Trump’s immigration crackdown could cost up to $479bn in lost taxes over 10 years

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown could cause the US to potentially lose up to $479bn in lost tax revenue over the the next 10 years, with enforcement deterring undocumented workers from filing their taxes this year, according to tax experts. Tax advisers say major changes, including proposed data sharing with immigration enforcement, have made filing taxes risky for undocumented immigrants. Tax benefits for immigrant parents have also been removed, further removing incentive to file taxes at all. Every tax season keeps Daisy Schmidt busy with typical accounting tasks, from bookkeeping to helping clients prepare their returns. But with an ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown, Schmidt has spent much of her time trying to calm clients that were too nervous to file. Despite her best efforts, many refused to file this year. “Our target is the Latino community, and many people didn’t file taxes because of fear of ICE,” said Schmidt, a tax adviser. “They said: ‘If they can deport me, what am I filing taxes for?’” Schmidt said this tax season, she has lost up to 75% of her clients at Crece Latino, the tax service firm she owns in Springfield Virginia. Other tax advisers who work with Latino clients say they have also seen a drop in clients after changes to federal immigration policy. Last year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) made an agreement to share the names and addresses of undocumented immigrants with the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE. Though a federal judge paused the data-sharing agreement in November and later ruled that it violated federal law, many are still worried about having their information passed to ICE. Parents without legal status also became ineligible for the child tax credit in 2025, even if their children are US citizens, which typically amounts to thousands of dollars in savings. Immigrants who are not legally authorized to work in the US are still required to pay taxes, and a longstanding IRS policy assured them that their data would be protected. Though it is harder for the IRS to pursue undocumented workers who don’t pay their taxes, those who work with undocumented immigrants say they still pay their taxes because it shows a willingness to work within the system, which can help when applying for legal status. “The system relies heavily on this trust, because people can decide not to do it,” said Luisa Godinez-Puig, a senior research associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Approximately 50% of undocumented immigrant households typically file income tax returns in the US. In 2022 alone, they paid an estimated $96.7bn, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Undocumented immigrants don’t qualify for most deductions or tax benefits, and as a result, can end up paying a higher percentage of their income than US citizens, Godinez-Puig added. “Historically, the IRS has been very, very good at keeping taxpayer information highly confidential, to make sure that taxpayers would feel confident in sharing such personal information with the system,” said Godinez-Puig. “To think that the IRS would share information with any agency would have been unthinkable a few years ago. So this is a huge, huge change to how the policy and then this trust was built between agencies, and that’s why this is a very large issue with grave consequences.” Experts believe that a drop in tax filings could cost the federal government billions of dollars in lost revenue. According to Yale’s Budget Lab, the losses could range from $147bn to $479bn over the next 10 years. At the same time, up to 2.7 million children who are US citizens or lawful permanent residents might lose access to the credit due to these policy changes. Though there is no official data on the effect this is having on federal revenue, the IRS estimates that a 1% decrease in voluntary tax compliance would lead to $46bn in lost federal tax revenue. The IRS did not respond to a request for comment. Edgar Villacorta, owner of Latin Tax in Maryland and Virginia, said that about 30% to 40% of his clients didn’t file taxes this year. “They see that it isn’t giving them any benefit,” he said, referring to the loss of the child tax credit, adding “there is so much news about that ICE-IRS agreement”. His only consolation is that his losses are not as big as what some of his peers are facing. “Other colleagues tell me that half of their clients didn’t come back.” The risk of being exposed to federal immigration enforcement has stoked fears among undocumented immigrants across the country. An Urban Institute’s survey found that one in four adults in immigrant families, documented and undocumented, are worried about deportations, and one in six adults reported personally seeing or knowing someone who was taken into ICE custody in 2025. “The government’s priority should be to ensure everyone feels safe when following the law and filing their taxes. And when they do file taxes, immigrants should be treated the same as other tax filers,” wrote Ben D’Avanzo and Sarah Krieger, senior strategist and senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, in a report. “The Trump administration should publicly commit to abiding by the court orders prohibiting data sharing of taxpayer information and end its attempt to use IRS or other federal data for immigration enforcement.” Immigrant advocacy groups assert that children are the ones most harmed by the change in the child tax credit. Proponents of the child tax credit emphasize it is an important tool for reducing poverty and helps families remain economically stable at a time of rising costs. Child poverty recently surged to an estimated 13% to 16% (roughly 10 million to 11.4 million children), a sharp increase from a record low of 5.2% in 2021. “It used to be the case that as long as the child was American and had a social security number, the parents could qualify, even if they both were undocumented,” said Godinez-Puig. “Because the point of this credit was to help American children … regardless of who the parents were.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Deported Despite DACA: Dreamers Face Uncertainty Under Trump

There had to have been a mistake, Martin Padilla recalled telling the immigration agents. An inspector in the oil and gas industry, he was about to fly to Sacramento for work when the agents pulled him aside at Corpus Christi International Airport in Texas last August. Stopped at the security X-ray scanner, he told them he had DACA status, referring to the Obama-era program designed to protect undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as young children. His DACA card, he said, was in his wallet. It didn’t matter. Within hours of the Aug. 5 encounter, Mr. Padilla had been detained. Days later, he was deported to his native Mexico, leaving behind his American wife, their three children and the family’s new home. Mr. Padilla, 35, is among about 500,000 people enrolled in DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — which is supposed to shield them from deportation and allow them to work legally. And he is one of the dozens of DACA recipients who have been expelled from the country by the Trump administration. The swift effort to deport Mr. Padilla underscores the tenuous state of many immigration protections under President Trump as he seeks to deliver on his pledge to deport millions of people and remake the country’s immigration system. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The federal government has all but ended the resettlement of refugees. The system for weighing asylum claims has been brought to a near standstill. And the Supreme Court will soon decide whether the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status for more than a million people from some of the world’s most troubled nations. Mr. Padilla’s lawyers challenged his deportation, arguing in a federal court filing that his due process rights had been violated. After seven months, Mr. Padilla was allowed to return to the United States. Image A border wall and a bridge in the background, with a column running through the center of the image. Mr. Padilla returned to the United States through the port of entry in Brownsville, Texas, after he was allowed back into the country.Credit...Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The New York Times “My focus is getting back to work and providing for my family,” he said in an interview. But Mr. Padilla is hardly out of jeopardy. There is an outstanding deportation order that was issued to his family when he was a child. The Department of Homeland Security said that order was a basis for his detention last year, even though DACA was intended to protect him. And the agency also cited two D.W.I.s over the last 14 years, which can be considered by immigration authorities even though neither led to a criminal conviction. With the Trump administration working to weaken a wide range of protections, DACA recipients are realizing that the program, born of bipartisan support for a generation of young undocumented immigrants, is no longer the reliable shield it seemed to be for most of the last two decades. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Padilla’s experience makes clear just how much has changed and just how uncertain the future may be for the half million people who currently have DACA. Since Mr. Trump took office last year, 650 DACA recipients have been taken into custody by ICE, and nearly 90 percent of the people arrested had previously been charged with or convicted of a U.S. crime, according to D.H.S. Lawyers contend the Trump administration is relying on minor infractions and decades-old deportation orders to justify detentions and removals of a protected group. Neither Mr. Padilla or his lawyer received an official explanation for his deportation, they said. “It seems so arbitrary that they decided to pick him up,” said his lawyer, Danielle Claffey. “The whole purpose of deferred action is to defer someone’s removal, even if they have a removal order.” Image A man standing near a table in a restaurant hugs a boy. A woman and another boy stand nearby. Mr. Padilla celebrating with his children after he was allowed to return to the United States. Credit...Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The New York Times In response to an inquiry from The New York Times, D.H.S. said Mr. Padilla was a “criminal,” citing two D.U.I. charges and a deportation order from 2003, when he was 12. Records show that a D.W.I. charge in 2012 was dismissed. A 2023 guilty plea for another D.W.I. was discharged by a judge without a conviction. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The case challenging his deportation never reached a hearing in court, Ms. Claffey said, because the Department of Homeland Security chose to resolve the matter by facilitating Mr. Padilla’s return. Created by the Obama administration in 2012, DACA was intended as a stopgap until Congress could pass legislation, known as the Dream Act, to provide legal status for a generation of young immigrants who were brought to the United States through no choice of their own. For many so-called Dreamers, the United States is the only home they’ve known. Former President Barack Obama described them as “Americans in every way but on paper.” DACA enabled them to obtain driver’s licenses, pay in-state college tuition and build careers. Many are now in their 30s. But the program has been legally vulnerable because it was established by executive action, not by Congress. Arguing that Mr. Obama had overstepped his authority, opponents have been challenging DACA in federal court since the program’s inception. Still, across the previous three presidential administrations, recipients were assured “deferred action,” meaning the government would not pursue their deportation. Editors’ Picks The Complicated Logistics of a Home Building Sprint This Mental Trick May Help You Get More Exercise Love Lessons From Ramy Youssef’s Dog SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In a letter to Senate Democrats in February, Kristi Noem, then the homeland security secretary, justified the arrest and deportation of DACA recipients by saying that the program “comes with no right or entitlement to remain in the United States indefinitely.” In a statement, D.H.S. said that any person covered by DACA “may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons including if they’ve committed a crime.” Last month, the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department and oversees immigration courts, ruled that DACA status doesn’t prevent recipients from being deported. The decision deepened the fear and uncertainty gripping Dreamers. Many were already facing delays in renewing their “deferred” status and accompanying employment authorization. Historically, these renewals, required every two years, have taken weeks to process. But monthslong waits have become common, and that is costing some recipients their livelihoods. Lawyers and advocacy groups report a surge of calls from panicked nurses, teachers and others forced out of jobs. Image A man shown from the torso down, from behind and facing a street looks out toward three women and a young child who are mingling. Mr. Padilla outside his home with his family after he was allowed back into the United States. They bought the home shortly before he was detained.Credit...Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The New York Times Yadira Valles, a nurse in Albuquerque awaiting her renewal, cared for patients recovering from brain and spinal surgeries — until her work permit expired a month ago. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I left my unit short a nurse, not because I wanted to but because I was forced to,” she said. “Without help from my family, I couldn’t keep my home, pay utilities and buy groceries.” While a lapsed work permit can mean a career on hold and earnings lost, for DACA recipients like Mr. Padilla, the Trump administration’s approach meant sudden expulsion. In the early hours of Aug. 18, he stood on the tarmac at an airport in Harlingen, Texas, a deportation hub. Chained at the waist, wrists and ankles, he tried once again to plead his case. His DACA was current, he told the people transporting him, to no avail. “I was like, oh my God, I have been here all my life, I have a home, I have a U.S.-citizen wife and three U.S.-born kids,” he recalled thinking as he shuffled up the stairs to the plane. He landed in southeastern Mexico disoriented, a stranger in the country of his birth. His wife sent him money, and he flew north to Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, to be closer to his family. Mr. Padilla and his wife, Cynthia, have been married since 2015. But it was not until June 2024 that she started the paperwork to sponsor him for a green card, a process that can take years. As his lawyer worked to have him returned to the United States, Mr. Padilla found a job at an American-owned manufacturing plant. His wife locked up their house near Corpus Christi and moved in with relatives near McAllen. Relocating allowed her and their children, 10, 7 and 4, to cross the border on weekends to visit Mr. Padilla. Their youngest, a girl, cried every time she parted ways with her father. Mr. Padilla’s lawyer filed a complaint in federal court in December. Before the judge ruled, government lawyers agreed in February to admit Mr. Padilla back into the United States. A week later, an ICE official emailed Ms. Claffey, saying that Mr. Padilla would be detained on arrival. This led to several more weeks of limbo, until ICE agreed not to immediately detain him. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Image Two young boys lying in bed while their parents pray beside them. A little girl is standing in the foreground facing the bed. Mr. Padilla and his wife saying prayers with their children before tucking them in bed for the night.Credit...Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The New York Times On April 24, Mr. Padilla was admitted through the port of entry at Brownsville, Texas. When U.S. agents dropped him off at a bus stop, they wished Mr. Padilla good luck, he said. One reminded him to keep his DACA active. Mr. Padilla remembers thinking, “It was active.” With Mr. Padilla able to earn only a fraction of what he had been making before his deportation, his family relied first on savings, then on credit cards, to keep up mortgage and car payments during his absence. “If this had gone on another month or two, we would have been in serious trouble with our home,” he said. He and his wife are aware his immigration saga won’t be truly over until he has a green card. “All I want to do is fix his status,” Ms. Padilla said. “He is a great husband, father and worker.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Trump’s immigration policies chill Japanese shipyard investment

A Trump administration push to convince Japan to invest in U.S. shipyards is running into an unexpected hurdle — its own immigration policy. The Commerce Department has been leaning on Japanese diplomats and business executives to commit a slice of the $550 billion Tokyo has promised to invest in the U.S. to modernize America’s moribund shipbuilding industry, according to four people familiar with the discussions, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. In response to U.S. encouragement, Japanese business executives came to the U.S. last month to visit several port sites on the East Coast to assess their investment potential, according to two people familiar with their itinerary. Both were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue. “It was an exploratory trip to demonstrate that Japanese companies have an appetite to invest in the sector,” one of the people briefed on the trip said. Despite the U.S. pressure, Japanese funding for shipbuilding is likely “years away” due to a shortage of domestic workers with the skills necessary for shipbuilding, said that person said. Specifically, Japanese officials are concerned about the administration’s hostility to foreign labor — evident by its slashing of work permits and visas for foreign laborers. The Trump administration’s “stance toward immigration is at odds with the needs of a skilled labor force,” the person added. Japan’s wariness underscores how the administration’s aggressive anti-immigration policy, punctuated with violent enforcement actions in cities including Minnesota and Chicago and rollbacks in visas for skilled workers, is running head-on into his push for foreign investment, a major component of Trump’s tariff-lowering trade agreements with Japan as well as South Korea and the European Union. And it could undermine Trump’s vow to rejuvenate ailing domestic industrial sectors, including U.S. shipbuilding. In particular, an Immigration and Customs’ Enforcement raid on a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia in September — resulting in the detention and deportation of some 300 South Korean workers employed at the site — has unsettled Japanese companies considering possible U.S. investments that require imported skilled labor, the person said. “Japanese companies are paying very close attention and there is real concern,” said Joshua Walker, president of the New York-based nonprofit Japan Society who has close contacts with Japanese private sector representatives. “The broader ICE enforcement climate has definitely spooked firms that rely on sending highly skilled workers for major investments under the new U.S.–Japan trade framework and to the Japanese embassy and consulates, as well.” The Japanese embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment. A Commerce Department spokesperson did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment. The Trump administration has pressed Japan as well as South Korea to make massive investments in U.S. shipbuilding, a key plank of the president’s campaign to boost industries that have withered in the face of stiff foreign competition and lack of investment. The shipyards in the United States currently build fewer than a dozen ships a year — heavily customized jobs for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard — while those in Asia can mass produce thousands of vessels annually, noted Gordon Shearer, an analyst at shipping industry consulting firm Poten & Partners. Trump issued an executive order last year dedicated to rebuilding the country’s maritime industries with measures including a “shipbuilding financial incentives program” and “regulatory relief” for U.S. and foreign investors willing to provide funding for the sector. The U.S. Trade Representative pitched in with a sharp increase in port fees for Chinese ships and cargo in October to offset Beijing’s current global dominance of the shipping sector. (USTR quickly reversed that plan after Beijing threatened to impose punitive fees on U.S. ships and cargo in response.) South Korea committed to invest $150 billion in American shipbuilding as part of a preliminary trade deal reached last October, much of which is expected to come from private companies. Japan’s investment pledges — promised as part of a deal Tokyo and Washington announced last summer lowering U.S. tariffs to 15 percent — have so far focused primarily on the energy sector. The U.S. shipbuilding sector is also wrestling with a looming labor crisis. Around 25 percent of the sector’s workers will reach retirement age by 2031, at a time when naval shipbuilding requirements alone will require an additional 250,000 skilled workers, John Phelan, a former Secretary of the Navy, said in January. And in the case of foreign shipbuilding projects, workers will need training to master the foreign technology and ship designs. Current immigration policies — including a sharp reduction in the number of H1-B visas designed for temporary highly skilled workers imposed in September and visa bans or restrictions for citizens of dozens of countries on national security grounds — limit countries’ ability to bring in their own citizens to manage and train U.S. workers. “Immigration restrictions hurt the ability to upskill laborers here in the United States,” said Arnav Rao, a transportation policy analyst at the centrist nonprofit think tank The Open Markets Institute. “If the administration continues to take this hardline approach where we won’t even allow workers to come in and train our people, then we don’t really have much hope of reviving our shipbuilding.” Watch: The Conversation Play Video38:03 Leon Panetta on Iran, Ukraine and the new global power struggle The White House has sent mixed messages over how open it is to bringing in foreign workers as it works to woo investment from abroad. After the Hyundai raid last fall, Trump posted on social media that he wanted international companies “to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people.” He also singled out shipbuilding, in particular, as one of the industrial products “we have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn, because we used to be great at it, but not anymore.” After the Hyundai raid, the administration moved to placate Seoul’s concerns by forming a working group with South Korean officials on providing U.S. visas for Korean workers. However, seven months of negotiations have failed to produce a mutually acceptable visa category for South Koreans to work on projects created by the $350 billion that Seoul has committed in U.S. investments, said a person familiar with the post-Hyundai raid discussions and granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. The ICE raid in Georgia “highlighted the tension between ‘America First’ immigration impulses and the reality that U.S. industrial revitalization hinges on foreign investment, talent, and expertise,” said Arius Derr, a spokesperson at the nonprofit Korean Economic Institute of America. “In order to support the billions of dollars of investment that Korea is bringing over here, there needs to be some sort of runway for these Korean workers to come over, get everything set up, and then most importantly, teach Americans how to use it.” The administration’s response to the visa issue, going forward, may determine whether it can regain the trust of governments in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, which send large numbers of their nationals to staff the start-up stages of investment projects. “Did the Georgia raid send a chill? My answer is ‘Is the Pope American?’ Of course it did,” said Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Arizona), whose district includes areas where Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has invested billions to build new chip production fabs. “Obviously, if you need to blend an American workforce and a foreign workforce together, that did not send the right messages about foreign direct investment in the United States.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

10,000 rulings: The courts’ overwhelming rebuke of Trump’s ICE policies

Ten thousand losses. That’s the Trump administration’s track record in court as federal judges grapple with the way ICE agents have swept through major U.S. cities and detained thousands of people in support of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. More than 10,000 times, judges have said those detentions, typically carried out with no opportunity for detainees to plead their case, were illegal. That’s roughly 90 percent of all cases — a staggering rejection of a core piece of Trump’s immigration agenda. Trump’s unprecedented detention policy, which is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court, infuriated lower courts in ways no other modern issue has. It ruptured the relationship between the Justice Department and the judiciary; pitted the administration against itself; and upended innumerable lives — not just of the people swept up by immigration agents, but of their spouses and children, many of whom are U.S. citizens. POLITICO is tracking the tens of thousands of detention cases that have flooded the system since ICE adopted its detention policy last July. Today we are releasing a full database of those rulings, giving the public an opportunity to see under the hood of our reporting — which has documented the courts’ lopsided results, ICE’s tactics for defying judges’ orders and the rising tensions between the judiciary and the Trump administration. The trend is clear from every angle. The administration has lost nearly 10,400 of the cases that have been decided, and prevailed in about 1,200. While some judges have heard more cases than others, the overwhelming majority of judges — more than 425 — have reached the same conclusion. Even a majority of Trump-appointed judges have sided against the administration. Trump administration officials shrug off the one-sided rebuke from the courts, attributing their losses to “the left and their activist proxies on the judiciary” and predicting that they will prevail at the Supreme Court. “The law is not a popularity contest among judges,” a Justice Department spokesperson said. As ICE’s detention spree continued to ratchet up over the past 10 months, even the Trump-led Justice Department — tasked with defending the federal government in court — has at times told judges it cannot defend some of ICE’s actions. Many judges hearing these cases have run out of words to express their frustration with what they see as a wreckage of lives and of laws. “Beyond the reach of ordinary legal description,” one judge wrote. “It is an assault on the constitutional order.” ‘This isn’t how things are supposed to work in America’ These more than 10,000 cases include a nursing mother who was detained despite active refugee status and another mother separated from her one-year-old child and released from custody only when her son landed in the hospital. They include parents of U.S. military servicemembers, trafficking victims or witnesses, a 5-year-old boy detained by ICE on his way home from school. Judges who have handled dozens of detention cases have described deepening frustration with ICE’s relentless detention drive and its defiance of court orders. “This isn’t how things are supposed to work in America,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, a Trump appointee based in New York, in the case of a man whose lawful status was revoked after ICE arrested him. “Unquestionably, the laws of human decency condemn such villainy.” One judge reached back to Greek myth after ruling against the administration 90 times, invoking Heracles’ effort to slay “a serpent whose heads regenerated twofold for each head that was lopped off.” Another, also borrowing from antiquity, compared it to Sisyphus’ endless march to push a boulder uphill. Others have been alarmed by the tactics ICE has used to effectuate its mass detention mandate: arresting parents dropping off school kids, positioning agents in courthouses to make arrests after immigration hearings, detaining people at ICE offices after routine check-ins, grabbing people once promised protection from enforcement through programs like DACA, and executing after-the-fact warrants that judges say have been used to paper over unjustified arrests. In rare but extreme cases, the Trump administration has acknowledged deporting people in violation of court orders. The flood of cases has overwhelmed both courts and the Justice Department, which had to call up inexperienced attorneys from other parts of the federal government to stand in for under-staffed U.S. attorney’s offices. And they have sometimes found themselves in an impossible position when ICE refuses to comply with judges’ orders, even ghosting its own lawyers in the process. “Despite hundreds of similar rulings in this and other courts resoundingly in favor of the ICE-detainee petitioners, ICE continues to act contrary to law, to spend taxpayer money needlessly, and to waste the scarce resources of the judiciary,” said U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III, a George H.W. Bush appointee from Pennsylvania. An unprecedented policy Presidents’ signature initiatives often end up in court. But this flood of adverse rulings is unique — a never-before-seen reaction to a never-before-seen policy. Federal law requires the detention of “applicants for admission” to the U.S. who are “seeking admission” to the country. Every previous administration has interpreted the provision to apply primarily to people who were apprehended at the border — until last year. In a July 8, 2025 memo, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said that millions of immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years would now be treated as “seeking admission” to the country, subjecting them to mandatory detention without the opportunity for bond. Watch: The Conversation Play Video38:03 Leon Panetta on Iran, Ukraine and the new global power struggle Until Lyons’ memo, millions fewer people were treated as eligible for detention, and people who were detained could still be released on bond, at the discretion of immigration judges who work for the executive branch. But the administration’s policy shift pushed millions of people into a framework that denies bond hearings from the outset. Courts were then flooded with lawsuits from individual detainees, seeking bond hearings or release based on their individual circumstances — and that’s why this policy has produced such an enormous volume of court cases. ICE has also either defied or tried to circumvent many of those rulings — for example, moving detainees to a new state, where they’ll need to bring a new case with a new lawyer; or providing hearings that judges found to be insufficient. That gamesmanship creates even more litigation, and has been a major driver of courts’ mounting frustration with the administration. Though the policy shift on mandatory detentions has driven the nationwide surge in emergency lawsuits, it’s not the only category of cases that has led to judicial pushback. POLITICO’s database also includes thousands of cases in which judges concluded that ICE had violated its own rules, deprived people of due process or held people for unconstitutionally lengthy periods without a realistic prospect of actually deporting them. Trump administration officials have said the novel ICE detention policy is an antidote to years of what they’ve called “catch-and-release” border policies by the Biden administration — and that it’s working. ICE often points to the number of voluntary departures from the country, and the steep drop in border crossings, as a sign of the success of its deportation agenda. Most Read Illustration collage of Donald Trump walking onto an unrolling red carpet patterned with the Chinese flag. How the Trump-Xi meeting became ‘the shrinking summit’ Michigan Senate hopeful El-Sayed calls himself a ‘physician’ but has little history treating patients 10,000 rulings: The courts’ overwhelming rebuke of Trump’s ICE policies Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asks public to back judicial independence As Republicans carve up Black districts, Democrats pivot to a new midterm message President Donald Trump and Kristi Noem tour the detention camp billed as Alligator Alcatraz. President Donald Trump and Kristi Noem, then his Homeland Security Secretary, tour the detention camp billed by the state of Florida as Alligator Alcatraz, on July 1, 2025. | Doug Mills/The New York Times via Redux Pictures The White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security declined to answer specific questions for this story. They leveled sweeping criticism at the judges who have ruled against them — DHS called them “judicial activists” — and predicted they would ultimately win at the Supreme Court. Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassare, asked about the more than 10,000 rulings against the administration, replied: “That’s great, now the American people can see how judges are putting personal policy preferences ahead of proper interpretations of the law.” The Department of Homeland Security attributed the spike in lawsuits filed by ICE detainees to the rulings themselves, saying the judges’ decisions incentivized others to rush to court to seek release. “The law clearly requires detention of aliens pending their removal from the United States,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. “We are confident the Trump Administration’s view of the law will be vindicated on appeal in the Supreme Court.” Heading toward SCOTUS The administration’s predictions that ICE’s detention policy would be vindicated on appeal has met mixed results. Two federal appeals courts — the 5th Circuit and 8th Circuit — have ruled in favor of the administration’s position. Those courts cover parts of the country, including Texas and Minnesota, where enforcement efforts have been particularly aggressive. Three others — the New York-based 2nd Circuit, Atlanta-based 11th Circuit and Cincinnati-based 6th-Circuit — have ruled against the administration. Another panel in the 7th Circuit deadlocked. More appellate rulings are imminent. The division among appeals courts points toward an ultimate resolution by the Supreme Court. District court judges are obligated to follow the rulings of their respective circuit courts, so some judges, particularly in Texas and Minnesota, who had been ordering bond hearings or outright release of ICE detainees have now had their hands tied. Other judges in those states have found workarounds to continue rejecting mandatory detention on other constitutional due process grounds. The 6th Circuit endorsed that approach in a ruling this week. As the issue works its way up the ladder of the judicial system, lower-court judges will have less and less power over the outcome, and the proceedings will become more focused on legal arguments than individual circumstances. But the human experiences that make up these more than 10,000 cases have clearly affected any number of judges. “Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, a Clinton appointee based in Texas, wrote in a three-page ruling ordering the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos. “And the rule of law be damned.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Democrats express ‘grave concerns’ over secretive ICE deportation flights

A group of 40 House Democrats have described “grave concerns” over the Trump administration’s secretive program of deportation flights and demanded the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) address allegations of mistreatment and inhumane conditions on ICE charter jets. A collage of a chain-link fence overlaying several images. In one panel a hand holds a phone displaying repeated call log entries labeled “Call failed.” In multiple panels, maps are shown with location markers and a plane's path connects them with dotted lines. In the lower right, a group of people, handcuffed, descend airplane stairs in a single-file line. Plane to purgatory: how Trump’s deportation program shuttles immigrants into lawless limbo Read more In a letter shared with the Guardian and addressed to the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, the lawmakers describe the “urgent need for transparency” over ICE’s expanded use of commercial airliners to transfer detained immigrants and its “inappropriate and dangerous” efforts to shield these flights from public scrutiny. “Credible reports indicate that individuals have been placed on flights without notice to counsel or family members, effectively disappearing from public view when flights are inappropriately shielded from tracking systems,” the letter states. “Families are left searching for their loved ones, and attorneys are denied meaningful opportunities to intervene, raising serious due process concerns.” The letter references an investigation by the Guardian, based on leaked flight data, which revealed the Trump administration transported detained immigrants in ways that routinely violated their constitutional rights. The reporting also identified allegations of abuse and rights violations at a private detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana, a central node in the administration’s deportation program. The Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda saw a surge in the number of ICE flights during 2025, according to monitoring by human rights groups that tracked an 84% increase from 2024. “Concerningly, information regarding these [ICE] flights is nearly impossible to find, which undermines congressional oversight and prevents the public from understanding the scope and conditions of these flights,” the letter states. The Trump administration has previously described claims of “hidden” or “weaponized” transfer and deportation flights as “categorically false” and argued its detention centers have “higher standards than most US prisons”. The lawmakers ask the FAA to provide a detailed report of “all ICE air operations” since Trump was sworn into office, including flight origin and destination data as well as how many passengers were held onboard each flight. It addresses reporting by the Associated Press, which revealed how dozens of charter jets used for deportation flights were granted unusual permission by the FAA to block certain data, including tail numbers, from public flight tracking sites – making it harder to monitor ICE air operations in public. “This transparency is important for the American people to understand what is happening every single day because there are so many violations of due process and legal rights happening that if people knew about them they would find it deeply problematic,” said the New Jersey congressman Rob Menendez, the letter’s lead author. “We want people to understand what is happening on their dime.” The signatories also include the Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who authored a bill earlier this year aiming to block airline operators from hiding their tracking data while carrying out federal government services, as well as co-author Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez and New York congressman Jerry Nadler, the ranking member on the House judiciary committee. The letter also calls on the FAA to provide detailed information on how the agency assesses humanitarian conditions on ICE flights, including the controversial use of full body restraints during deportation flights. The lawmakers ask the FAA how restraining passengers in this manner affects evacuation and emergency procedures onboard and how ICE officers and flight attendants are trained to handle such scenarios. The Trump administration has previously described its use of restraints on ICE flights as “long-standing, standard ICE protocol” designed to “ensure the safety and well being of both detainees and the officers/ agents accompanying them” and argued the practices are “fully in line with established legal standards”. Menendez, who sits on the influential energy and commerce committee, said he expected representatives from airline companies working with ICE as well as private companies operating detention centers to face greater pressure to testify before Congress should Democrats win back control of the House following the midterm elections later this year. “We are putting pressure on now. But when we have the majority and the gavels there is so much more work and oversight that we will be able to do to demand and get accountability for the American people so all options will be on the table,” Menendez said. “People who think they can do this [immigration detention and transfer] work without there being any consequence are wrong.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Democrats express ‘grave concerns’ over secretive ICE deportation flights

A group of 40 House Democrats have described “grave concerns” over the Trump administration’s secretive program of deportation flights and demanded the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) address allegations of mistreatment and inhumane conditions on ICE charter jets. A collage of a chain-link fence overlaying several images. In one panel a hand holds a phone displaying repeated call log entries labeled “Call failed.” In multiple panels, maps are shown with location markers and a plane's path connects them with dotted lines. In the lower right, a group of people, handcuffed, descend airplane stairs in a single-file line. Plane to purgatory: how Trump’s deportation program shuttles immigrants into lawless limbo Read more In a letter shared with the Guardian and addressed to the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, the lawmakers describe the “urgent need for transparency” over ICE’s expanded use of commercial airliners to transfer detained immigrants and its “inappropriate and dangerous” efforts to shield these flights from public scrutiny. “Credible reports indicate that individuals have been placed on flights without notice to counsel or family members, effectively disappearing from public view when flights are inappropriately shielded from tracking systems,” the letter states. “Families are left searching for their loved ones, and attorneys are denied meaningful opportunities to intervene, raising serious due process concerns.” The letter references an investigation by the Guardian, based on leaked flight data, which revealed the Trump administration transported detained immigrants in ways that routinely violated their constitutional rights. The reporting also identified allegations of abuse and rights violations at a private detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana, a central node in the administration’s deportation program. The Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda saw a surge in the number of ICE flights during 2025, according to monitoring by human rights groups that tracked an 84% increase from 2024. “Concerningly, information regarding these [ICE] flights is nearly impossible to find, which undermines congressional oversight and prevents the public from understanding the scope and conditions of these flights,” the letter states. The Trump administration has previously described claims of “hidden” or “weaponized” transfer and deportation flights as “categorically false” and argued its detention centers have “higher standards than most US prisons”. The lawmakers ask the FAA to provide a detailed report of “all ICE air operations” since Trump was sworn into office, including flight origin and destination data as well as how many passengers were held onboard each flight. It addresses reporting by the Associated Press, which revealed how dozens of charter jets used for deportation flights were granted unusual permission by the FAA to block certain data, including tail numbers, from public flight tracking sites – making it harder to monitor ICE air operations in public. “This transparency is important for the American people to understand what is happening every single day because there are so many violations of due process and legal rights happening that if people knew about them they would find it deeply problematic,” said the New Jersey congressman Rob Menendez, the letter’s lead author. “We want people to understand what is happening on their dime.” The signatories also include the Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who authored a bill earlier this year aiming to block airline operators from hiding their tracking data while carrying out federal government services, as well as co-author Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez and New York congressman Jerry Nadler, the ranking member on the House judiciary committee. The letter also calls on the FAA to provide detailed information on how the agency assesses humanitarian conditions on ICE flights, including the controversial use of full body restraints during deportation flights. The lawmakers ask the FAA how restraining passengers in this manner affects evacuation and emergency procedures onboard and how ICE officers and flight attendants are trained to handle such scenarios. The Trump administration has previously described its use of restraints on ICE flights as “long-standing, standard ICE protocol” designed to “ensure the safety and well being of both detainees and the officers/ agents accompanying them” and argued the practices are “fully in line with established legal standards”. Menendez, who sits on the influential energy and commerce committee, said he expected representatives from airline companies working with ICE as well as private companies operating detention centers to face greater pressure to testify before Congress should Democrats win back control of the House following the midterm elections later this year. “We are putting pressure on now. But when we have the majority and the gavels there is so much more work and oversight that we will be able to do to demand and get accountability for the American people so all options will be on the table,” Menendez said. “People who think they can do this [immigration detention and transfer] work without there being any consequence are wrong.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Federal Impact Immigration Society Some immigrants face indefinite detention, likely leading to Supreme Court case

As appeals courts split on the constitutionality of mandatory detention for millions of immigrants, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to decide the matter. A Trump administration policy threatening imprisonment without bond has been struck down by three appeals courts, which could soon be joined by a fourth, but upheld by two others. The conflicting orders mean the Supreme Court must straighten out the situation as immigrants now could face different fates in different states. The new detention policy, implemented in a July 2025 memo, threatens millions of immigrants with imprisonment without bond if they crossed a border illegally to get into the United States, no matter how long ago or whether they’ve applied for asylum. Without bond means they must be detained while awaiting court action. The policy is a key part of the Trump administration’s stated goal to get 1 million removals a year, including deportations and voluntary returns. So far the pace is about half that, or roughly 460,000 for the current fiscal year, if the daily rate as of mid-April continues, according to an analysis by Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University. This spring’s mixed appeals court rulings mean that in some states, detainees may be offered bond hearings and a chance to be released pending new court dates. In other states, people can now be held indefinitely. Most recently, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, the policy Monday, saying it “strains reason” to suggest Congress intended to put millions of people into immigration detention. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Alabama, Florida and Georgia, also struck it down last week, saying the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 does not give President Donald Trump “unfettered authority to detain, without the possibility of bond, every unadmitted alien present in the country.” In April, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Connecticut, New York and Vermont, also struck down the policy, calling it “the broadest mass-detention-without-bond mandate in our Nation’s history for millions of noncitizens.” Judges in another appeals court covering New England states, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, appeared skeptical of the policy in a hearing this month but have not yet ruled. Meanwhile the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, encompassing Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, upheld the new policy, saying the status quo gives people living here illegally more rights than those at the border seeking legal admission. “It seems strange to suggest that Congress would have preserved bond hearings exclusively for unlawful entrants,” the 5th Circuit ruling said. Those states have some of the largest detention centers in the country, often accepting transfers from other states. The cross-state transfers complicate legal cases attempting to free those detained there. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Arkansas and several Midwestern states, also upheld the Trump policy. Conflicting appeals rulings like these, known as “circuit splits,” generally lead to a Supreme Court ruling to settle them, experts say. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a Stateline request for comment. Last July, a department spokesperson told The Associated Press that “President (Donald) Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe.” The Trump administration policy flies in the face of decades of federal practice that let many immigrants stay free on bond while they pursue their court cases, said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade group. “This has done a lot of damage to people who are caught in detention with a very low amount of due process,” Dojaquez-Torres said. The policy has also flooded federal courts with petitions for release by people denied bond under the policy, she added. Thousands were filed each week from January through late April, compared with a few dozen a week last year before the policy was enacted, according to a ProPublica report. The threat of indefinite detention can be an incentive for immigrants who have been arrested to agree to the administration’s option of “voluntary departure.” This has done a lot of damage to people who are caught in detention with a very low amount of due process. – Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Hannia Ortega, who left Oklahoma for her native Mexico at age 22 last fall to avoid the threat of detention, said the policy has “helped me not to regret leaving.” “I’ve had the opportunity to meet people here who were deported and were not given the chance to fight their cases in front of a judge. One of the people I met was an Uber driver who was deported after 36 years in the states,” Ortega wrote in an email to Stateline. Ortega won an award for leadership and good grades in a Tulsa high school, and said she also earned a community college degree there with the help of a private scholarship for students living in the country illegally. Hannia Ortega. (Photo courtesy of Hannia Ortega) She decided staying in the U.S. was too risky. Her parents brought her illegally as a 6-year-old and she did not qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, a program with some deportation protections. “It is scary and just speaks to how dangerous it has gotten for every single immigrant in the United States. I pray that better days are ahead for all but it seems unlikely any time soon,” Ortega wrote. It’s hard to tell exactly how many immigrants are threatened with indefinite detention, but of about 14.6 million undocumented residents, the Center for Migration Studies estimates, something like 5.5 million could have entered the country illegally, making them subject to the detention policy. There are no recent estimates for the percentage, said Robert Warren, senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies of New York. But in 2017 the center estimated 38% of unauthorized immigrants crossed the border illegally either by evading border patrol officers or surrendering to them and getting a court notice to fight deportation proceedings. Others overstayed legal visas and would not be subject to the new policy. Mustafa Cetin, a New Jersey immigration attorney, said two of his clients from Turkey were denied bond despite a clean criminal record and active asylum cases in court. Both were arrested in October during routine check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he said. Both won release on bond through federal court decisions, and one has already won an asylum case, he said. Both followed a familiar pattern of seeking asylum in 2023 and 2024. “They say, ‘Don’t come in,’ but if you come in, they will process you (with a court appearance ticket),” Cetin said. “We’ve seen this play out for hundreds of thousands of people. Then, this administration, instead of trying to deal with those who come to the border, they decided to scare people away.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Thousands of asylum-seekers abandon their cases as ICE seeks to deport them to nations they aren't from

Willian Yacelga Benalcazar's asylum case followed what had become a similar pattern in immigration courts across the country: After telling a judge he feared returning to his home country, the judge ordered his deportation to another one. Yacelga, who said he fled threats from criminal gangs in Ecuador, was facing removal to Honduras. By March, he had spent five months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, where he said he caught a virus, had to fight for food and drank water contaminated with chlorine. So he asked to be sent back to his native Ecuador rather than continue to fight his case in the U.S. "I believe we abandoned the asylum case because the lawyer told me I could be in detention for three, four additional months. I was already sick in there. I couldn't take it anymore," Yacelga told CBS News from Ecuador, speaking in Spanish during a phone interview. "All I wanted was to get out, to be free, because it's horrible being locked up in there," he added. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CBS News Benalcazar entered the U.S. illegally and was deported to Ecuador on April 16. The Trump administration's unprecedented efforts to deport asylum-seekers to third countries have stalled thousands of immigrants' cases and scared thousands more into giving up their asylum claims, according to a CBS News analysis of recently released federal data and interviews with attorneys and immigration policy experts. Third-country deportations "have more to do with fear than scale," said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. About 17,500 people have been deported to third countries since President Trump returned to office, according to an estimate from Third Country Deportation Watch, a monitoring group operated by the nonprofits Refugees International and Human Rights First. The vast majority were sent to Mexico. That number is about 2% of the total deportations border czar Tom Homan told CBS News have been carried out during Mr. Trump's second term so far. Far more have faced the threat of being deported to a third country. In a sweeping, monthslong campaign, more than 75,500 asylum cases received a motion to "pretermit," or terminate proceedings without a hearing on the merits, according to a CBS News analysis of immigration court data. These motions were relatively rare until October 2025, when the Board of Immigration Appeals, the appellate body in the U.S. immigration court system, ruled that immigration judges should decide on motions for third-country removal before considering whether someone qualifies for asylum. These countries have signed "asylum cooperative agreements" with the Trump administration that allow the U.S. to re-route asylum-seekers there, forcing them to seek refuge outside of American soil. After that decision, immigration attorneys said nearly every asylum-seeker they represented now had to argue they feared persecution not only in their home country, but in third-party nations like Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala and Uganda. ICE did not respond to CBS News' request for comment about its efforts to send asylum-seekers to third countries or about detention facility conditions. In cases where a motion to pretermit was filed, about 16% of asylum-seekers — or roughly 12,300 people — withdrew or abandoned their asylum claims or agreed to voluntarily depart the U.S., immigration court data through March 31 shows. "The third countries people are being removed to are often very dangerous countries themselves that don't have a functioning asylum system," said Victoria Neilson, supervising attorney at the National Immigration Project. "There's a lot of reasons for people to be afraid and I guess choose the devil you know over the one you know nothing about." Asylum cases in limbo More than 24,000 people received removal orders to third countries the U.S. has asylum cooperative agreements with after a motion to pretermit their case was filed, the immigration court data shows. ICE has not disclosed how many have been actually removed, and did not respond to CBS News inquiries about the figure. Some, as Yacelga did, may seek to return to their home countries anyway. Immigration attorneys told CBS News they are doubtful that it will be feasible to deport so many people to third countries under the agreements. Honduras, for example, has only agreed to accept 10 non-Honduran deportees per month, but more than 6,300 non-Hondurans had a deportation order to that country by the end of March after receiving a motion to pretermit their case. About 60 had been removed to Honduras as of late April, according to Third Country Deportation Watch. "I believe what we're seeing now is the inevitable result of forcing judges to order immigrants deported to third countries that have not agreed to accept them," said Adriana Heffley, an immigration attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. "There are thousands of people now with deportation orders that cannot be carried out." In mid-March, ICE attorneys received an email directing them not to file new motions to pretermit cases, The Seattle Times reported, but that cases where motions had already been filed could continue. DHS did not respond to CBS News' request for comment on the memo. A federal lawsuit against the practice of pretermitting asylum cases under the third-country agreements is currently pending, accusing the federal government of subverting due process and arguing the countries it has signed agreements with have inadequate asylum systems. About 13,300 cases — more than half of those with third-country removal orders — are also stalled while those immigrants appeal their removal, immigration court data shows, as an appeal puts a pause on deportation. The BIA, which makes the final decision, decided less than 1% of the appeals by the end of March. Last year, the board took an average of two years to rule on a case decision appeal, the data shows. Under the current administration, BIA decisions that set a precedent, which are public, have been overwhelmingly in favor of DHS. Facing third-country removal from detention For those with third-country removal orders in detention — about 1,800 people as of the end of March, according to immigration court data — waiting indefinitely for an appeal ruling can be worse than the threat of deportation, advocates and lawyers say. The BIA's turnaround is faster for those in detention, but still averaged about 10 months last year, the data shows. Before Yacelga gave up his asylum case, he was transferred between five detention facilities spread across the country and handcuffed for an entire day during some of the transfers, he told CBS News. He spent most of his time in Eloy, Arizona, thousands of miles from his wife, children and legal team in New York, and he said that for over a month, his family and attorney didn't know where he was. A judge denied his request to bond out of detention. "Unless a federal court steps in and says that their detention is unreasonable or illegal and they release them — otherwise, they will keep you there," said Carlos Trujillo, an immigration attorney in Provo, Utah. "It's the psychological warfare of trying to push you to just give up." In a statement to CBS News, a DHS spokesperson said Yacelga crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in August 2023 and that he was ordered deported to Ecuador last month by immigration judge. The DHS spokesperson added that Yacelga was arrested for larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. "President Trump's message has been clear: criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S. If you come to our country and break our laws, we will find you, arrest you, and deport you," the spokesperson wrote. Yacelga said he was never prosecuted. The charges were pending when he was detained, data from ICE indicates. About two weeks after his deportation to Ecuador, Yacelga told CBS News he struggles to sleep and still battles symptoms from the virus he caught in detention, which has left him too sick to find a job. "Everything, all the money I had earned, everything I had, I left it with them so they could survive during the time I was detained," he said in Spanish, referring to his family in New York. "What I want is to forget all that and start over because it was horrible being imprisoned without having committed any crime, just for wanting to, well, try to take care of your family." About the data CBS News analyzed data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) on immigration court proceedings for those with asylum cases from Jan. 1, 2025, through March 31, 2026. While the data does not specify whether motions to pretermit are made on the grounds of asylum cooperative agreements or in response to a different BIA ruling, interviews with several immigration attorneys and data from the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies indicate that the vast majority of pretermission motions filed over the last several months have been made in pursuit of such third-country removals. Further, while the data includes the date of a voluntary departure decision, it does not include a date field for when an asylum application was withdrawn. Interviews with immigration attorneys and an analysis of previous data releases from EOIR suggest most withdrawals took place after a pretermission motion was filed. Camilo Montoya-Galvez contributed to this report. Immigration U.S. launches major expansion of denaturalization campaign Blanche: Immigrants who committed fraud to become U.S. citizens should worry Homan: "Things weren't perfect" in Minneapolis, but ICE not backing down Judge blocks Trump from ending deportation protections for Yemenis Go deeper with The Free Press Asylum Seekers Lose Their Day in Court She Showed Up for a Routine Green Card Meeting. Then ICE Took Her. Immigration U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department of Government Efficiency Asylum Seekers Julia Ingram Julia Ingram is a data journalist for CBS News Confirmed. She uses data analysis and computation to cover misinformation, AI and social media. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

‘Everyone has a breaking point’: the immigration judges at the sharp end of Trump’s deportation drive

David Koelsch, a former immigration judge based in Maryland, was in Minneapolis visiting his mother and sister the day Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents. He drove to Nicollet Avenue, parked a few blocks away, and walked toward the scene. “I didn’t go there to protest. I didn’t bring a sign. I didn’t bring anything. I just went to stand and bear witness,” Koelsch said. Collage of weather maps, flooded streets, people walking, ICE police, a Houston sign, and a skyline ‘Living in survival mode’: Houston’s embattled immigrant community faces health, climate and petrochemical crises Read more What he saw shook him. Koelsch, 59, had never seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection officers up close in full tactical gear, masked, armed with rifles and pistols, blocking off the street. About 50 to 75 agents stood in the road. Dozens of civilians watched from the sidewalk. People were yelling. Then the teargas came. “My chest started getting tight,” he said. “I felt like throwing up.” He dropped to his knees, then scrambled half a block away. After a few minutes, he could breathe again. Koelsch had spent four years as a supervisory asylum officer at the Department of Homeland Security before nearly eight years on the bench as an immigration judge in Baltimore. He investigated individuals with alleged ties to terrorism and later presided over asylum cases. He had taken the same oath as the agents now filling the street with gas. “I was proud to do my part in protecting the country. But then to see these officers out in the streets, basically harassing civilians, I just felt kind of sad,” he said. “It just really repulsed me because they and I took the same oath. And I didn’t think they were living up to it.” Four months before the Pretti killing, Koelsch had resigned. “I was actually planning on retiring in two years when I turn 62,” he said. His departure came amid a broader push by the Trump administration, supported by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), to offer buyouts to federal employees seen as obstacles to its deportation agenda. Man in suit poses for a portrait View image in fullscreen Former immigration judge David Koelsch at the University of Baltimore School of Law in Maryland on 1 April 2026. David retired from the bench amid increasing pressure on immigration judges the Trump administration deemed biased “in favor of the alien”. Photograph: Demetrius Freeman Since January 2025, the Trump administration has fired more than 113 immigration judges, pushed out others through buyouts and reassignments and replaced them with military lawyers and political appointees. The Guardian spoke with a dozen judges who had been fired or accepted buyouts, and others still on the bench to understand what is unfolding inside the immigration courts and what it may signal for the broader American justice system. Many said the purge was not just about immigration. It reflects a growing effort to exert political control over the courts, pressuring judges to align with enforcement goals. Some warned that if such pressure became normalized, it could reshape how justice is administered far beyond immigration. All current judges and several former judges requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. Some of the targeted judges across the country had been granting asylum at higher rates. Koelsch feared he might be next. He said: “Judges were being fired left and right. I knew my grant rate was higher than others. Maybe that would be a factor. So I thought, better to leave on my own terms.” Koelsch said the erosion of judicial independence did not begin with Trump. He also criticized the Biden administration’s use of prosecutorial discretion to remove cases from immigration courts, calling it “a numbers game” designed to reduce the backlog. “They didn’t really care so much about the people,” he said. “They just wanted good headlines.” Since leaving the bench, Koelsch taught law, was able to have health insurance through his wife’s job and secured a full-time position at the faith-based refugee resettlement organization World Relief. It seemed like things were working out. For others, that was not the case. Officers arrest a man on the ground View image in fullscreen US Border Protection agents detain a person near Roosevelt high school during dismissal time in Minneapolis on 7 January. Photograph: Kerem Yücel/AFP/Getty Images ‘Bias is in favor of an alien’ Just months after Koelsch’s resignation, on 21 November 2025, Jeremiah Johnson, 52, a judge at the San Francisco immigration court, was having what he described as a normal day. Johnson had been on the bench since 2017, appointed by then-attorney general Jeff Sessions during the first Trump administration (Koelsch was also a Sessions appointee). According to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, he granted asylum in a large share of his cases, a rate significantly higher than the national average. That afternoon, he granted asylum to a family of four in a case he described as well-prepared on both sides and then returned to the office. Johnson said: “I was sitting in my colleague’s chambers with the supervising judge when someone walked by and said Chen and Savage, two other judges, had been fired.” When he rushed back to his office, he found out he was also dismissed. “I logged on to my computer that afternoon. I had received a termination letter. I opened the PDF file. And before I could even print it, I was locked out of the system,” he said. portrait of man in suit View image in fullscreen Judge Jeremiah Johnson Photograph: Courtesy Judge Jeremiah Johnson The firing of judges in the San Francisco area came as the administration moved to shutter the San Francisco immigration court, which went from 21 judges at the start of 2025 to just four early this year, according to NPR. The court closed 1 May, leaving a backlog of 120,000 cases and transferring much of its operations to a smaller court 35 miles away. Johnson was one of five immigration judges fired that day in the San Francisco area, part of a pattern that had been building for months. Just four months prior, on 27 June 2025, Sirce E Owen, acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), issued a policy memorandum to all staff warning that “there are some Immigration Judges who appear to believe – based on their own personal policy preferences – that exhibiting bias is justifiable in certain situations, as long as that bias is in favor of an alien and against the Department of Homeland Security.” The memo threatened “corrective or disciplinary action” and suggested that judges who disagreed should “consider transitioning to alternate career paths”. Johnson, now an executive vice-president of the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), rejected the suggestion that his record reflected bias. “They claim they have to reverse the Biden era, that judges have implicit bias, and they have a duty to weed it out,” he said. “Well, then, tell me I have an implicit bias. Tell me that’s why I’m being fired. If you say I have implicit bias, show me the statistics. Be exact.” The Guardian submitted detailed questions to the White House’s office for immigration review about the firings, the Owen memo and reports that sitting judges have been threatened with removal for granting bond. EOIR declined to comment, calling them “personnel matters”. Dozens of people on the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office in San Francisco. Now, the city’s main immigration court has been closed and the majority of its docket moved to another court. View image in fullscreen Dozens of people on the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office in San Francisco. Now, the city’s main immigration court has been closed and the majority of its docket moved to another court. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, defended the Trump administration’s approach, saying that “Joe Biden’s open border allowed millions of illegal aliens to flood into the country and claim asylum despite lacking any legitimate claims.” She added that the president was fulfilling his promise to enforce federal immigration law. The White House directed questions about the immigration courts to the Department of Justice, which did not respond. ‘The government doesn’t state a reason’ For Johnson, the lack of a clear explanation from the Trump administration is deeply concerning. He believes the firings are being justified under executive authority to accelerate what he calls “mass deportation”, often without due process. A group of fired judges has already filed suit against the Department of Justice, challenging the administration’s authority to terminate immigration judges without cause or explanation. In a landmark ruling, the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent federal agency created to protect federal employees from being terminated or disciplined for political reasons, said it had no jurisdiction to review their removal. The fired judges are appealing against the decision to the US court of appeals for the federal circuit, calling it a departure from more than a century of civil service precedent. But some fired judges have pointed to a contradiction in the government’s own actions. Carmen Maria Rey Caldas, 46, noted that the government paid her severance, a benefit typically reserved for employees separated without cause. “The government doesn’t state a reason,” she said. “And in fact, they just paid me severance. So arguably, that means they are admitting that there’s no cause because otherwise I wouldn’t be due severance.” An NPR analysis found that many of the fired judges came from immigrant defense backgrounds, though the Department of Justice has denied targeting judges based on prior experience. Rey Caldas, a first-generation immigrant herself, was born in Spain during the country’s fragile transition to democracy, just four years after the death of Francisco Franco, who had ruled as dictator for nearly four decades. She moved to the US at age 11 with her family, whom she describes as “economic migrants”. In 2022, she was appointed to the bench by former attorney general Merrick Garland after nearly two decades working in immigration law. She was initially assigned, as a probationary judge, to one of the most challenging dockets in the country, handling detained cases at the Stewart detention center in Georgia. “I worked inside a detention facility, which is one of the most difficult environments in the immigration courts,” she said. People stand for a portrait View image in fullscreen Judge Carmen Rey (center) at her swearing in ceremony Photograph: Biana Rey During her two-year probationary period, she said she received strong evaluations from across the courtroom, including her supervisor, ICE officials and defense attorneys. The Guardian independently confirmed her evaluations. “The supervisory immigration judge at Stewart spoke with ICE officials in Georgia and at headquarters, and with defense counsel,” she said. “They all recommended me. So I was made permanent.” Not long after, she was terminated. Military judges fill in the slots As immigration judges are being fired across the country, the Trump administration has also launched a public hiring campaign to fill the vacancies, advertising for candidates to “become a deportation judge” – language that reflects the broader agenda of the administration. “The announcements are clearly written to solicit applicants that may not be able to demonstrate the type of impartiality and demeanor that are generally required of a judicial officer,” said Rey Caldas. On 27 August 2025, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, authorized up to 600 military lawyers from the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps to serve as temporary immigration judges – a move the justice department paired with waiving longstanding requirements that temporary judges have at least 10 years of immigration law experience. The New York City Bar Association and many experts in immigration law condemned the move as “an unprecedented departure from established practice” and “a dangerously flawed solution to a manufactured crisis”. Asked about the deployment, Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, said military attorneys would “augment existing resources” and “deliver justice, restore order, and protect the American people”. A Pentagon official, speaking on background, said training would be provided by senior Department of Justice personnel, but did not specify its length or content. The Department of Defense declined to provide a figure for how many JAG attorneys have been deployed to immigration courts. As of December 2025, only 30 military lawyers had been detailed to the courts, according to the Associated Press. Even those jobs are not safe. In December 2025, Christopher Day, a US army reserve lawyer serving as a temporary immigration judge in Annandale, Virginia, was fired after just five weeks on the bench. According to the Associated Press, federal data shows that Day granted asylum or other relief in six of his 11 cases, a rate that diverged sharply from other military-appointed judges, who ordered removal in about 78% of cases. (Day could not be reached for comment.) The US Department of Justice declined to comment on his specific case, calling it a “personnel matter”. ‘This devil on your shoulder’ As the administration began assigning military judges and less-experienced appointees to fill the growing vacancies, those with immigration backgrounds who remain on the bench described a deepening culture of uncertainty. Rey Caldas, who remains in contact with judges still on the bench, described more intimidation. “They’re going into meetings and being told directly that if they grant a bond in certain cases, they will be taken off the bench,” she said. Supervisory judges, she said, were entering judges’ offices to demand explanations for routine continuances. “Suddenly you have this devil on your shoulder,” she said. “Is your career going to be affected? Are you going to be able to pay your bills? Are your children going to be able to continue in school? That is counter to the whole idea of having a neutral adjudicator.” Koelsch said many of those sitting judges were experienced and principled. “I know several excellent immigration judges, some of whom I mentored,” he said. “They’re fantastic judges, and they’re not liberal, they’re not conservative. They’re like umpires or referees in a game. They call it as they see it.” Several current and former judges described an administration aggressively pushing for third-country deportations and setting no bond, or imposing higher bond amounts. Some said the internal pressure had, at times, felt like “bending the knee” to politics rather than principle. The administration has reached deportation agreements with numerous countries, many of which advocates and Democratic senators believe were pressured by US officials through financial incentives, eased visa restrictions or diplomatic leverage. “What really bugs me now is these third-country agreements, where people are not even being allowed to have their day in court,” Koelsch said. “They’re being sent to countries they have no connection to. We’re sending people to Uganda now, and they may be from Africa, but they’re not from Uganda.” The overhaul of the immigration courts – the mass firings, the intimidation, the threats to remove judges from the bench – has created an impossible tension for those who remain: between their ethical obligations and the need to keep their jobs. Several current judges who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity said the strain had taken a deep emotional toll. “Everyone has a breaking point, where they’re asked to do something unethical, and then that’s too much,” Koelsch said. Koelsch fears that the loss of seasoned immigration judges will have consequences far beyond the courts – including for American citizens. A ProPublica investigation in October 2025 found that more than 170 US citizens had been detained by immigration agents during raids and protests. A sign and papers on a cork board View image in fullscreen Military lawyers are serving as temporary immigration judges – a move the Department of Justice paired with waiving longstanding requirements that temporary replacements have at least 10 years of immigrant law experience. Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images At the same time, the strain on the system has deepened as courts face a backlog of more than 3m cases. The second Trump term has also seen a historic rise in habeas corpus petitions – legal challenges filed by immigrants claiming their detention is unlawful. According to ProPublica, more habeas cases have been filed since January 2025 than under the last three administrations combined. But the administration’s focus has remained squarely on deportation. Since the start of Trump’s second term, ICE has deported more than 605,000 people, according to DHS records, with the administration publicly setting a goal of 1m removals a year. In many ways, Trump has achieved much of what he promised: historic deportation numbers, the halting of nearly all refugee admissions – except a small number of white South Africans who, as Rey Caldas noted, “categorically do not qualify as refugees under US law” – and asylum grant rates that have plummeted to historic lows. But many judges fear the consequences will shape the foundations of American democracy itself as they see alarming use of executive orders to reconfigure immigration courts across the country. “If such a thing exists in the United States as a tribunal where you’re never going to be heard, where the outcome of your case is predisposed, then why would that be different in any other type of tribunal?” said Rey Caldas. “If we’re willing to accept this here, then obviously this can also be the case in criminal courts. And in tax court. And in any other type of federal proceeding.” She paused, adding: “It erodes the idea that the US is in fact a country of law.” Many judges who spoke with the Guardian believed that much of the purging had been possible because immigration judges sat within the justice department, part of the executive branch, which means they serve at the pleasure of the attorney general – and, by extension, the president. Several expressed support for establishing an independent immigration court, free from executive control. But those who have witnessed the overreach of this presidency first-hand warned that the damage may already extend beyond what structural reform alone can repair. “If the president can effectively say who gets immigration status and who doesn’t, whether or not the law would give them the right to immigration status, then we’re past a system of laws, and we are fully living at the whim of an individual,” said Rey Caldas. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Leaks of private data for use in Trump’s anti-immigration campaign raises alarms

One of the main tools the Trump administration is using in its campaign against immigration is the collection of personal data. The line between citizens’ right to privacy regarding sensitive information and the Department of Homeland Security’s acquisition of data collected by private companies has become blurred in recent months, due to the sharing of personal information between government agencies and the proliferation of opaque contracts with companies like Palantir. This U.S.-based software company, specializing in big data analytics and artificial intelligence, has designed specific programs to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in its efforts to identify and locate both undocumented immigrants and anyone critical of the agency’s operations. “The Trump administration has dramatically expanded the scope and scale of data sharing among federal agencies in a way we haven’t seen before,” says Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight. This watchdog organization has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE, the IRS, and other government agencies for failing to respond to its request for information about data handling under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. “Information that U.S. citizens provided for entirely different purposes — such as filing taxes, accessing healthcare, or applying for benefits like food assistance — is now being centralized and repurposed to support immigration enforcement. This consolidation has the potential to create a powerful surveillance infrastructure, enabling the tracking and profiling of both immigrants and U.S. citizens,” Chukwu adds. Concerns about the fate of citizens’ sensitive data have skyrocketed since Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 mandating the sharing of personal data between government agencies. Private and sensitive information from the IRS and Medicare was transferred to the DHS to support the deportation campaign. In this context of government surveillance, Congress recently extended for 45 days a controversial spying program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside the United States. It is considered a loophole in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, guaranteeing the security of their persons, homes, papers, and effects. It prohibits warrants without probable cause and applies to all individuals, regardless of their immigration status. “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is meant to protect Americans from foreign threats. But it’s also making it easier for your own government to spy on you without a warrant. Trump wants to spy on you. I’m fighting to stop him,” Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wrote on social media. The Democratic lawmaker, along with New York Democratic Representatives Dan Goldman and Nydia Velázquez, sent a letter in April to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, signed by 30 lawmakers, demanding answers regarding the continued use of technologies developed by Palantir to collect Americans’ personal data and fuel a mass surveillance ecosystem. “Public reporting regarding DHS’ data analytics tools and software raise serious concerns about Palantir-developed technologies being used to compile, aggregate, and analyze large volumes of personal data and information. These data-compiling systems reportedly allow DHS personnel to link individual profiles to addresses, phone numbers, devices, and other identifying information across multiple datasets in order to generate leads and identify potential locations of persons sought for immigration enforcement actions,” they wrote. The members of Congress referred to the Elite app (an acronym for Enhanced Identification and Selection of Leads for Law Enforcement), created by Palantir, which identifies neighborhoods and geographic areas where people with immigration backgrounds might be found and which they describe as “kind of like Google Maps,” although with questionable reliability. “Even more troubling, Palantir-developed tools are not the only technologies being deployed by your department to fulfill the administration’s mass deportation campaign and daily arrest quotas,” they noted. The Department of Homeland Security, through private contractors, has used facial recognition systems developed by Clearview AI, social media monitoring and analytics tools produced by PenLink, Stingray technology from vendors such as L3Harris, and cell phone surveillance technologies created by Paragon Solutions. “These tools contribute to a mass surveillance ecosystem that appears to operate in conjunction with Palantir-developed platforms and ultimately support enforcement operations conducted” by the DHS, the lawmakers stated. Since 2015, federal agencies have been prohibited from collecting mass data on U.S. citizens. The legislation arose after former Homeland Security contractor Edward Snowden leaked classified information about how the agency collected Americans’ phone records. To circumvent this legal barrier, the government purchases databases created by private companies and routinely uses them for commercial purposes. “While companies can manipulate you, they cannot put you in jail. But the U.S. government can, and it now purchases massive quantities of your information from commercial data brokers,” said Anne Toomey McKenna, a professor at Penn State University’s Institute for Computational and Data Science, in a recent article for The Conversation. The Trump administration has also turned to technology companies like Google, Reddit, and Meta to obtain user information. Requesting personal data from companies has been common practice in cases such as child trafficking, but now it is being used to identify critics of ICE and Border Patrol immigration operations. Recently, the government subjected Reddit to a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., to reveal the identity of a user who had been critical on the social network about the actions of the federal agent who fatally shot U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis in January. In addition to concerns about where citizens’ data ends up, critics denounce the relationships between the companies benefiting from these contracts and the government. American Oversight, in its lawsuit, points out that Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel is a close friend of Trump, and that CEO Alex Karp donated $1 million to MAGA, the ultraconservative movement that supports the Republican. Furthermore, it emphasizes that while the company has signed contracts with previous administrations, during Trump’s second term, it obtained federal contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars for a variety of services — including artificial intelligence and data analytics — with multiple federal agencies. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

More Americans say US is no longer welcoming to immigrants, survey finds

Donald Trump’s aggressive and wide-reaching immigration-enforcement agenda has convinced increasing numbers of adults that the US is no longer a welcoming country for outsiders, a new poll has found. About six in 10 respondents to the Associated Press-NORC poll, conducted last month, say the country used to be a great place for immigrants, but no longer is. Another one-third said they or somebody they knew personally had been affected by the Trump administration’s crackdown in the previous 12 months, rising to about 60% of Hispanic adults. Almost half of the Hispanic adults who responded said they had started carrying proof of their US citizenship or permanent residence for fear of being detained or deported by federal immigration agencies. The wide-ranging poll paints a damning portrait of how opinions have changed in the 14 months since Trump returned to the White House and embarked on his long-threatened “largest deportation operation in US history”. Trump surged thousands of immigration agents, sometimes backed by the US military, into several cities and states to round up and detain those in the country illegally, often with violent results. In separate incidents in Minneapolis in January, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two unarmed US citizens protesting against the government’s actions, were shot and killed by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers. “It’s just plain wrong,” Reid Gibson, 72, a retiree in Missouri, said in his response to the poll. “This is not a good country for immigrants any more.” The survey found that only a quarter of adults still believed the US was welcoming to immigrants, while about one in 10 believed it never was. A question about birthright citizenship, which Trump has attempted to remove by an executive order blocked by federal courts and currently under deliberation by the justices of the US supreme court, brought a mixed response. Overall, 65% believe that all children born in the US should be entitled to citizenship regardless of their parents’ status, and 75% believe the same for children whose non-citizen parents are legally present in the US on work visas. But only 49% think that should be the case for children born in the US to parents in the country illegally. Trump’s executive order seeks to limit US citizenship to those who have at least one parent who is already a citizen. The AP said it found that Democrats were more likely than independents or Republicans to know someone affected by the Trump crackdown, and those with a personal connection are more likely to say the US is no longer a great place for immigrants. Kathy Bailey, a 79-year-old Illinois Democrat, said she had seen the administration’s immigration policies seep into the small-town swim class she regularly attends. She said two women in the class, both naturalized US citizens, had started carrying their passports when they left home. Bailey said one of the women, from Latin America, was especially worried about sticking out in an overwhelmingly white community. “She’s an American citizen now, but she’s so scared that she has to carry her passport,” Bailey said. “She’s just another sweet old grandmother swimming at five in the morning.” Nick Grivas, 40, said his grandfather’s immigration from Greece two generations ago made him more conscious of Trump’s policies, and that he believed the US stopped being a promising place for people seeking a new life. “We can see how we’re treating children and the children of the immigrants, and we’re not viewing them as potential future Americans,” Grivas, a resident of Massachusetts, said. He said he thought new arrivals would be deterred from investing in their local communities if they feared deportation. “You’re less willing to commit to the project if you don’t think that you’re gonna be able to stay,” he said. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

US lifts hold on immigration applications for doctors, but leaves others waiting

Libyan Dr. Faysal Alghoula needs to renew his green card to continue caring for roughly 1,000 patients in southwestern Indiana. But he hasn’t been able to do that since the Trump administration stopped reviewing applications for people from several dozen countries it deemed high-risk. Alghoula has lived in the U.S. since 2016, and his current visa will expire in September if his application is denied. But last week, Alghoula and doctors like him got a potential lifeline when the administration quietly made an exemption for physicians with pending visa or green card applications. It’s a move physicians, organizations and immigration attorneys had sought for months, citing widespread shortages and a high proportion of foreign-trained doctors, who disproportionately work in underserved areas, according to the National Library of Medicine. The lack of doctors is top of mind for Alghoula, a pulmonologist and Intensive Care Unit doctor who serves a mostly rural population spanning parts of Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. “It is about four to five months wait to get the pulmonologist here,” he said. Related Stories US revokes green cards and visas of several Iranian nationals connected to Tehran government US revokes green cards and visas of several Iranian nationals connected to Tehran government Military families anxious about unknowns of Iran war, proud of their service members Military families anxious about unknowns of Iran war, proud of their service members A Venezuelan doctor in ICE custody misses husband's asylum interview after being detained at airport A Venezuelan doctor in ICE custody misses husband's asylum interview after being detained at airport Still, applicants and immigration attorneys say it’s unclear how big a difference the exemption will make. The change means doctors can have their cases reviewed, but it doesn’t guarantee their green cards or visas will be renewed. It is also unclear whether U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will be able to process those applications in time to meet immigration deadlines like Alghoula’s — especially as many doctors with pending applications still haven’t heard any updates from the federal government directly since the announcement was first made. Despite his qualifications, Alghoula said he is still concerned about his upcoming appointment, given stories circulating about immigrants being detained at appointments to renew their paperwork. “I’m still scared to go to my interview,” Alghoula said Wednesday. That uncertainty intensified on Friday when he learned that his interview, scheduled for early June, had been canceled without any explanation. He said he doesn’t know what that means for his application. Meanwhile, the pause remains in effect for thousands of others, including researchers and entrepreneurs from 39 countries, including Iran, Afghanistan and Venezuela. While they’re on hold, many can’t legally work, get health insurance or a driver’s license. If they leave the U.S., they won’t be let back in. Immigrants unable to work or see family The Trump administration decided last year to stop reviewing green card and visa applications for people from a list of countries deemed high-risk and this year stopped reviewing visa applications for citizens of more than 75 countries over concerns they would seek public assistance. The moves came amid the U.S. government’s broader crackdown on immigrants. The pause followed the shooting of two National Guard troops by an Afghan citizen, which the administration said highlighted “what a lack of screening, vetting, and prioritizing expedient adjudications can do to the American people.” The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration officials, didn’t answer questions about the pause or recent changes to exempt physicians but said in an email it wants to ensure applicants are properly screened after determining the prior administration failed to do so. “There are lots of bans and lots of pauses that are happening right now,” said Greg Siskind, an immigration attorney based in Memphis, Tennessee. “It is all about making life miserable for people who are here legally so they will choose other countries.” It isn’t clear how many doctors have been affected by the pause, according to a spokesperson for the American Academy of Family Physicians, who said several doctors have reached out to the organization asking for help. Some doctors have already been denied Before the exemption, many immigrants filed federal lawsuits demanding that the government issue decisions on their cases. One of them was Iranian Dr. Zahra Shokri Varniab, who came to the United States three years ago to conduct radiology research. She was waiting for a green card to attend a residency program but her application got stuck in the pause. She filed a lawsuit demanding an answer to her application and a federal judge ordered immigration officials to review her case. They did — and denied her. The 33-year-old doctor said she believes it was in retaliation for her lawsuit. “I feel completely confused,” Shokri Varniab said. In court filings, U.S. government lawyers wrote that Shokri Varniab’s application contained inconsistencies about whether she plans to become a practicing doctor or researcher. She said she plans to do both. She said the exemption doesn’t appear to apply to her since her case was decided but is seeking relief in court. Immigration policy compounding war abroad Immigrants who hold prestigious jobs in science and technology said they currently can’t work due to the pause because they’re waiting on employment authorization documents. Some said they are running out of money for rent and groceries and worry their careers could be thwarted if they’re forced to leave the country. Those from Iran are especially worried about returning home during the ongoing war with U.S. and Israeli forces. They said they can’t regularly reach family due to the Iranian government’s internet blackout or count on them for financial support. Kaveh Javanshirjavid came to the United States from Iran seven years ago to study for his doctorate in agriculture. He was supposed to start a lab job in January but needs employment authorization and his application is on hold. The 41-year-old said he’s borrowing from friends to pay rent and relying on his wife’s doctorate stipend for basic necessities. But he doesn’t know how long that will last because she’s also Iranian and will need work authorization to get a job after graduating this summer. “The whole of my life is on hold,” he said. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.