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March 12, 2026

3 entries on this date.

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.

Hegseth launches task force to ideologically review the military's senior service colleges

On March 12, 2026, Secretary of War (Defense) Pete Hegseth announced a 90-day task force to review the U.S. military's Senior Service Colleges — the Army War College, National Defense University, Naval War College, Marine Corps University, and Air War College — declaring that professional military education "should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters." Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata was tasked with standing up the review to scrutinize professors, administrators, and curriculum and to "rip out" courses and ideologies the department deems DEI-related, with the stated aim of refocusing the schools on national-security strategy, history, and warfighting.

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.