Federal prosecutors are under fire after critics accuse them of smearing man killed by ICE in Houston

An FBI agent arrived at a crime scene and saw something suspicious: tied plastic baggies containing unknown substances resembling illegal drugs. He would need to laboratory test the items to be sure. To do that, he would also get a warrant. The Houston incident, following one of the latest deadly shootings by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, mirrors countless routine police encounters that happen daily across the country as officers find suspected drug paraphernalia and seek court orders to seize and test it for illegal substances. In this instance, however, the search warrant, shielded from public view when initially filed, was inexplicably unsealed and made public the next day. Justice Department veterans told CNN they can’t remember a time when information that could be critical to a case was made publicly available while a criminal investigation was still underway. “This is absolutely abnormal,” said Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. “This raises all sorts of red flags and all sorts of questions about why they would unseal this now.” The move quickly set off a firestorm, with immigration rights advocates accusing DOJ of trying to malign a dead man. And some legal experts are now questioning whether the department is playing politics in an unprecedented way with a high-profile criminal investigation. ‘It just smells of a smear campaign,’ an advocate says Bertha Lopez pays her respects July 9 at the site where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed in Houston. Bertha Lopez pays her respects July 9 at the site where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed in Houston. Brandon Bell/Getty Images The still-unidentified substances were allegedly found on the dashboard and floor of a van driven by Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Houston man ICE tried to pull over last week on suspicion of being in the country unlawfully. Importantly, he was not their original target. Instead, federal authorities said immigration officers were initially searching for undocumented migrants in another vehicle that resembled Salgado Araujo’s van when they initiated the traffic stop. In a statement, which mirrors similar past statements issued by the Department of Homeland of Security during the Trump’s administration’s nationwide immigration enforcement surge, ICE said Salgado Araujo “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer” before an immigration officer shot and killed him in self-defense. No video has surfaced depicting the moment of the shooting and none of the officers were wearing body cameras. Men who were riding in the van with Salgado Araujo and his brother, Victor, told attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra they did not attempt to ram officers, nor put the officers in danger. Salgado Araujo also had no prior criminal record despite the Trump administration’s claims it is targeting the ‘worst of the worst.’ In an affidavit seeking to search the vehicle filed in federal court Tuesday, the FBI agent who responded to the incident wrote “the white in color crystal-like substances packaged in small clear plastic bags are consistent with how users of drugs package controlled substances for distribution, manufacturing, and possession,” adding it was “consistent with methamphetamine.” As is normal in active, high-profile investigations, the federal court docket shows the search warrant was originally filed by DOJ under seal, shielding its contents from public view. But, a day later, in a move many who served in law enforcement viewed as baffling, the warrant appeared to have been suddenly unsealed while the ongoing investigation into the incident was still underway. It was quickly picked up by the media, with articles and TV segments spotlighting the FBI’s suspicion that Salgado Araujo was transporting methamphetamine. The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the allegations in the warrant; why the warrant information was made public; and whether it was unsealed at the request of federal prosecutors. Notably, attorney Ruby Powers representing Salgado Araujo’s family refuted the notion he was in possession of drugs, saying in a statement the family believed the plastic baggies actually contained “granulated salt, which is paired with lemon and water as a homemade electrolyte mix used by outdoor workers in extreme Texas heat, not methamphetamine or any other illicit substance.” Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, who has criticized federal authorities for not cooperating with his office’s investigation into the shooting, told CNN he also does not believe the substance the FBI found was drugs. The FBI has not commented on whether testing of the items has been completed. In addition to criticizing the unsealing of the search warrant in the case, Teare told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Friday that he did not believe the FBI fully processed the van for evidence. That might include records from the vehicle’s computer system indicating its speed, steering, and braking, he said, as well as swabbing the exterior for DNA that may prove immigration officers were in physical contact with the van. “All they were looking for were baggies that were in open sight, and the only thing that I can think they did it for was to smear a good man’s name,” he said. The president of the LULAC Adelante PAC, a political group that supports Latino voter participation and candidates, accused federal investigators of trying to “change the public discourse and prejudice a jury in Harris County.” “It just smells of a smear campaign and a cover up,” Domingo Garcia said Wednesday. ‘No reason to unseal it now,’ says DOJ veteran People march to honor Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 8. People march to honor Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 8. Brandon Bell/Getty Images “No prosecutor would ever unseal a warrant at this phase of an investigation under any ordinary circumstances,” said Honig, who served in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. He said warrants are typically only unsealed after a case has been indicted by a federal grand jury and federal prosecutors begin sharing evidence with the defense as required. “There is no reason to unseal it now,” Honig said. “All you do is risk revealing information about your investigation you don’t want revealed. You could compromise your investigation, compromise witnesses, and undermine your own case.” If the unusual step to unseal the search warrant was indeed meant to sully the reputation of Salgado Araujo and his passengers, it may have worked. Social media was ablaze with demeaning comments. Some, however, directed their skepticism and hostility towards ICE and the FBI, openly questioning why they would think someone would actually drive around with methamphetamine clearly visible on their dashboard. One notable aspect of this apparent subplot is how little the presence of drugs, if eventually verified by FBI testing, would likely factor at all into the DHS Office of Inspector General’s ongoing investigation of the ICE officer’s decision to use deadly force. To date, DHS has not indicated the ICE officers who stopped Salgado Araujo had any knowledge of drugs possibly being inside the vehicle at the time of the fatal shooting. It does remain to be seen whether any allegations of drug possession may be used in possible deportation proceedings for the passengers who were riding with him. The DA in Houston has requested they be afforded special visas while multiple investigations remain underway, calling the men witnesses to alleged crimes. In a statement Thursday that did not address any of the questions raised about the unsealing of the search warrant in the case, Trump-appointed US Attorney Aaron Reitz, who took office this month after previously working for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, insisted he is not “drawing any final conclusions while the investigation is ongoing.” Reitz said federal authorities “are doing everything we can to seek the truth and do the right thing. In the meantime, I encourage the public to give the FBI and DHS the opportunity to investigate.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

One week, two killings: Trump’s immigration crackdown turns deadly – again

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was driving to work with his brother and two other passengers in Houston, Texas, when immigration agents began tailing his car. They pulled him over and fired a fatal shot through the open passenger-side window. Six days later in Biddeford, Maine, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26, was driving around his neighborhood when agents stopped him at an intersection – right outside the laundromat where he’d often go with his three-year-old daughter – and shot him dead. The two killings in less than a week have unleashed waves of grief and outrage across the US. Demonstrators gathered in both cities to – once again – demand that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency tasked with carrying out Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation scheme, remove its agents from their streets. To deliver on Trump’s promise of mass arrests and deportations, immigration officers armed with military gear have been violently detaining immigrants in communities across the US – at traffic stops and outside department stores, at bus stops, warehouses, farms, schools and churches. Salgado Araujo and Durán Guerrero were the 29th and 30th people that immigration officers have opened fire on since Trump took office last year, according to the Trace, an outlet that is tracking these shootings in its Gun Violence Data Hub. Officers killed eight of those people, among them Renee Good and Alex Pretti – the US citizens gunned down during a militarized enforcement operation in Minnesota. This week, another man fleeing immigration agents in Florida died after being struck by a truck. Twenty-two people have died in ICE custody, including inside immigration detention centers, this year. Protesters hold anti-ICE signs and an illustration of Salgado Araujo View image in fullscreen Demonstrators protest against ICE after the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas, on 14 July 2026. Photograph: Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images The two latest shootings echoed each other – and those that came before. Neither victim, it turned out, was the true target of the immigration officers’ operation. Salgado Araujo, of Mexico, had lived and worked in the US for 35 years. He was a husband and the father of three US citizen children. Durán Guerrero, from Colombia, had been working multiple jobs to support his wife and daughter. Salgado Araujo’s eldest son, Ronaldo, said he saw a Facebook video of his father’s shooting – and recognized him immediately from the sound of his voice crying for help. Neighbors told the Portland Press Herald that they saw Durán Guerrero’s partner and daughter rush outside in the aftermath of his killing – the three-year-old in her Bluey pyjamas – and heard their cries ringing through the street. Shootings by federal immigration agents under Trump As of 15 July 2026 8 killed 13 injured Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero 13 July 2026 Biddeford, Maine Lorenzo Salgado Araujo 7 July 2026 Houston, Texas Alex Pretti 24 Jan 2026 Minneapolis, Minnesota Renee Good 7 Jan 2026 Minneapolis, Minnesota Keith Porter Jr 31 Dec 2025 Los Angeles, California Isaias Sanchez Barboza 11 Dec 2025 Rio Grande City, Texas Silverio Villegas González 12 Sept 2025 Franklin Park, Illinois Ruben Ray Martinez 15 March 2025 South Padre Island, Texas Unknown 16 June 2026 Blaine, Washington Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez 7 April 2026 Patterson, California Unknown 22 Feb 2026 Pittsburg, New Hampshire Patrick Gary Schlegel 27 Jan 2026 Pima county, Arizona Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis 14 Jan 2026 Minneapolis, Minnesota Luis David Nino-Moncada 8 Jan 2026 Portland, Oregon Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras 8 Jan 2026 Portland, Oregon Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins 24 Dec 2025 Glen Burnie, Maryland Unknown 24 Dec 2025 Glen Burnie, Maryland Carlos Jimenez 30 Oct 2025 Ontario, California Jose Garcia-Sorto 29 Oct 2025 Phoenix, Arizona Carlitos Ricardo Parias 21 Oct 2025 Los Angeles, California Marimar Martinez 4 Oct 2025 Chicago, Illinois 9 other shooting incidents where no one was injured 1 July 2026 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 10 Feb 2026 Roxbury, New Jersey 21 Jan 2026 Los Angeles, California 21 Dec 2025 St Paul, Minnesota 16 Dec 2025 Queens, New York 13 Nov 2025 Washington DC 17 Oct 2025 Washington DC 16 Aug 2025 San Bernardino, California 31 July 2025 Black Forest, Colorado Show more Guardian graphic. Source: Gun Violence Data Hub, news articles. Note: The data was collected and analyzed by the Trace by independently reviewing media reports and is likely an undercount. Some incidents were not included due to the circumstances of the shooting. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – which oversees ICE and the US border patrol – quickly followed up each shooting with statements, but no evidence, that the victims were to blame. Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle” against officers, the DHS said – echoing the language used after officers killed Good, and other people that agents have shot. The DHS said the officers who fired at Durán Guerrero did so while “fearing for public safety”. Witness videos of each incident have already cast doubt on these official statements. Calls for accountability: ‘This has to stop’ The shootings have galvanized thousands of protesters, and led to calls from local leaders and civil rights groups for independent investigations. In Houston, thousands of protesters have marched to demand that ICE leave the city entirely and for the Houston police department to end all cooperation with the agency. In addition to demanding a full, city-led investigation, they are also asking the DHS to reveal the names of the ICE agents involved and release from immigration custody the three witnesses who were in the vehicle with Salgado Araujo when he was shot. 'ICE Out: Justice for Lorenzo and Joan' protest at Foley Squareepaselect epa13112023 People attend the 'ICE Out: Justice for Lorenzo and Joan' protest at Foley Square in New York, USA, 14 July 2026. Protesters call for the abolishment of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in reaction to the fatal shootings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Guerrero. EPA/SARAH YENESEL ‘Fear, intimidation, violence’: calls mount to remove ICE from US streets after agents killed two men Read more One week after the shooting, hundreds of protesters gathered outside Houston’s city hall, chanting: “¡Justicia para Lorenzo!” – Justice for Lorenzo! More than a hundred Houstonians signed up to urge action from the mayor, John Whitmire, and the city council during lawmakers’ first meeting since Salgada Araujo was killed. In Maine, hundreds of people poured into the streets of Biddeford and organized an evening vigil for Durán Guerrero. But many of his friends were afraid to speak publicly, according to Maine Public – because they feared that ICE would retaliate against them and others in the city’s Latino immigrant community. In an interview with Telemundo, Durán Guerrero’s father, Omar, said his son “had a strong vision of getting ahead, many dreams to fulfill”. Even the scenes of mourning were familiar. At a memorial for Salgado Araujo, volunteers were sharing “know-your-rights” pamphlets with mourners and neighbors – just as volunteers had done near the site where Good and Pretti were killed. “Nobody should have to learn their rights standing at a memorial for their neighbor,” said Neidi Dominguez, the executive director of the advocacy group Organized Power in Numbers. “But that’s where we are right now.” Increasingly, advocates are grappling with a bigger question: what happens when ICE violates people’s rights with apparent impunity? Jasmine Khadem Gonzalez, an immigrant rights organizer with the Houston Democratic Socialists of America, said her training now includes instructions for documenting agents in the field – taking note of badge numbers, license plates and timestamps, and filming the agents – all in order to create a reliable record of violations. Protesters gather and wave yellow and black anti-ICE signs. View image in fullscreen People protest against ICE in Houston on 8 July 2026. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images On Houston’s Canal Street, where residents placed candles and flowers near the spot where Salgado Araujo was killed, people grappled with what it meant that ICE’s violence had reached them, and their community. “We watched this happen in Los Angeles last year and taught our students about it, and then in Chicago, and Minneapolis, and now it is happening to us, here,” said JoAnna Rodriguez, who teaches the history of Mexican American communities, known as Chicano history, at the local arts center she founded. She lives two blocks from where Salgado Araujo was killed. “We’ve always been fearful, and it’s only getting worse. This has to stop.” A supercharged deportation campaign The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement apparatus is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the US. Last month, the president signed a bill securing $70bn in funding ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with $38bn for ICE to expand arrests, detention and deportation operations. In recent months, the administration has recruited thousands of new immigration agents, many without proper vetting and questionable qualifications. At the same time, the government has been dismantling the offices tasked with investigating deaths and civil rights abuses within immigration agencies. Following public outrage over Good’s and Pretti’s killings in Minneapolis, and massive nationwide protests against the Trump administration’s militarized immigration raids in cities across the US, Trump signaled a shift in tactics. He demoted Gregory Bovino – the bombastic border patrol official who led armed and masked bands of agents through cities with a film crew in tow – and fired his homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. Tricia McLaughlin, the top DHS spokesperson who had become notorious for her blatantly false press statements, also left her role. The DHS promised to equip all its agents with body cameras. But that has not been fully implemented, and the officers who apprehended Salgado Araujo and Durán Guerrero were not wearing cameras. After Durán Guerrero’s killing, the administration instructed federal immigration to pause pulling over vehicles – and almost immediately afterwards the president overturned that pause. Many of the immigration arrests in recent months have been conducted by police, sheriffs and members of other state and local law enforcement agencies deputized by the federal government to conduct immigration sweeps. In many locales, it has become unclear to bystanders whether drivers are being pulled over due to a genuine traffic violation, or because an officer was interested in checking their immigration status. While it has become less common to see roving caravans of immigration officers in masks, the administration has not slowed its mass-deportation campaign. Officers are still detaining immigrants at workplaces, at routine check-in appointments, outside their homes or during traffic stops. The arrests are happening routinely – in most cases before neighbors and bystanders realize what is going on. “It’s just happening so quickly. So people can’t get there to observe, record and report what they saw,” said Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project. “And often all that’s left is an empty car sitting there.” Flowers surround a photo of a young man. View image in fullscreen A makeshift memorial for Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero on 14 July 2026 in Biddeford, Maine. Photograph: Ryan Murphy/Getty Images ICE agents are targeting immigrants not only in big cities, but also in smaller cities and towns all across the US. In Iowa, advocates noticed a surge in targeted arrests at people’s residences – among those detained were a delivery service driver from Turkey and a Fijian national who had come to the US on a student visa. This month in Wisconsin, advocates noticed a surge of arrests in suburban neighborhoods – agents trailed and stopped immigrants, including those with work permits and legal status, who were driving in Milwaukee and suburban Greenfield. The New York Times reported earlier this month that immigration officials had detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days of June. In the aftermath of the killings this week, ICE released statements emphasizing that the agency was arresting the “worst of the worst” including “murderers, pedophiles, violent assailants and drug traffickers”. However, data analyzed by the Guardian and others show that the vast majority of people that ICE has arrested had no criminal convictions. Immigration attorneys and advocates are bracing for even more arrests to come. A recent supreme court ruling allowing the administration to revoke a designation known as temporary protected status from Haitian and Syrian immigrants will strip legal status from about 1.3 million people. Those who aren’t able to quickly find some other legal pathway to residency in the US could be immediately arrested and deported. In Houston, residents said they would continue to push back against ICE – and protect their families and their neighbors, whose lives are on the line. “We have to stop mincing words … ICE is a domestic terrorist organization,” said Jasmine Khadem Gonzalez, the immigrant rights organizer. “They are killing our fathers on the streets in cold blood all across this country.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

‘Fear, intimidation, violence’: calls mount to remove ICE from US streets after agents killed two men

US officials are facing mounting calls to remove US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from American streets after federal agents killed two men who were not the target of enforcement action in less than a week. Advocacy groups, including the National Police Accountability Project and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, described the fatal shootings of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas as extrajudicial killings. A memorial with flowers, candles, and a photograph sits at the base of a utility pole on a street corner ICE pauses vehicle stops after deadly shootings in Texas and Maine Read more “The bystander videos I watched make it clear that ICE agents carried out another extrajudicial public execution in Maine,” Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said in a statement. “It’s clear that the only way to prevent ICE from killing us in the streets is to remove ICE from the streets.” Congress can do so, she added, by freezing funding to the agency and limiting their jurisdiction. Surveillance footage shows scene of deadly ICE shooting in Maine – video 1:31 Surveillance footage shows scene of deadly ICE shooting in Maine – video Details have emerged in recent days about how the two killings unfolded during operations that quickly turned deadly. On 7 July, federal agents in unmarked vehicles pursued Salgado, a 52-year-old builder originally from Mexico, in Houston as he drove his crew to their job site. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that agents were conducting a “targeted enforcement operation” at the time but that Salgado, who had no criminal history, was not the intended target. Salgado had lived in the US for 35 years and was close to obtaining legal status, his family has said. Officers conducting surveillance for the operation noted two white vans on the property associated with the target’s address, according to the DHS. Lorenzo Salgado, whose father Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed in Houston this week. Man killed by ICE agents not intended target of immigration arrest, DHS says Read more A DHS spokesperson said that “officers were almost at the target’s address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop.” While Salgado was not the person agents were looking for, the DHS alleged that he “weaponized his vehicle” in an effort to run over an ICE official, a claim disputed by witnesses. The three men in the vehicle denied the agency’s claims, telling their attorney that there was never any ICE official in front of the van and that the shots at Salgado were fired from the “sides” of the van. Less than a week later, on Monday, an ICE official in Maine shot and killed Durán, a 26-year-old from Colombia. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said agents had been conducting “surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal. An illegal alien departed the residence in a vehicle.” The office of Senator Angus King later told WMTV-8 that Markwayne Mullin, the DHS secretary, told the Maine senator that Durán was not the target of an operation. 'ICE must leave the state of Maine': protesters march after fatal shooting - video 'ICE must leave the state of Maine': protesters march after fatal shooting - video The agency went on to claim that when law enforcement officers attempted to conduct a stop, “The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.” Witnesses to the incident have told media that after the shooting Durán told agents he tried to stop his vehicle as they pulled him out of it, and that his wife and daughter, who was wearing Bluey pyjamas, saw the aftermath of the violence. While much of the circumstances around the shooting are still unclear, immigrant rights activists have said Durán was authorized to work in the US and had a social security number. Friends and relatives in Colombia hold a vigil for Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Maine. View image in fullscreen Friends and relatives in Colombia hold a vigil for Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Maine. Photograph: Jaime Moreno/AP Civil rights groups and elected officials have called for independent investigations into the killings of both men, and the removal of ICE from US communities. “This is not public safety. This is not enforcement. It is state violence with the direct intent of terrorizing communities through fear, intimidation, and deadly violence,” Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), said in a statement. “We demand a full, independent, and transparent investigation into these unjustified uses of force and accountability for every official responsible. We demand ICE leave our communities immediately.” The Guardian reported on Tuesday that after the killings federal immigration officials were instructed to stop pulling over vehicles until further notice. Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, told Fox News it was a temporary pause while officials look into the recent incidents and determine whether training should be improved. America’s Voice, a progressive immigration reform advocacy group, argued that a “partial, temporary pause” would not solve the underlying problem: “A hastily hired, undertrained force of armed agents operating under exorbitant, politically driven arrest quotas.” Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of America’s Voice, said in a statement: “In America we don’t kill people in the streets because of the way they look. This pattern of unaccountable killings is unconscionable and unconstitutional and must end, period.” The killing of Durán was the 11th fatal shooting by federal immigration officials since Trump’s second term began, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, according to a Guardian review of public reports. The US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets. We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Man fleeing immigration officers in Florida is struck and killed by tractor trailer, police say

A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said. It was the third death in a week involving encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, following shootings in Texas and Maine The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi, Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Dylan Bryan said in an emailed statement. The driver of the semi stopped and tried to help the man, Bryan said. It was at least the 10th death involving encounters with immigration agents since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation campaign last year. It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the encounter Tuesday. In an emailed statement, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed it had conducted an operation and said the Florida Highway Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations were “investigating an incident resulting in the death of a Mexican national.” The department did not respond to an inquiry from The Associated Press about the status of the other three occupants of the vehicle. Related Stories Mexican man killed in Houston ICE shooting was not the target of operation, lawmaker says Mexican man killed in Houston ICE shooting was not the target of operation, lawmaker says 3 MIN READ Trump says he is nominating former Oklahoma state trooper Lance Schroyer as ICE director Trump says he is nominating former Oklahoma state trooper Lance Schroyer as ICE director 1 MIN READ Houston shooting marks at least the 8th fatality in US immigration sweeps Houston shooting marks at least the 8th fatality in US immigration sweeps 1 MIN READ State Rep. Angie Nixon, a Democrat from Jacksonville, called the death a tragedy that resulted from an out-of-control agency. “Whether it’s ICE agents gunning down a father in the streets of Houston, shooting a young man in Maine or conducting operations right here in Northeast Florida that result in a deadly crash, the outcome is the same: fear, chaos and death,” she said. In two other cases, people died after fleeing agents and being struck by vehicles. Last summer, a man running from immigration officers outside a Home Depot store in southern California died after being hit by an SUV as he tried to cross a freeway. Homeland Security officials said that 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, of Guatemala, was not being pursued by immigration authorities when he was struck. In October, a pickup truck fatally struck 24-year-old gardener Josué Castro Rivera, of Honduras, on a highway in Norfolk, Virginia, as he tried to escape authorities during a traffic stop. Authorities said Castro Rivera’s vehicle was stopped as part of a “targeted, intelligence-based” operation and that Castro Rivera had “resisted heavily and fled.” The Mexican government on Tuesday said it had asked state attorneys general in the U.S. to review the deaths of migrants in ICE custody or during raids for possible criminal prosecution. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Citizenship and Immigration Services ordered to resume processing work permit applications

(CN) — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to resume processing I-765 employment authorizations for noncitizens after the federal government earlier this year had frozen all such applications for people who are from 39 “high risk” countries. U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia DeMarchi in San Jose, California partially granted a request for a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit brought by 137 foreign nationals from 15 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela. They claim timely adjudication of their I-765 applications is essential to their ability to work, maintain their non-immigrant statuses and sustain their livelihood in the U.S. The judge rejected the government’s arguments that the policy memoranda freezing the applications are shielded from judicial review under the Immigration and Nationality Act. DeMarchi disagreed the policy memoranda don’t amount to final agency actions that can be challenged under the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies make and implement significant policy decisions. “This very issue of jurisdiction has been well-vetted by other courts in similar litigation in this district and across the country,” DeMarchi said. “The court agrees with the reasoning of those courts that find that USCIS has a non-discretionary duty to adjudicate immigrant benefit applications within a reasonable period of time; that courts have jurisdiction to review USCIS’s failure to do so; and that the policy memoranda are sufficiently ‘final’ for purposes of APA review.” The work authorizations in question are typically needed by foreign students at U.S. universities, asylum seekers, green card applicants and spouses of foreigners who have a visa to work in the U.S. The ruling follows a decision last month by a Rhode Island federal judge who vacated four USCIS policies that had halted applications for asylum, work permits, green cards, and citizenship by nationals from the 39 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr., a Barack Obama appointee, in that decision scolded USCIS for violating the very immigration laws that Congress had charged it with administering. “In enacting its latest immigration policies, USCIS: claims statutory and regulatory authority that it does not possess; makes decisions without the reasoned explanations that it must provide; acts without regard for the reliance interests of applicants that it must consider; and justifies its actions with pretextual concerns of ’national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making,” McConnell Jr. said in a 135-page decision. While the ruling in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island vs. USCIS effectively meant that the applications for I-765 are no longer frozen, DeMarchi denied the government’s request to stay the litigation before while it appeals the Rhode Island decision. “The judge was right to grant this injunction — our law firm’s fifth or sixth victory against the holds,” Curtis Lee Morrison, an attorney with Red Eagle Law who represents the plaintiffs in the San Jose case, said in an email. “The government’s position that they’ll likely prevail on the appeal of Dorcas’ vacatur clearly undermines any argument for not granting relief here or in other challenges to the holds.” Representatives of the U.S. Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

More than a dozen immigration detention facilities have gone over a year without inspection under revised ICE policies

Fifteen of the 45 immigration detention facilities holding 500 or more people hadn't been inspected in over 12 months as of late June, while five had no inspection on record, a CBS News analysis of inspection reports found. This follows a shift in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's policies from inspecting most of its facilities twice a year to once a year or once every two years. It's a move immigration custody experts said weakens an oversight mechanism that was already flawed. "A lot of facilities have deficiencies and it takes frequent reassessments to ensure that those deficiencies are being addressed," said Dr. Annette Dekker, an assistant professor at UCLA's medical school who has studied health outcomes among immigration detainees and co-authored a 2024 paper calling for inspection reforms. "It's concerning if now they're doing this less frequently, because that's a pretty big time gap between evaluations to just ensure that healthcare and other conditions are being met," Dekker told CBS News. Concern about conditions in detention has mounted as the Trump administration's deportation crackdown has pushed the detention population to heights. Deaths in ICE custody were at their highest rate since 2020 last year. In May, concerns about spoiled food and poor medical care sparked a hunger strike inside New Jersey's Delaney Hall and weeks of protests outside the facility. And last month, a government review found dangerous conditions at ICE's largest facility, Camp East Montana in El Paso. Since 2019, ICE's inspections identified at least one deficiency in nearly 90% of inspections they carried out, ranging from staff failing to perform suicide checks often enough to not storing food at adequate temperatures or properly filing incident reports, CBS News' analysis found. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson defended the changes in inspection policy, telling CBS News that the "frequency of inspections is based on facility type, detention capacity, and operational function," and added that "ICE maintains a robust, multi-layered compliance program designed to promote compliance with ICE's contractually obligated detention standards." Walking back reforms After a DHS watchdog found in 2018 that ICE Office of Detention Oversight inspections were not frequent enough to ensure facilities remedied violations, Congress increased funding to require inspections twice a year by the end of fiscal year 2021. That changed last year, when ICE moved to conduct annual inspections on dedicated facilities, or those that exclusively hold ICE detainees, and inspections every other year on non-dedicated facilities, such as county jails. It also added biennial "assisted self-inspections" for non-dedicated facilities holding fewer than 50 people, some of which were not previously regularly inspected. Largest ICE detention facilities that haven't been inspected in over a year ICE's revised policies require dedicated facilities to be inspected once each fiscal year (Oct. 1 to Sept. 30) and non-dedicated facilities to be inspected every other year. Dedicated Non-Dedicated Average daily population 500 1,000 2,000 The Florida Everglades facility known as "Alligator Alcatraz" was also never inspected by ICE, but was excluded because it closed in late June. Map: Julia Ingram / CBS NewsSource: Office of Detention Oversight inspection reports, ICE Detention Management Statistics Border czar Tom Homan told sheriffs in February 2025 that the administration was aiming to reduce the number of federal inspections in a move to encourage local law enforcement agencies to allow their jails to be used as detention facilities, Reuters reported. By April of this year, there were 203 facilities holding ICE detainees, up from 104 last February. A DHS spokesperson told CBS News that the new framework allows ICE to "allocate oversight resources based on facility type and operational complexity." The spokesperson emphasized that all dedicated ICE facilities, "regardless of population size," are scheduled for inspections this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Under the new framework, they wrote, "smaller or non-dedicated facilities with limited detention populations and/or shorter-term detention functions receive biennial rated inspections," meaning every other year. But some non-dedicated facilities hold just as many immigrants as dedicated facilities. Five of these facilities hold an average of more than 500 detainees, ICE data shows. The budget measure passed in April that funded DHS outside of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol earmarked $20 million for immigration detention facility inspections by the agency's Inspector General, responsible for watchdog functions across DHS. The measure that funds those two agencies, passed this month, does not include requirements for ODO inspections. 'No question that more is better' Even when ODO was inspecting facilities semiannually, a review by the Government Accountability Office found it lacked a way to determine whether its inspection program was effective at maintaining detainees' health and safety. Some say it wasn't. "Often there are deficiencies noted at facilities without any repercussions," said Dekker, the UCLA physician and assistant professor. ODO refers to areas where facilities fall short of standards as deficiencies. By law, ICE must terminate a facility's contract after two consecutive failures, but facilities have accumulated multiple significant deficiencies without failing an inspection, CBS News' analysis found. Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, for example, a dedicated contracted facility holding an average of about 2,000 people, received an "acceptable/adequate" rating at its most recent inspection in March 2025. Inspectors found 12 deficiencies, including two they labeled "priority components" pertaining to suicide prevention. Since then, two detainees have died by suicide, one last June and one in April, the county coroner told CBS News. The DHS spokesperson pushed back on claims ICE does not hold facilities accountable, writing that "ICE works directly with the responsible field office and facility operator to correct identified deficiencies and bring the facility into compliance with ICE detention standards." Inspectors have broadly found fewer deficiencies per inspection each year since 2019, when they started inspecting facilities twice a year, CBS News' analysis found. That trend continued in 2025, but so far this year, the number of deficiencies per inspection is trending upward for larger facilities. Those included inspections that found more than 23 use-of-force violations at a facility in Natchez, Mississippi, and 22 at the El Paso detention center where inspectors outside DHS uncovered several health and safety issues. ODO's inspection of the family detention center in Dilley, Texas, also identified 16 deficiencies in the facility's education program for children. Average violations per inspection by detention facility population 50-200200-500500-10001000+ 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 0 5 10 15 20 25 500-100020236.1 500-100020236.1 Violations are referred to in inspection reports as "deficiencies." Population figures represent average daily population from fiscal year 2026 through April. Inspections current as of June 18. Chart: Julia Ingram / CBS NewsSource: Office of Detention Oversight Knowing an inspection is coming prompts facilities to "self-review," and sometimes rectify their own issues, said Margo Schlanger, who served as head of civil rights and civil liberties at DHS during the Obama administration. "You want that to happen on a pretty regular cadence," she said. "Then the inspections themselves uncover things that are going wrong." "There's just no question that more is better," she added. "And so when you make it less often, things can really go astray in between." Dwindling oversight The Department of Homeland Security also moved to cut other oversight mechanisms last year, including gutting the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which were responsible for investigating complaints of misconduct and abuse. "People whose rights might previously have been protected are now vulnerable to serious medical neglect in detention, to abuse by guards in detention, to loss of their rights to fight fairly their immigration cases," said Anthony Enriquez, who is litigating a case against the government for dissolving the offices. "Where we might have seen those issues resolved at least individually for some people if a complaint was filed, we're no longer seeing that." ICE also relaxed detention standards that apply to some facilities in June to "reduce the burden on our detention operators," including removing compensation requirements for detainee labor. Last year, ODO also allowed facilities operated by the U.S. Marshals (USMS) to operate under the USMS standards, a handbook one-third the length with fewer requirements in areas such as access to calls to legal counsel, accommodations for detainees with disabilities and how long detainees are allowed in disciplinary segregation. "The guard rails are continuing to come off," said Dora Schriro, an expert in detention standards who served as a special adviser to former President Barack Obama's DHS secretary, Janet Napolitano. "I'm very concerned about what the ramifications are that we're not only capitulating to sheriffs but to U.S. Marshal as well." ODO also allows USMS facilities to conduct "assisted self-inspections." On average, USMS facilities reported many fewer deficiencies after switching to self-inspections or the new set of standards, CBS News found. Among the 26 facilities that have been inspected both before and after ICE began making these changes, ODO found an average of 12 deficiencies before the changes and an average of two after the changes. Critics have also pointed to a lack of independence for ODO, which is housed within ICE, as hampering its ability to conduct adequate oversight. "There's no reason to think that they're actually going to take a hard look at what the conditions are on the ground and make the required changes that would come from such an honest review," said Azadeh Erfani, director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, a D.C.-based advocacy group that provides legal services to immigrants. Some public officials have taken oversight into their own hands. A group of lawmakers sued ICE for access to conduct their own inspections, which sometimes surface more issues than ODO inspections do. At the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, for example, California state inspectors found that medical and detention staffing levels were inadequate for the surge of detainees, and detainees reported they were unable to receive timely treatment, even in emergencies. At Adelanto's most recent ODO inspection in September 2025, officials recorded no medical deficiencies. Four detainees in Adelanto have died since President Trump took office, three after the facility's most recent inspection. It's unclear when it will be inspected next. "If [ICE is] looking to consolidate inspections or conduct fewer inspections without knowing what's working or how effective your current system is, it's hard to make those changes," said Heather MacLeod, director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office, which conducted the review of detention inspection practices in 2024. "While we haven't had a chance to review the effect of changing the inspections that ODO is conducting we would hope that they would have data to support such a decision to make that change." For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

ICE points finger at protesters over recent arrests at NYC immigration courts

MANHATTAN (CN) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement is blaming protesters for its continued arrests in New York City immigration courts, a practice that has been largely banned by a federal court for the past several months. U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel ruled in May that these arrests would only be permitted “under certain enumerated circumstances,” finding that they could deter immigrants from attending their mandatory proceedings. Despite that, ICE claimed in a new court filing that it has made at least five arrests in Manhattan immigration courts since Castel’s May 18 order. Immigrant rights groups claim these are a blatant affront to Castel’s ruling. But ICE argues the arrests comply with the court’s ruling, which only narrowly greenlights detentions in immigration court if they involve a threat to national security or public safety. In this case, ICE claims such threats come in the form of anti-ICE protests, which have cropped up in cities around the country during these controversial immigration enforcement efforts. “At-large arrests in sanctuary cities like New York tend to trigger protests and intervention by agitators and bystanders, making alternative locations in New York unsafe and [Executive Office for Immigration Review] the safest location for the arrests,” Roberto Rodriguez, Acting Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer at ICE, wrote a declaration filed Monday. Rodriguez claimed these five arrests, which took place between two Manhattan immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway, needed to be conducted there because of these security concerns, finding immigration courts to be “one of the safest locations in which an arrest could be conducted.” “The public, when entering 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway, for example, is screened for prohibited items by security personnel and/or Federal Protective Services,” Rodriguez wrote. “Therefore, ERO can ensure both public and officer safety during an arrest at an EOIR immigration court.” The first of the five arrests took place on May 19, when a 21-year old Honduran man named Vinyl Alexander Castillo-Norales was spotted at 26 Federal Plaza getting apprehended by ICE agents less than 24 hours after Castel issued his ruling. He was released hours later. Rodriguez claimed in his declaration that Castillo-Norales was deemed to be a public safety threat “based on criminal history,” but did not elaborate. In a habeas petition challenging his arrest, Castillo-Norales claimed he had no criminal convictions at all. But in the other cases, ICE repeatedly invoked the threat of protesters in their decision to make the arrests at immigration court. In the case of Jose German Carchi Lopez, who was arrested at 26 Federal Plaza on June 25, ICE claimed in court records that “there was no safe alternative location” to carry out the arrest. Similarly, Esdras Nehemias Velasquez Ajpop was detained at 290 Broadway on June 29. ICE officer Jose Camacho justified that arrest in a court filing by claiming that “large arrests in major urban areas like New York tend to trigger protests and intervention by members of the public that can endanger bystanders, officers, and arrestees.” It’s unclear if this reasoning runs afoul of Castel’s order, but the judge is expected to weigh in soon. Immigrant rights groups behind the underlying suit have signaled that they’re looking for Castel to enforce his order against ICE in light of these recent arrests. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Castel, a George W. Bush appointee, initially greenlit the controversial practice of ICE making these courthouse arrests based on an internal guidance memo from 2025. But he reversed course in May after federal prosecutors admitted ICE misled them about the memo, which never applied to arrests at immigration courts at all. In June, a federal judge in California built on Castel’s ruling with a nationwide order blocking ICE from arresting noncitizens at immigration courthouses. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

These Immigrant Kids Were Once Protected. Under Trump, Their Deportations Have Tripled.

For the first few weeks after he arrived at the immigration detention center in Winnfield, Louisiana, 18-year-old Elder Chavez was wide awake most nights, listening to the creaky sounds of the bunk beds and to voices of dozens of men, also sleepless, around him. He suffered terrible headaches and would finally doze off around 4 a.m. — just when guards would begin to summon the detainees for breakfast. Then he’d sleep for most of the rest of the day. He had developed the schedule of an owl. And he thought to himself that the dark circles that had appeared under his eyes made him look like one. He’d landed at the Winn Correctional Center after Alabama state police had caught him in December going 15 mph over the speed limit and driving without a license. He was on his way home from getting his favorite sandwich, carne asada, when he was pulled over. Once the officers realized he was an immigrant, they called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Chavez offered to show them documents that proved he wasn’t living in hiding. Immigration authorities had granted him Special Immigrant Juvenile Status because, as a toddler, he’d been abandoned by his parents in Honduras and had come to this country on his own when he was 14. His sister, who’d migrated years earlier and was living in Alabama, offered to help take care of him. A lawyer was helping him pursue permanent residency. “I’m legal in this country,” Chavez pleaded with the officers. But the officers, he said, weren’t having it. One of them told him, “Your papers are of no use to me.” And just like that, an otherwise law-abiding high school student — who loved his welding and carpentry classes, had braces and a girlfriend, and spent weekends playing soccer at the park with his nieces and nephews — was thrown into detention and put on a path toward deportation. “I’m just waiting here,” he said during a video call from detention. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” ProPublica is continuing to report on the way immigration policy is impacting kids and is now focusing on outgoing high school seniors. If you or someone you know has a story to share about the class of 2026, email us at immigration@propublica.org or message us on WhatsApp at 917- 207-6447. You can also help us spread the word about our reporting by distributing this flyer in your community. Chavez is hardly alone. A first-of-its-kind analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data found that unaccompanied minors living in the U.S. are being detained and removed at about three times the rate they were during the last time President Donald Trump was in office. In addition, a ProPublica analysis of court data found that immigration judges, who report to the Justice Department, have issued more than 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders each month for immigrant minors who either migrated alone or with relatives, a rate that is nearly four times higher than in Trump’s last term. The vast majority of unaccompanied minors removed last year had no criminal history in the United States, ProPublica’s analysis of ICE data showed. Before Trump returned to office last year, Chavez would have likely been given a ticket and allowed to return to his sister. But as part of the president’s mass deportation campaign, his administration has moved to systematically roll back policies that provided immigrant minors access to legal counsel and relief from deportation while they pursued permission to permanently stay in the country. Those policies were based on laws that had been implemented over more than two decades, with bipartisan support, because both parties believed unaccompanied immigrant minors — ill-prepared to navigate a new country on their own, much less a legal system daunting to most adults — are especially vulnerable to trafficking and other kinds of exploitation. Congress created SIJ specifically to protect immigrants, like Chavez, who are under 21 and are able to prove in family court that they had been abused, neglected or abandoned by at least one parent in their home countries. The silhouette of a pregnant woman standing in profile before a window with closed blinds and sheer curtains. A simple, handmade wooden plank chair sits on a grassy lawn in front of a light blue house with a raised porch. Chavez, abandoned by his parents as a toddler, traveled to the U.S. to live with his older sister, Mayuri Chavez, left, when he was 14. He enrolled in high school in Alabama and excelled at classes like carpentry. His sister keeps a chair he made in carpentry class in their backyard. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica Trump administration officials have long argued that not only are the programs designed to help unaccompanied minors rife with fraud, but that their very existence has encouraged hundreds of thousands of children to embark on dangerous journeys to the border, increasing their risk of falling into criminal hands. To make its case, his administration points to the record 450,000 unaccompanied minors who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border and were released into the country under President Joe Biden. Neither those children nor the people to whom they were released were properly vetted, say Trump administration officials. As a result, administration officials say, some of the children became victims of abuse or exploitation. Alarming numbers of them were found working illegally in factories or in other jobs that put them at risk for trafficking, injury and wage theft. Other minors, the administration has said, became criminals. It put out a July 2025 government report that said since 2013, some 19,000 SIJ petitioners were found to have criminal arrest records, including hundreds with serious charges like murder and sex offenses. The administration says the best way to stop such abuses and criminality is to disincentivize immigrant children from coming in the first place. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Trump is “undoing the damage Biden did.” Responding to questions about ProPublica’s data analysis, which was based on data provided via Freedom of Information Act requests and was validated with outside experts, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency “could not verify the veracity” of the data. Advocates argue that the administration is using exceptional cases to cast all immigrant minors and the adults who sponsored them in a negative light. They say that some of their clients who have been living in the U.S. for years, including those, like Chavez, who have since turned 18, face serious risks if sent back to their home countries. The majority of the unaccompanied minors who have come to the United States in the last decade were fleeing Central American countries crushed by economic turmoil, violence and political upheaval. Some came from families riven by poverty and domestic violence. Some, like Chavez, have no parents to go back to. “These children have been through incredibly harrowing and traumatic experiences,” said Michael Lukens, the executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, a legal defense organization. “And ICE is retraumatizing them.” To the administration’s claims that its policies are aimed at protecting minors, he said, “If you’re worried about the welfare of kids, stop rounding kids up and trying to deport them.” ICE Is Detaining and Deporting More People in the Country Who Entered as Unaccompanied Minors A growing number of immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors without parents or legal guardians are being arrested in the country’s interior and removed via deportation or voluntary departure orders. Note: Some of the immigrants who entered as minors are now over 18, and some were reunited with family members or other sponsors after they arrived. This chart includes only minors detained by ICE and does not include minors arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. December 2025 data covers only part of the month. Source: ProPublica analysis of ICE data released through the Freedom of Information Act Jeff Ernsthausen / ProPublica Sometimes the deportation orders issued in immigration court have been coming so fast that lawyers say even they have a hard time explaining them to their clients. Within a span of three hours on a single morning in April in a downtown New York immigration courtroom, Judge Jem Sponzo issued deportation orders for 25 minors, almost everyone on her docket appearing virtually that morning. Some of the hearings were only a few minutes long, and some of the minors were too young to understand what was happening to them. Among the children in court that day was an 8-year old girl from Ecuador who was seeking asylum and SIJ. The girl’s mother had already won asylum in a separate case. But Sponzo ordered the girl to be deported anyway. In another case, an attorney pleaded for more time to prepare enough evidence to support an asylum petition for her client from Guatemala. The attorney said her client’s home in Guatemala was dominated by an abusive father whose violence made it hard for her to gather information she needed for the case. Sponzo politely denied the request, saying, “I empathize and thank you for your efforts.” Then she ordered the child deported. A high school senior from Guatemala who lives in Queens, with side-swept black hair and wearing a short sleeve athletic shirt, appeared on a video screen from a room with piled-up clothes on the bed and an American flag tacked on the wall. He stayed on mute while his lawyer asked for more time for his applications for SIJ and asylum to be processed. Sponzo said no and ordered him deported. His lawyer said in an interview her client is now afraid he could be picked up by ICE at any time. At the end of the day, several of the attorneys said they felt blindsided by the judge’s rapid-fire denials. Although they all said they would appeal her rulings, which could buy their clients some time to stay in the U.S., one said the deportation orders would “hang over their heads like a loaded gun.” Olivia Cassin, a former immigration judge who oversaw juvenile dockets in New York, said that before Trump returned to office, there was widespread recognition that it took time for immigrant minors’ SIJ and asylum petitions to work their way through the backlogged system. For SIJ recipients, getting a green card often takes years. Judges typically gave minors that time. Now the authorities overseeing immigration courts have instructed them not to do so. Sponzo cited those instructions at the end of many of the cases she heard that day in April. Cassin is one of the more than 100 immigration judges who have been fired since Trump returned to office. Some of the judges who lost their jobs said they believe they were pushed out because the administration saw them as not aligned with its agenda. But they also say they’ve received no official explanation for their firings. Sponzo was also fired recently. She could not be reached for comment. The Justice Department did not respond to questions about the firings. Since the Start of Trump’s Second Term, Immigration Courts Have Averaged More Than 10,000 Removals of Minors Per Month Source: ProPublica analysis of court data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review Jeff Ernsthausen/ProPublica It’s not just the overhaul of the immigration courts that is having an effect on immigrant kids. Early on in Trump’s second term, officials moved to curb funding for advocacy groups that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors. It also put an end to a Biden-era policy known as “deferred action,” which protected minors who had been granted SIJ from deportation. SIJ on its own does not confer legal status, and the deferred action policy was implemented to cover those with SIJ until they could get their green cards. After advocacy groups took the administration to court, federal judges ordered the government to restore funding for legal assistance andaccess to deferred action for SIJ recipients. Despite those rulings, some legal advocates say they still have not been paid what they’re owed. And in June, several groups said federal agents appeared at their Washington-area offices, seeking to look at client files, even though they didn’t have warrants. The advocates said they saw the move as an attempt to intimidate them. As for granting deferred action, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a statement that the agency would do so only under “compelling circumstances on a case-by-case basis.” DHS, which oversees USCIS and ICE, emphasized in an email that having SIJ “does NOT confer lawful status,” adding that “any recipient may be subject to removal.” The agency did not respond to a question about the agents who visited advocates’ offices. Over the last year, the administration says it has tracked down 146,000 of the unaccompanied minors who entered the country under Biden in order to check on their well-being. The majority of all the minors who entered the country in recent years had been released to one or both parents in the United States or to other close relatives. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a June press conference that some of the welfare checks found minors were doing fine with their families. But he asserted that he’d also tracked down children who were in the hands of rapists and other criminals. “We start digging into these cases and you start hearing absolute horrific things,” he said. When asked for verifiable details about some of the cases Mullin mentioned, DHS did not respond. A DHS spokesperson later sent a list of 16 people who had sponsored immigrant minors and had previously been charged with crimes including assault, drug trafficking or domestic violence. Meanwhile, Justice Department officials said they’d indicted less than a handful of people on charges of smuggling or exploiting immigrant minors. No officials from DHS or the Justice Department explained what had become of any of the children connected to those indictments. As for immigrants who had entered the U.S. as children and are now adults, Mullin said, “we are working on the process of sending them back.” A three-paneled sequence shows a young man with dark hair speaking on a black landline telephone. Across the frames, his expressions shift from focused to serious to smiling, captured inside what appears to be a visitation room with a window in the background. ProPublica spoke with Chavez over video calls from a Louisiana detention center, where he’s been locked up for six months. ProPublica Soon after Chavez arrived in detention, one of the men in his cell recognized the teen’s pattern of sleeping through the day as a silent cry for help. Carlos Della Valle, who had migrated to the United States from Mexico, was attuned to Chavez’s struggles because he had a son around the same age. Even in detention, Chavez, with a head full of tousled black hair and big brown eyes, had an easy laugh and smile. Della Valle worried that Chavez was “losing valuable time that he’s never going to get back.” Winn was a tough place, advocates and detainees said. Two migrants died there earlier this year. One of the deaths was reportedly caused by cardiovascular disease, and authorities have not determined a cause for the other. A recent report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General described unsafe and unsanitary conditions at Winn, including leaking ceilings, dirty food prep areas and an incident in which a guard put a detainee in a prohibited choke hold. A DHS spokesperson said that the agency is working to address the issues raised in the report, adding, “our death rates are lower than most state prisons.” Della Valle began nudging young Chavez out of bed in the mornings and put him to work helping keep their cellblock clean. Detainees were given an hour a day outside, sometimes less than that. Della Valle told Chavez that keeping himself busy, in whatever constructive ways possible, was the only way to make it through the monotony with his sanity intact. Chavez briefly took a job in the barber shop that paid the standard wage for someone in detention — $1 a day — but he said that giving haircuts to around 80 men in a shift was so grueling that he only lasted a month. Instead, Chavez and Della Valle pored over passages from the Bible together. They sat together for most every meal. Chavez learned to mix packets of powdered juice just the way Della Valle liked it. Della Valle offered to help Chavez navigate the immigration system. He knew it well. In 1997 he’d twice illegally entered the United States. He was deported the first time but illegally entered again, married a U.S. citizen soon after and settled in Pennsylvania. Because of his reentry, which is a felony, he has been ineligible to regularize his status. But he lived underground with little worry. Immigration authorities generally avoided targeting immigrants with long ties to their communities, like him. Not anymore. Authorities intercepted Della Valle when he and his wife were returning from a Virgin Islands vacation, though they released him on bond at the time. Months later, however, he was taken into ICE detention. By the time he met Chavez, he had spent months being transferred among close to a dozen holding facilities. He worried about what detention might do to Chavez. Other men in his cellblock, who nicknamed Chavez “El Niño,” worried too. “It was hard to see him, you know, because he’s just a boy. He’s not a grown man,” Della Valle said. “I had to do whatever I could for him.” A close-up profile portrait of a man with short hair and light stubble looking thoughtfully out a window beside a dark curtain. After noticing how Chavez was handling detention, Carlos Della Valle befriended the teenager and tried to comfort him. Now released and back home with his wife, Della Valle is advocating for Chavez’s release as well. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica While the administration has made progress bending immigration courts to its will, there’s evidence that federal courts, where tens of thousands of immigrants have challenged their detentions as illegal, are pushing back. The National Immigration Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, tracked the cases of 263 immigrants who entered the country as unaccompanied minors and SIJ applicants. The group found that federal judges ordered releases or bond hearings in all but 12 of them since the start of the second Trump administration. In March, U.S. District Judge Gary Brown issued a scathing rebuke in one such case, writing, “The laws of human decency condemn such villainy.” The administration can set policy, he wrote, but he added that “it is forbidden from trampling our system of laws — a system which has safeguarded this nation for close to 250 years.” Among those recently released was 20-year-old Fredy Martinez. Born in Honduras, he was a teenager when he crossed the border as an unaccompanied minor. He had graduated from high school in Texas and was delivering a DoorDash order on his bike when he was detained, according to court documents about his case. He was held for eight months at a sprawling and deeply troubled tent detention camp in El Paso, Texas — which has seen a measles outbreak and detainee deaths, including one ruled a homicide — before a federal judge found his detention was illegal and ordered him released. DHS did not respond to a question about the center. Another teenager named Carlos from Guatemala said in an interview that he was detained on his way to work at a car wash in Rockland County, New York, when he was 18, despite having been granted SIJ and deferred action. He was flown over 1,000 miles to a detention facility in Louisiana, though not the same one as Chavez. Carlos asked to be identified only by his first name because of his ongoing immigration case. After his arrest, he said, “I was just thinking that I would never see my family again.” Carlos was held for more than two months before a federal judge set him free. The DHS spokesperson did not answer questions about any individual cases. They said federal court rulings against the administration “should come as no surprise,” since “many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate.” A person holds a smartphone displaying an active call screen and keypad, with a blue patterned bedspread and stuffed animals blurred in the background. Chavez and his sister try to speak daily when he calls from detention, helping each other cope with the separation. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica Six months into his detention, Chavez is on his own. He was ordered deported but is appealing the decision and filed a habeas petition. Della Valle has been released, thanks to his wife’s outspoken advocacy. His release was bittersweet for Chavez. But Della Valle has not forgotten him. Della Valle and his wife, Angela Della Valle, have helped Chavez’s sister, Mayuri Chavez, to pay off his outstanding traffic tickets and prepare his defense. The couple started a letter-writing campaign for him. They’ve passed out flyers with a picture of a chair Chavez made in carpentry class, asking people to color it in and send him messages of encouragement. Della Valle said he feels pangs of guilt about leaving Chavez behind. He still speaks to Chavez most days and tries to keep the teen’s spirits up, but worries his words don’t carry the same weight now that he’s out. Della Valle tries to convince himself that Chavez will be OK, saying, “I think me being out might be good for him because he knows that there’s hope.” Several decorated coloring pages are arranged on a wooden table, each featuring a drawing of a simple wooden plank chair with the phrase “bring Elder home” in colorful lettering at the top. Children in an Alabama classroom colored pages to support Chavez. Courtesy Meanwhile, Chavez has been moved to different cells multiple times. One had only a single functional shower for dozens of men. The video call system often malfunctioned. Someone stole his small notebook, where he had carefully written down all the telephone numbers of the people he was in touch with outside. One night he dreamt he was free. When he woke up and realized he was still in detention, he panicked and had trouble breathing. He said he has been trying to keep up the routine he started when Della Valle was there, but each passing week makes it harder. In a series of interviews from detention, Chavez worried about losing half his junior year of high school. He missed a required English test and a deadline to turn in a history project, and now that the school year is over, he is unclear if he will be able to make the assignments up to be able to graduate on time. His sister spent a lot of money to get him braces, and without regular adjustments he worries it will all be for nothing. He missed the birth of his new nephew, and he is unsure if he will be able to meet him. “I had so many plans,” he said, “but now everything is ruined.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

A fourth appeals court rejects ICE mass detention policy

A Denver-based federal appeals court Tuesday became the fourth to reject ICE’s bid to subject millions of people — most of whom have lived in the U.S. for years and have no criminal records — to the prospect of detention without bond. A unanimous three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the Trump administration’s unprecedented expansion of mass detention relies on an inaccurate reading of decades-old laws that had never been used for the breathtaking scope of the Trump administration’s mass detention effort. The ruling, authored by Biden appointee Richard Federico, repeatedly emphasized that the fight — which has flooded courthouses all over the country and led to an overwhelming rebuke of the administration by hundreds of distinct court judges — is likely headed for the Supreme Court. “In our circuit, thousands of noncitizens are likely subject to mandatory detention under the Government’s newfound statutory reading and policy,” wrote Federico, joined by Obama appointee Robert Bacharach and Reagan appointee David Ebel. “Many more legal battles over this policy are currently playing out in courts across the country. Five circuits have already weighed in. Ultimately, only one court, the Supreme Court, can settle this issue once and for all.” The ruling echoes similar decisions in the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, the New York-based 2nd Circuit, and the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit. Two appeals courts, the 5th Circuit and the 8th Circuit, have sided with the Trump administration. Rulings are pending in five other circuits. In addition to the 4-2 split among appeals courts, more than 460 federal judges have rejected the administration’s approach in more than 9,500 cases, compared to 54 judges who have endorsed the policy in about 1,000 cases. Last week, the Justice Department petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the issue. At the heart of the issue is a 30-year-old immigration statute that requires the detention — without bond — of all “applicants for admission” to the U.S. while they are “seeking admission” to the country. For decades, administrations of both parties applied this to people who had newly crossed the southern border. Those living inside the country could also be detained under a different section of the law that afforded them a chance for a bond hearing to prove they could live safely in their communities. But nearly a year ago, ICE adopted a new interpretation of the law, declaring that anyone targeted for deportation by ICE would be treated as an “applicant for admission,” subjecting them to mandatory detention. That decision was backed up in October by the Board of Immigration Appeals, a panel of immigration judges who set national policy for executive branch-run immigration courts that handle deportation proceedings. The result has been a deluge of emergency lawsuits filed by immigrants detained under the new policy. That crush of so-called “habeas” petitions has overwhelmed courthouses and the Justice Department, straining relations between DOJ attorneys and judges, exposing rifts within the administration itself and disrupting the lives of tens of thousands of people whose detentions were later deemed illegal. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed limits

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens. By a 6-3 vote, the court struck down Trump’s order. A bare majority of five justices, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, held that the long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, makes a citizen of anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions, “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, citing congressional debate over the amendment, “We keep that promise today.” A sixth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, disagreed about the constitutional ruling, but pointed to a federal law that he said broadly conveys birthright citizenship. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have upheld Trump’s proposed restrictions. Related Stories The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, May 18, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) The divided Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision exposes sharp rifts among justices 3 MIN READ 414 Activists celebrate the Supreme Court's ruling on birthright citizenship, outside of the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) Takeaways from Supreme Court term: Trump’s power is enhanced, but he lost some high-profile cases 5 MIN READ 77 The U.S. Supreme Court is seen Monday, June 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib) Supreme Court strikes down limits on party spending in federal elections, backing Republican appeal 3 MIN READ 94 “The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a 91-page dissent, more than three times as long as Roberts’ opinion. “In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.” The Republican president’s restrictions had been blocked by several lower courts and had not taken effect anywhere in the U.S. Trump said the decision was “too bad for our Country” and wrongly suggested that Congress could “easily” address it with legislation. The majority decision rests on constitutional grounds. It would take an amendment to overcome the decision. During arguments in April, both conservative and liberal justices questioned the order’s legality in a momentous case that was magnified by Trump’s unprecedented attendance in the courtroom. The case framed another test of Trump’s assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court with a conservative majority and a robust view of presidential power that has largely ruled in his favor. In the notable exceptions when the court has not, Trump has responded with starkly personal criticisms of the justices. The justices ruled on Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions. The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on the first day of his second term, is part of his administration’s broad immigration crackdown. Birthright citizenship was the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. The justices previously struck down global tariffs Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law that had never been used that way. Trump reacted furiously to the late February tariffs decision, saying he was ashamed of the justices who ruled against him and calling them unpatriotic. He also seemed to recognize the court was likely to rule against him on birthright citizenship, too, using his Truth Social platform to criticize “dumb judges and justices” and wealthy pregnant women from China and elsewhere who come to the U.S. to give birth so their newborns will have American citizenship. Trump’s order would have upended widely held views that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born in the U.S., excluding only the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force. The amendment was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship, though the Citizenship Clause is written more broadly. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” it reads. In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down Trump’s executive order as illegal. The decisions have invoked the high court’s 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which held that the U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen. Roberts, joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberal justices, said the amendment’s language, the historical context and the 1898 case make clear that children born to parents illegally or temporarily in the U.S. “are citizens at birth.” But there was only a bare majority of five justices on the constitutional question. Kavanaugh sided with the majority because of a federal law that makes those children citizens. But he joined the dissenters in finding that Trump’s order does not violate the Constitution. His view would enable a future Congress to change the law to restrict birthright citizenship. The Trump administration had argued that the common view of citizenship is wrong, asserting that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are not entitled to citizenship. More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would have been affected by the executive order, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute. While Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and actions, the birthright citizenship restrictions also would have applied to people who are legally in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent resident status. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.