James Percival

Auto-generated actor page. Add an entry in taxonomy/aliases.yaml to enrich the metadata.

2026 Events (3)

July(1)

DHS General Counsel Percival publicly branded four federal judges 'Worst of the Worst' over immigration rulings

DHS General Counsel James Percival began a "Worst of the Worst, District Judges Edition" social-media series on July 23, 2026, naming four federal district judges in Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California and accusing them of "mutiny against the Supreme Court" and entering orders "in bad faith" to "run out the clock" on the administration's immigration agenda. The posts came amid a sharp rise in threats against the federal judiciary and drew a formal condemnation from the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, which called the rhetoric "dangerous and irresponsible" and warned it crossed from legitimate criticism into intimidation.

June(1)

ICE's HSI unit obtains individual voter files from Texas and North Carolina counties to investigate alleged noncitizen voting

Election officials in Webb County, Texas, and Forsyth County, North Carolina, turned over individual voter-file records — including registration history, addresses, dates of birth, driver's-license numbers, and voting histories — to agents of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit as part of the Trump administration's campaign against alleged noncitizen voting, according to emails obtained by Democracy Forward and first reported by Axios on June 13, 2026. The requests reached Webb County in May 2026 and Forsyth County in November 2025, and on June 9 DHS General Counsel James Percival directed ICE to pursue stricter penalties, including deportation, for noncitizens found to have voted.

May(1)

DHS directs ICE to pursue immigration attorneys under asylum-fraud authority

On May 26, 2026, DHS General Counsel James Percival issued a memo directing ICE attorneys in the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor to develop "anti-fraud policies" for "robust enforcement" of the document-fraud statute (8 U.S.C. § 1324c), stating the effort should include enforcement against immigration attorneys who file false asylum claims. The memo explicitly invoked President Trump's March 2026 directive seeking sanctions against lawyers who bring "frivolous" litigation against the government.