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January 22, 2026

7 entries on this date.

ICE removed all detainees from Cumberland County Jail and DHS canceled its housing contract hours after sheriff criticized ICE's tactics

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed all roughly 50 federal detainees from the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Maine, on January 22, 2026, and the Department of Homeland Security formally canceled the jail's detainee-housing contract the next day, hours after Sheriff Kevin Joyce publicly criticized ICE's arrest of a county corrections officer as "bush league." ICE Deputy Assistant Director Patricia Hyde said on the record that the cancellation followed Joyce "criticizing those who actually protect our communities," and in the same rushed transfer ICE moved detainees in violation of standing federal court orders, prompting two judges to order several immediate releases.

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.

National Park Service removed the George Washington slavery exhibit at Philadelphia's President's House Site

On January 22, 2026, the National Park Service removed 34 educational panels documenting the nine people George Washington enslaved while living at the President's House in Philadelphia, implementing President Trump's March 2025 executive order directing federal cultural sites to remove content that "inappropriately disparages" Americans. The city of Philadelphia sued, and a federal judge ordered the exhibit restored in February 2026, but the Third Circuit reversed that injunction in June, and NPS installed replacement panels in July that critics say soften Washington's record on slavery; Philadelphia is now seeking a rehearing of the appellate ruling.

EEOC's Republican majority rescinded its 2024 workplace harassment guidance, including transgender protections

On January 22, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Republican-appointed majority — Chair Andrea Lucas and Commissioner Brittany Panuccio — voted 2-1 to rescind its 2024 enforcement guidance on workplace harassment, skipping the standard notice-and-comment process. The 190-page guidance, adopted under President Biden following the Supreme Court's Bostock ruling, included examples of unlawful harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation; a federal court in Texas had already vacated that specific section in May 2025 for exceeding EEOC's authority, but the January 2026 vote eliminated the remainder of the document, covering harassment standards for race, sex, religion, age, and disability as well. The commission's lone Democrat, Kalpana Kotagal, voted against the rescission, calling it "throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

Education Dept. found Connetquot school district violated Title VI by dropping its Native American mascot to comply with state law

On January 22, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights concluded that Connetquot Central School District on Long Island, New York, violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by renaming its "Thunderbirds" mascot to "T-Birds" under a settlement complying with a 2023 New York State Education Department regulation banning Native American mascots and imagery in public schools. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said the district "engaged in race- and national-origin-based discrimination" by abandoning the name and ordered it to revert to "Thunderbirds" and all associated logos; New York's Education Department called the finding "a mockery of our nation's civil rights laws."

DOJ and FBI arrest anti-ICE church-protest organizers under FACE Act and conspiracy statute

On January 22, 2026, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel announced federal charges against Minneapolis civil-rights organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul school-board member Chauntyll Allen, and others over a January 18 anti-ICE demonstration inside Cities Church in St. Paul, where one pastor also directs the local ICE field office. The activists were charged under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and 18 U.S.C. § 241 (conspiracy against rights); Levy Armstrong was processed and released the same day after a federal magistrate found insufficient evidence to detain her. These were the first arrests in a prosecution that a February 27 superseding indictment would expand to 39 defendants.

ICE agents smashed a lawfully present driver's car window and tased him during a Portland, Maine stop

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped civil engineer Juan Sebastián Carvajal-Muñoz while he drove to work in Portland, Maine, on January 22, 2026, smashed his car window with a crowbar, and dragged him out at taser-point after he showed a REAL ID through the window. Agents held Carvajal-Muñoz, who holds a valid H-1B visa through September 2027, for roughly 16 hours — moving him toward an ICE facility in Burlington, Massachusetts — before releasing him that night. He sued ICE agent Jack Cory Ravencamp and four then-unnamed agents in April 2026 under the Maine Civil Rights Act, alleging the stop was based on his race.