A coalition of immigrants and advocates has filed a class-action lawsuit in D.C. to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from arresting migrants at immigration court hearings. They argued these arrests, which have increased significantly in 2025, instill fear in asylum seekers and violate U.S. immigration law and the Fifth Amendment. Their complaint cites surprise arrests leading to family separations and heightened fear of persecution.
Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said, “The Trump administration is weaponizing immigration courts and chilling participation in the legal process.”
Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative Interim CEO Priyanka Gandhi-Abriano said, “The arrests are a deliberate attempt to intimidate people.”
ICE often arrests individuals after deportation cases have been dismissed, enabling expedited deportations. Advocates alleged that the administration has used courts to intimidate participants in legal processes.
Gandhi-Abriano said, “Our friends, neighbors, and families are told to ‘do it the right way’ — to follow the legal process. They’re doing just that — showing up to court, complying with the law. Despite this, they’re being arrested and detained.”
National Immigrant Justice Center Director of Litigation Keren Zwick said, “We are witnessing an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. immigration court system by the Trump administration.”
Immigration officials have defended the actions as lawful, claiming those with credible fear have still been able to pursue their cases and that targeting court attendees has improved enforcement. Critics warned that the practices risk undermining due process rights.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said, “We aren’t some medieval kingdom; there are no legal sanctuaries where you can hide and avoid the consequences for breaking the law.” She added, “The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense. It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be. It is also safer for our officers and the community.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lawsuit-targets-ice-arrests-at-court-hearings/ar-AA1KEhLx
The worst crimes of Donald Trump and dangers to America from the unstable, monomaniacal, lying outlaw in the White House have yet to come. He is not satisfied with tearing apart our country’s social safety net for tens of millions of Americans (e.g., Medicaid and food program cuts); wrecking our scientific/medical systems, including warning people about pandemics. He is, by wrecking FEMA et al, failing to address the impact of mega-storms, wildfires, and droughts; and allowing cybersecurity threats to increase while giving harm-producing big corporations immunities from the law, more subsidies, and more tax escapes. Recall how he always adds to his attacks on powerless people that “This is just the beginning.”
He just took the next step in his march to madness and mayhem by announcing more concentration camps holding immigrants, arrested without due process, for deportation to foreign countries that want U.S. taxpayer cash for each deportee.
Recent immigrants are crucial to millions of small and large businesses. Consider who harvests our crops, cares for our children and the elderly, cleans up after us, and works the food processing plants and construction sites. Already, businesses are reducing or closing their enterprises – a political peril for Dangerous Donald.
If all immigrants to the U.S. from the last ten years, documented and undocumented, went on strike, our country would almost shut down. Yet Trump, who hired 500 undocumented workers for just one of his construction sites in New York, and had similar laborers at his New Jersey golf course, promises deportations of millions more.
Always bear in mind the self-defined characteristics of corporatist Trump’s feverish, hateful, outlaw mind: (1) He has declared he “can do whatever he wants as President,” proving his serial violations of law and illegal dictates every day; (2) He always doubles down when indicted, convicted, caught, or exposed, falsely accusing his accusers of the exact transgressions they are reliably charging him with; (3) He brags about lashing out at criticism with foul defamatory invectives; (4) He never admits his disastrous mistake; (5) He boasts that he knows more than leading experts in a dozen major areas of knowledge (see, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All”); and (6) He asserts that every action, policy, or program he launches is a spectacular success – the facts to the contrary are dismissed.He is gravely delusional, replaces realities with fantasies, breaks promises that are made to defer any reckoning or accountability, and, like an imaginary King, finds no problem with saying “I rule America and the world.”
His ego defines his reactions, which is why every foreign leader is advised to flatter him. Nobody flatters better than the cunning genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu, who at his last regal White House dinner, held up his nomination of convicted felon, woman abuser, Trump for the Nobel Prize. Netanyahu’s preening comes from a politician whose regime has dossiers on Trump regarding his past personal and business behavior. This helps explain why Trump is letting the Israeli government do whatever it wants in its Gaza Holocaust, the West Bank, and beyond with our tax dollars, family-killing weaponry, and political/diplomatic cover.
The approaching greater dangers from Trump will come when he pushes his lawless, dictatorial envelope so far, so furiously, so outrageously, that it turns his GOP valets in Congress and the GOP-dominated U.S. Supreme Court against him. Add plunging polls, a stagflation economy, and impeachment, and removal from office would become a political necessity for the GOP in 2026 and beyond. In 1974, the far lesser Watergate transgressions by President Richard Nixon resulted in Republican Senators’ demanding Tricky Dick’s resignation from office.
Further provocations are not far-fetched. Firing Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell, sinking the dollar, and angering the fearful, but very powerful bankers are all on the horizon. Will the sex-trafficking charges involving Jeffrey Epstein and vile abuses of young girls finally be too much for his evangelical base, as well as for many MAGA voters? This issue is already starting to fissure his MAGA base and the GOP iron curtain in Congress. Subpoenas have just been issued to the Justice Department by the GOP Chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky – a close friend of Senator Mitch McConnell.
There is always SERENDIPITY. Trump, the mercurial egomaniac, offers old and new transgressions to stoke the calls for his impeachment. Does anyone believe that Trump would not start a military conflict, subjecting U.S. soldiers to harm, to distract attention from heavy media coverage of unravelling corruption investigations? Draft-dodging Donald has Pete Hegseth, his knee-jerk Secretary of Defense, waiting to do his lethal bidding, despite possible opposition from career military.
If Trump were to be impeached and removed from office, would he try to stay in office? Here is where a real constitutional explosion can occur. He would have to be escorted from the White House by U.S. Marshals who are under the direction of toady Attorney General Pam Bondi. The Supreme Court has held that the Constitution grants “the sole Power” to try impeachments in the Senate and nowhere else. Thus, the courts would provide no remedy to a lawless president wanting to stay in power.
Then what? The country falls into extreme turmoil. The Defense Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security are in the Trump Dump. Tyrant Trump can declare a major national emergency, invoke the Insurrection Act, and hurl these armed forces and police state muscle against a defenseless Congress and populace. (Recall the January 6, 2021, assault on Congress.) The abyss would have been breached.
With our society in a catastrophic convulsion, the economy collapsing, what would be the next steps? Like the Pentagon that anticipates worst-case domestic scenarios on possible violent “blowbacks” against U.S. military actions abroad, Americans should start thinking about the unthinkable. Such foreshadowings may make us far more determined NOW to thwart, stop, and repeal the fascist dictatorship which Der Führer Donald Trump is rooting ever more deeply every day. Little restraint on lawless Trump from the Congress and the Supreme Court, and only feeble, cowardly responses by the flailing Democratic Party (and the Bar Associations for that matter) thus far, make for the specter of violent anarchy and terror.
Trump has fatalistic traits. Armageddon shapes his ultimate worldview. Ponder that for a dictator with his finger on more than the nuclear trigger.
Again, Aristotle got it right over 2300 years ago, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
https://www.alternet.org/trump-s-worst-crimes-and-destructions-haven-t-even-happened-yet
Glass House Brands released its first public comment Monday since the California company faced a violent raid from federal authorities last month that left one man dead and hundreds arrested.
On July 10, federal agents searched two of the company’s Southern California cultivation facilities — one in Ventura County and one in Santa Barbara County — in an operation that quickly descended into chaos. Officers fired tear gas inside the facilities and searched for immigrants as hundreds of protesters gathered outside to protest the Donald Trump administration’s action. One worker fell from a green house and later died, marking the first known death in Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Following the raid, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had arrested at least 361 people suspected of being in the country illegally, as well as 14 “migrant children,” although the agency hasn’t shared any court documentation behind those figures.
Glass House, one of California’s largest legal cannabis companies, had not issued any public comment in the weeks following the raid other than a post to X on July 11 confirming it was being raided.
On Monday, the company broke its silence with a news release that outlined details of the operation, including that nine company employees were detained or arrested. The company said any other people arrested would have been employed by farm labor companies that provide employees for the farm, which is a common practice at agricultural facilities.
Glass House said that it has not been able to determine the identities of the alleged minors but said that if minors were at the facility “none of them were Glass House employees.”
There has been widespread fear in the cannabis industry that federal agents could have been conducting a much broader operation investigating the cultivation of marijuana itself, which is still federally illegal and could lead to federal criminal charges against the company and its staff. Video apparently taken during the raid and posted to social media showed a federal agent saying, “This is not an immigration raid.”
Monday’s news release countered that narrative, saying the raid was led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and that the search warrant was authorized specifically for “evidence of possible immigration violations.” Glass House said that “very few documents were seized pursuant to the search warrant.”
The company did not say if its farming operations have been delayed or stalled, which could strike an economic blow to the public company during the summer harvest season, but did say it has since improved its labor practices to comply with federal immigration law, increased age controls for anyone entering its farms, and signed a labor peace agreement with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The company had previously been accused of working with a “fake union” that never attempted to unionize or represent any employees at the company.
https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/calif-cannabis-farm-breaks-silence-ice-raid-20800994.php
Some law enforcement officers are continuing to charge people under a Florida law that bans people living in the U.S. illegally from entering the state, even though a federal judge has halted enforcement of the law while it’s challenged in court.
Two more people were arrested and charged under the law in July, according to a report Florida’s attorney general is required to file as punishment for defying the judge’s ruling.
Both men were arrested by a sheriff’s officer in Sarasota County, located on the state’s southwest coast. The charges came months after U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami first halted enforcement of the state statute, which makes it a misdemeanor for people who are in the U.S. without legal permission to enter Florida by eluding immigration officials.
As punishment for flouting her order and being found in civil contempt, the judge required Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier to file bimonthly reports about whether any arrests, detentions or law enforcement actions have been made under the law.
In separate incidents on July 3 and July 28, the men were each charged with driving without a valid license and offenses related to driving under the influence of alcohol. The State Attorney’s Office for the 12th Judicial Circuit dismissed the illegal entry charges against them, and requested that the sheriff’s office advice the arresting officer of the court’s order halting enforcement of the law, according to the status report.
A spokesperson for Uthmeier did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a separate court filing, immigrants’ rights advocates who filed the lawsuit questioned whether state officials are using the blocked law to justify holding detainees at an isolated immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Attorneys for the advocates provided the court an email apparently sent by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee to the offices of members of Congress, stating that Florida officials are relying on legal authority granted by the blocked law.
In a separate court filing, immigrants’ rights advocates who filed the lawsuit questioned whether state officials are using the blocked law to justify holding detainees at an isolated immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Attorneys for the advocates provided the court an email apparently sent by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee to the offices of members of Congress, stating that Florida officials are relying on legal authority granted by the blocked law.
Charles Hicks was at the gym when his husband called from the car to say he was being followed, Hicks recalled. His husband pulled over by their home, and Hicks watched on FaceTime as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent smashed his husband’s window.
He rushed to his Meridian apartment, but by then his husband was gone. Hicks, a U.S. citizen, already had started the process to get his husband legal status, he said. He and his husband had talked about the possibility of immigration enforcement, but Hicks said it still didn’t make him ready.
The Statesman is not naming the husband because Hicks said his husband fears repercussions for his case.
“I was not really prepared to watch that or to hear that,” Hicks said by phone. ICE agents screamed and yelled at his husband in the car, he said. “The No. 1 feeling that I had was just a pit in my stomach.”
Being in the United States without authorization is enough grounds to start the deportation process, and some immigrants who are here legally can also be removed. But under President Donald Trump, ICE agents in Idaho have been changing their tactics and using some strategies more often, according to local immigration lawyers. That includes smashing car windows, like with Hicks’ husband.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment sent via its official media email.
ICE agents also have conducted more arrests at ICE check-ins, which are routine meetings for agents to keep tabs on people going through the immigration process. Agents have also focused more on workplace enforcement, lawyers said. ICE isn’t necessarily going out to farms, but agents have been going to businesses to look for people employing undocumented immigrants, according to Neal Dougherty, a Nampa lawyer and partner at Ramirez-Smith Law.
The Owyhee County Sheriff’s Office and the Idaho State Police also have signed cooperation agreements with ICE, known as 287(g) agreements.
Overall, immigration arrests have increased over 900% in Idaho since Trump took office, according to The New York Times.
There aren’t increases in ICE’s resources or agents, said J.J. Despain, managing attorney for Wilner & O’Reilly’s Boise office, but ICE has lowered the bar on who it wants to deport and changed their strategies.
“Some of those are happening by surprise,” Despain told the Statesman.
The criminal justice system
In early April, a man failed to show up for his pretrial conference in Canyon County, perplexing his lawyer.
The lawyer, with the Idaho Public Defender’s Office, had been working with his client, who was charged in December 2024 with driving with a suspended or revoked driver’s license.
“I don’t know why he isn’t here today,” the lawyer told the judge in court audio obtained via a records request.
The next day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a picture of the man being detained in Nampa by federal officers.
When ICE picks up people mid-case, they can face default judgments and parole or probation violations for failing to appear in court. When or if individuals ever return to the United States, there can already be a warrant out for an immigrant’s arrest, said Dougherty.
ICE picked up people while their Idaho criminal cases were ongoing before the new administration took office. But it’s happening more often now, Dougherty and Despain said, with potential consequences for the immigrants and any victims.
These aren’t all minor cases like driving with a suspended license. In one instance, a 27-year-old man from Mexico was arrested in Pocatello for child sexual abuse, child enticement and kidnapping. ICE posted a picture of him the day before his preliminary hearing, at which he failed to appear. He has since been deported, ICE spokesperson Alethea Smock said in an email. The case is listed as inactive and pending after the state asked to keep the case open.
Wood River Valley lawyer Justin McCarthy said immigrants in Idaho’s criminal justice system should finish their sentences in the Gem State.
“They should be held accountable here. … You don’t get to skate on the sentence,” McCarthy said. “What about victims? What about the victims’ families? … That person could come back, and they often do.”
An immigrant from El Salvador
Hicks had been with his husband for about five years by the time he was detained by ICE in late June. The couple married in 2023, according to a petition filed by his husband’s lawyers.
Hicks’s husband is originally from San Salvador, the capital of the Central American country of El Salvador. He came to the United States in 2018 to support his family and has worked in construction, Hicks said. His husband sends money to his mother, sisters and nephews back home, Hicks said. He hasn’t been able to see his family in years.
In 2021, his husband pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and received a withheld judgment. He was required to undergo alcohol education and was placed on unsupervised probation, according to court records. On June 5 of this year, he was found guilty of driving while using a cellphone, according to online court records.
After his arrest, the husband was sent to Elmore County first. Now he is detained in the Nevada Southern Detention Center west of Las Vegas, according to an online ICE detainee locator tool.
Hicks can’t go visit his husband in detention. The couple can conduct phone and video calls through the jail, Hicks said.
Lawyers for Hicks’ husband filed a petition in federal court to get him out of detention, arguing among other things that ICE agents didn’t show a warrant when they broke into his car and that an immigration judge was unfairly keeping him detained.
Hicks filed a petition earlier in 2025 for his husband to get residency, he said. But it will take four to six years, Hicks said.
“You should enter (the U.S.) with permission,” Hicks said. “But also, the whole process is just broken. It shouldn’t take someone five or six years to possibly get residency when they’re married to a U.S. citizen.”
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article311591857.html
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has criticized President Trump’s aggressive ICE raids, arguing they harm the city’s economy by spreading fear among immigrants. She notes significant business losses in Latino neighborhoods like Boyle Heights. Bass condemned the use of National Guard and Marines to quell protests, calling it excessive.
Earlier this month, a federal court upheld a restraining order against indiscriminate ICE arrests in Southern California. Bass joined a lawsuit to stop the raids, highlighting their impact on families, while adopting a bolder leadership approach amid recovery from January 2025 wildfires and her 2026 reelection campaign.
…
Bass said, “Let me just say that, because we are a city of immigrants, we have entire sectors of our economy that are dependent on immigrant labor. We have to get the fire areas rebuilt. We’re not going to get our city rebuilt without immigrant labor.”
Bass added, “And it’s not just the deportations, it’s the fear that sets in when raids occur, when people are snatched off the street. And I know you are aware that even people who are here legally, even people who are U.S. citizens, have been detained.”
Bass stated that “what I think we need is comprehensive immigration reform. I served in Congress for 12 years.” She stressed the importance of immigrant labor in post-crisis recovery and noted that ICE raid fears impact both undocumented residents and U.S. citizens.
,,,,
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/court-upholds-restraining-order-in-blow-to-ice/ss-AA1Khr9r
A Los Angeles doctor has told how she watched on FaceTime as her husband, a Tunisian musician with a pending green card application, was arrested by federal immigration agents on what she called “probably the worst day of my life.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pulled over Rami Othmane while he was driving to a grocery store in Pasadena on July 13, the Associated Press (AP) reported, before he pulled out paperwork he was carrying.
His wife, Dr. Wafaa Alrashid, who is a U.S. citizen and chief medical officer at Huntington Hospital, told the AP she watched events unfold over the video call, “They didn’t care, they said, ‘Please step out of the car,” she recalled.
Confirming the arrest, Department of Homeland Secuity’s (DHS) assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek via email on Monday that Othmane’s “B-2 tourist visa expired more than nine years ago. He will remain in custody at ICE’s Eloy Detention Center pending his removal proceedings.”
Alrashid said her husband has since been subjected to “inhumane treatment.” The DHS told California news station KABC in a statement that detainees recieve “proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.”
Newsweek contacted the family via GoFundMe for comment on Monday.
Why It Matters
The administration is pushing forward with plans to carry out widespread deportations as part of President Donald Trump‘s immigration crackdown.
In addition to people living in the country without legal status, immigrants with valid documentation, including green cards and visas, have been detained. Newsweek has documented dozens of cases involving green card holders and applicants who were swept up in the ICE raids.
What To Know
Alrashid told the AP her husband has lived in the U.S. since 2015, and though he overstayed his initial visa, a deportation order against him was dismissed in 2020. They married in March 2025 and Othmane promptly filed for his green card, Alrashid said.
On learning her husband had been stopped, Alrashid got into her car and tracked his location on her phone, the AP reported. She reached the scene just in time to catch a glimpse of the outline of his head through the back window of a vehicle as it drove away, the agency said.
“Agents blocked his car, did not show a warrant and did not identify themselves,” Othmane’s family said in a GoFundMe set up to raise financial support.
The family said Othmane suffers from chronic pain and has an untreated tumor.
Othmane remains in federal custody at an immigration detention facility in Arizona.
“When they took him, he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and flip-flops,” Alrashid told a rally of fellow musicians, immigration advocates and activists outside the facility more than a week after his arrest.
“So he was freezing. Also, there are no beds, no pillows, no blankets, no soap, No toothbrushes and toothpaste. And when you’re in a room with people, bathrooms open, there’s no door. So it’s very dehumanizing, it’s undignifying, the food is not great either.”
What People Are Saying
Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek in an emailed statement on Monday: “Rami Jilani Othmane, an illegal alien from Tunisia, was arrested by CBP on July 13. His B-2 tourist visa expired more than nine years ago. He will remain in custody at ICE’s Eloy Detention Center pending his removal proceedings.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to restoring integrity to the visa program and ensuring it is not abused to allow aliens a permanent one-way ticket to remain in the U.S.
“The fact of the matter is those who are in our country illegally have a choice—they can leave the country voluntarily or be arrested and deported. The United States taxpayer is generously offering free flights and a $1,000 to illegal aliens who self-deport using the CBP Home app. If they leave now, they preserve the potential opportunity to come back the legal, right way. The choice is theirs.”
Dr. Wafaa Alrashid wrote in a post on GoFundMe: “This is not just an immigration issue—this is a human rights crisis happening in downtown Los Angeles. My husband has been subjected to 12 days of inhumane treatment in a federal building. He is not a criminal. He is a kind, peaceful man with an open immigration petition. He should be with his family, not sleeping on a concrete floor without medical care.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to KABC: “Any allegations that detainees are not receiving medical care or conditions are “inhumane” are FALSE. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.”
What Happens Next
Othmane will remain in ICE custody, pending further removal proceedings.
https://www.newsweek.com/green-card-applicant-arrested-ice-grocery-store-california-2108413
From her room on the third floor of the Sonesta Chicago O’Hare Airport Rosemont hotel, Valentina Galvis could see flight crews and travelers coming and going. Families enjoyed summer dining on the outdoor patio. Friends snapped selfies commemorating their stays. Children fidgeted as they waited for shuttles to deliver them to the nearby airport.
But for Galvis and her seven-month-old son, the hotel was not a vacation — it was a jail. The phone had been removed from the room, and Galvis had no way to contact the outside world. Private guards contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stood watch at all times. She had no idea when she and her son Naythan, who is a U.S. citizen, would ever get to leave.
Galvis and her son were detained at the Sonesta for five days in early June after they were apprehended at the Chicago Immigration Court by federal agents.
“I was sad, confused, and often terrified,” Galvis said. “I wanted to call my husband, my attorney, or anyone at all to let them know where I was.”
In screenshots taken by family members and reviewed by Injustice Watch and The Intercept, Galvis appeared on the ICE locator to be held over 700 miles away in Washington, D.C.
Galvis’s detention at the airport hotel came as federal immigration authorities have rounded up more than 100,000 immigrants nationwide in an effort to meet arrest targets set out by the Trump administration. The spike in immigration arrests has overwhelmed detention centers around the country: Immigrants have been packed into overcrowded holding cells, forced to sleep on floors, and subjected to “unlivable” conditions at a hastily built detention camp in the Florida Everglades.
Though a hotel may seem preferable to these conditions, advocates said Galvis’s detention raises concerns about what types of facilities are being turned into de facto detention centers and how many people are quietly held in Illinois.
Xanat Sobrevilla, who works with Organized Communities Against Deportations, says it’s not the first time she’s heard of an Illinois mother of an infant baby appearing to be in Washington, D.C. — which has no detention center.
“We know we can’t trust the ICE detainee locator,” she said. “People get lost in this system.”
Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., called the false location listing “chilling” and likened the secretive hotel detention to a “kidnapping.”
Illinois and Chicago have some of the nation’s strongest laws aimed at protecting immigrants like Galvis by prohibiting state and local agencies from cooperating with ICE. But her and Naythan’s detention at the Sonesta shows the limits of the state’s efforts to block ICE detention. The federal government can still use commercial facilities like hotel rooms to hold individuals and families in its custody.
“Nothing that the states or local governments can do will stop ICE from carrying out its operations,” said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has backed legislation that defends immigrants in the state, declined to comment.
Ramirez said private companies are violating the spirit of sanctuary legislation — and she called for a state investigation into what happened with Galvis.
“This requires the [Illinois] attorney general to conduct an investigation and to consider what legal action must be taken in the state of Illinois” against the security company that detained Galvis and Naythan as well as the hotel they were confined in, Ramirez said.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement to Injustice Watch, Sonesta, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, asserted it “has no knowledge of any illegal detentions at any hotels in the Sonesta portfolio.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment.
ICE Detention by Another Name
Galvis doesn’t remember the name of the company the civilian guards said they worked for. But she recognized a photo of JoAnna Granado, an employee for MVM Inc., a longtime ICE contractor with active contracts to transport children and families and a track record of confining unaccompanied migrant children in office buildings as well as in hotels. Granado confirmed to Injustice Watch and The Intercept that she transported Galvis and her son from the Sonesta O’Hare. MVM did not respond to numerous requests for comment.
Since fiscal year 2020, MVM has entered into contracts worth more than $1.3 billion from ICE — the vast majority of it for the transportation of immigrant children and families.
In 2020, when an attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project attempted to reach unaccompanied children being held in a McAllen hotel, he was physically turned away. ICE acknowledged MVM was at the hotel in question. The Texas Civil Rights Project and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Trump administration, and the government ultimately transferred the children out of the hotel.
More recently, attorneys filed suit against MVM last year for enforced disappearance, torture, and child abduction — among other claims — for its role during the first Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy that separated thousands of children from their parents near the border. The company’s effort to get the case dismissed failed.
Calls to the Sonesta O’Hare in June and July after Galvis’s release confirmed that MVM had rooms there.
ICE’s standards for temporary housing allow for the use of hotel suites to hold noncitizens “due to exigent circumstances including travel delays, lack of other bedspace, delay of receipt of travel documents, medical issues, or other unforeseen circumstances.” The standards require ICE or its contractors to explain to the detainee why they are at the hotel and how long they will be there, and to inform the detainee of the right to file a grievance, as well as “unlimited availability of unmonitored telephone calls to family, friends, and legal representatives” and various oversight agencies. Galvis said she wasn’t allowed to make any calls and was never told she was able to file a complaint.
In its statement, Sonesta said that “all guest rooms at the property have a telephone and seating” at the O’Hare hotel.
Two Sonesta O’Hare workers said they were familiar with MVM — one added that the company had a special rate there. (In a phone call with Injustice Watch, Sonesta O’Hare’s general manager, Sandra Wolf, said she was “unaware” of MVM or the confinement of detainees at her hotel.)
Calls to other airport Sonesta hotels suggest that MVM’s detention of immigrants may be more widespread.
When called in June, a front-desk worker at the Sonesta Atlanta Airport South in Georgia said that MVM usually has rooms at the hotel. On a call, an attendant at the Sonesta Select Los Angeles LAX El Segundo immediately recognized the company name and explained that MVM books rooms at a nearby property.
A front-desk agent at the nearby Sonesta Los Angeles Airport LAX acknowledged by phone that MVM regularly has rooms at the hotel. The hotel’s general manager Robert Routh later said he’d never heard of MVM and wasn’t familiar with the practice of holding ICE detainees in his hotel.
In a written statement, Sonesta wrote that it “does not condone illegal behavior of any kind at its hotels, and we endeavor to comply with the law and with law enforcement in the event of any suspected illegal behavior at any property within the Sonesta portfolio.” The company declined to answer questions about whether it has any contractual obligations to MVM or whether MVM received a special rate at its hotels.
Snatched From Immigration Court
Galvis knew before she went to Chicago’s immigration court on Thursday, June 5, from news and social media reports that ICE had been arresting people like her when they had shown up to court for their immigration cases.
But her husband, Camilo, a long-haul truck driver, had been granted asylum in the same court just two weeks earlier. The facts of their cases were almost identical. They had come to the U.S. together in 2022, fleeing far-right paramilitary violence in their native Colombia. Galvis had also survived a brutal assault from the paramilitary group.
So she came to the court at 55 E. Monroe Street with her infant son, Naythan, hoping to walk out without incident.
Instead, as with thousands of other immigrants in recent months, federal prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss her case, ending the asylum process. Plainclothes agents were waiting to detain her the moment she left the courtroom.
The agents shuttled Galvis and Naythan first to a nearby building, where she was fingerprinted and her phone and documents — including Naythan’s U.S. passport and birth certificate — were seized. Mother and son were then taken to an initial hotel where they spent several hours late into Thursday night. She was told that they would be flown to Texas before dawn on Friday — the sole detention center, ICE claimed, that could accommodate families. She was allowed one call to her husband; in a call that lasted a few seconds, she told him she was heading to Texas.
The terror that Naythan might be torn away consumed her thoughts. She could endure detention and deportation alongside her son, Galvis said. Without him, she believed grief alone might kill her.
Around 2:30 a.m., two people dressed in civilian clothing arrived. They said their names were Alejandro and Lori and told Galvis in Spanish that they worked for a private company, though Galvis doesn’t remember which one. They encouraged her to ask any questions about her case to the ICE agents while she still had the chance, because the two of them wouldn’t be able to answer them.
Soon after, they brought Galvis and Naythan to the Sonesta, where they would spend the next five days cut off from the outside world.
They were held in a two-room suite and monitored at all times by one or two civilian guards, sometimes Alejandro and Lori and sometimes others. They were given fast food: Panera Bread, Subway, McDonald’s; Galvis picked out little pieces of vegetables to feed to her son, who was just beginning to eat solid foods.
On Friday, the day after she and Naythan were detained by ICE, Galvis’s attorney William G. McLean III filed a writ of habeas corpus, petitioning for her release. U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama soon ordered that the Trump administration “shall not remove Petitioners from the jurisdiction of the United States, nor shall they transfer petitioners to any judicial district outside the State of Illinois” before June 12. Judge Valderrama set an afternoon hearing for Tuesday, June 10, on the matter.
In emails reviewed by Injustice Watch and The Intercept, McLean pleaded with an ICE field officer for days to know his client’s whereabouts. “We do not know where they are located,” he wrote on Saturday. “I feel that it is very important to know that everything is OK,” he wrote the following Monday. ICE didn’t reveal his client’s location.
Galvis, meanwhile, had no idea about her lawyer’s efforts to release her. One day, she was told by one of the civilian guards that she would be deported with her son to Colombia. Other days, she said, she was told they’d be taken to Texas. She continued to fear that her son would be taken from her.
Finally, on the fifth day, Granado and another guard loaded Galvis and Naythan in a car but wouldn’t divulge where they were headed, Galvis said. While the airport was only minutes away, she noticed the navigation system indicated a 40-minute drive. Her heart sank, thinking they were taking her to a new location where her son could be taken from her.
Galvis kept quiet in the car, caressing Naythan and silently praying. As they approached their destination, Granado turned to her, Galvis said.
“I think they’re going to let you go,” Galvis remembered her saying.
Galvis didn’t believe her. But moments later, she was at the Department of Homeland Security’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program office in Chicago. Agents gave her paperwork, including some of Naythan’s documents, and placed an electronic bracelet monitor on her wrist. Relief overcame her, mixed with uncertainty about what could happen next.
“I was obviously very scared of being deported, but my principal fear was being deported without my baby,” Galvis said. “I don’t think I could have survived that.”
The dismissal in Galvis’s original immigration case is on appeal, and she now has a new asylum case with a new immigration judge in the same court. Galvis has regular online and in-person check-ins. Her next immigration court date is scheduled for January.
Federal immigration authorities detained a woman seeking medical care at the National Institutes of Health’s flagship research hospital, according to an internal document and an NIH official briefed on the situation.
The woman, an existing patient, drew scrutiny at a security station to enter the campus of the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, when she handed over a state driver’s license that failed to meet new federal security ID standards.
That prompted NIH officials to check for warrants and discover she had an order for removal. They then called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The woman was to receive care through the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, according to the official and the document. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, confirmed the detainment.
“We are grateful to NIH security for apprehending an illegal alien attempting to enter the NIH campus Thursday,” Andrew Nixon, the spokesman, said in a statement. “Like any taxpayer-funded service, NIH clinical trials are for people here legally, whether they be citizens or those with proper visas that allow them to participate in clinical trials and/or treatment at the NIH. We are grateful to our law enforcement partners for acting swiftly to protect patients and staff at NIH Clinical Center.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return requests for comment.
The document and official did not have the woman’s name or the date of her detention. Details of the woman’s immigration history were not immediately available; immigration judges typically issue orders of removal after authorities present evidence that a noncitizen should be deported.
Maryland allows undocumented immigrants to receive driver’s licenses, although it’s unclear if the woman presented a Maryland license. Congress mandated that states implement Real ID, a set of security standards for driver’s licenses designed to limit forgeries. Real IDs, or other acceptable forms of identification such as passports, are needed to enter most federal buildings, according to DHS.
Hospitals have historically been considered sensitive locations off limits to immigration enforcement. When enforcement actions happen in these settings, they may deter people from seeking care, especially for people who are undocumented, immigrant advocates and health experts have said.
President Donald Trump has directed ICE to ramp up the detention and deportations of immigrants. In the early days of Trump’s second term, officials revoked a directive that had essentially prevented ICE from detaining immigrants around sensitive areas such as schools, hospitals and churches.
Matthew Lopas, director of state advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, said incidents like the reported detention at NIH raise serious concerns about immigrant access to health care.
“Hospitals and clinics should be places of healing, not fear. This kind of enforcement does not just impact undocumented patients. It undermines public health for everyone,” said Lopas, whose organization published a guide for doctors and hospital administrators on how to protect patient rights when immigration authorities visit medical facilities.
Still, reports of ICE showing up at hospitals have been rare.
Last month, a nurses union and immigrant advocates raised concern about the presence of ICE agents who spent days at a Glendale, California, hospital seeking to detain a woman who had been hospitalized while in their custody. The woman had previously been ordered deported, DHS said.
Democratic members of Congress have introduced legislation that would largely limit immigration enforcement actions within 1,000 feet of places such as hospitals, schools and churches. But the measure is not likely to pass given Republican control of Congress.
“We need to ensure that everyone can access essential services without the threat of ICE enforcement looming over them,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Illinois), said in a statement Friday responding to the detainment at NIH.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/08/08/nih-clinical-center-ice-arrest
