockton District Court on February 11, 2026 on an outstanding default warrant and held her at its Burlington field office in a bedless holding room, where she slept on a concrete bench. Her abdominal pain, nausea, and decreased fetal movement went unaddressed over roughly three days until she was transferred to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on February 13, where ICE agents continued to restrict her family's access to her.
ICE deported Army veteran Godfrey Wade to Jamaica while his removal-order appeal was still pending
On February 5, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Godfrey Wade, a 65-year-old honorably discharged Army veteran and lawful permanent resident of the United States since 1975, to Jamaica while his appeal of a 2014 in-absentia removal order remained pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals. ICE detained Wade after a September 13, 2025 traffic stop in Conyers, Georgia, under a removal order he did not learn existed until his green-card renewal was denied in December 2024 — notices of the 2014 hearing and order had been mailed to an address that returned them undeliverable. An immigration judge denied Wade's motion to reopen the case in under two minutes without addressing the returned-notice evidence, and DHS has defended the removal, calling Wade "a criminal illegal alien" who "received full due process."
ICE detained asylum seeker four months, denying scheduled cyst surgery and chaining her during outdoor time
Guatemalan asylum seeker Andrea Pedro-Francisco, then 23, was arrested by ICE on February 5, 2026, in Burnsville, Minnesota, during Operation Metro Surge, days before a scheduled surgery to remove an ovarian cyst, and transferred to Camp East Montana and the El Paso Service Processing Center in El Paso, Texas. Over nearly four months in custody, ICE denied her the surgery, provided only over-the-counter pain medication, and had her chained during her roughly one hour of daily outdoor time; a federal judge denied her habeas corpus petition and ICE twice denied her requests for humanitarian parole. She was released June 3, 2026, after Democratic Sen. Tina Smith personally intervened with a DHS official.
ICE detained a Columbia Heights, MN fifth-grader and her family, holding them in a Texas facility unknown to her school for a month
A Valley View Elementary fifth-grader in Columbia Heights, Minnesota stopped attending class in early January 2026, and her family became unreachable, leaving behind a school-issued Chromebook and an empty rental home. On February 4, 2026, Columbia Heights Public Schools disclosed that two classmates had recognized the girl in the cafeteria of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Dilley, Texas family detention center before their own release, and confirmed ICE has detained seven of its students, ages 5 to 17, since a district-area enforcement surge began; five have been released and two, including this girl, remain in custody. The exact date ICE detained the girl and her family has not been publicly established.
United States and Grenada signed third-country deportation MOU after months of resistance
The United States and Grenada signed a Memorandum of Understanding on January 30, 2026 in Washington, D.C., allowing the U.S. to propose third-country nationals for transfer to Grenada on a case-by-case basis. Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell had publicly resisted the arrangement for weeks, repeatedly telling reporters in January that Grenada had "not agreed to accept" any deportees, before signing alongside seven other Caribbean leaders at the State Department.
Federal prosecutors misreported ICE detainee's Maine location to court, nearly stripping habeas jurisdiction
Court filings entered Jan. 26, 2026 revealed that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maine, relying on incorrect location information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told a federal judge that immigration detainee Cristian Yair de la Cruz Guillermo had been moved to Massachusetts -- which would have stripped the Maine court of habeas jurisdiction over his case -- before correcting the claim the same day to say he remained in Fort Fairfield, Maine. U.S. District Judge John Woodcock Jr. then issued a temporary restraining order barring CBP, ICE, DOJ and DHS officials from moving Guillermo out of state, citing a similar location misreport in an unrelated detainee's case.
ICE agents arrested asylum seeker Isa Maluenga Avila without explanation, detained her 18 days at Eloy
On January 26, 2026, masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Isa Maluenga Avila, a 41-year-old Tucson asylum seeker lawfully admitted at the Nogales port of entry in 2023, without explanation as she left a bank, and sent her to Eloy Detention Center. ICE gave no reason for the arrest, and Maluenga Avila had no criminal record and no active removal case or final removal order against her. She was held 18 days in conditions she described as inhumane before an immigration judge ordered her release on February 13, 2026, after DHS moved to dismiss its case rather than respond to a federal habeas corpus petition her attorney had filed.
ICE detained former Venezuelan opposition mayor Carlos Garcia-Oden at routine Cincinnati check-in
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Carlos Garcia-Oden, a former opposition mayor of Mérida, Venezuela, at a scheduled immigration check-in in Cincinnati, Ohio, on January 23, 2026, and booked him into the Butler County Jail as deportation proceedings began. Garcia-Oden had complied with ICE check-ins for years, held a valid work permit through 2030, and had no criminal record; his family said ICE gave no reason for the arrest. He fled Venezuela in 2017 after being sentenced in absentia for opposing Nicolás Maduro's government and has an asylum claim pending.
ICE detained Chicago man acquitted in Bovino murder-for-hire plot, held him without a hearing for weeks
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Juan Espinoza Martinez, a 37-year-old Chicago construction worker, into custody on Jan. 23, 2026 -- one day after a federal jury acquitted him of offering a bounty for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino -- and held him at the Clay County Justice Center in Brazil, Indiana without a hearing before an immigration judge. U.S. District Judge James Hanlon ruled Feb. 6, 2026 that the continued detention was unlawful for lack of that hearing and ordered the government to release Espinoza Martinez or grant him a bond hearing.
ICE flew a 2-year-old and her father to Texas despite a court order to release the toddler
On January 22, 2026, ICE agents detained Elvis Joel Tipan Echeverria and his 2-year-old daughter in south Minneapolis as they returned home from grocery shopping. After a federal judge ordered that the toddler not be moved out of state and be released, the government placed both on a commercial flight to Texas roughly twenty minutes later, in contravention of the order. The child was returned to her mother in Minnesota the next day; her father, who has an active asylum case, remained in federal custody.
ICE deported pregnant asylum seeker Zharick Buitrago Ortiz from Atlanta amid reported medical distress, pending asylum claim
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Zharick Daniela Buitrago Ortiz, a 21-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who was eight months pregnant, from Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport on January 21, 2026, while a derivative asylum claim on her mother's application remained pending. Her attorney said she was in "serious medical distress" with intense back and abdominal pain and had been denied medical care before the flight; DHS disputed the medical-distress claim on the record, saying she had been medically cleared per policy and describing her as a suspected gang member who had previously been removed. Hours later, a federal judge granted part of an emergency motion to halt the removal, but ICE had already put her on the plane.
ICE secretly deported eight shackled Palestinians from Phoenix to the occupied West Bank
On January 20, 2026, ICE flew eight Palestinian men - shackled at the wrists and ankles for the entire journey - out of a Phoenix deportation hub on a private jet bearing the emblem of Dezer Development, the company run by Trump donor Gil Dezer, with refueling stops in New Jersey, Ireland, and Bulgaria. The men landed at Ben Gurion Airport and were released by Israeli authorities at a military checkpoint near Ni'lin in the occupied West Bank, in an operation coordinated with Israel and approved by the Shin Bet. A joint +972 Magazine and Guardian investigation found the flight was one of at least two such secret removals in early 2026, carried out with little or no due process.
ICE detained 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, transferring them to a Texas family detention center
On January 20, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, in the driveway of their home in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, and transferred them to the Dilley family detention center in Texas. A federal judge ordered their release on January 31, 2026, finding the case stemmed from an "ill-conceived" pursuit of deportation quotas, and the family returned to Minnesota on February 1. Days later the Department of Homeland Security moved to end the family's pending asylum claims, which the family's attorneys said was an attempt to fast-track their removal and which DHS called standard procedure.
DHS denies Minneapolis immigration detainees, including a U.S. citizen, access to lawyers
During Operation Metro Surge, federal agents held people swept up in Minneapolis-area immigration raids — including at least one U.S. citizen — inside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building and systematically denied them access to attorneys. Lawyers reported being turned away for days with shifting, legally invalid excuses, while detainees were allowed an outgoing call only after being booked and transferred to out-of-state facilities. DHS denied any violation, but the pattern was corroborated by four named attorneys, two U.S. senators, and a class-action suit that produced a March 2026 court order requiring prompt attorney access before any transfer.
ICE breaks into St. Paul home at gunpoint and detains Hmong American U.S. citizen ChongLy Thao in his underwear; county probes it as kidnapping
On January 18, 2026, masked federal immigration agents broke down the door of ChongLy "Scott" Thao, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen of Hmong descent, in St. Paul, pointed guns at his family, and led him into subzero cold wearing only his underwear, Crocs, and a blanket. Agents handcuffed Thao in front of his young grandson and drove him around questioning him before fingerprinting confirmed he is a longtime citizen with no record, then returned him home without explanation. Ramsey County's attorney and sheriff opened an investigation into the federal agents' conduct as a possible kidnapping.
U.S. Border Patrol detained Gresham, Oregon family, including 7-year-old, in Portland hospital parking lot; held past Flores limit
U.S. Border Patrol agents detained Darianny Liseth González de Crespo, her husband Yohendry de Jesús Crespo, and their 7-year-old daughter Diana in the parking lot of Adventist Health Portland on January 16, 2026, while the Gresham, Oregon family sought emergency care for the child's persistent nosebleed. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on the record that Border Patrol agents made the detention; the family was driven to Washington state and flown to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, where they were held together for 21 days -- one day past the 20-day limit on detaining children set by the 1997 Flores Agreement.
ICE re-arrested Garrison Gibson at Minneapolis check-in, a day after judge ruled his battering-ram arrest unlawful
On January 16, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents re-arrested Garrison Gibson, a 37-year-old Liberian national living in Minneapolis under an order of supervision, during a scheduled check-in at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building -- one day after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan ordered his release, ruling that ICE's January 11 battering-ram arrest of Gibson violated the Fourth Amendment and that ICE had ignored its own regulations on revoking supervised release. ICE held Gibson roughly three hours before releasing him again that afternoon, fitted with an ankle monitor and returned to supervision, again without providing the notice or interview the regulations require before revoking an order of supervision.
ICE deported gay Moroccan asylum-seeker to Cameroon, circumventing judge's order barring removal to Morocco
On January 15, 2026, ICE deported Farah, a 21-year-old gay Moroccan asylum-seeker, from ICE custody in Alexandria, Louisiana to Cameroon, despite an immigration judge's August 2025 ruling that she could not be removed to Morocco because it would endanger her life. Farah, who fled Morocco after her own and her partner's families attacked her over her sexual orientation, was deported three days before a scheduled release hearing; unable to safely remain in Cameroon, where homosexuality is also illegal, she was then sent onward to Morocco — the country the order barred. DHS said it was "applying the law as written."
ICE agents detained a Brooklyn deacon outside his home without explaining the arrest or reading him his rights, court filings say
On the morning of January 15, 2026, ICE agents detained Deacon Sebastian Renoj Ordoñez and several neighbors outside his Bensonhurst, Brooklyn apartment building as they left for work; according to federal court filings, officers did not explain the arrest or read him his rights. Ordoñez, a church leader for 18 years with no criminal record and U.S.-citizen children and grandchildren, was transferred within 48 hours to a detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. DHS said he had previously been deported under a false identity in 2000, while a federal judge ordered a pause on any further transfer or deportation and directed that he receive a bond hearing within 10 days.
ICE breaks into St. Paul home in armed warrantless raid, detains six including a 12-year-old flown to Texas
On January 15, 2026, federal immigration agents broke through the door of a home on Nevada Avenue East in St. Paul, Minnesota, entered with assault rifles, and detained six members of a Venezuelan family — including a 12-year-old boy who was transported to an immigration center in San Antonio, Texas. Agents claimed a search warrant but never presented one; a document left on the doorstep the next day was an unfiled Ramsey County (state) court paper with no case number. On January 19, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim granted the family's habeas petition after DHS failed to produce a judicial warrant by his deadline, ordering the detainees returned to Minnesota and released within 72 hours.
ICE detained a Willmar, Minnesota restaurant's owners and a dishwasher in a collateral vehicle-stop arrest hours after agents ate lunch there
On January 14, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers surveilled El Tapatio Mexican Restaurant in Willmar, Minnesota, and positively identified a target inside after seeing his vehicle parked outside. Officers conducted a vehicle stop later that day and detained the target along with two other people found in the car -- the restaurant's two owners and a dishwasher -- one of whom already had a final removal order from an immigration judge. The restaurant closed afterward as residents described a climate of fear and a nearby business owner said ICE operations had cost his shop roughly 75% of its trade.
CBS News report revealed DOJ immigration court locked out independent observers at Minneapolis's Whipple building
CBS News Minnesota reported on January 14, 2026 that immigration court officials at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis had locked courtroom doors, denied or severely restricted independent observers' access, and stripped names and complete case numbers from case records — a pattern the advocacy group The Advocates for Human Rights said has continued since early 2025. DOJ's own published policy states immigration courts are open to the public except when a judge grants a motion to close a hearing or limit attendance; no such motion or other government justification for the restrictions was reported.
ICE detained Circle Pines, Minnesota restaurant worker at work, flew him to Texas detention within about 12 hours
On January 13, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained a worker at Pancho's Taqueria and Mexican Cafe in Circle Pines, Minnesota, during the federal Operation Metro Surge immigration-enforcement deployment to the Twin Cities. The worker -- identified by restaurant owners only as "Kevin" to protect his safety -- was taken to a federal building in Minneapolis and flown to an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas roughly 12 hours later, before his family or an attorney located him. Restaurant owner Frank Chase said Kevin held valid work authorization; ICE and CBP did not respond to reporters' requests for comment on the detention.
ICE agents arrested and held Willmar teenager Suban Noor incommunicado for four days during Operation PARRIS sweep
On January 12, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 19-year-old Suban Noor, a Willmar Senior High School student and Walmart employee, on a downtown Willmar street as she stopped to pick up food for her family. An eyewitness described agents cornering her car, handcuffing her, and pulling her barefoot into an ICE vehicle while she cried out; her family had no contact with her and did not know where she was held until ICE's own detainee locator showed her release on January 16.
ICE arrested NYC Council employee Rafael Rubio at a routine asylum interview and detained him 158 days despite his valid TPS
On January 12, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Rafael Rubio, a Venezuelan data analyst employed by the New York City Council, when he appeared for a routine asylum interview at a USCIS office in Bethpage, New York, despite his holding Temporary Protected Status valid through October 2026. He was held at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey for 158 days, and the Department of Homeland Security branded him a "criminal illegal alien" in a January 13 press release. City Council Speaker Julie Menin disputed the government's account and called the detention wrongful.
New Mexico In Depth investigation revealed ICE detained U-visa applicant Damián Soto for months; Soto says an officer pressured him to self-deport
A January 12, 2026 New Mexico In Depth investigation revealed that ICE arrested Damian Soto, a 31-year-old San Bernardino, California man with a pending, preliminarily-approved U visa, at his home in June 2025 and detained him for months, transferring him through Los Angeles and El Paso facilities to CoreCivic's Cibola County Correctional Center in Grants, New Mexico, where, according to Soto, a detention officer urged him to sign voluntary-departure paperwork. Soto's family found the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, which filed a federal habeas corpus petition the government did not oppose; Soto was released without bail or an ankle monitor, though his immigration court case continues.
ICE deported 5-year-old U.S. citizen Génesis Gutiérrez Castellanos to Honduras without a hearing or access to counsel
On January 11, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported five-year-old Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos -- a U.S. citizen born in Austin, Texas -- to Honduras alongside her mother, Karen Guadalupe Gutiérrez Castellanos, who was removed under a 2019 administrative deportation order issued before Génesis was born. ICE took the pair into custody in Austin on January 5 after local police, responding to a domestic-disturbance call, found an active ICE warrant against Gutiérrez and notified the agency, then held them nearly a week in a San Antonio-area hotel without a hearing or access to a lawyer before deporting them.
St. Lucia signed non-binding third-country deportee MOU, faced disclosure-timing backlash
St. Lucia Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre announced during a New Year's address on January 11, 2026 that his Cabinet had approved a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with the United States on third-country deportees. Pierre faced domestic criticism for the timing of the disclosure, with commentators noting the deal appeared to have been finalized weeks before he announced it, and the agreement's text has never been publicly released.
ICE agents battered down Minneapolis man's front door and arrested him without a warrant; judge ruled the raid unconstitutional
On January 11, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used a battering ram to break down the front door of Garrison Gibson's home in north Minneapolis and arrested him without a judicial warrant and without his consent, while his wife, 9-year-old daughter, and her cousin were inside. Gibson, a Liberian national who had been complying with routine ICE check-ins, was held in custody until U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan ruled on January 15, 2026 that agents had "forcibly entered Garrison G.'s home without his consent and without a judicial warrant," violating the Fourth Amendment, and ordered his immediate release.
U.S. Border Patrol detained Spokane asylum-seeker and his 10-year-old daughter, held them a month at Texas facility
U.S. Border Patrol agents detained Guatemalan asylum-seeker Arnoldo Tiul Caal and his 10-year-old daughter Karla Tiul Baltazar in Spokane, Washington, on January 10, 2026, a day after first stopping and questioning him, despite his ongoing asylum case and clean record. The pair, who had lived in Spokane since 2019, were held roughly a month at the Dilley, Texas immigration processing center -- where Karla ran a fever and vomited -- before the Department of Homeland Security released them on February 6 without contesting a due-process habeas petition alleging DHS had violated its own regulations.
DHS launched Operation PARRIS, and ICE detained up to 150 Minnesota refugees without due process
On January 9, 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched "Operation PARRIS," directing USCIS to reexamine the immigration status of 5,600 Minnesota refugees who have not yet received green cards, as part of the administration's broader Minnesota fraud investigation. In the weeks that followed, ICE agents in plain clothes and masks arrived at refugees' homes and workplaces across Minnesota with drawn weapons, told families it was "just paperwork," and detained roughly 100 to 150 people, transporting most within about 24 hours to the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling and then to detention facilities in Texas without access to an attorney or a stated legal basis for their detention.
ICE and Orange County Jail unlawfully detained Venezuelan student without charges for 18 days
On January 7, 2026, Florida authorities arrested Javier Gimenez Rivero, a Venezuelan high school student in Orlando with a pending asylum claim and valid federal work authorization, and Orange County Jail held him for 18 days with no criminal charges, warrant, or hearing under an ICE immigration hold. Orange County Corrections confirmed it extended his detention past the jail's own 48-hour limit by "rebooking" him and other ICE-hold detainees under new booking numbers each time the clock lapsed. U.S. District Judge Roy B. Dalton Jr. found the hold carried no independent lawful authority and ordered Rivero's immediate release.
ICE detained 10-year-old Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano and her mother on the way to school and held them a month at Dilley, Texas
On January 6, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded a family car at a Columbia Heights, Minnesota bus stop and detained 10-year-old fourth-grader Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano and her mother, Rosa Elena Caisaguano Cajilema, flying both to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas the same day. The girl telephoned her father during the arrest to say agents would drop her at school; he waited outside Highland Elementary for hours, and the Department of Homeland Security later said officers detained the child because her mother "failed to find a trusted adult to care for" her. School officials and the family's attorney said the father was available at the school and that the family's timely asylum appeal was still pending, leaving no final order of removal.
2025 Events (73)
ICE agents detained at least 92 people across California's Central Coast in unannounced holiday sweeps
Between December 27 and 29, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, joined by agents from the Camarillo and Los Angeles field offices, detained at least 92 people across Santa Maria, Lompoc, San Luis Obispo, Nipomo, Paso Robles and Santa Barbara, California, apprehending people at homes, workplaces, parking lots and shopping areas starting as early as 4 a.m., and in one case taking a man into custody from the San Luis Obispo County Jail lobby upon his release without presenting a warrant. At a January 2, 2026 press conference, Santa Maria City Councilmember Gloria Soto said local advocacy groups had documented roughly 150 detentions since the sweep began, about 87 of them in Santa Maria, and 805 UndocuFund characterized the operation as indiscriminate racial profiling of working-class Latino communities.
Palau's president signed deportee MOU despite legislature's repeated objections
Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr. announced a Memorandum of Understanding on December 24, 2025 to accept U.S. third-country deportees in exchange for $7.5 million in aid, after Palau's Congress and Council of Chiefs had twice rejected the same proposal. The Palau Senate sued in February 2026 alleging the president lacked constitutional authority to enter what amounted to a treaty without legislative ratification, but a judge allowed implementation to proceed; the first deportee arrived in May 2026 and left after two weeks.
United States and DR Congo signed undisclosed third-country removal agreement
The United States and the Democratic Republic of the Congo reached a third-country removal agreement via diplomatic notes dated December 24, 2025, not disclosed until the State Department posted it in June 2026. Fifteen people with U.S.-granted humanitarian protections were forcibly transferred to DRC on April 17, 2026, shackled throughout a 27-hour flight and given only 24 hours' notice of their destination; a U.S. judge later found one woman's removal was likely unlawful and ordered her return.
ICE re-detained Jorge Gonzalez Ochoa one minute before his court-ordered release, defying a federal judge's order
On December 23, 2025, at 9:59 a.m. — one minute before a federal court order required his release — ICE officers served the Muscatine County Jail with a new arrest warrant for Jorge Gonzalez Ochoa, a 28-year-old Colombian asylum seeker, circumventing a December 22 release order by U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher. ICE had not yet prepared the legally required Notice to Appear when it issued the arrest warrant, and Judge Locher later found the agency sent the notice by regular mail to obscure the sequence and "cover its tracks." Gonzalez Ochoa was not released until January 9, 2026 — seventeen days after the original release order.
United States and Antigua and Barbuda signed non-binding third-country deportation MOU
The United States and Antigua and Barbuda signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding dated December 19, 2025, allowing the U.S. to propose transferring up to 10 "noncriminal refugees" per year to the Caribbean nation. The deal only became public in January 2026, after the U.S. imposed partial visa restrictions on Antigua and Barbuda effective January 1, 2026, prompting accusations from the political opposition that the timing amounted to coercion.
Dominica signed third-country deportee agreement with United States after visa threat
Dominica's Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit announced on January 5, 2026 that his government had signed an agreement, dated to diplomatic notes from December 17, 2025, to accept third-country nationals the U.S. cannot deport to their countries of origin. The deal followed a December 16, 2025 U.S. proclamation restricting entry for Dominican nationals, and Skerrit declined to disclose which countries the transferred individuals would come from.
ICE arrested and detained U.S.-born Maryland woman for 25 days despite documented citizenship evidence
ICE arrested Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, 22, during a December 14, 2025 traffic stop in Baltimore and detained her for 25 days across five facilities in Louisiana, Texas, and New Jersey, despite her Laurel, Maryland birth certificate, hospital and immunization records, and birth-witness affidavits. DHS disputed her citizenship, citing a 2023 Customs and Border Protection encounter near Lukeville, Arizona, and an in-absentia removal order issued in January 2025, while a federal judge barred her removal pending litigation and she was released January 7, 2026 under ICE supervision.
St. Kitts and Nevis signed CARICOM-only third-country deportation MOU with United States
St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Terrance Drew announced January 8, 2026 that his government had entered a Memorandum of Understanding with the United States, dated to December 12, 2025, allowing the transfer of CARICOM nationals — excluding Haitians and anyone with violent or sexual-offense records — who cannot be returned to their own countries. The first group, three people from Jamaica and Belize, was accepted in May 2026.
ICE detained Tennessee construction worker Diego Hernandez Garcia, then deported him in violation of a federal court order
On December 11, 2025, ICE agents detained Diego Hernandez Garcia, a 24-year-old Salvadoran construction worker with Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and deferred action valid through May 12, 2026, during a raid on a Hardin Valley, Tennessee job site; USCIS revoked his deferred action the same day, after he was already in custody. On December 23, despite a federal court order requiring he remain in the U.S. pending his case, ICE placed him on a flight to El Salvador; he was returned hours later after his attorney intervened, with the government calling the removal "inadvertent."
United States and Burundi agreed to transfer of nationals flagged as security risks
The U.S. Department of State proposed a third-country removal understanding to Burundi via diplomatic note dated December 8, 2025, explicitly contemplating the transfer of people who "raise national security or public safety concerns" — broader framing than most of the administration's other third-country notes. Burundi's government accepted, with a carve-out excluding people with violent criminal records, through a further exchange of notes completed February 12, 2026.
United States and Cameroon reached undisclosed third-country deportation agreement
The United States and Cameroon reached a third-country removal agreement through diplomatic notes dated December 8, 2025, which were not made public until June 2026. At least 36 people have been forcibly sent to Cameroon across four flights between January and May 2026, many of whom had been granted U.S. humanitarian protections against return to their home countries.
USCIS froze asylum applications and immigration benefits for 19 travel-ban countries, ordered green-card review
On December 2, 2025, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192 placing an indefinite hold on all pending affirmative asylum applications and freezing adjudication of immigration benefits—including green cards, work permits, and naturalization—for nationals of 19 countries subject to the June 2025 travel ban, while also ordering a review of every green card already issued to people from those countries. The memo cited Executive Order 14161 and a November 26 shooting near the White House as justification and stated the freeze would remain until lifted by a future directive. On June 5, 2026, a federal court vacated the policies as contrary to law and pretextual.
State Department cable halted all Afghan visa processing worldwide, including SIVs for wartime allies
On November 29, 2025, the State Department sent a cable to every U.S. diplomatic post ordering consular officers to stop processing and refuse all visa applications from Afghan nationals — immigrant, non-immigrant, and Special Immigrant Visas — effective immediately. The cable also instructed officers to cancel any authorized-but-unprinted visas and to destroy already-printed ones, while Secretary of State Rubio publicly confirmed the halt. The directive was triggered by the November 26 shooting of two National Guard members near the White House by an Afghan national, and applied collectively to all Afghans regardless of individual circumstances or prior approval status.
USCIS halted all asylum decisions nationwide after National Guard shooting
On November 28, 2025, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow ordered asylum officers to immediately stop approving, denying, or closing any asylum application nationwide, regardless of the applicant's nationality, following the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House by an Afghan national. The indefinite halt suspended the statutory asylum adjudication process under INA §208 for all pending applicants, freezing them in limbo with no path to a decision or hearing, and served as the originating operational directive later formalized by the December 2, 2025 USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192.
USCIS halted all asylum decisions for applicants of every nationality after D.C. National Guard shooting
On November 28, 2025, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow announced that the agency had "halted all asylum decisions" pending completion of enhanced vetting for "every alien," telling officers they could continue interviews up to the point of decision but could not approve, deny, or close any application regardless of the applicant's nationality. The operational directive—issued two days after an Afghan national shot two National Guard members near the White House—went beyond the concurrent Afghan-specific pause and froze affirmative asylum adjudication nationwide. CBS News reported the officer guidance on November 29. The pause was later formalized in USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192 (December 2, 2025) and declared unlawful by a federal court on June 5, 2026.
USCIS indefinitely halted all Afghan immigration requests—asylum, green cards, SIVs—hours after D.C. shooting
On November 26, 2025, USCIS announced it was immediately and indefinitely pausing processing of all immigration requests from Afghan nationals, covering asylum seekers, green-card applicants, work-permit renewals, family petitions, and Special Immigrant Visa applicants, many of whom aided U.S. forces during the war in Afghanistan. The agency imposed the halt by announcement with no rulemaking, no end date, and no individualized review, citing security-vetting concerns in the hours following an alleged shooting by an Afghan national near the White House.
Guyana agreed to accept US third-country deportees despite no refugee treaty status
Guyana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed a diplomatic note dated November 25, 2025, expressing willingness to accept third-country nationals deported from the United States, retaining complete discretion over individual transfers. Guyana is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol and has no domestic asylum legislation, leaving people transferred there — particularly those previously granted U.S. protection from removal — without the legal backstop that treaty accession would otherwise provide.
Sierra Leone agreed to accept US deportees, later described months in chains
Sierra Leone's government sent a note verbale on November 20, 2025 expressing willingness to accept up to 300 ECOWAS-citizen deportees from the United States per year; a January 2026 exchange of notes finalized the arrangement, adding that neither side intended to transfer people with violent criminal backgrounds. Nine people arrived May 20, 2026 — the first of two flights — and were described by a Sierra Leonean health ministry official as "traumatized due to the months in chains during detention in the US."
ICE detained and deported Babson College freshman despite no valid removal order; judge ordered her return
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained 19-year-old Babson College freshman Any Lucia Lopez Belloza at Boston's Logan Airport on November 20, 2025, as she prepared to fly home to Texas for Thanksgiving, and deported her to Honduras two days later without letting her contact an attorney or her family. The Trump administration acknowledged the deportation was a mistake — an ICE officer had failed to activate an alert flagging her case — but did not voluntarily return her; a federal judge ordered the government to facilitate her return on February 13, 2026.
United States and Cabo Verde signed Asylum Cooperative Agreement diverting asylum seekers
The United States and Cabo Verde signed an "Agreement on the Transfer of Third-Country Nationals" at Praia on November 19, 2025, which entered into force the same day, allowing the U.S. to propose sending asylum seekers to Cabo Verde to pursue their protection claims there. Unaccompanied minors and people with serious criminal or gang histories are excluded, and no transfers had occurred as of this filing.
United States deported 50 Ukrainians to Poland, transferred them into war zone
ICE deported 50 Ukrainian nationals to Poland on November 18, 2025, the largest single deportation of Ukrainians since Russia's invasion; U.S. officials flew them to Jasionka and transferred them to Polish officials, who escorted them across the border into Ukraine. Some had entered the U.S. under the Uniting for Ukraine humanitarian parole program with pending re-parole applications; Amnesty International and Human Rights First later called the practice a likely violation of international law.
ICE arrested Beaverton handyman Paulino Martin San Pedro, deported him within days without a court order or family notice
On November 18, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Paulino Martin San Pedro, a 53-year-old Beaverton, Oregon handyman who had lived in the United States for more than 30 years, as he left a job site. Within three days, ICE transferred him from Tacoma, Washington to Arizona and deported him to Mexico without a court order, leaving his family without word of his whereabouts for two days. Martin San Pedro, who has three adult children and grandchildren in Oregon, reported witnessing dialysis and cancer patients handcuffed to their wheelchairs while in ICE custody.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Fernando Vazquez during a Cary, North Carolina immigration sweep
On the morning of November 18, 2025, U.S. Border Patrol agents in unmarked vehicles detained Fernando Vazquez, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen and commercial landscaper, near a construction jobsite in Cary, North Carolina, as part of a broader immigration sweep moving from Charlotte into the Raleigh/Triangle area. Agents asked where he was from, confiscated his wallet, and drove him roughly two miles before determining he was a U.S. citizen and releasing him, discarding his belongings — including his IDs and AirPods — on the ground rather than returning them.
ICE held Roosevelt, NY man incommunicado for two months, attorney says, disclosing his location only after a judge ordered it
Manuel Hernandez Zelada, 27, of Roosevelt, New York, was arrested by immigration agents on November 14, 2025 while walking to a deli, and his family had no contact with him for nearly two months. Attorneys with Make the Road NY filed a habeas corpus petition on January 7, 2026 demanding ICE disclose his whereabouts; U.S. District Judge Sanket Bulsara ordered ICE and DHS on January 8 to disclose his current and prior locations, and officials called his attorney with his location the next day. He was found in a federal facility in New Mexico, having been held in four different facilities in New York, New Jersey, Texas, and New Mexico since his arrest, and spoke to his father by phone for the first time on January 10.
DHS terminated Temporary Protected Status for South Sudanese nationals over disputed 'improved conditions' claim
On November 5, 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for South Sudanese nationals, effective January 5, 2026, justifying it by citing "renewed peace" in South Sudan following a 2018 peace agreement. On December 30, 2025, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley granted an emergency injunction blocking the termination, ruling in a lawsuit brought by African Communities Together that DHS had acted unlawfully and citing a United Nations panel report describing ongoing armed conflict and near-record food insecurity in South Sudan. The administration has separately pursued TPS terminations for Syria, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
ICE detained Jordanian father of disabled US-citizen son despite standing caregiver accommodation
On October 28, 2025, ICE detained Maher Tarabishi, a 62-year-old Jordanian national, during a routine annual check-in at its Dallas field office, despite a supervision order in place since 2008 that permitted him to remain in the country as the full-time caregiver for his disabled adult son, Wael, who has Pompe disease. DHS said Tarabishi was a "self-admitted member" of the Palestine Liberation Organization and that a prior removal case against him had been dismissed in 2011; his family disputes that characterization and says he has never been charged with a crime, has paid taxes, and had attended every required ICE check-in without failure. Tarabishi remains in ICE custody at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas.
ICE arrested a misidentified Durango asylum-seeker and his two children without a warrant en route to school
On October 27, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Fernando Jaramillo-Solano, a Colombian national with a pending asylum case, and his two children without a warrant as he drove them to school in Durango, Colorado. A senior ICE official later testified in federal court that Jaramillo-Solano had been mistaken for another person, but agents detained him anyway and transferred him to a Texas facility. The family was separated from the children's mother, and the arrest triggered days of protests outside the Durango ICE field office.
ICE agent shot citizen journalist Carlitos Ricardo Parias during Los Angeles arrest attempt; agency denied him counsel access and body-camera footage
On October 21, 2025, an ICE agent shot citizen journalist Carlitos Ricardo Parias in the elbow during an attempted arrest in downtown Los Angeles, after agents smashed his car window; a U.S. marshal was also struck. Prosecutors charged Parias with assaulting a federal officer, but a federal judge dismissed the indictment with prejudice in December 2025, finding the government denied him access to counsel while in ICE custody and missed a court deadline to release body-camera footage of the shooting.
United States and Belize signed safe third-country agreement diverting asylum seekers
The United States and Belize signed a "safe third country" agreement on October 20, 2025, allowing the U.S. to transfer Central American and Caribbean asylum seekers to Belize to pursue protection claims there instead of in the U.S. The agreement's text was not made public and required ratification by Belize's Senate that November; the first deportation flight arrived July 10, 2026, carrying one Haitian asylum seeker.
Michigan DNR officers stopped Detroit father on pretext of fishing-license check, delivering him to ICE custody
On October 18, 2025, Michigan Department of Natural Resources officers stopped Detroit resident Jose Pedro Hernandez Lupercio, a Mexican citizen with no convictions who was fishing with his sons on the Manistee River in Brethren, Michigan, and the stop led to his transfer into ICE custody. DHS said the arrest occurred during "a targeted operation led by the USFS in conjunction with the DNR," while DNR maintains its officers were present only "as backup" and were "not present to enforce federal immigration laws" — an account contradicted by a federal habeas corpus ruling stating DNR agents contacted ICE after Hernandez Lupercio could not prove legal presence. He was held on $7,000 bond and released in February 2026.
ICE agents arrested Victor Cruz Gamez without a warrant in Hillsboro, Oregon, and held him more than three weeks despite his valid work permit
On October 14, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled over and arrested Victor Cruz Gamez, a longtime Hillsboro, Oregon, construction worker and grandfather, without a warrant and without an individualized determination that he was likely to escape. Cruz Gamez held a work permit valid through 2029 and deferred-action status tied to a pending visa application, and his family said agents had been looking for a different man with the same name; he was transferred to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, the next morning and held for more than three weeks. A federal judge later found that ICE's warrantless-arrest practice in Oregon amounted to unlawful agency policy and enjoined it.
ICE deported ten migrants to Eswatini on second third-country removal flight
On October 6, 2025, ten migrants deported by the United States arrived in Eswatini, the second flight under the third-country removal arrangement the administration launched that July. An immigration lawyer said the group included at least three Vietnamese nationals, a Filipino, and a Cambodian national; Eswatini's Correctional Services department said it would hold them in correctional facilities pending repatriation efforts without specifying conditions. The flight brought the total number of third-country deportees sent to Eswatini to 15.
DHS began offering unaccompanied immigrant children cash and detention threats to induce 'self-deportation'
Starting in September 2025 and formalized in an October 3, 2025 nationwide memo, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services began pressuring unaccompanied immigrant children in federal custody — offering some children 14 and older $2,500 to leave voluntarily — to waive their right to a hearing before an immigration judge. A written "advisal" DHS had used since September 2025 told children that refusing to self-deport meant prolonged detention, transfer to ICE upon turning 18, and possible arrest and prosecution of their U.S. sponsors. Immigration attorneys and advocacy groups, including the National Immigration Law Center and Public Counsel, said the program stripped away statutory safeguards for one of the most vulnerable populations in the immigration system.
ICE detained exonerated legal permanent resident Subramanyam Vedam on his prison release, pursuing deportation under a vacated murder conviction
On October 3, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Subramanyam "Subu" Vedam, a 64-year-old legal permanent resident from India, the day a Pennsylvania court vacated his 1982 murder conviction for prosecutorial misconduct and prosecutors declined to retry him. ICE relied on a decades-old deportation order predicated on the now-vacated conviction and moved to deport him to India — a country he left as a nine-month-old in 1962. Vedam was held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, where DHS continued pursuing deportation even as an immigration judge found him rehabilitated and cleared the way for his potential release.
United States paid Equatorial Guinea $7.5 million to accept deportees with US protections
The United States and Equatorial Guinea signed a Note Verbale dated October 2, 2025, under which the U.S. paid the authoritarian petrostate $7.5 million to accept deportees who could not be returned to their own countries. An Associated Press investigation published March 21, 2026 revealed the secretive deal and found that most of the at least 40 people eventually transferred there — including a 28-year-old East African refugee ICE agents allegedly beat after he refused to sign a voluntary-return document — had already been granted U.S. legal protection against removal home.
United States and Liberia signed asylum protection-claims agreement
The United States and Liberia signed an "Agreement to Cooperate in the Examination of Protection Claims" via exchange of notes at Monrovia on September 10, 2025, entering into force the same day. Liberia separately agreed on October 24, 2025 to accept Kilmar Abrego Garcia "on a strictly humanitarian and temporary basis" following an October 17 meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Liberia's foreign minister; by August 18, 2026 the agreement had scaled into active use, with Liberia agreeing to accept up to 1,200 third-country deportees.
ICE detained Irish national Seamus Culleton, then blocked his green-card interview and reversed his court-approved bond during prolonged detention
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Irish citizen Seamus Culleton on September 9, 2025, after running his license plate at a Home Depot in Saugus, Massachusetts, and transferred him to Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. During his ensuing detention, ICE caused him to miss at least two scheduled USCIS interviews confirming his pending marriage-based green card, and DHS successfully moved to reverse an immigration judge's $4,000 bond grant on a jurisdictional ground specific to the Visa Waiver Program he entered under.
United States deported protected migrants to Ghana under undisclosed third-country deal
The United States deported the first group of third-country nationals to Ghana on September 5, 2025, under an arrangement the BBC reported six days later; the deal's text has never been disclosed. At least 60 people have been forcibly sent to Ghana across four confirmed flights, many with U.S.-granted humanitarian protections, and Reuters later found Ghana forcibly returned at least 22 of them to their home countries despite U.S. court orders barring exactly that.
BIA stripped immigration judges of bond authority, mandating detention without hearings in Matter of Yajure Hurtado
On September 5, 2025, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedential decision, Matter of Yajure Hurtado, holding that noncitizens who entered the United States without inspection are "applicants for admission" subject to mandatory detention under the Immigration and Nationality Act, with no authority for an immigration judge to grant a bond hearing. The ruling reversed decades of practice under which longtime residents placed in removal proceedings could seek release on bond, and DHS and ICE began applying it to hold thousands of people without any individualized custody review.
ICE agents detained 57 workers in a Cato, NY factory raid; judge found warrants didn't authorize the detentions
On September 4, 2025, roughly 60 armed federal agents, supported by the Cayuga and Oswego County sheriff's offices, raided the Nutrition Bar Confectioners factory in Cato, New York and detained 57 of the roughly 160 workers present, though supporting affidavits named or described fewer than 10 potentially undocumented individuals. Fifty-two of the 57 were deported and five were charged with illegal re-entry; U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes later found that the two warrants used authorized only the seizure of business records and the questioning of workers, not their detention, and ruled that agents violated the Fourth Amendment rights of one charged worker, Argentina Juarez-Lopez.
Pentagon authorized up to 600 military JAG lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges
On August 27, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo authorizing the Department of Defense to detail up to 600 Judge Advocate General lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges under the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review on assignments of up to 179 days. The authorization followed the DOJ's removal of the prior-immigration-experience requirement for temporary judges. Military JAGs would receive approximately two weeks of training before serving; the first cohort of five was sworn in on May 20, 2026, in the largest investiture class in EOIR history.
United States and Paraguay signed Safe Third Country Agreement at State Department
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Paraguay's Foreign Minister signed a Safe Third Country Agreement on August 14, 2025, allowing asylum seekers in the U.S. to pursue protection claims in Paraguay instead. A February 2026 addendum expanded the deal beyond asylum seekers to third-country nationals generally, and Paraguay has since rejected several proposed transferees for failing documentation checks.
United States and Uganda signed asylum transfer deal, later used to fast-track dismissals
The United States and Uganda signed an Asylum Cooperative Agreement at Kampala on July 29, 2025, published in the Federal Register that September, under which Uganda agreed to accept an unspecified number of asylum seekers with pending U.S. claims. ICE attorneys began citing the agreement to summarily dismiss asylum cases without a hearing, until internal DHS guidance obtained by the New York Times restricted such motions in December 2025; eight people had been forcibly transferred to Uganda as of April 2026, with mixed outcomes.
USCIS declared SIJS application fee non-waivable, cutting off abused children from congressional immigration protection
On July 22, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published a Federal Register notice declaring that the $250 Special Immigrant Juvenile Status application fee is non-waivable, effective immediately, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The agency acknowledged the law did not include an explicit no-waiver provision but interpreted the mandatory fee language as barring any waiver. SIJS, created by Congress in 1990, provides immigration protection to children who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned and who cannot safely return to their countries of origin. The removal of the fee waiver made the protection financially inaccessible to the indigent children it was designed to protect.
ICE deported five men to Eswatini on first third-country removal flight
On July 16, 2025, five men deported by the United States arrived in Eswatini, the first flight under the Trump administration's newly launched third-country removal arrangement. DHS said the men, from Vietnam, Laos, Jamaica, Cuba, and Yemen, could not be returned to their home countries and described them as convicted of serious crimes; Eswatini said it would hold them in isolated units pending eventual repatriation. The flight inaugurated a policy that sent at least three more groups to the same facility over the following year.
United States and Ecuador secretly signed Asylum Cooperative Agreement
The United States and Ecuador secretly signed an Asylum Cooperative Agreement in July 2025, formalized in diplomatic notes and published in the Federal Register on November 17, 2025 without any public evaluation of whether Ecuador is safe for transferred asylum seekers. The administration has since cited the agreement's existence to summarily dismiss over 18,000 asylum cases for removal to Ecuador, far more than the small number of people actually transferred.
CBP and ICE agents detained U.S. citizen and Army veteran George Retes for 72 hours without charge during Camarillo raid
On July 10, 2025, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained George Retes, a U.S. citizen and disabled Army veteran working as a security guard, as he arrived for his shift at a federal raid on Glass House Farms in Camarillo, California, breaking his car window, pepper-spraying him, and pulling him from the vehicle before holding him roughly 72 hours across three facilities without charge, an attorney, or contact with his family. The Department of Homeland Security said Retes "became violent" and was arrested for assault, but the government never filed a charge and released him on July 13, 2025. Retes sued the United States and individual federal officers in February 2026.
DHS stripped independent board review from immigration civil-penalty appeals, cutting the window to 15 business days
On June 27, 2025, DHS and DOJ's Executive Office for Immigration Review published an interim final rule that took appeals of immigration civil penalties away from DOJ's Board of Immigration Appeals and gave them to a DHS supervisory officer, while cutting the response window from 30 days to 15 business days and eliminating the option for an in-person interview. The rule governs fines of up to $998 per day under INA Section 274D for failing to depart after a final removal order; DHS told CNN in 2026 that it had assessed more than $84 billion in such fines against over 100,000 people since the start of Trump's second term, including a $1.8 million fine against a man who had already left the country and twice submitted evidence of his departure.
Supreme Court 6-3 stayed order requiring torture screening before third-country deportations, enabling removals to South Sudan and Libya
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 on June 23, 2025, to stay a federal district court order that had required the Trump administration to provide immigrants a meaningful opportunity to contest removal to dangerous third countries before deportation. The stay immediately allowed the administration to resume removals to South Sudan, Libya, and El Salvador under bilateral agreements, without any screening for Convention Against Torture claims. Justice Sotomayor dissented sharply, writing that the administration had "repeatedly defied" the lower court order and calling the Supreme Court's intervention "so gross an abuse of the Court's equitable discretion."
Kosovo agreed to accept up to 50 third-country deportees from United States
Kosovo's government confirmed on June 11, 2025 that it had agreed to temporarily host up to 50 migrants deported from the United States who are not Kosovar citizens, without disclosing which countries they would come from or whether the U.S. would pay Kosovo for its cooperation. The first deportee arrived that December and was granted temporary protection; Kosovo has not signed the Convention Against Torture or the 1951 Refugee Convention.
United States and Guatemala signed agreement diverting Central American migrants
The United States and Guatemala signed an agreement, effected by an exchange of diplomatic notes on June 11 and 13, 2025 and published in the Federal Register on July 15, 2025, allowing transfer of Central American nationals to Guatemala. President Bernardo Arévalo insisted it was not a "safe third country agreement," but DHS attorneys have since used it to summarily dismiss pending asylum cases, and most subsequent transfers to Guatemala have occurred outside the agreement's own terms entirely.
Rwanda agreed to accept up to 250 US deportees for $7.5 million payment
Rwanda's government confirmed in early August 2025 that it had agreed to accept up to 250 migrants deported from the United States, under a deal signed by officials in Kigali in June 2025, in exchange for a U.S. cash grant. The first seven deportees arrived in mid-August 2025; a Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority report later calculated the arrangement cost the U.S. more than $1 million per person transferred.
Supreme Court 7-2 stayed injunction blocking CHNV parole termination, enabling DHS to revoke status for 532,000 noncitizens
On May 30, 2025, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration's emergency application to stay a federal injunction, allowing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to proceed with terminating humanitarian parole for more than 532,000 noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela admitted under the Biden-era CHNV programs. The unsigned 7-2 order — with Justices Jackson and Sotomayor dissenting — cleared the way to revoke parole status without the individualized case-by-case review that the district court's injunction had required. Justice Jackson wrote that the majority had "plainly botched" the ruling and decried the "devastating consequences" of upending the lives of nearly half a million people while their legal claims remained pending.
DOJ filed motion to terminate Flores Settlement Agreement, eliminating court-ordered protections for immigrant children in custody
On May 22, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement, a 1997 court settlement that has set minimum care standards and a 20-day detention cap for immigrant children in federal custody for nearly three decades. Attorney General Pam Bondi's DOJ argued termination was warranted by post-settlement regulations and a 2022 Supreme Court ruling. Judge Dolly Gee denied the motion in August 2025, finding the government remained in substantial noncompliance with the settlement's terms.
ICE arrested Bronx high school student Dylan Lopez Contreras in Manhattan courthouse lobby after his scheduled immigration hearing
On May 21, 2025, ICE agents arrested 20-year-old Dylan Josue Lopez Contreras, a Venezuelan Bronx high school student, in the lobby of 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan after he appeared for a scheduled immigration hearing. During the hearing, government lawyers asked the judge to dismiss Dylan's case and immediately reopen it as an expedited removal — leaving him without legal protection and enabling the on-site arrest. Dylan, who had entered the country lawfully under a Biden-era humanitarian program and held a work permit, had no criminal record. He was subsequently detained at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania for nearly ten months before being released on March 18, 2026.
United States and Eswatini signed MOU for third-country deportations
The United States and Eswatini signed a Memorandum of Understanding dated May 14, 2025, made available on the State Department website that June. Under it, at least 30 people have been forcibly sent to Eswatini across four flights between July 2025 and July 2026; a DHS spokesperson described the initial group as "depraved monsters" despite several having U.S.-granted humanitarian protections.
ICE Acting Director Lyons issued classified memo authorizing warrantless home entry for immigration arrests
ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memo on May 12, 2025, directing agents to forcibly enter private homes using administrative warrants signed by ICE supervisors rather than judges, departing from longstanding Fourth Amendment practice and prior DHS policy requiring judicial warrants for home entry. The memo was classified for restricted internal distribution—agents were required to return it and take no notes—and was reportedly used to train new ICE agents. Whistleblowers disclosed the memo to Senator Blumenthal in January 2026; NBC News published the full account.
United States and South Sudan agreed to single deportation flight via diplomatic notes
The United States and South Sudan reached the only written agreement made public to date via an exchange of diplomatic notes from early May 2025, covering a single flight of third-country nationals. Eight men were deported under it in July 2025 in violation of a standing federal court injunction requiring meaningful notice and a chance to raise fear-based claims; the agreement was not disclosed until January 2026, and the men were held in a guarded compound lacking reliable electricity.
DHS announced Uzbekistan third-country deportation partnership, first deal of second term
DHS announced on April 30, 2025 that it had partnered with Uzbekistan to deport more than 100 Uzbek, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz nationals on a single flight — the first third-country removal deal of the second Trump administration. Uzbekistan fully funded and organized the flight; a further six people were sent to Uzbekistan in March 2026.
ICE terminated student status records of two lawfully enrolled international graduate students at Montana State University
In April 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement terminated the SEVIS student status records of two international graduate students lawfully enrolled at Montana State University, effectively revoking their authorization to remain in the United States without legal basis. The ACLU of Montana filed suit against then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and ICE, challenging the terminations as unlawful. A federal judge issued an emergency order in April 2025 blocking the government from deporting the students; the U.S. government subsequently reinstated their records and changed its policy. The government settled the lawsuit in July 2026, formally committing to protect the students' immigration status.
United States redirected foreign aid to fund Costa Rica's interception of US-bound migrants
The U.S. and Costa Rica signed a Memorandum of Understanding on April 3, 2025 under which DHS funds and runs logistics for Costa Rica's own deportations of irregular migrants, primarily those transiting toward the United States. The State Department is redirecting up to $7.85 million from its Economic Support Fund — a foreign-aid line normally used for allied economic development — to DHS to pay for the program, modeled in part on a 2024 Biden-era deal under which the U.S. paid Panama to detain and deport migrants moving toward the U.S. border.
HHS issued interim final rule permitting ICE and CBP to access sponsors' immigration status, reinstating first-term enforcement arrangement
On March 25, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services published an interim final rule (90 Fed. Reg. 13554) that rescinded a Biden-era prohibition on sharing the immigration status of unaccompanied children's sponsors with ICE and CBP for enforcement purposes. The rule, effective immediately, also removed the prohibition on disqualifying potential sponsors based solely on their immigration status. The IFR reinstated a memorandum of agreement from Trump's first term under which approximately 170 undocumented sponsors who came forward to claim children in federal custody had been arrested by ICE.
DHS Secretary Noem terminated CHNV parole programs, stripping lawful status from 532,000 noncitizens without individualized review
On March 25, 2025, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem published Federal Register Notice 2025-05128 (90 FR 13611) formally terminating the Biden-era categorical parole programs for inadmissible noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The termination took effect immediately; the approximately 532,000 current parolees were given until April 24, 2025 to depart the United States. Each had been individually vetted and admitted under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5), but their status was revoked through a single blanket notice with no individualized review of reliance interests or changed circumstances.
ICE arrested Georgetown postdoctoral researcher Badar Khan Suri over pro-Palestinian speech and associations, without filing charges
On March 17, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral research fellow at Georgetown University's Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, as he walked toward his Virginia home. ICE moved Suri to a federal detention facility in Texas without filing any criminal charges; the Trump administration cited his pro-Palestinian social media posts and his wife's family connection to a former Hamas adviser as justification, without presenting evidence to the court. A federal judge found his release was in the public interest to prevent the chilling of constitutionally protected speech.
Trump invoked Alien Enemies Act for CECOT transfer bundled with secret Bukele prisoner exchange, defying court order
On March 15, 2025, President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to fly more than 250 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador's CECOT prison without individualized hearings, defying a federal judge's same-day order to turn the planes around. A diplomatic note later declassified shows the operation was bundled with a separate request: El Salvador President Nayib Bukele personally asked for the return of MS-13 leader César Antonio Lopez Larios, and El Salvador agreed to also hold up to 500 Tren de Aragua members for a year, in exchange for undisclosed U.S. financial and in-kind support.
United States and Honduras signed Asylum Cooperative Agreement capped at 240 transfers
The United States and Honduras signed an Asylum Cooperative Agreement at Washington on March 10, 2025, which entered into force June 25, 2025 and caps transfers at 10 people per month, 240 over its first two years. A Center for Gender and Refugee Studies fact-finding trip found Honduras meets neither of the legal standards — safety from persecution or access to full and fair asylum procedure — the agreement is supposed to guarantee, and documented a transferred Salvadoran man forced to flee the same gang he had escaped originally.
ICE detains Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil over pro-Palestinian activism; no criminal charges filed
On March 8, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Mahmoud Khalil — a lawful permanent resident and Columbia University graduate student who had been a prominent organizer of pro-Palestinian campus protests — with no criminal charges filed against him. Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C), a rarely-used statute permitting deportation on foreign-policy grounds, as the basis for removal. Khalil was transferred to an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he was held for approximately three months while his attorneys argued the government was retaliating against him for constitutionally protected political speech.
United States deported 200 third-country migrants to Costa Rica without written agreement
The United States deported roughly 200 people, including 80 children, to Costa Rica on two flights in February 2025, before any written agreement existed governing the transfers. Deportees from Afghanistan, China, Iran, Russia, Uzbekistan, and other countries were held for months at a border migration facility with their passports confiscated, until Costa Rica's Constitutional Court ordered their release that June for violating their rights to legal counsel and information.
Panama accepted 299 third-country deportees under expanded, unwritten MOU
The United States and Panama expanded an existing Memorandum of Understanding on February 2, 2025, under which roughly 299 migrants and asylum seekers from Asian and other countries were forcibly transferred to Panama that same month, many expelled without any protection screening under a Trump proclamation suspending asylum access. Dozens remained stranded in Panama for months, held at a jungle-camp facility and a Panama City hotel, before human rights groups intervened.
Trump signed memo directing Pentagon and DHS to expand Guantánamo Bay to house up to 30,000 migrant detainees
On January 29, 2025, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to full capacity, stating the facility would hold up to 30,000 detained immigrants. The site in Cuba falls outside ordinary U.S. federal court jurisdiction, raising legal uncertainty about detainees' access to habeas corpus review. Administration officials described intended detainees as "high-priority criminal aliens," though subsequent transfers included low-risk detainees with no serious criminal records.
Acting DHS Secretary Huffman invoked first-ever mass influx finding, deputizing law enforcement in all 50 states for immigration enforcement
On January 23, 2025, Acting DHS Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman signed a formal "Finding of Mass Influx of Aliens" — the first invocation of the 1996 statutory authority in its 29-year history — declaring an imminent emergency at the southern border affecting all 50 states. The finding authorized DHS to request immigration enforcement assistance from state and local law enforcement nationwide under 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(10), bypassing the training and agreement requirements of the standard 287(g) program. A companion directive simultaneously expanded enforcement authority to DOJ components — the U.S. Marshals Service, DEA, ATF, and Bureau of Prisons — that have no statutory immigration function.
United States began mass unwritten third-country deportations to Mexico under Trump
Beginning January 20, 2025, the second Trump administration dramatically expanded a decades-old, never-written practice of deporting third-country nationals to Mexico, sending almost 13,000 people there by March 2026 — by far the largest volume under the program. A March 2026 Justice Department court filing referred to a "standing (unwritten) agreement" with Mexico; neither government has ever published its terms.
Trump signed EO 14159 expanding expedited removal to US interior, eliminating immigration court hearings for non-citizens
On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14159, directing DHS to expand expedited removal to the fullest extent authorized by statute. DHS implemented the order via a Federal Register designation effective January 21, 2025, extending expedited removal authority to any non-citizen anywhere in the United States who could not prove at least two years of continuous presence. Previously, the procedure had applied only to migrants apprehended at or near the border; the expansion allowed interior deportations without any hearing before an immigration judge.
2024 Events (1)
Biden administration began funding Panama's deportation of US-bound migrants
The Biden administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Panama on July 1, 2024, under which the U.S. State Department and DHS fund and help run Panama's own deportation flights for migrants transiting toward the United States through the Darién Gap. The Congressional Hispanic and Black Caucuses had urged the administration to halt the funding before it was finalized, warning Panama's asylum system lacked the capacity to screen people — particularly Venezuelans and Haitians fleeing persecution — before returning them to danger.