Report offers rare insight into the risks and challenges facing US deportees in Haiti

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Human Rights Watch released a report on Monday detailing the hardships faced by hundreds of people deported by the United States to gang-ravaged Haiti. The report is the first intimate look at the lives of deportees who have declined to speak at length with journalists because they fear for their safety. Gang violence is surging and hunger and poverty are deepening. The U.S. has deported more than 470 people to Haiti since July, including people who lost Temporary Protected Status, which had allowed them to live and work legally in the U.S. The main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous because of persistent gang violence, so deportation flights are landing in the northern city of Cap-Haitien. Mayor Michel Saint-Croix told Human Rights Watch that the city’s population has tripled to more than 1 million in the past two years as it receives deportees and Haitians fleeing violence elsewhere in the country. The deportees’ arrival has strained already limited resources. Haitian migration officials said the U.S. government has told them it planned to send as many as two deportation flights a week, each carrying about 200 people, according to the report. Deportees share details of their lives Human Rights Watch said it interviewed 44 deportees, as well as Haitian and international officials. Deportees said they went for hours without food or water and days without bathing or changing clothes while held at U.S. immigration detention facilities. The interviewees said their belongings, including official documents and money, were not returned to them when they arrived in Haiti. “All detainees are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries,” it said in a statement, also asserting that detainees have access to phones to talk with relatives and lawyers. “Certified dieticians evaluate meals. In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.” It noted that deportees have included Haitians charged in the U.S. with crimes ranging from drug possession to sexual offenses. Human Rights Watch said it reviewed passenger manifests for two deportation flights in August. Neither contained information about the deportees’ immigration status or the grounds for their removal. Most of the 44 deportees interviewed said they had fled Haiti’s worsening security and humanitarian crises and settled in U.S. states, including Florida, New York, Indiana and Ohio. They found work in sectors such as construction, healthcare and manufacturing. Many said they were from Port-au-Prince or surrounding areas, where armed men control an estimated 70% of the capital. Others said they were from the Artibonite region, which is under assault by violent gangs. The deportees lived in the U.S. for anywhere from two to 14 years before being sent back to Haiti. Among them was a 38-year-old unidentified man who said he had lived in Florida since December 2019 and worked at the same hotel for more than six years. His wife and 5-year-old son, who is a U.S. citizen, remain in Florida, according to the report. “I worked so that he could grow up without the fear, violence, and uncertainty that I had known in Haiti,” the man was quoted as saying. He and several other deportees said they had Temporary Protected Status, although the rights group noted it could not independently verify those claims. A 47-year-old woman said she had lived in Miami with her husband, a U.S. citizen, and was arrested when she attended an interview to apply for permanent residence. “Once detained, most interviewees said authorities did not allow them to contact their lawyers or appear before an immigration judge, while many received little or no information about their pending asylum claims, the grounds for their detention, or how they could challenge their deportation,” Human Rights Watch said. Another deportee was a 24-year-old nursing assistant student who said she applied for asylum after fleeing Haiti in 2023 after gangs attacked her community.

AP Exclusive: ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding thousands of detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them, according to current and former officials familiar with the practice. ICE removed those detainees from its online detainee locator system on Sept. 15, according to three current and former ICE officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the change. Several lawyers contacted by The Associated Press confirmed their clients vanished from the system this week, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association warned its members about the situation Friday. The move represents a stark departure from previous practice and highlights the hardline nature of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, leaving thousands of detainees exceedingly hard to trace and potentially unable to exercise all of their legal options. The practice, which applies to detainees who have received final orders of removal from an immigration court, could speed deportations by making last-minute legal challenges harder to pursue, immigration lawyers said. Nearly 16,000 people who were arrested and booked into ICE detention in July were subject to final removal orders, more than a third of the overall bookings, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project based at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA. The practice does not apply to detainees held at a detention facility in Adelanto, California or at temporary holding facilities in Minneapolis, New York City or suburban Chicago, the sources said. Judges have ordered ICE to list detainees in those facilities in the online locator promptly upon their arrival, as part of litigation over their detention practices. Lawyers and relatives distressed by lack of information on detainees The effort to hide their locations adds to the ways in which the Trump administration has made life harder for detainees and their families as it has increased pressure on them to waive appeals and agree to deportation. ICE did not publicize the move and in a statement issued to the AP, the agency did not confirm or deny it. The statement said detainees with final removal orders were being prioritized for deportation, even as ICE faces a “historic number of injunctions” from courts stopping individual removals. Related Stories A former Nicaraguan paramilitary faces deportation after ICE detention A former Nicaraguan paramilitary faces deportation after ICE detention 3 MIN READ ICE arrests jumped to nearly 50,000 in July, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term ICE arrests jumped to nearly 50,000 in July, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term 2 MIN READ China presses the US for answers after a man dies hours after entering ICE custody China presses the US for answers after a man dies hours after entering ICE custody 2 MIN READ As a result of the change, lawyers and relatives lost track of their clients and loved ones without explanation, which is especially concerning because detainees are frequently moved to new facilities before deportation, said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Families are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be,” he said. “On the attorney side, this has serious implications for the ability to contact their client. It certainly has implications about how it will interfere with the attorney-client relationship.” The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, has argued that people who are subject to final removal orders have received due process. That usually means an immigration judge has ordered their removal after a hearing, including cases when immigrants fail to show up, and the decision was affirmed on appeal or not appealed. Detainees with final removal orders still have options to appeal Still, those detainees have options to challenge their detention and removal, including seeking to reopen the case or by bringing what’s known as a habeas petition asking a judge to release them on constitutional grounds. Federal judges have granted thousands of rulings ordering that detainees be released or granted bond hearings. Sign up for the Ground Game Newsletter: Your guide to the biggest stories in politics, policy and U.S. elections. Email address Email address Sign up This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. ICE detention facilities held more than 65,000 people as of early July, the most recent available data. Around 30% of them likely have final removal orders, said Michelle Mendez, legal director at the National Immigration Project. More people have been issued final removal orders after failing to show up for hearings in recent months because the administration’s immigration courts have taken steps to make it harder to participate and to reopen such cases, she said. “To me, it’s just another iteration of disappearing people,” she said. “Why would we do that in the United States of America? It’s something we’d hear about in another country and be concerned about individual rights and due process.” Some with final removal orders also have legal protections against deportation to their countries of origin based on the likelihood they would be tortured or persecuted. Many of them are facing removal to third-party countries where they have no ties and their disappearance in ICE’s system will make legal challenges harder, lawyers said. Lawyers say clients have vanished from ICE locator system ICE initiated the online detainee locator system in 2010 to allow relatives, lawyers and the public to search for people in custody. Previously they had to call ICE regional offices or individual facilities to try to track them down. Many advocates and lawmakers have complained that the system updates too slowly and contains too much inaccurate or missing information, allowing ICE to shield the locations of detainees for days or weeks. Minors, people who have been held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for less than 48 hours, and detainees who are being transported are not in the system, among others. But the exclusion of detainees with final removal orders has no apparent parallel, several immigration lawyers said. Atenas Burrola Estrada, a deputy program director with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said that “every single one of our clients who has a final order has disappeared from the locator,” including 17 in all as of Monday. Among those disappeared from the locator system are eight Somali men being detained at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to one of their attorneys, My Khanh Ngo, of the American Civil Liberties Union. She said the change could make it “nearly impossible” for people to challenge their removals in some cases. “If you can’t find your client, don’t know what’s happening to your client, you can’t get that information to the court to stop their removal,” she said. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

USCIS Forms Update Notice

Good afternoon, We recently updated the following USCIS form(s): Form I-485 Supplement J, Confirmation of Valid Job Offer or Request for Job Portability Under INA Section 204(j) 09/18/2026 03:20 PM EDT Edition Date: 09/18/26. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions. Form I-485 Supplement A, Supplement A to Form I-485, Adjustment of Status Under Section 245(i) 09/18/2026 03:13 PM EDT Edition Date: 09/18/26. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions. Form I-356, Request for Cancellation of Public Charge Bond 09/18/2026 02:54 PM EDT Edition Date: 09/18/26. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions. Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status 09/18/2026 02:46 PM EDT Edition Date: 09/18/26. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions. Form I-945, Public Charge Bond 09/18/2026 02:02 PM EDT Edition Date: 09/18/26. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions. For more information, please visit our Forms Updates page.

Revealed: ICE lost count of miscarriages, while detaining a record number of pregnant women

CE is arresting a record number of pregnant women and teenagers – placing them in detention centers where they say it can be exceedingly difficult to access medical care. At the same time, the agency appears to have lost count of how many suffered a miscarriage. Government documents obtained by the Guardian show that the Trump administration placed more pregnant immigrants in detention last fall and winter than at any time over the previous year. ICE recorded 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of the Trump administration, the documents show, but the agency has no data on miscarriages after 3 October 2025. Meanwhile, detained pregnant women report that they are struggling to access routine and emergency medical care. In interviews with the Guardian and in testimonies shared by their attorneys, women who miscarried or were hospitalized for pregnancy complications said they did not receive follow-up care, despite experiencing ongoing pain and symptoms. Anabell, 35, said she didn’t know she was pregnant until she was arrested and told to take a pregnancy test during a medical examination at the Campbell county detention center in Kentucky. A month later, she started bleeding heavily – soaking through a new menstrual pad every 30 minutes. Chained to a hospital bed at a local ER, she was told she wasn’t pregnant anymore. Laura, 21, was in the second trimester of a high-risk pregnancy when she was sent to the Dilley detention center in Texas. Now, still detained and approaching her third trimester, she’s experiencing persistent abdominal pain and bleeding – and says she hasn’t been allowed to see an OB-GYN. Angie, 26, learned she was pregnant a few weeks after she was booked into the Mesa Verde detention center in California. A few weeks after that, she woke up to large amounts of brown fluid excreting from her body. The medical staff at the detention center told her the miscarriage wasn’t her fault, she said. A composite image showing printed-out white stickers with yellow, purple, pink, or red highlighter. View image in fullscreen Copies of several meal stickers affixed to Anabell’s food throughout March, shared by her lawyer, show that ICE was offering a modified diet. Photograph: National Immigrant Justice Center Although it is difficult to pinpoint the cause of a miscarriage, or to attribute a miscarriage solely to the conditions in detention, it is clear that detained women aren’t getting the medical care they need when they experience miscarriage symptoms, said Deborah Ottenheimer, an obstetrician-gynecologist and medical expert with Physicians for Human Rights. Women who miscarry and don’t receive proper treatment, including an ultrasound and other tests to ensure that their pregnancy tissue has been vacated from their body, could experience infection and other severe complications, Ottenheimer said. “These incarcerated women are not getting the prenatal visits that they’re supposed to get. They’re not getting high-risk prenatal visits if they need them. And if they do miscarry, the medical care they receive is minimal to none,” Ottenheimer said. Christina Davidson, the chief medical officer of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in July that “placing and holding pregnant patients in detention poses serious medical and mental health risks for both the pregnant patient and fetus”. Lapses in care at detention facilities, she added, could escalate treatable conditions into life-threatening emergencies. The Guardian filed a Freedom of Information Act request and then filed suit in collaboration with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to obtain data on the number of pregnant people in ICE detention. Eventually, ICE shared records tracking the number of pregnant, postpartum and nursing women who were in detention from October 2024 through mid-January 2026, but only provided data on miscarriages up to 3 October 2025. In internal documents provided to the Guardian, the agency said it did not have miscarriage data for subsequent months because of a change in its medical accounting system. In response to follow up questions about its tracking practices after 3 October 2025, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, first said that the agency was tracking miscarriages in monthly reports. But later, the spokesperson confirmed what was in its internal documents – it does not have data on miscarriages from October 2025 through June 2026. DHS has never before acknowledged that it had lost count of miscarriages – not even when US senators asked the agency for the data. It is convenient for the administration that ICE cannot report how many women in its custody had miscarriages, said Faisal Al-Juburi, the co-chief executive of Raíces, a Texas-based humanitarian aid and immigration services non-profit. “When you don’t track something of that magnitude, then you don’t have to be confronted with the reality of what your policies have yielded.” To Anabell – an asylum seeker from Nicaragua who has birthed three children and miscarried once before – hardly anything about her last pregnancy had gone as normal. She was wondering why her period hadn’t come yet when she turned up for her mandated ICE check-in appointment on 25 February, she said. The visit went as normal until she was about to leave and an officer told her she couldn’t. The next few hours were a blur. She was taken to the Campbell county detention center in Newport, Kentucky. She underwent a medical examination, and was given one pregnancy test. Then another test. They both came back positive. “It was a surprise,” she said, speaking from the detention center on the phone. “All I could do was cry.” She wasn’t given a blood test to confirm a healthy pregnancy or prenatal vitamins, she said. Nor was she scheduled for an ultrasound. She did receive a special meal, labeled with a sticker that read: “Medical Diet - Pregnancy High Protein w/ PM Snack.” Usually, this meant an extra peanut butter sandwich and a small carton of milk. Over the next weeks, she was often nauseous and could hardly eat or sleep. She’d wake up to the cries and screams of the other detainees, or to the sound of officers yelling. About a month after she was arrested, she began to bleed – first a little, then a lot. “I told them I need to see a doctor,” she said, but an officer told her she’d have to wait. In an emergency medical request, she wrote, in Spanish: “This is URGENT, please. I am pregnant and have been bleeding since yesterday … I am scared for the baby.” Fellow detainees noticed she looked unnaturally pale and tried to get her help as well, she said. A day later, she was rushed to the ER. Shackled to a hospital bed and under the watch of three immigration officers, she was told she wasn’t pregnant anymore through a Spanish interpreter on the phone. ICE has repeatedly declined to release Anabell’s medical records to her and her lawyer. She didn’t even know which hospital she had been taken to, so her lawyer hunted down her hospital record by calling nearby medical facilities. The doctor’s notes said her pregnancy hormone levels were low, suggesting that she may have lost her pregnancy even before she started bleeding heavily. Still at Campbell, Anabell has continued to bleed, vomit and lose her hair in chunks. She has lost about 30lbs, and her skin is tender with rashes, she said. In hospital records she shared with the Guardian, the ER doctor wrote that she should return to the hospital if she experiences any new symptoms and that she should receive follow-up care at a women’s health clinic – but the medics at Campbell haven’t offered any check-ups. “I don’t know what is going to happen to me,” she said. Anabell said she met two other pregnant women in detention – including another who seemingly miscarried. The data ICE released to the Guardian shows that the agency has been increasingly detaining pregnant people since Donald Trump took office in January 2025. Amid high-profile, militarized immigration raids in Minneapolis, Chicago and other cities last autumn and winter – ICE held more pregnant individuals in detention than at any time over the previous year, according to the agency’s records. In October, there were at least 87 pregnant women and adolescents in detention and in November, there were 101. Most women of reproductive age who enter immigration detention receive pregnancy tests during an initial medical assessment, but not all of them do. Some detained women have said they were unable to access pregnancy tests, so ICE’s numbers could be an undercount. Records from ICE show that at least 18 women miscarried while in custody from January 2025 through September 2025. This is also very likely an undercount, according to experts on healthcare within the immigration system. Some women who experience miscarriages, especially early in pregnancy, don’t notice significant physical symptoms and therefore don’t seek or receive emergency medical care – so their pregnancy loss may not be tracked in ICE’s records. There are no updated data on miscarriages after 3 October 2025, ICE noted in internal agency documents, because the agency had ended its contract with the Veterans Affairs Financial Services Center (VA-FSC), which had been handling medical billing for the agency. Acentra Health, a private Virginia-based company, was contracted to replace the VA-FSC starting in October 2025 – but ICE’s medical claims processing has been delayed for months. Immigration attorneys and former DHS officials told the Guardian it was odd that ICE was only keeping track of miscarriages via its medical billing provider. Federal policy, outlined in a 2021 directive, instructs ICE to wholly avoid detaining pregnant, postpartum and nursing immigrants “unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist”. If ICE does detain a pregnant individual, the directive obligates officers to consistently monitor and document their health. Agents or contractors at detention centers are to send monthly updates on these detainees to the executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations. The ICE health service corps, which oversees healthcare in detention, is to continuously evaluate whether it is medically advisable to keep them detained. “In the very limited circumstances in which detention is necessary and appropriate, ICE must monitor individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing detained in ICE custody for general health and wellbeing, including regular custody and medical reevaluation, to ensure appropriate pre- and/or postnatal and other medical and mental health care,” the directive states. A spokesperson for DHS said the agency is still adhering to the directive. “The 2021 directive is still in place,” said spokesperson Chandler Rebel. “Pregnant women receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations aligned with community standards of care.” He did not engage with the Guardian’s questions about reports that women were not receiving essential prenatal, postpartum and miscarriage care. Acentra did not respond directly to questions about whether it was keeping track of miscarriages on behalf of ICE. Instead, it directed the Guardian to a statement clarifying that there were delays in implementing ICE’s new claims processing due to government shutdowns. Court records as well as interviews with US congress members, immigration attorneys and pregnant detainees indicate that the administration has all but abandoned adherence to the directive. The Guardian reviewed case details of eight pregnant women and teens who complained of medical neglect at the Dilley detention center in Texas – the country’s only ICE facility that holds families as well as single adults. Several of them alleged that language barriers made it difficult to access medical care. One woman who was four months pregnant stopped trusting the medical staff after a nurse shouted at her because she couldn’t speak English, according to Raíces. A woman who was pregnant with severe anemia and asthma was unable to get prescribed treatment. A woman who was six months pregnant with a high viral load of hepatitis B was unable to access the antiviral medications she needed to lower the risk of transmitting the infection to her baby. People chanting, raising their fists, and holding signs as they march together. View image in fullscreen A protest against ICE detaining five-year-old Liam Ramos, on 28 January 2026 in Dilley, Texas. Photograph: Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Images Laura, the 21-year-old who remains detained at Dilley along with her two-year-old son, said she has a history of miscarriages. Two days before she was detained at a mandated ICE appointment, she had gone to the ER with symptoms of miscarriage and was diagnosed with a high-risk obstetric condition. After arriving at Dilley, a physician at the facility evaluated her and told her her condition requires a specialist. “Despite this clinical determination, facility administration has failed to approve or schedule the consultation for me,” she stated in a legal declaration that Raíces shared with the Guardian. She and her son should never have been detained in the first place, said Al-Juburi of Raíces. She was certified for a special visa for the victims of crime after a stray bullet struck her and her son last year. The 2021 directive instructs ICE to avoid detaining pregnant people “except in exceptional circumstances”. But in more than a dozen cases reviewed by the Guardian, attorneys said they did not receive any clear explanation from ICE officers or from the DHS as to how they met the criteria of “exceptional circumstances”. Many were asylum-seekers with scheduled immigration hearings, and dutifully attended mandated ICE appointments – showing that they posed no flight risk. “I have yet to encounter a pregnant or postpartum person who I believe meets the definition of extraordinary circumstances, as it’s used in other areas of the law,” said Sarah Decker, a senior attorney at the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center. Many of her clients are detained at the South Louisiana processing center in Basile, an all-women detention center with the highest number of pregnant detainees in the county, according to ICE data. Decker also raised doubts that ICE was unaware of how many women in its custody had experienced pregnancy complications or miscarried. “Many of the pregnant women that we’ve met at Basile have told us that they disclosed their pregnancy to ICE officers, that they had to advocate for access to prenatal care and access to a gynecologist, that they needed emergency care for complications,” she said. “So ICE is clearly aware and I think their desire to kind of obfuscate the access that people have to this data is intended to cover up the level of life-threatening medical neglect that’s happening in these facilities.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Doctors say children of immigrants are missing healthcare

Four in 10 pediatricians reported kids in immigrant families are avoiding coming in for healthcare out of concerns around immigration status, according to a new survey published Tuesday. More than 1,600 pediatricians responded between April and June to the survey by American Academy of Pediatrics researchers. In the survey, pediatricians were asked whether over the past year, their patients or the families they care for avoided seeking medical care for their child due to concerns around the immigration status of a household member. They were also asked the same about sending kids to school and about applying for safety net programs such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program or food stamps. On average, pediatricians reported that about a quarter of their patients are in immigrant families. Forty percent of pediatricians reported those families avoided seeking medical care for their child out of concern for the patient or family’s immigration status. Thirty-one percent of the surveyed physicians reported immigrant families avoided applying for government programs. Just over a fifth reported that families had avoided sending their child to school. The American Academy of Pediatrics said the findings are likely an undercount and that more children are likely going without care. Stateline reported this month that many clinicians are seeing more advanced illnesses among kids of immigrants, as well as skipped preventive care and forgone surgeries amid immigration status fears. In the survey, answers varied across different service areas and subspecialities. For example, nearly 45% of pediatricians with subspecialities and almost half — 48% — of urban, inner city pediatricians said families retreated from seeking medical care for their child, versus 32% of rural pediatricians surveyed. In January of last year, the Trump administration rescinded Biden- and Obama-era restrictions on places where immigration agents generally could not arrest people, such as hospitals, clinics and schools. In 2024, a quarter of children nationwide were in immigrant families with one or both parents born in another country, with the percentages varying by state, the researchers noted. Healthcare professionals have also raised concerns about a new federal policy that goes into effect Friday. It broadens the discretion of immigration officers reviewing applications for green cards, certain visas or admissions into the U.S., allowing officers to consider enrollment in public benefits — such as housing and food assistance, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program — as a “public charge,” which is grounds for inadmissibility under federal law. “Pediatricians have long spoken out against changes to the public charge policy because we know that it leaves families fearful of accessing programs and services that are critical for their health and well-being,” Dr. Sural Shah, chair of the academy’s Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health, said during a news conference on the policy last week. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Latin American migrants deported by ICE to West Africa describe being stranded "on the other side of the world"

Monrovia, Liberia — None of the deported men and women placed in a three-story hotel in a remote, coastal area of this West African country are Liberian citizens. Many are not even from Africa. Instead, they hail from countries throughout Latin America — including Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela — as well as other African countries, like Cameroon and Eritrea. They were deported to Liberia, Africa's oldest republic, last month by U.S. immigration officials as part of an intensifying tactic in President Trump's aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration: sending some deportees to far-flung places where they have no ties. CBS News tracked down the deportees in Liberia, becoming the first U.S. television network to speak to them in person. They described being in limbo and feeling stateless, unable to return to the U.S., where many have spouses and children, and scared of being persecuted if they go back to their homelands. untitled-449.jpg Honduran deportee Elvis Rodriguez Venturas speaks with CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez. CBS News "I'm concerned," Honduran native Elvis Rodriguez Venturas told CBS News. "I feel far away, on the other side of the world." Rodriguez Venturas said his four children, two of whom are U.S. citizens, ask him every day when he's coming back to Texas, where he worked in construction. His wife is also in the U.S. Rodriguez Venturas entered the U.S. illegally, but his deportation to Honduras was barred by an immigration judge who found he could be harmed there. He said he had been using that protection to work in the U.S. legally before his detention. In fact, most of the deportees who agreed to be interviewed won legal protections in American immigration courts, preventing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting them to their home countries because of concerns they could be persecuted or tortured there. symbol 00:00 02:00 Read More But under the Trump administration's zero-tolerance posture to illegal immigration, those with such cases are being targeted for deportation to third countries, as they still lack a valid permanent immigration status, despite their limited legal protections. a18e7f09-047f-4fb2-af07-241ea85de368.jpg The six Latin American male deportees who agreed to talk with CBS News. CBS News The deportees said they were not notified by ICE that they would be removed to Liberia, or given the chance to challenge their deportation to West Africa. "Honestly, I had never heard of Liberia," Colombian immigrant Arin Garcia Yepes told CBS News. "I didn't even know it existed," said Rodriguez Venturas, the Honduran deportee. Brazilian immigrant Paola Ferreira Dos Santos, the only woman among the Latin American deportees in Liberia, said she only learned where she had been deported to when the deportation flight landed in Monrovia on Aug. 20. "I was the first to get off the plane, and they said, 'Welcome to Liberia. You're in Africa,'" the 21-year-old told CBS News in Portuguese. untitled-339.jpg CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez at the main market in Monrovia, Liberia. CBS News While Trump administration officials often say their deportation blitz is primarily focused on hardened criminals they call the "worst of the worst," CBS News obtained the names of those sent to Liberia last month, and could not find a criminal charge or conviction for the vast majority, beyond immigration violations like entering the U.S. illegally. In a statement to CBS News, the Department of Homeland Security said those in the U.S. illegally could opt to self-deport and receive a $3,000 stipend the administration has been offering. "The Trump Administration is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised," the department added. The State Department has repeatedly declined to provide detailed information on the "third-country" deportation deals, saying in a statement that it had "no comment on the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments." "I could be in danger" Liberia is a relatively small country bordering the North Atlantic that is roughly the size of Tennessee and home to more than 5 million people. It was founded in the 19th century by freed American slaves. Its capital, Monrovia, is named after U.S. President James Monroe. In August, Liberia's government revealed it had agreed to receive up to 1,200 "third-country" deportees from the U.S., framing it as a humanitarian gesture. So far, it has only received one group of deportees under the agreement, the Aug. 20 flight that brought 15 non-Liberians to Liberia. The West African country joined more than 30 nations around the globe that have now agreed to such "third-country" deportations under pressure from the Trump administration. Many of the agreements have been brokered with African countries, including those beset by armed conflict, political crises and widespread poverty, like the Central African Republic and South Sudan. While the Liberian government has said the "third-country" deportees can claim asylum in Liberia, none of the ones interviewed by CBS News expressed interest in staying in the West African nation permanently, citing poverty, the different culture there and their lack of work visas. 9e1f1985-95e9-4fa4-8210-6227e241780c.jpg CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez speaks with Venezuelan deportee Carlos Tellez Sanchez. CBS News Unlike some African countries, such as the small kingdom of Eswatini, Liberia is not detaining the deportees it receives from the U.S. While they've been told not to venture too far outside the hotel for their own safety, the deportees are technically free to leave. The United Nations' migration agency, the International Organization for Migration, has been providing the group with basic necessities. But many still feel trapped. Some are contemplating returning to their home countries or hoping that another third country agrees to welcome them. Venezuelan deportee Carlos Tellez Sanchez, who was selling cars and delivering food in the Dallas area before he was detained by ICE late last year, said he's stuck for now in Africa. His wife and their American-born baby remain in Texas. "Returning to Venezuela is not an option for me," he said. "I feel I could be in danger if I return to my home country." For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

DHS voter probe may break state laws and wrongly implicate U.S. citizens, whistleblower alleges

NEW YORK — A last-ditch Trump administration effort to hunt for noncitizen voters ahead of November’s elections is requiring federal employees to misrepresent themselves on voter lookup tools in a way that likely violates state laws, according to a federal whistleblower's statement released Monday. The Department of Homeland Security probe known as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative” also asks employees to create federal law enforcement records about voters based on unreliable data, the account warns. That could potentially wrongly implicate U.S. citizens in official documentation that could spur further investigation. The anonymous, nearly 30-page disclosure was published Monday by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, the ranking member of a Senate committee overseeing federal elections. It features screenshots and transcripts of a DHS training for a group of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffers, whom it says were forced in late August to drop their other work, complete a less than two-hour training and begin running DHS-provided lists of individuals through state voter registration systems to find “unlawful voters.” The whistleblower contends that agents have been asked to review 40 individuals per day, giving them about 12 minutes to determine whether each person is a legal voter and create federal records of anyone who is not. Padilla and Schumer said Monday the initiative was an example of President Donald Trump attempting to interfere in elections and that the short timelines would impede officials from conducting proper investigations. They noted that the data DHS has on voters can be unreliable and differ from state records, making any federal findings based on that data potentially problematic. “We just got more proof of Trump’s vile schemes to rig our elections,” Schumer told reporters in a news conference. “The lengths Trump will go to cheat, lie and steal in this upcoming election are simply beyond the pale.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has been targeting noncitizen voting to allege it could be a source of significant fraud during the midterm elections, even as research shows voting by people who are not citizens is extremely rare. Trump has been pushing for the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to voters verified as U.S. citizens, and his Justice Department has sued to force the release of detailed voter data in 30 states and the District of Columbia, though it has not yet succeeded in those cases. The whistleblower report details an effort by the federal government to work around a lack of data from the states by directing Citizenship and Immigration Services employees to pose as individual voters to access their state voter records. Some states, such as Virginia, explicitly limit their voter lookup tools to individuals who attest under penalty of law that they are looking up their own records. In other states, like California, personally identifiable information such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number is needed to look up individual voter records. The whistleblower said that when officers raised concerns about liability for searching the tools against state guidance, agency leaders told them to proceed with the searches anyway. Schumer and Padilla on Sunday sent a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin requesting more information about the initiative and demanding that it be stopped. DHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But earlier this month, when an immigrant rights group sued the administration to block the agency from using federal databases that it alleged were being used to target naturalized citizens, a DHS spokesperson told The Associated Press it is “laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens.” “The department accessed publicly available data from states’ voter rolls and cross referenced them with known illegal aliens in our systems,” the spokesperson said at the time. “It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.” The New York Times first reported on the DHS initiative in early September. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

States and cities sue Trump administration over policy restricting green card benefits

A coalition of 22 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday over a new policy that would allow individual immigration officers to deny green cards based on use of public benefits. The new policy changes a long-established “public charge” rule, which dates back to the Immigration Act of 1882, established to ensure that newcomers to the country would be able to provide for themselves without relying on governmental benefits. During his first term, the Trump administration attempted to impose a similar policy that likewise widened the number of categories immigration officers could consider, including Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers. That policy was also met with legal challenges and subsequently reversed by Joe Biden’s administration. “Hardworking families should not be forced to go without the support they need because they fear asking for assistance will get them deported,” said New York attorney general Letitia James in a statement. “This rule preys on that fear and counts on families forfeiting the food assistance, health care coverage, and other public benefits to which they are legally entitled. My office fought this exact policy once before and won, and we are leading the nation to ensure the Trump administration cannot inflict this harm on families again.” The new change is more expansive than the previous attempt. This time, it does not specify which safety nets should be considered and allows immigration officers to consider government benefits that are applied for on behalf of family members, including children who are US citizens. Many immigrants without green cards are already ineligible for public benefits programs despite paying into them. However, US citizen children are legally eligible for such benefits, regardless of their parents’ status. Historically, however, immigration officers did not include the use of benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) or Medicaid in their assessment. The new policy would reverse that practice, decreasing the number of federal programs that are available to non-green card-holding immigrants. “Congress never intended for the public charge ground to be weaponized against immigrants and their family members who merely use supplemental or temporary amounts of public assistance to which they are lawfully entitled. Yet that is exactly what Defendants now seek to do through the final rule challenged here,” the coalition wrote in their filing. The states’ filing argues that the impact of the policy change could be disastrous, noting that states would lose billions from the federal government because of the reduced use of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip). They also said citizens who live with noncitizens might avoid signing up for benefits, which would have both financial and health impacts. The states’ suit was brought by New York, California, Illinois, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is leading a coalition of cities, including Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Clara county in California and King county in Washington, filing a similar lawsuit. “The new public charge rule seeks to push immigrant families away from the programs that have kept people fed and healthy for decades,” Mamdani said in a statement. “New Yorkers will be afraid to see a doctor or ask for help they are legally entitled to. That fear will not stop at the families that the federal government is targeting. Families who remain fully eligible for benefits will feel a chilling effect, and all New Yorkers will pay for it.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

USCIS Forms Update Notice

Good afternoon, We recently updated the following USCIS form(s): Form G-1055, Fee Schedule 09/09/2026 10:28 AM EDT Edition Date: 09/09/26. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page of Form G-1055, Fee Schedule. Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker 09/09/2026 09:01 AM EDT Edition Date: 09/09/26. Starting Nov. 9, 2026, we will accept only the 09/09/26 edition. Until then, you can also use the 02/27/26 edition. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions. For more information, please visit our Forms Updates page.

Revealed: attorneys rally to free children held in US immigration custody

An army of attorneys is rallying to free hundreds of children from immigration custody, where they have been stranded indefinitely by the Trump administration without their parents or loved ones, the Guardian can reveal. The effort is a counter strike to what critics see as unprecedented moves by federal officials to ride roughshod over children’s rights and increase deportations – while in the meantime corralling them in conditions that can allegedly lead to psychological harm. About 1,900 kids who arrived in the US unaccompanied by a parent or guardian were under the federal government’s control across the country as of the end of August. From babies to teenagers, children have spent an average of 183 days – roughly six months – in shelters or long-term foster care, according to the government’s own data, despite many of them having family members in the United States anxiously awaiting their release as their legal cases proceed through the immigration system. Now, more than 50 legal organizations, firms and law offices have mobilized to join a mission they are calling the Children’s Due Process Project, where lawyers working pro bono head to federal courts to argue case-by-case that these kids are being detained unlawfully. The immediate goal is to use highly effective habeas corpus petitions to force federal officials to justify their actions in keeping the children in their custody or let them go, the Guardian has exclusively learned. “This is the most immediate way to help the kids who are currently being harmed,” said Becky Wolozin, senior attorney at the California-based National Center for Youth Law. Her group is co-managing the project, which started quietly this summer and has built up over recent months. Other managing organizations include the Acacia Center for Justice in Washington DC, The Door, a New York-based comprehensive youth development organization, and the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Attorneys are deploying petitions for a writ of habeas corpus for each child concerned – the legal procedure that allows any person to argue in court that they are being detained or confined without a valid reason – which have rarely been used or needed for immigrant kids in the US who have a vetted, willing person to receive and care for them, known as a sponsor, until now. The aggressive move is needed, the advocates argue, to fight against what has become a crisis of seemingly interminable stays in facilities affiliated with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the agency tasked with ensuring the welfare of children who came to the US unaccompanied. At the same time, the administration defunded these kids’ existing attorneys last month and has scheduled accelerated immigration hearings where government lawyers are arguing for their abrupt removal from the US, before they can receive legal protections from other agencies. White silhouette of a child against a dark collage of a courtroom and judge’s gavel Inside the New York court where children face deportation without access to attorneys Read more “That’s the race that we’re in, is can we help children get to their families before they get chewed up and spit out by the child detention system?” Wolozin said. A spokesperson for the administration for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the parent agency of ORR, responded to a request for comment from the Guardian with a statement. “The standards that ORR currently follows closely mirror those of the US foster care system. Once a sponsor completes their application, ORR releases children as quickly, or faster, than the US foster system. ORR is not slow, we are just more careful, as we should be: children’s lives are at stake,” the statement said in part. US law says that unaccompanied immigrant children should “be promptly placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child”, which is typically with a family member already living in the US. But during Donald Trump’s second term, officials have devised new restrictions that make it harder – and in some states, effectively impossible – for children to go home to the sponsors waiting for them. They have also undone privacy protections for sponsors who are undocumented, allowing ORR to collaborate with immigration enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and have even had parents detained at appointments that are part of the sponsorship process. “ORR has increased safety vetting measures for individuals applying to take custody of one or more children who arrived at the border alone. ORR is taking these advanced measures to ensure the safety of unaccompanied minors following investigations revealing that criminal smuggling organizations play a role in every case related to the entry of Unaccompanied Alien Children into the US,” the government’s statement said. Unaccompanied children often rely on a sophisticated smuggling network hired to get them safely to the US from their home countries, though that has little bearing on their situation – beyond potential financial debts owed to the smugglers – once they arrive stateside. By the end of July, at least 65 kids with continuing immigration court proceedings had been held by ORR for over a year, according to data researchers at the New York-based immigration data insights platform bklg.org who shared details with the Guardian. “There’s just attempts from every single angle to harm the children that are in federal custody. And I think because they’re in federal custody, the government has more access to them,” said Beth Baltimore, interim managing director of the legal services center at The Door, implying that when children are in ORR facilities, the Trump administration is able to exert more control over their futures. She added: “It’s really devastating to see the cruelty that’s taking place everywhere. This is not something that has happened en masse for children during other administrations.” Often called shelters, experts describe ORR’s facilities as the equivalent of detention for children. “Children are not allowed to leave. They have no contact with people outside of the place where they live. And so they eat, sleep, go to school, do activities all within one sort of small campus. In some cases, it’s a single building. And that’s their whole life,” Wolozin said. Kids “are being held against their will”, explained Ryan Matlow, a clinical associate professor at the California-based Stanford Medicine at Stanford University, which “create[s] the conditions for trauma and a lasting post traumatic stress response”. Trusted adults at the large, congregate shelters are hard to find for the children, as even well-meaning staffers “answer to ORR – and DHS by extension”, Wolozin said, talking about the agency’s new policies of information sharing with immigration enforcement. She remembers kids telling her how the walls to their rooms wouldn’t reach the ceilings of some large shelters. “You’re essentially sleeping in a cubicle, and there was constant noise.” Meanwhile, in Texas and Florida, the facilities are unlicensed. One former ORR shelter in Brownsville, Texas, now closed, was infamously housed in a repurposed Walmart Supercenter. To free the kids stuck in these conditions, attorneys with the Children’s Due Process Project are filing habeas petitions – often when sponsors have already gone through government security vetting, but the child is kept in federal custody anyway. Habeas petitions have become an increasingly regular practice for adults and families stuck in immigration custody in recent months, with widespread success in the federal district courts, which are part of the independent judiciary branch while immigration courts come under the Department of Justice. Attorneys are starting to see some fresh success with kids now, too. “Judges are basically asking, like, ‘What are you doing? This child should be with their family,’” Wolozin said. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.