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Timeline › 2026 › February › 13

February 13, 2026

5 entries on this date.

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.

JTF Southern Spear killed three aboard suspected narcotics vessel in Caribbean; 39th strike, ~134 campaign deaths

On Feb. 13, 2026, at the direction of U.S. Southern Command commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a "lethal kinetic strike" on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea that SOUTHCOM alleged — without presenting evidence and without interdiction, arrest, or judicial process — was operated by a designated terrorist organization. Three men were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed. The strike is part of the open-ended Operation Southern Spear campaign of lethal strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.

DHS and ICE began occupying a Romulus, Michigan warehouse for a detention facility without notifying local or state officials

On February 13, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began taking occupancy of a roughly 300,000-square-foot warehouse at 7525 Cogswell Street in Romulus, Michigan, intending to convert it into a roughly 500-bed immigration detention facility, without formally notifying the city, Wayne County, the state of Michigan, or the state's congressional delegation in advance. Michigan's attorney general and the City of Romulus later sued DHS and ICE over the lack of environmental review and intergovernmental consultation, and in June 2026 the agencies abandoned the plan and agreed to sell the property.

Justice Department sued Harvard to compel production of admissions data

On February 13, 2026, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division sued Harvard University in federal court in Massachusetts, seeking an order compelling Harvard to turn over five years of undergraduate, medical-school, and law-school admissions data -- including grades, test scores, essays, and race/ethnicity -- that DOJ had demanded since opening a compliance review in April 2025. DOJ said Harvard had "thwarted" the investigation into whether the university continued considering race in admissions after the Supreme Court barred affirmative action; Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called Harvard's refusal "a red flag." Harvard said it has been responding to the government's requests and is in compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling, and characterized the suit as "retaliatory actions" tied to its earlier refusal to accept a list of administration demands.

ICE agents tracked Minnesota protesters to their homes, ACLU court filings revealed

Nearly 100 sworn statements filed February 13, 2026 in an ACLU-led civil case over Minnesota's "Operation Metro Surge" immigration deployment describe more than a dozen instances of federal agents identifying protest-monitors' home addresses, apparently via license-plate tracking, and showing up there -- most without an individually established date. One monitor, Daniel Woo, said an ICE-linked SUV he had tracked later drove to and parked in front of his home. DHS said the agency does not use force against peaceful protesters or stop cars without reasonable suspicion, and did not address the specific incidents.