Tag Archives: Stephen Miller

CBS News: ICE head says agents will arrest anyone found in the U.S. illegally

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In an exclusive interview with CBS News, the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said his agents will arrest anyone they find in the country illegally, even if they lack a criminal record, while also cracking down on companies hiring unauthorized workers.

Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, said his agency will prioritize its “limited resources” on arresting and deporting “the worst of the worst,” such as those in the U.S. unlawfully who also have serious criminal histories.

But Lyons said non-criminals living in the U.S. without authorization will also be taken into custody during arrest operations, arguing that states and cities with “sanctuary” policies that limit cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement are forcing his agents to go into communities by not turning over noncitizen inmates.

“What’s, again, frustrating for me is the fact that we would love to focus on these criminal aliens that are inside a jail facility,” Lyons said during his first sit-down network interview on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “A local law enforcement agency, state agency already deemed that person a public safety threat and arrested them and they’re in detention.”

“I’d much rather focus all of our limited resources on that to take them into custody, but we do have to go out into the community and make those arrests, and that’s where you are seeing (that) increase” in so-called “collateral” arrests, Lyons added, referring to individuals who are not the original targets of operations but are nonetheless found to be in the U.S. unlawfully.

Collateral arrests by ICE were effectively banned under the Biden administration, which issued rules instructing deportation officers to largely focus on arresting serious criminal offenders, national security threats and migrants who recently entered the U.S. illegally. That policy was reversed immediately after President Trump took office for a second time in January.

As part of Mr. Trump’s promise to crack down on illegal immigration, his administration has given ICE a broad mandate, with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pushing the agency to conduct 3,000 daily arrests. While ICE has so far not gotten close to that number, the agency just received tens of billions of dollars in additional funds from Congress to turbo-charge its deportation campaign.

Lyons said “it’s possible” to meet the administration’s target of 1 million deportations in a year with the new infusion of funds. ICE has recorded nearly 150,000 deportations in Mr. Trump’s first six months in office, according to internal government data obtained by CBS News.

From Jan. 1 to June 24, ICE deported around 70,000 people with criminal convictions, but many of the documented infractions were for immigration or traffic offenses, according to data obtained by CBS News.

While the administration frequently highlights arrests of non-citizens convicted of serious crimes like murder and rape, ICE also has sparked backlash in communities across the country due to some of its tactics and actions, including the use of masks by agents (which Lyons said will continue due to concerns about the safety of his officers), arrests of asylum-seekers attending court hearings and raids on worksites.

“ICE is always focused on the worst of the worst,” Lyons said. “One difference you’ll see now is under this administration, we have opened up the whole aperture of the immigration portfolio.”

Lyons promises to hold companies accountable 

Another major policy at ICE under the second Trump administration is the lifting of a Biden-era pause on large-scale immigration raids at worksites.

In recent weeks, federal immigration authorities have arrested hundreds of suspected unauthorized workers at a meatpacking plant in Nebraska, a horse racetrack in Louisiana and cannabis farms in southern California. At the cannabis farms alone, officials took into custody more than 300 immigrants who were allegedly in the country unlawfully, including 10 minors.

Amid concerns from industry leaders that Mr. Trump’s crackdown was hurting their businesses, ICE in June ordered a halt to immigration roundups at farms, hotels and restaurants. But that pause lasted only a matter of days. Since then, the president has talked about giving farmers with workers who are not in the U.S. legally a “pass,” though his administration has not provided further details on what that would entail.

In his interview with CBS News, Lyons said ICE would continue worksite immigration enforcement, saying there’s no ban on such actions. He said those operations would rely on criminal warrants against employers suspected of hiring unauthorized immigrants, which he said is not a “victimless crime,” noting such investigations often expose forced labor or child trafficking.  

“Not only are we focused on those individuals that are, you know, working here illegally, we’re focused on these American companies that are actually exploiting these laborers, these people that came here for a better life,” Lyons said.

Asked to confirm that ICE plans to hold those employing immigrants in the U.S. illegally accountable — and not just arrest the workers themselves — Lyons said, “One hundred percent.”

ICE head says agents will arrest anyone found in the U.S. illegally, crack down on employers of unauthorized workers
Immigration agents will arrest anyone they find in the country illegally, even if they lack a criminal record, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in an exclusive CBS News interview.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-head-todd-lyons-agents-will-arrest-anyone-found-illegally-crack-down-on-employers

Charlotte Observer: Stephen Miller’s Migrant Claim Sparks Outrage

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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has claimed that removing undocumented immigrants would enhance public services in cities like Los Angeles. However, critics have noted that over 70% of the more than 57,000 individuals detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have no criminal convictions. They added that a fear of deportation and restrictive policies have driven an avoidance of healthcare.

Miller said, “What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens? Here’s what it would look like: You would be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problems. Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed. … There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.”

Bullshit!!!

Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ruled, “During their ‘roving patrols’ in Los Angeles, ICE agents detained individuals principally because of their race, that they were overheard speaking Spanish or accented English, that they were doing work associated with undocumented immigrants, or were in locations frequented by undocumented immigrants seeking day work.”

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth:

Cato Institute data shows 65% of over 204,000 ICE detainees in fiscal year 2025 had no criminal record. While some committed serious crimes, most do not fit the violent image portrayed by the Trump administration.

A 2014 UCLA study found only 10% of undocumented adults use emergency rooms annually, compared to 20% of U.S.-born adults. Trump-era changes to the “public charge” rule have further reduced healthcare use.

Brennan Center for Justice senior director Lauren-Brooke Eisen stated, “Trump has justified this immigration agenda in part by making false claims that migrants are driving violent crime in the United States, and that’s just simply not true. There’s no research and evidence that supports his claims.”

Critics have argued that claims linking undocumented immigrants to the fentanyl crisis are misleading. Nearly 90% of fentanyl-related convictions involve U.S. citizens.

Stephen Miller’s Migrant Claim Sparks Outrage

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/stephen-miller-s-migrant-claim-sparks-outrage/ss-AA1J0dy7

Independent: Border Patrol carries out raid at Home Depot parking lot 600 miles from US-Mexico border

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Activists say that a U.S. citizen observing the operation was among those arrested

“The Border Patrol should do their jobs – at the border – instead of continuing their tirade statewide of illegal racial profiling and illegal arrests,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, told Cal Matters.

While the Border Patrol can operate within 100 miles of any U.S. border, including the California coast and nearby cities, a federal judge held in April that the agency cannot conduct warrantless immigration stops throughout California’s Eastern District, which includes Sacramento.

Border agents arrested at least 11 people during a Thursday raid outside a northern California Home Depot — including a U.S. citizen who was volunteering as an observer, according to local activists.

The operation, which took place in the Sacramento area, nearly 600 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, is the latest show of force from the Border Patrol in the state, which joined a full-cavalry raid in a Los Angeles park earlier this month.

“There is no such thing as a sanctuary city,” Border Patrol El Centro sector chief Gregory Bovino said Thursday in a video filmed in front of the state capitol building, referring to jurisdictions that don’t voluntarily assist with federal immigration enforcement.

“There is no such thing as a sanctuary state,” Bovino added in the clip, which features images of masked agents arresting men, soundtracked by the Kanye West song “Power.”

At least 11 people unlawfully in the U.S. were arrested in the early-morning operation, according to the Department of Homeland Security, including an immigrant man officials said was a “serial criminal” with past charges including illegal entry, possession of marijuana for sale, and felony burglary.

Bovino, in the video, said the arrests included a man who appears to have past fentanyl trafficking charges, and an individual arrested for impeding or assaulting a federal officer

So only 2 of 11 were actually criminals, plus you illegally bagged 1 U.S. citizen. Major fail!

However, Andrea Castillo said her husband Jose Castillo is a U.S. citizen and was among those arrested.

Video shared with KCRA shows Andrea Castillo yelling at agents as a group of masked officers pile Jose into an unmarked black minivan.

“Leave him alone, he’s a U.S. citizen!” she can be heard saying.

In the footage, one of the agents threatens to mace Castillo, and later says, “Google me,” when she asks for his badge number.

During the exchange, agents say they are detaining Jose Castillo because they believe he slashed the tires on a federal vehicle.

The activist group NorCal Resist said Jose Castillo was volunteering on behalf of the organization to document the operation, but did not impede officers. The group added that he has since been released.

Local lawmakers are questioning whether the operation violated a recent court order. Assembly member Rhodesia Ransom, whose district includes nearby Stockton, has reportedly asked the state attorney general’s office to investigate if federal officers are running afoul of state and federal laws or the U.S. Constitution with the operations.

“The Border Patrol should do their jobs – at the border – instead of continuing their tirade statewide of illegal racial profiling and illegal arrests,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, told Cal Matters.

While the Border Patrol can operate within 100 miles of any U.S. border, including the California coast and nearby cities, a federal judge held in April that the agency cannot conduct warrantless immigration stops throughout California’s Eastern District, which includes Sacramento.

The ruling came in response to a series of operations at the beginning of the year targeting farmworkers in Kern County, which critics said were based on little more than the men’s appearance.

“You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston said in court at the time.

A separate ruling last week barred the Border Patrol from making similar raids in the district including Los Angeles, after a lawsuit accused federal agents of making indiscriminate arrests in locations like Home Depot parking lots.

When asked about the alleged arrest of a U.S. citizen and the legal criticisms, federal officials pointed to a Homeland Security press release announcing the operation, which did not mention either subject.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of much of the administration’s immigration policy, has reportedly pressed immigration officials to reach 3,000 arrests per day, including by targeting hubs for day laborers like Home Depot parking lots.

The Trump administration’s recently passed “Big, Beautiful Bill” domestic spending legislation contains about $170 billion in wider immigration and border funding, which officials say will fuel a surge in domestic immigration operations.

Border Patrol raids Home Depot parking lot 600 miles from US-Mexico border
Activists say that a U.S. citizen observing the operation was among those arrested

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/border-patrol-raid-sacramento-home-depot-b2791909.html

YouTube: ‘The brick wall of reality’: Stephen Miller’s anti-immigrant pitch doesn’t hold up to scrutiny

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‘The brick wall of reality’: Stephen Miller’s anti-immigrant pitch doesn’t hold up to scrutiny
“What would Los Angeles look like without illegal immigrants,” asked Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to himself on Fox News. He painted an i…

LA Times: Hiltzik: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He’s blowing smoke

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Stephen Miller, the front man for Donald Trump’s deportation campaign against immigrants, took to the airwaves the other day to explain why native-born Americans will just love living in a world cleansed of undocumented workers.

“What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?” he asked on Fox News. “Here’s what it would look like: You would be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problems. Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed. … There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.” Etc., etc.

No one can dispute that the world Miller described on Fox would be a paradise on Earth. No waiting at the ER? School districts flush with cash? No drug deaths? But that doesn’t obscure that pretty much every word Miller uttered was fiction.

Trump aide Stephen Miller concocts a fantasy about L.A.

The gist of Miller’s spiel — in fact, the worldview that he has been espousing for years — is that “illegal aliens” are responsible for all those ills, and exclusively responsible. It’s nothing but a Trumpian fantasy.

Let’s take a look, starting with overcrowding at the ER.

The issue has been the focus of numerous studies and surveys. Overwhelmingly, they conclude that undocumented immigration is irrelevant to ER overcrowding. In fact, immigrants generally and undocumented immigrants in particular are less likely to get their healthcare at the emergency room than native-born Americans.

In California, according to a 2014 study from UCLA, “one in five U.S.-born adults visits the ER annually, compared with roughly one in 10 undocumented adults — approximately half the rate of U.S.-born residents.”

Among the reasons, explained Nadereh Pourat, the study’s lead author and director of research at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, was fear of being asked to provide documents.

The result is that undocumented individuals avoid seeking any healthcare until they become critically ill. The UCLA study found that undocumented immigrants’ average number of doctor visits per year was lower than for other cohorts: 2.3 for children and 1.7 for adults, compared with 2.8 doctor visits for U.S.-born children and 3.2 for adults.

ER overcrowding is an issue of long standing in the U.S., but it’s not the result of an influx of undocumented immigrants. It’s due to a confluence of other factors, including the tendency of even insured patients to use the ER as a primary care center, presenting with complicated or chronic ailments for which ER medicine is not well-suited.

While caseloads at emergency departments have surged, their capacities are shrinking.

According to a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences, from 1993 to 2003 the U.S. population grew by 12%, hospital admissions by 13% and ER visits by 26%. “Not only is [emergency department] volume increasing, but patients coming to the ED are older and sicker and require more complex and time-consuming workups and treatments,” the report observed. “During this same period, the United States experienced a net loss of 703 hospitals, 198,000 hospital beds, and 425 hospital EDs, mainly in response to cost-cutting measures.”

President Trump’s immigration policies during his first term suppressed the use of public healthcare facilities by undocumented immigrants and their families. The key policy was the administration’s tightening of the “public charge” rule, which applies to those seeking admission to the United States or hoping to upgrade their immigration status.

The rule, which has been part of U.S. immigration policy for more than a century, allowed immigration authorities to deny entry — or deny citizenship applications of green card holders — to anyone judged to become a recipient of public assistance such as welfare (today known chiefly as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) or other cash assistance programs.

Until Trump, healthcare programs such as Medicaid, nutrition programs such as food stamps, and subsidized housing programs weren’t part of the public charge test.

Even before Trump implemented the change but after a draft version leaked out, clinics serving immigrant communities across California and nationwide detected a marked drop off in patients.

A clinic on the edge of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles that had been serving 12,000 patients, I reported in 2018, saw monthly patient enrollments fall by about one-third after Trump’s 2016 election, and an additional 25% after the leak. President Biden rescinded the Trump rule within weeks of taking office.

Undocumented immigrants are sure to be less likely to access public healthcare services, such as those available at emergency rooms, as a result of Trump’s rescinding “sensitive location” restrictions on immigration agents that had been in effect at least since 2011.

That policy barred almost all immigration enforcement actions at schools, places of worship, funerals and weddings, public marches or rallies, and hospitals. Trump rescinded the policy on inauguration day in January.

The goal was for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents “to make substantial efforts to avoid unnecessarily alarming local communities,” agency officials stated. Today, as public shows of force and public raids by ICE have demonstrated, instilling alarm in local communities appears to be the goal.

The change in the sensitive locations policy has prompted hospital and ER managers to establish formal procedures for staff confronted with the arrival of immigration agents.

A model policy drafted by the Emergency Medicine Residents Assn. says staff should request identification and a warrant or other document attesting to the need for the presence of agents. It urges staff to determine whether the agents are enforcing a judicial warrant (signed by a judge) or administrative warrant (issued by ICE). The latter doesn’t grant agents access to private hospital areas such as patient rooms or operating areas.

What about school funding? Is Miller right to assert that mass deportations will free up a torrent of funding and cutting class sizes in half? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Most school funding in California and most other places is based on attendance. In California, the number of immigrant children in the schools was 189,634 last year. The total K-12 population was 5,837,700, making the immigrant student body 3.25% of the total. Not half.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the estimated 30,000 children from immigrant families amounted to about 7.35% of last year’s enrollment of 408,083. Also not half.

With the deportation of immigrant children, the schools would lose whatever federal funding was attached to their attendance. Schools nationwide receive enhanced federal funding for English learners and other immigrants. That money, presumably, would disappear if the pupils go.

What Miller failed to mention on Fox is the possible impact of the Trump administration’s determination to shutter the Department of Education, placing billions of dollars of federal funding at risk. California receives more than $16 billion a year in federal aid to K-12 schools through that agency. Disabled students are at heightened risk of being deprived of resources if the agency is dismantled.

Then there’s fentanyl. The Trump administration’s claim that undocumented immigrants are major players in this crisis appears to be just another example of its scapegoating of immigrants. The vast majority of fentanyl-related criminal convictions — nearly 90% — are of U.S. citizens. The rest included both legally present and undocumented immigrants. (The statistics comes from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.)

In other words, deport every immigrant in the United States, and you still won’t have made a dent in fentanyl trafficking, much less eliminate all drug deaths.

What are we to make of Miller’s spiel about L.A.? At one level, it’s echt Miller: The portrayal of the city as a putative hellscape, larded with accusations of complicity between the city leadership and illegal immigrants — “the leaders in Los Angeles have formed an alliance with the cartels and criminal aliens,” he said, with zero pushback from his Fox News interlocutor.

At another level, it’s a malevolent expression of white privilege. In Miller’s ideology, the only obstacles to the return to a drug-free world of frictionless healthcare and abundantly financed education are immigrants. This ideology depends on the notion that immigrants are raiding the public purse by sponging on public services.

The fact is that most undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible for most such services. They can’t enroll in Medicare, receive premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, or collect Social Security or Medicare benefits (though typically they submit falsified Social Security numbers to employers, so payments for the program are deducted from their paychecks).

A 2013 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that low-income immigrants use public benefits for which they’re eligible, such as food stamps, “at a lower rate than native-born low-income residents.”

If there’s an impulse underlying the anti-immigrant project directed by Miller other than racism, it’s hard to detect.

Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who last week blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in Los Angeles, ruled that during their “roving patrols” in Los Angeles, ICE agents detained individuals principally because of their race, that they were overheard speaking Spanish or accented English, that they were doing work associated with undocumented immigrants, or were in locations frequented by undocumented immigrants seeking day work.

Miller goes down the same road as ICE — indeed, by all accounts, he’s the motivating spirit behind the L.A. raids. Because he can’t justify the raids, he has ginned up a fantasy of immigrants disrupting our healthcare and school programs, and the corollary fantasy that evicting them all will produce an Earthly paradise for the rest of us. Does anybody really believe that?

Commentary: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He’s blowing smoke
Will mass deportations make wait times at the ER get shorter and schools have more money? The truth is just the opposite

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-07-15/stephen-miller-says-americans-will-live-better-lives-without-immigrants-hes-blowing-smoke

MSNBC: A federal judge’s ruling against ICE should be required reading for every American

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Los Angeles is a city under attack. Spurred on by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s outrage that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not been deporting enough people, ICE agents have been sweeping through the city, often clad in full military attire like a conquering army. Photographs and videos document ICE’s “arrest first and ask questions later” approach on a daily basis.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong ordered ICE to stop “conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.” She refused to be taken in by the Trump administration’s fog of deception and disinformation. “The federal government agrees: Roving patrols without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment and denying access to lawyers violates the Fifth Amendment,” she wrote. “What the federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening.”

Frimpong’s ruling should be required reading for every American. She modeled the kind of resistance that is essential in the face of the administration’s concerted attack on facts, truths and common sense. Her “believe what you see, not what they say” response sets an example for all Americans who wish to resist an authoritarian takeover in this country.

The Courthouse News Service reports that, at a hearing held Thursday, the government wanted the judge to believe “that the ICE raids were sophisticated operations, based on surveillance and information from other law enforcement agencies targeting specific individuals.” According to CNS, lawyers for the Justice Department argued that ICE could “also stop and question other individuals there who they suspected were immigrants without legal status….” That would be acceptable, a DOJ lawyer argued, based on the “totality of the circumstances.”

The government offered these claims against the weight of the evidence and out-of-court statements. In an appearance last week on Fox News, the administration’s border czar Tom Homan included “physical appearance” in the list of things that ICE takes into account during their patrols in Los Angeles. At the Thursday hearing, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that ICE was engaging in racial profiling, targeting members of the Hispanic community and ignoring people of European ancestry who might be in the country illegally. “The evidence is clear that they’re looking at race,” Mohammad Tasjar, an attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, told Frimpong. Even a lawyer for the government acknowledged that “agents can’t put blinders on.”

During the hearing, as The New York Times reported, the judge “was skeptical of the government’s assertions that it was not violating the constitutional rights of people and that agents were stopping immigrants based on ‘the totality of circumstances,’ rather than relying on race.”

That skepticism was reflected in the 52-page opinion the judge handed down one day later. Frimpong wrote that the migrants who filed suit were likely to prevail in their claim that ICE had no legitimate basis to stop and detain most of the people caught up in its military style operations in Los Angeles. She found that the ICE operation constituted a “threatening presence” that left people fearful that they were being “kidnapped.” The judge ordered that, when conducting such operations, the government must stop relying on factors such as race, ethnicity, speaking Spanish, speaking English with an accent, presence at a particular location, or type of work.

Frimpong seemed particularly disturbed by the government’s failure to “acknowledge the existence of roving patrols at all.” As she put it, “the evidence before the Court at this time portrays the reality differently.” She also noted that the government had failed to provide any evidence that what ICE is doing could pass constitutional muster, despite “having nearly a week” to do so.

This judge’s insistence that reality does in fact matter is particularly important in the face of an administration that time and again demands Americans accept whatever it says.

In the immigration context at least, that ploy seems not to be failing. A recent Gallup poll found that 79% of respondents say immigration is “a good thing” for the country versus just 20% who say it is a “bad thing.” Just a year ago, those numbers were 64% and 32% respectively. The percentage of Americans who want to see a decrease in immigration also sharply declined, from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. And 62% of Americans now disapprove of President Trump’s handling of immigration.

Judge Frimpong’s determined refusal to be deceived by the administration’s smoke and mirrors and her rebuke of ICE’s “roving patrols” shows other members of the judiciary — and the rest of the country — that the White House’s rationalizations of its immigration policy deserve not a shred of deference. It should serve as a wake-up call to all of us and a reminder of the damage the administration’s anti-immigrant crusade is doing to our constitutional order.

A federal judge’s ruling against ICE should be required reading for every American
U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong refused to be deceived by the administration’s smoke and mirrors.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ice-los-angeles-judge-ruling-profiling-immigration-rcna218624

Salon: “Cried every night”: ICE traumatizes a child with leukemia

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The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, a young cancer patient and his family were detained, despite adhering to every rule of the immigration process. The boy’s lawyer says the family’s experience puts to lie the Trump administration’s claims about deportation.

In May, a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia since the age of three was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside his family, immediately after a court hearing on May 29. Their case was dismissed at the hearing, per instructions from Trump, who directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years so that ICE can move to deport them. On July 2, the family was released after significant pressure from the public and media coverage of the detention.

Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represented the boy and his family, told Salon that the boy and his 9-year-old sister “cried every night in detention.” At the same time, the government pursued an expedited removal, a process by which the government deports someone without a hearing before a judge.

“The Trump administration’s policy of detaining people at courthouses who are doing everything right, who are entirely law-abiding, who are trying to fulfill all the requirements that the US government asks of them — it violates our Constitution, it violates our federal laws. It also violates our sense of morality. Why are we targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including children, who are doing everything right?” Mukherjee said.

Jeff Migliozzi, the communications director for Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant advocacy organziation, told Salon that “The Trump administration’s aggressive quota of 3,000 daily immigration arrests — a policy pushed by hardliners in the White House like known white nationalist Stephen Miller — is terrorizing communities.”

“The administration is directing resources and personnel from every possible corner of the government to conduct a multi-agency detention and deportation campaign at unprecedented scale,” Migliozzi said.. “This destructive agenda touches every corner of American life and civil society, as more and more people, including those who have been in the US for decades and are pillars of their community, are suddenly snatched by masked agents and taken away to remote detention sites. Street operations are resource-intensive, so the administration has increasingly turned to bait-and-switch tactics to drive up the numbers. ICE is now relying more on arrests at scheduled check-ins and at courthouses. These practices underscore not only the cruelty of this administration’s policy, but of the outdated and unfair immigration system. Here you have people doing everything they can to follow the instructions given to them, and then the rug is pulled out from under them. The result is separated families and shattered lives.”

Despite living in Los Angeles, the family was kept at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas for over a month. The center had been closed under the Biden Administration, but has been reopened as part of Trump’s push to deport as many immigrants as possible.

In detention, Mukherjee said that the boy suffered from easy bruising and bone pain, both symptoms of leukemia, and missed a June 5 medical appointment related to his cancer treatment. His sister barely ate in detention, she added.

In response to a request for comment from Salon, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, “ICE does not consider a six-year-old child a ‘flight risk’ or a ‘criminal’—that is a disgusting accusation and devoid of any reality. ”

McLaughlin claimed that the family entered the United States illegally and that “Any implications that ICE would deny a child proper medical care are FALSE,” adding that “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”

“On May 29, 2025, an immigration judge in California dismissed the family’s immigration case and they were served orders of expedited removal,” McLaughlin said. “ICE took custody of the family following the judge’s decision and pending further proceedings. The child arrived at the Dilley facility on May 30, 2025, and was seen by a nurse during intake. Fortunately, the child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year and was seen regularly by medical personnel while at the Dilley facility. During this time, the family chose to appeal their case. On July 2, the child, his mother, and his sister were released on parole.”

The Dilley detention facility has been subject to renewed scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores Settlement, a 1990s-era policy stemming from the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores, which set basic standards for the treatment of children in detention and required the government to release children from detention without unnecessary delay.

Recent testimony about conditions at ICE facilities has raised concerns over violations of the agreement, with one girl describing situations in which adults and children were fighting over an insufficient amount of water at one facility.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” the girl said in testimony related to conditions in immigrant detention. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Mukherjee said that the family had followed all the rules in coming to the United States, but were still arrested by ICE. And, despite claims from the Trump administration that they’re focusing their efforts on criminals, neither the small children nor the mother had been accused of a crime. The family arrived in the United States in October, applying for asylum after they faced death threats in Honduras. The names and details of the family have not been released due to the threats they face in Honduras.

“So this particular family did everything right. They came to the U.S. border after fleeing imminent and menacing death threats in their home country of Honduras. They didn’t cross the border illegally. They waited for permission to enter the United States using a CBP one appointment. At that point, DHS paroled the family into the United States, which necessarily entailed a determination that the family did not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Mukherjee said. “The family did exactly what the federal government asked them to do.”

According to Mukherjee, as soon as the family stepped out of their May 29 hearing, plain clothes ICE officers detained them, a move that she said “clearly violates both the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.”

“When Trump was campaigning for president, and since he’s become president, and high-level officials in the Department of Homeland Security constantly say that we are targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’” Mukherjee said. “These are the people who are doing everything right.”

Their release followed a suit filed by the mother of the family, demanding the family’s immediate release. Mukherjee told Salon that the family intends to continue its legal battle to remain in the United States.

“Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia – Salon.com
The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/14/cried-every-night-ice-traumatizes-a-child-with-leukemia

Salon: Stephen Miller can’t make America white. LA is paying for his impotent rage

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Mass deportations were never going to work, so Trump and Miller resort to authoritarian theater

Donald Trump loves authoritarian theater, but let’s not forget that Stephen Miller is also to blame for the violence and chaos in Los Angeles. Last week, the right-wing Washington Examiner reported that Trump’s deputy chief of staff called a meeting with the top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “eviscerate” them for falling far short of the ridiculous goal he set of 3,000 deportations a day. In their desperation to keep Miller happy, ICE has already been targeting legal immigrants for deportation, mostly because they’re easy to find, due to having registered with the government. ICE agents stake out immigration hearings for people with refugee status and round up people here with work or student visas for minor offenses like speeding tickets, all to get the numbers up. But these actions were not enough for Miller.

“Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” he reportedly screamed at ICE officials. One ICE leader protested that the agency’s lead, Tom Homan, said they’re supposed to be going after criminals, not people who are just working everyday jobs. Miller reportedly hit the ceiling, furious that arrests aren’t widespread and indiscriminate. Trump has repeatedly implied he was only targeting criminals, but as Charles Davis reported at Salon, that conflicts with his promise of “mass deportations.” Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born Americans. The expansive efforts to find and arrest immigrants in California, which kicked off the protests, appear to be a direct reaction to Miller’s orders to grab as many people as possible, regardless of innocence. 

But Miller doesn’t seem to care about crime. Or, perhaps he thinks having darker skin should be a crime. For Miller, the goal of “mass deportations” has never been about law and order, but about the fantasy of a white America. His desire to deport his way to racial homogeneity has always been not only deeply immoral, but pretty much impossible. His impotence shouldn’t breed complacency, however. As the violence in Los Angeles shows, petty rage can lead to all manner of evils. 

The term “white nationalist” is often used interchangeably with “white supremacist,” but it has a specific meaning. White supremacists think the government should enshrine white people as a privileged class over all others. White nationalists, however, want America to be mostly, if not entirely, white — a goal that cannot be accomplished without mass violence. That Miller appears to lean more into the white nationalist camp is well known. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center reviewed a pile of leaked emails Miller had sent to media allies that illustrated his obsession with white-ifying America. He repeatedly denounced legal immigration of non-white people and endorsed the idea that racial diversity is a threat to white people. He longed for a return to pre-1965 laws that banned most non-white immigrants from moving to America.

“Trump’s mass deportation project is actually a demographic engineering project,” Adam Serwer of the Atlantic explained on a recent Bulwark podcast, pointing to the administration’s expulsion of legal refugees of color while making exceptions to the “no refugee” policy for white South Africans. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau defended the exception by claiming that “they can be assimilated easily into our country.”

But it’s clear this language is code for “white.” By any good-faith definition of the word, thousands of non-white people targeted for deportation have also assimilated. They have jobs. They get married. They have kids. They are part of their communities. 

Sure enough, a sea of MAGA influencers have responded to the Los Angeles protests like parrots trained quite suddenly to say “ban third world immigration.” 

Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA followed up by praising Steve Sailer, a white supremacist who peddles debunked “race science” falsely claiming skin color and ethnicity controls IQ. The Groypers, a Hitler-praising group that doesn’t even pretend not to be racist, was ecstatic to see MAGA leaders edge closer to openly admitting to being white nationalists. 

Miller’s whites-only dreams aren’t going to happen, though it’s unclear if he’s delusional enough to think otherwise. White non-Hispanic Americans are 58% of the population, according to the Census. That means nearly 143 million Americans — most of whom are citizens— fall outside the strict parameters of what white nationalists like Miller would see as “white people.” Even if the Trump administration met its unlikely goal of deporting 11 million people, this would still be a racially diverse country by any measure. And it’s becoming more diverse: the non-white population is younger and having more children. 

If it feels gross to treat human beings like a math problem, that’s because it is. But that’s what we’re dealing with: an administration, led by a would-be strongman and his little deputy, that can’t engineer American demographics, no matter how hard they might try. MAGA Republicans flip out when liberals correctly point out that diversity is America’s strength. But what really makes them crazy is knowing, deep down, that diversity is America’s inevitability. 

This impotent rage factor is important for understanding what’s happening in Los Angeles. Trump and Miller can’t achieve their whites-only dreams, so they’re lashing out violently at communities, like in southern California, that remind them of their powerlessness in this department. 

Make no mistake: the Trump administration is the instigator here, and not just because they sent ICE in to start nabbing people willy-nilly. As Judd Legum of Popular Information carefully detailed on Monday, the violence began because Trump called the National Guard. Before that, the protests had been relatively small and contained. The Los Angeles Police Department released a statement commending the protesters for their cooperation and peacefulness, which led to a demonstration “without incident.” 

Trump started the chaos by sending in the National Guard. He wants violent visuals for right-wing media to run on a constant loop to serve his authoritarian agenda. When the protesters in Los Angeles didn’t give Trump the imagery he wanted, he deliberately escalated and lied about the reasons. Now he is celebrating his victory because of the violence he unleashed. He’s not subtle, and it’s a failure of the media every time they report on the “violence” without noting that Trump was the instigator.  

Small, weak men can cause a lot of damage. No one should be complacent about either the violence in Los Angeles or the thousands of lives being destroyed by these deportation schemes. But it’s also important to not be cowed by Trump and Miller’s theater, which they put on in no small part to conceal the myriad ways they will never be as all-powerful as they promised their supporters they would be. Understanding this can help people find the courage needed to fight back, because the best shot that MAGA has at winning is if their opponents give up the struggle. Already the administration’s overreach is creating a backlash: 

Stephen Miller can’t make America white. LA is paying for his impotent rage
Mass deportations were never going to work, so Trump and Miller resort to authoritarian theater

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/11/stephen-miller-cant-make-america-white-la-is-paying-for-his-impotent-rage

Reuters: In California strawberry fields, immigration raids sow fear

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Flor, a Mexican migrant, picks strawberries in the agricultural town of Oxnard, but immigration roundups in recent weeks have infused the farmworker community in the strawberry capital of California with stress and fear. 

Flor said the raids are taking a toll on the farmworkers’ children, who fear that their parents will be detained and deported and some are depressed. Flor, who has a permit to work in the fields, is a single mother of three U.S. citizen daughters and when she picks them up in the afternoon she feels a palpable sense of relief.

“It hurts my soul that every time I leave the house they say, ‘Mommy, be careful because they can catch you and they can send you to Mexico and we will have to stay here without you,'” said Flor, who asked that only her first name be used. 

“You arrive home and the girls say, ‘Ay Mommy, you arrived and immigration didn’t take you.’ It is very sad to see that our children are worried.”

President Donald Trump has increased immigration enforcement since taking office in January, seeking to deport record numbers of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Farmers, who depend heavily on immigrant labor, have warned raids could damage their businesses and threaten the U.S. food supply.

Trump has said in recent weeks that he would roll out a program that would allow farmers to keep some workers, but the White House has not yet put forward any plan. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Tuesday that there would be “no amnesty.”

The Trump administration has arrested twice as many alleged immigration offenders as last year, but the number of farm workers specifically remains unclear. An immigration raid at marijuana farms near Los Angeles on Thursday prompted protests.

Many Oxnard residents have not left their houses for three or four weeks and some simply don’t show up for work, Flor said.

“It is really sad to see,” Flor said. “We have senior citizens who work with us and when they see immigration passing where we are working , they begin to cry because of how fearful they are. They have been here many years and they fear they could be sent to their home countries. Their lives are here.” 

Flor has little hope that the circumstances will improve.

“The only hope we have is that the president touches his heart and does an immigration reform,” she said. 

The president of the United Farm Workers union, Teresa Romero, said they are working on organizing workers so they “really stick together” as the fear persists.

“What the administration wants to do is deport this experienced workforce that has been working in agriculture for decades. They know exactly what to do, how to do it,” Romero said.

A White House official told Reuters that Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, decided in January not to heavily target farms because the workers would be difficult to replace.

When asked on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ on Sunday about people afraid of possible arrest even if they have legal immigration status, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan was unapologetic about the crackdown.

“It’s not OK to enter this country illegally. It’s a crime,” Homan said. “But legal aliens and U.S. citizens should not be afraid that they’re going to be swept up in the raid(s).”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

“Came for a Dream”

The farmworkers get up at around 4 a.m. local time (1100 GMT) and then wake up their children, who Flor says are suffering with the roundups.

“It is sad to see our community suffering so much. We are just workers who came for a dream, the dream we had for our children,” Flor said.

Flor’s daughters are 10, 7, and 2 – and the 10-year-old wants to be a police officer. 

“And it breaks my heart that she might not fulfill her dream because they detain us and send us to Mexico,” Flor said. “It makes me very sad to see how many children are being separated from their parents.”

While some politicians in California have been outspoken about the immigration raids, Flor said they have not come out to the fields or come to learn about the workers’ plight. 

“I would like to invite all the politicians to come and see how we work on the farms so they can get to know our story and our lives,” said Flor. “So they can see the needs we have.” 

Romero said they are working with representatives in Congress on a legislative bill called the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would protect the workers and has the support of at least 30 Republicans. Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California has introduced the bill to Congress, but it may not pass until the next Congress takes over in 2027. 

“We are not going to give up,” said Romero. “Si se puede (yes we can).”

Flor earns about $2,000 a month, a salary that often does not go far enough. She pays $1,250 for rent each month and pays the nanny that helps care for the girls $250 per week. Sometimes, she doesn’t have enough food for the children. 

She also says the back-breaking harvest work means she cannot spend enough time with her children.

“My work also means that I cannot dedicate enough time to my children because the work is very tough, we are crouched down all day and we lift 20 pounds every few minutes in the boxes,” Flor said. 

Romero said she has talked to some of the children affected by the raids. 

“I have talked to children of people who have been deported and all they say is ‘I want Daddy back,’” she said.

“It is affecting children who are U.S. citizens and who do not deserve to be growing up with the fear they are growing up with now,” Romero added. “Unless we get this bill done, this is what is going to continue to happen to these families and communities.”

In California strawberry fields, immigration raids sow fear
“We have senior citizens who work with us and when they see immigration passing where we are working, they begin to cry because of how fearful they are,” said Flor, a Mexican migrant who picks strawberries in the agricultural town of Oxnard.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-strawberry-fields-immigration-raids-sow-fear-2025-07-14

Salon: “Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia

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As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, a young cancer patient and his family were detained, despite adhering to every rule of the immigration process. The boy’s lawyer says the family’s experience puts to lie the Trump administration’s claims about deportation.

In May, a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia since the age of three was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside his family, immediately after a court hearing on May 29. Their case was dismissed at the hearing, per instructions from Trump, who directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years so that ICE can move to deport them. On July 2, the family was released after significant pressure from the public and media coverage of the detention.

Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represented the boy and his family, told Salon that the boy and his 9-year-old sister “cried every night in detention.” At the same time, the government pursued an expedited removal, a process by which the government deports someone without a hearing before a judge.

“The Trump administration’s policy of detaining people at courthouses who are doing everything right, who are entirely law-abiding, who are trying to fulfill all the requirements that the US government asks of them — it violates our Constitution, it violates our federal laws. It also violates our sense of morality. Why are we targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including children, who are doing everything right?” Mukherjee said.

Jeff Migliozzi, the communications director for Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant advocacy organziation, told Salon that “The Trump administration’s aggressive quota of 3,000 daily immigration arrests — a policy pushed by hardliners in the White House like known white nationalist Stephen Miller — is terrorizing communities.”

“The administration is directing resources and personnel from every possible corner of the government to conduct a multi-agency detention and deportation campaign at unprecedented scale,” Migliozzi said.. “This destructive agenda touches every corner of American life and civil society, as more and more people, including those who have been in the US for decades and are pillars of their community, are suddenly snatched by masked agents and taken away to remote detention sites. Street operations are resource-intensive, so the administration has increasingly turned to bait-and-switch tactics to drive up the numbers. ICE is now relying more on arrests at scheduled check-ins and at courthouses. These practices underscore not only the cruelty of this administration’s policy, but of the outdated and unfair immigration system. Here you have people doing everything they can to follow the instructions given to them, and then the rug is pulled out from under them. The result is separated families and shattered lives.”

Despite living in Los Angeles, the family was kept at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas for over a month. The center had been closed under the Biden Administration, but has been reopened as part of Trump’s push to deport as many immigrants as possible.

In detention, Mukherjee said that the boy suffered from easy bruising and bone pain, both symptoms of leukemia, and missed a June 5 medical appointment related to his cancer treatment. His sister barely ate in detention, she added.

In response to a request for comment from Salon, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, “ICE does not consider a six-year-old child a ‘flight risk’ or a ‘criminal’—that is a disgusting accusation and devoid of any reality. ”

McLaughlin claimed that the family entered the United States illegally and that “Any implications that ICE would deny a child proper medical care are FALSE,” adding that “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”

Bullshit!!! It’s all about cruelty and terror!

“On May 29, 2025, an immigration judge in California dismissed the family’s immigration case and they were served orders of expedited removal,” McLaughlin said. “ICE took custody of the family following the judge’s decision and pending further proceedings. The child arrived at the Dilley facility on May 30, 2025, and was seen by a nurse during intake. Fortunately, the child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year and was seen regularly by medical personnel while at the Dilley facility. During this time, the family chose to appeal their case. On July 2, the child, his mother, and his sister were released on parole.”

The Dilley detention facility has been subject to renewed scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores Settlement, a 1990s-era policy stemming from the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores, which set basic standards for the treatment of children in detention and required the government to release children from detention without unnecessary delay.

Recent testimony about conditions at ICE facilities has raised concerns over violations of the agreement, with one girl describing situations in which adults and children were fighting over an insufficient amount of water at one facility.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” the girl said in testimony related to conditions in immigrant detention. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Mukherjee said that the family had followed all the rules in coming to the United States, but were still arrested by ICE. And, despite claims from the Trump administration that they’re focusing their efforts on criminals, neither the small children nor the mother had been accused of a crime. The family arrived in the United States in October, applying for asylum after they faced death threats in Honduras. The names and details of the family have not been released due to the threats they face in Honduras.

“So this particular family did everything right. They came to the U.S. border after fleeing imminent and menacing death threats in their home country of Honduras. They didn’t cross the border illegally. They waited for permission to enter the United States using a CBP one appointment. At that point, DHS paroled the family into the United States, which necessarily entailed a determination that the family did not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Mukherjee said. “The family did exactly what the federal government asked them to do.”

According to Mukherjee, as soon as the family stepped out of their May 29 hearing, plain clothes ICE officers detained them, a move that she said “clearly violates both the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.”

“When Trump was campaigning for president, and since he’s become president, and high-level officials in the Department of Homeland Security constantly say that we are targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’” Mukherjee said. “These are the people who are doing everything right.”

Their release followed a suit filed by the mother of the family, demanding the family’s immediate release. Mukherjee told Salon that the family intends to continue its legal battle to remain in the United States.

“Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia – Salon.com
The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/14/cried-every-night-ice-traumatizes-a-child-with-leukemia