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January 14, 2026

12 entries on this date.

Alabama prison officials transferred 'Alabama Solution' whistleblowers to extreme solitary confinement

In mid-January 2026, the Alabama Department of Corrections abruptly transferred incarcerated activists Raoul Poole, Robert Earl Council ("Kinetik Justice"), and Melvin Ray — subjects of the Oscar-nominated documentary "The Alabama Solution" — from their prisons to an isolated five-cell solitary confinement unit at Kilby Correctional Facility near Montgomery, Alabama. The transfer followed the men's December 2025 announcement of a nonviolent work strike, and their attorneys and family said prison officials gave no reason and cut the men off from contact with other prisoners, staff, and initially their families.

ICE routes Diaz autopsy to military hospital, bypassing ME who ruled prior Camp East Montana death a homicide

Victor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan detained in the Minneapolis area under Operation Metro Surge, died on January 14, 2026 at Camp East Montana, the ICE tent facility on the Army's Fort Bliss base in El Paso, Texas — eight days after his arrest and roughly 1,200 miles from where he was taken. ICE called the death a "presumed suicide," but his family rejected that account, and the agency routed his autopsy to a military hospital that withholds its findings from the public, bypassing the El Paso County medical examiner who had ruled an earlier detainee's death at the same camp a homicide. Diaz was the third person to die at Camp East Montana in a 44-day span.

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.

State Department suspended immigrant-visa processing for 75 countries citing "public charge" concerns

On January 14, 2026, the State Department announced it would suspend immigrant-visa processing for citizens of 75 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, and Somalia, effective January 21, citing a policy of vetting applicants for the likelihood they would rely on public assistance once admitted. The suspension, which builds on a November 2025 directive tightening "public charge" vetting, does not apply to nonimmigrant tourist or business visas.

DHS Secretary Noem terminated Temporary Protected Status for Somalia, stripping deportation protection from about 2,500 Somalis

On January 14, 2026, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Somalia, effective March 17, 2026, stating that "country conditions in Somalia have improved" and that continued protection was "contrary to our national interests." The termination affects approximately 2,500 Somali nationals — 1,082 people enrolled in TPS as of December 8, 2025, plus 1,383 pending applicants — making them eligible for deportation. The announcement came amid an ongoing ICE enforcement surge in Minneapolis, home to the nation's largest Somali-American community, and after President Trump had made repeated derogatory public statements about Somali immigrants.

Federal agents deployed tear gas under a Minneapolis family's vehicle, trapping six children inside

On January 14, 2026, federal agents responding to protests against Operation Metro Surge deployed tear gas that rolled under a family's SUV in north Minneapolis, trapping Destiny and Shawn Jackson and their six children — ages six months to eleven — inside as the vehicle's auto-locking doors initially prevented escape. Once extracted, Destiny Jackson performed CPR on the couple's six-month-old, who had stopped breathing; the infant was revived, and the family was hospitalized and decontaminated. DHS initially posted, then deleted, a statement blaming the family for bringing children to a "violent riot," before an agency spokesperson said the family had not intentionally been at the protest and were not the target of the agents' actions.

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.

FBI searched Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's Alexandria, Virginia home, seized her devices in Pentagon leak probe

On January 14, 2026, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Alexandria, Virginia home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson and seized her phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive, and a Garmin watch, as part of a Pentagon-referred Justice Department leak investigation into a government contractor accused of taking home classified reports. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the search was conducted at the Defense Department's request; Natanson and the Post were not targets of the underlying probe, but the seizure cut off her access to more than 1,000 confidential sources and her ongoing reporting on the administration's downsizing of the federal workforce.

Slotkin revealed Pirro's office sought interviews with Democratic lawmakers over anti-illegal-orders video

Sen. Elissa Slotkin revealed on January 14, 2026 that Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, had asked to interview her the previous week about a November 2025 video in which she and five other Democratic members of Congress reminded U.S. troops of their duty to refuse illegal orders. Reps. Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan confirmed to reporters that they received similar interview requests from Pirro's office. The requests followed a November 2025 FBI counterterrorism interview request over the same video and preceded a February 2026 attempt by Pirro's office to indict the same six lawmakers before a grand jury.

Education Department opened 18 Title IX investigations into schools and colleges across 10 states over transgender-athlete policies

On January 14, 2026 — the day after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on state laws barring transgender athletes from women's sports — the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights opened Title IX investigations into 18 K-12 school districts, colleges, and one state education department across ten states: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington. The investigations targeted policies letting students compete in school sports according to their gender identity rather than sex. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said OCR was "aggressively pursuing" the entities and would "leave no stone unturned."

ICE detained U.S. citizen Nasra Ahmed for two days in St. Paul; agent allegedly shoved her and used a racial slur

On January 14, 2026, ICE agents in St. Paul, Minnesota detained Nasra Ahmed, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen with no criminal record, while pursuing two men she did not know; Ahmed said agents shoved her to the ground and one used a racial slur before she was held two days at Sherburne County jail and released without charges. She described the detention publicly at a Minnesota State Capitol press briefing on January 21, and a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson responded the same day by alleging, without evidence, that she had assaulted federal agents. Federal prosecutors subsequently charged Ahmed over the same encounter, and in June 2026 a federal judge dismissed the case with prejudice, finding the government had violated a court order and undermined the presumption of innocence.

Hennepin County charges ICE agent in January Minneapolis shooting of Venezuelan immigrant

On May 18, 2026, Hennepin County prosecutors charged U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian Castro with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the January 14, 2026 shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis through the front door of a home in north Minneapolis. County Attorney Mary Moriarty said security-camera and physical evidence show Castro was never under threat — he was not struck by a shovel, broom, or other object — and then filed a false account of the encounter. The U.S. Department of Justice had previously dropped the federal assault charges that the Department of Homeland Security brought against Sosa-Celis and his cousin Alfredo Aljorna in February 2026 after the same footage contradicted the ICE agents' sworn statements; ICE placed two agents on administrative leave at that time.