Tag Archives: deportation

Reason: How DHS Facial Recognition Tech Spread to ICE Enforcement

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More government agencies are using facial recognition for enforcement than ever before.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a smartphone app to identify people based on an image of their fingerprints or face, 404 Media reported Thursday, based on a review of internal ICE emails. The expanding and repurposing of this sophisticated technology, ordinarily used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when people are entering or exiting the country, is now being used on people living in the United States to meet mass deportation and arrest quotas imposed by President Donald Trump.

The app, Mobile Fortify, enables users to verify an unknown person’s identity in the field through contactless fingerprints and facial images on ICE-issued phones, according to an email sent to all ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel and obtained by 404. According to the emails, Mobile Fortify can identify a person by comparing a photo of their face across two databases—Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Traveler Verification Service database of people’s photos taken when entering the United States, and Seizure and Apprehension Workflow, described by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as an “intelligence aggregator” that brings together information related to searches and seizures. For fingerprint matches, the app uses DHS’s centralized Automated Biometric Identification System, which “holds more than 320 million unique identities and processes more than 400,000 biometric transactions per day,” according to the agency.

A report released by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in September 2024 attempted to call attention to concerns about accuracy, oversight, transparency, discrimination, and access to justice as facial recognition tools have quickly proliferated. Although facial recognition technology is now available to the public through commercially available tools, policies governing the federal government’s use of the technology have lagged behind real-world applications. Currently, there are no comprehensive laws regulating the federal government’s use of facial recognition technology and no constitutional provisions governing its use.

“Face recognition technology is notoriously unreliable, frequently generating false matches and resulting in a number of known wrongful arrests across the country. Immigration agents relying on this technology to try to identify people on the street is a recipe for disaster,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media. “Congress has never authorized DHS to use face recognition technology in this way, and the agency should shut this dangerous experiment down.“

How DHS facial recognition tech spread to ICE enforcement
Facial recognition technology, originally developed for border crossings, has been expanded to help drive mass deportation efforts.

https://reason.com/2025/06/27/how-dhs-facial-recognition-tech-spread-to-ice-enforcement

Newsweek: Green card-holder with 2 US citizen kids held by ICE for over two months

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Claudio Cortez-Herrera, a green card holder from Mexico who has lived in the U.S. for more than two decades and has two U.S. citizen children, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials for over two months.

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Cortez-Herrera, 34, has been in the U.S. for over two decades, his fiancee Leticia Ortiz Lopez wrote in an online fundraiser seeking financial assistance for legal fees and child support. He is the father of their two U.S. citizen children, a 2-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son with autism.

She told local outlet 13 On Your Side that he was on his way to work and “putting in the house payment across the street at the drop box post office, when he got surrounded by 10 ICE agents, and he was taken.”

ICE confirmed in a Facebook post that Cortez-Herrera was arrested by Detroit-based immigration officials on April 23. Newsweek confirmed in the ICE detainee database that he is still in custody, held at the Calhoun County Correctional Center in Battle Creek, Michigan.

In the Facebook post, ICE noted Cortez-Herrera’s previous criminal record, writing, “Convicted in New Castle, Del [Delaware],” noting that his conviction was for “Planning first-degree arson & first-degree reckless endangering.”

Newsweek has been unable to independently verify the conviction.

His wife said in the GoFundMe: “Over 20 years ago, as a teen, he made a mistake. He took responsibility and left that life behind.”

Green card-holder with 2 US citizen kids held by ICE for over two months
Claudio Cortez-Herrera, who has been in the U.S. for decades but served seven months on a racketeering charge as a teen, has been detained by ICE.

https://www.newsweek.com/green-card-holder-2-us-citizen-kids-held-ice-over-two-months-2091660

LA Times: ICE seizes 6-year-old with cancer outside L.A. court. His mom is fighting for his release

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  • A Honduran woman filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility.
  • She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras as her 6-year-old son battles acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

A Central American asylum applicant arrested outside an L.A. immigration court is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security and the Trump administration for her immediate release and that of her two children, including her 6-year-old son stricken with cancer.

The Honduran woman, not named in court documents, filed a petition for writs of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility. She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras, as her children cry and pray nightly to be released from a Texas holding facility, according to court documents.

She and her two children, including a 9-year-old daughter, are facing two removal proceedings concurrently: a previous removal proceeding involving their asylum request and this recent expedited removal process.

The woman claims the government violated many of their rights, including the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.

Her attorneys noted that DHS determined she was not a flight risk when she was paroled and that her detention was unjustified.

The woman’s lawyers also argued that she was not given an opportunity to contest her family’s detention in front of a neutral adjudicator, and that the family’s 4th Amendment right to not be unlawfully arrested was violated.

ICE seizes 6-year-old with cancer outside L.A. court. His mom is fighting for his release
A Honduran woman is fighting to prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras as her 6-year-old son battles acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-26/mother-of-6-year-old-l-a-boy-battling-leukemia-files-lawsuit-to-stop-immediate-deportation

CNN: Trump is creating new universes of people to deport

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The full scope of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan – which has been evident in theory – is only just starting to come together in practice, and its scale has come as a surprise to many Americans.

This week, the Supreme Court blessed, for now, the administration’s effort to deport people from countries such as Cuba and Venezuela to places other than their homeland, including nations halfway around the world in Africa.

In Florida, construction began on a migrant detention center intended to be a sort of Alcatraz in the Everglades.

And CNN reported exclusively that the administration will soon make a large universe of people who had been working legally after seeking asylum eligible for deportation.

I went to the author of that report, CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, and asked her to explain what we know and what we’re learning about how the different stories are coming together.

One thing that stuck out to me is how the totality of the administration’s actions is turning people who had been working legally in the US into undocumented immigrants now facing deportation.

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The plans that the administration has been working on are targeting people who came into the US unlawfully and then applied for asylum while in the country.

The plan here is to dismiss those asylum claims, which could affect potentially hundreds of thousands of people and then make them immediately deportable.

It also puts the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency responsible for managing federal immigration benefits, at the center of the president’s deportation campaign, because not only are they the ones that manage these benefits, but they have also been delegated the authority by the Department of Homeland Security to place these individuals in fast-track deportation proceedings and to take actions to enforce immigration laws.

This is a shift that is prompting a lot of concern. As one advocate with the ACLU put it – and I’ll just quote her – “They’re turning the agency that we think of as providing immigration benefits as an enforcement arm for ICE.”

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You’re right to say that coming into this administration, Trump officials repeatedly said their plans were to target people with criminal records.

That is a hard thing to do. It requires a lot of legwork, and their numbers in terms of arrests were relatively low compared to where they wanted to be.

The White House wants to meet at least 3,000 arrests a day, and you just cannot do that if you are only going after people with criminal records.

Analysis: Trump is creating a new universe of people to deport | CNN Politics
The puzzle pieces are starting to come together for Trump’s master deportation plan

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/26/politics/immigration-deportations-trump-asylum-seekers

Western Journal: Trump Admin Preparing Move That Would Allow for Mass Deportation of Hundreds of Thousands of Illegal Aliens: Report

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Illegal immigrants who sought to stave off deportation by filing asylum claims may find themselves in line for deportation according to a new report.

According to CNN, federal officials are considering a plan in which they would dismiss asylum claims for illegal immigrants, which would make them what CNN called “immediately deportable.”

CNN cited sources it did not name for the report.

The report said that illegal immigrants whose asylum claims are terminated would be subject to expedited removal.

Closing the cases of illegal immigrants who sought asylum with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will impact thousands of illegal immigrants, which the CNN report estimating there were about 250,000 cases in 2023 alone, during the height of the Biden-era spike in illegal immigrants entering the U.S.

The report said about 1.45 million people have asylum applications pending.

That’s almost 1.5 million lives (not counting friends and family) that can be turned inside out and upside down. Homan & Noem must be getting really excited, already savoring the fear and anxiety they will inflict.

Trump Admin Preparing Move That Would Allow for Mass Deportation of Hundreds of Thousands of Illegal Aliens: Report
A new report says the Trump administraiotn may be looking at another option to deport illegal immigrants across America.
Trump Admin Preparing Move That Would Allow for Mass Deportation of Hundreds of Thousands of Illegal Aliens: Report

Raw Story: DOJ slams judge’s ‘clear error’ and fights release in wrongful deportation case

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President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice on Tuesday opposed the release of a migrant it already acknowledged was wrongly deported to El Salvador, and accused a magistrate judge of committing a “clear error.”

In March, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to the country despite a 2019 court order barring his removal due to fear of persecution. He was imprisoned without trial in a notorious maximum security prison and was subsequently criticized as an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court delivered a confusing order that the government must “facilitate” his return.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration argued that the magistrate judgeerred by rejecting established precedent. The government said she misinterpreted the word “involves” regarding a youth when she wrongly denied a detention hearing.

Picking nits over nothing! Our tax dollars at waste!

DOJ slams judge’s ‘clear error’ and fights release in wrongful deportation case

https://www.rawstory.com/kilmar-abrego-garcia-2672427174

AsAmNews: Army veteran and purple heart recipient deported

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Even after earning the Purple Heart for his bravery and calling the United States his home since the age of 7, on Monday Sae Joon Park self-deported due to immigration issues.

He served in Panama during the Noriega war in 1989.

“I got shot in the spine with an AK-47, M16, in my left lower back. In my mind, I’m going, ‘Oh my god, I’m shot in the back. I can’t feel my legs. I must be paralyzed,’” he recalled to Hawaii News Now.

Park faced post-traumatic stress disorder after being honorably discharged. He turned to marijuana as a way of dealing with stress, but that led him to develop an addiction to cocaine.

He ended up serving two and a half years in prison in 2009. These charges also led to the revocation of his green card and detainment by ICE.

He fought the deportation in court and was allowed to stay in the country due to being a Purple Heart veteran. However, recently, he was told he must leave the country willingly or he will be deported forcibly.

“ I can’t believe that this is happening in America,” Park told NPR in an interview prior to his departure. “That blows me away, like a country that I fought for.”

Park leaves behind a wife, two children and an 85-year-old mother.

Army veteran and purple heart recipient deported – AsAmNews
Even after earning the Purple Heart for his bravery and calling the United States his home since the age of 7, on Monday Sae Joon Park self-deported due to immigration […]

https://asamnews.com/2025/06/24/sae-joon-park-drug-addiction-and-use-self-deportation-under-threat

Newsweek: Trump admin ordered to return man deported to El Salvador

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President Donald Trump‘s administration has been ordered to return a Salvadoran man who was deported minutes after a federal appeals court blocked his removal.

Jordin Melgar-Salmeron was deported to El Salvador on May 7 despite an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, New York, blocking it.

On Tuesday, the appeals court ordered the administration to “facilitate the return” of Melgar-Salmeron as soon as possible to “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

It also directed the government to return to court within one week to provide details on the current location of Melgar-Salmeron and how it planned to return him to the United States.

Trump admin ordered to return man deported to El Salvador
The Trump administration was ordered to return a Salvadoran man deported minutes after a federal appeals court blocked his removal.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-ordered-return-man-deported-el-salvador-2090058

Newsweek: Amazon worker fears deportation after humanitarian parole revoked

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An Amazon employee in Indiana fears she will be deported to a war-torn country after her humanitarian parole was revoked by the Trump administration.

Now, her husband believes that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will come for her.

Daphnee S. Poteau, 33, originally from Haiti, had been working at an Amazon customer returns center in Speedway since entering the United States on July 4, 2023, under the Biden-era CHVN humanitarian parole program. On June 14, she was sent home mid-way through her shift after she lost her right to work.

The CHNV parole program was launched in early 2023 by the Biden administration to provide a lawful pathway for individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the U.S. temporarily under humanitarian parole. Participants with U.S.-based sponsors could live and work in the country for up to two years.

Though Poteau has not been arrested or detained by immigration authorities, Poteau’s husband, Kristopher D. Vincent, 45, an Amazon associate and U.S. citizen, says the family is feeling “frustrated and scared.”

“I am afraid they will come looking for her eventually. We’ve seen it in the news a lot lately. People in black masks snatching—or attempting to snatch—migrants up, even at immigration hearings,” Vincent told Newsweek. “When judges, and even U.S. representatives, are facing arrests and indictments, how are the little people like us supposed to feel? Her only ‘crime’ seems to be coming from the ‘wrong’ country.”

Amazon worker fears deportation after humanitarian parole revoked
Now, her husband believes that ICE agents will come for her.

https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-worker-deportation-humanitarian-parole-revoked-2089333

Newsweek: ICE responds after beloved bagel house boss’ arrest sparks protests

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A manager of a New York bagel house was detained by federal immigration agents earlier this month, sparking outrage across the community.

Fernando Mejia, 41, who runs Port Washington’s Schmear Bagel & Cafe, was apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents outside the business on June 12, the Long Island Press reported.

When contacted for comment by Newsweek, a spokesperson for ICE said: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement encountered Fernando Alberto Mejia-Flores, a Salvadorian national, during a daily routine law enforcement action in the vicinity of Port Washington, New York, June 12. Mejia-Flores was identified as a fugitive alien with a Final Order of Removal. ICE arrested him and transported him to an ICE processing facility in Central Islip, New York.”

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The American Immigration Council estimates that the president’s mass deportation policy could slap a one-time cost of $315 billion on the country.

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“Fernando was also recently hospitalized for medical issues, which make his sudden detention all the more dangerous to his well-being,” a post on GoFundMe reads. “His sudden detention has also left his family, including his 14-year-old daughter, emotionally devastated and facing immediate legal battles.”

ICE responds after beloved bagel house boss’ arrest sparks protests
Fernando Mejia who runs Port Washington’s Schmear Bagel & Cafe, was apprehended by ICE agents outside the business earlier this month.

https://www.newsweek.com/fernando-mejia-bagel-house-ice-immigration-2089381