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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

NBC News: Calls to strip Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship spark alarm about Trump weaponizing denaturalization

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Past administrations, including Obama’s, have sought to denaturalize U.S. citizens, such as terrorists and Nazis. But advocates worry he could target political opponents.

Immediately after Zohran Mamdani became the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City last month, one Republican congressman had a provocative suggestion for the Trump administration: “He needs to be DEPORTED.”

The Uganda-born Mamdani obtained U.S. citizenship in 2018 after moving to the United States with his parents as a child. But Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., argued in his post on X that the Justice Department should consider revoking it over rap lyrics that, he said, suggested support for Hamas.

The Justice Department declined to comment on whether it has replied to Ogles’ letter, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of his claims about Mamdani, “Surely if they are true, it’s something that should be investigated.”

Trump himself has claimed without evidence that Mamdani is an illegal immigrant, and when erstwhile ally Elon Musk was asked about deporting another naturalized citizen, he suggested he would consider it.

The congressman’s proposal dovetails with a priority of the Trump administration to ramp up efforts to strip citizenship from other naturalized Americans. The process, known as denaturalization, has been used by previous administrations to remove terrorists and, decades ago, Nazis and communists.

But the Trump DOJ’s announcement last month that it would “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings” has sparked alarm among immigration lawyers and advocates, who fear the Trump administration could use denaturalization to target political opponents.

Although past administrations have periodically pursued denaturalization cases, it is an area ripe for abuse, according to Elizabeth Taufa, a lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

“It can be very easily weaponized at any point,” she said.

Noor Zafar, an immigration lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said there is a “real risk and a real threat” that the administration will target people based on their political views.

Asked for comment on the weaponization concerns, a Justice Department spokesperson pointed to the federal law that authorizes denaturalizations, 8 U.S.C. 1451.

“We are upholding our duty as expressed in the statute,” the spokesperson said.

Immigrant groups and political opponents of Trump are already outraged at the way the Trump administration has used its enforcement powers to stifle dissent in cases involving legal immigrants who do not have U.S. citizenship.

ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist engaged in campus protests critical of Israel, for more than 100 days before he was released. Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was also detained for two months over her pro-Palestinian advocacy.

More broadly, the administration has been accused of violating the due process rights of immigrants it has sought to rapidly deport over the objection of judges and, in cases involving alleged Venezuelan gang members and Salvadoran man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Supreme Court.

Denaturalization cases have traditionally been rare and in past decades focused on ferreting out former Nazis who fled to the United States after World War II under false pretenses.

But the approach gradually changed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Aided by technological advances that made it easier to identify people and track them down, the number of denaturalization cases has gradually increased.

It was the Obama administration that initially seized on the issue, launching what was called Operation Janus, which identified more than 300,000 cases where there were discrepancies involving fingerprint data that could indicate potential fraud.

But the process is slow and requires considerable resources, with the first denaturalization as a result of Operation Janus secured during Trump’s first term in January 2018.

That case involved Baljinder Singh, originally from India, who had been subject to deportation but later became a U.S. citizen after assuming a different identity.

In total, the first Trump administration filed 102 denaturalization cases, with the Biden administration filing 24, according to the Justice Department spokesperson, who said figures for the Obama administration were not available. The new Trump administration has already filed five. So far, the Trump administration has prevailed in one case involving a man originally from the United Kingdom who had previously been convicted of receiving and distributing child pornography. The Justice Department declined to provide information about the other new cases.

Overall, denaturalization cases are brought against just a tiny proportion of the roughly 800,00 people who become naturalized citizens each year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

‘Willful misrepresentation’

The government has two ways to revoke citizenship, either through a rare criminal prosecution for fraud or via a civil claim in federal court.

The administration outlined its priorities for civil enforcement in a June memo issued by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, which listed 10 potential grounds for targeting naturalized citizens.

Examples range from “individuals who pose a risk to national security” or who have engaged in war crimes or torture, to people who have committed Medicaid or Medicare fraud or have otherwise defrauded the government. There is also a broad catch-all provision that refers to “any other cases … that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”

The denaturalization law focuses on “concealment of a material fact” or “willful misrepresentation” during the naturalization proceeding.

The ACLU’s Zafar said the memo leaves open the option for the Trump administration to at least try to target people based on their speech or associations.

“Even if they don’t think they really have a plausible chance of succeeding, they can use it as a means to just harass people,” she added.

The Justice Department can bring denaturalization cases over a wide range of conduct related to the questions applicants for U.S. citizenship are asked, including the requirement that they have been of “good moral character” in the preceding five years.

Immigration law includes several examples of what might disqualify someone on moral character grounds, including if they are a “habitual drunkard” or have been convicted of illegal gambling.

The naturalization application form itself asks a series of questions probing good moral character, such as whether the applicant has been involved in violent acts, including terrorism.

The form also queries whether people have advocated in support of groups that support communism, “the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship” or the “unlawful assaulting or killing” of any U.S. official.

Failure to accurately answer any of the questions or the omission of any relevant information can be grounds for citizenship to be revoked.

In 2015, for example, Sammy Chang, a native of South Korea who had recently become a U.S. citizen, had his citizenship revoked in the wake of his conviction in a criminal case of trafficking women to work at a club he owned.

The government said that because Chang had been engaged in the scheme during the time he was applying for naturalization, he had failed to show good moral character.

But in both civil and criminal cases, the government has to reach a high bar to revoke citizenship. Among other things, it has to show that any misstatement or omission in a naturalization application was material to whether citizenship would have been granted.

In civil cases, the government has to show “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt” in order to prevail.

“A simple game of gotcha with naturalization applicants isn’t going to work,” said Jeremy McKinney, a North Carolina-based immigration lawyer. “It’s going to require significant materiality for a judge to strip someone of their United States citizenship.”

Targeting rap lyrics

In his June 26 tweet, Ogles attached a letter he sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to consider pursuing Mamdani’s denaturalization, in part, because he “expressed open solidarity with individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.”

Ogles cited rap lyrics that Mamdani wrote years ago in which he expressed support for the “Holy Land Five.”

That appears to be a reference to five men involved in a U.S.-based Muslim charitable group called the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted in 2008 of providing material support to the Palestinian group Hamas. Some activists say the prosecution was a miscarriage of justice fueled by anti-Muslim sentiment following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Ogles’ office and Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Speaking on Newsmax in June, Ogles expanded on his reasons for revoking Mamdani’s citizenship, suggesting the mayoral candidate had “failed to disclose” relevant information when he became a citizen, including his political associations. Ogles has alleged Mamdani is a communist because of his identification as a democratic socialist, although the latter is not a communist group.

Anyone speaking on Newsmax these days is an irrelevant fruitcake.

The Trump administration, Ogles added, could use a case against Mamdani to “create a template for other individuals who come to this country” who, he claimed, “want to undermine our way of life.” (Even if Mamdani were denaturalized, he would not, contrary to Ogles’ claim, automatically face deportation, as he would most likely revert his previous status as a permanent resident.)

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on June 29, Mamdani said calls for him to be stripped of his citizenship and deported are “a glimpse into what life is like for many Muslim New Yorkers and many New Yorkers of different faiths who are constantly being told they don’t belong in this city and this country that they love.”

Targeting Mamdani for his rap lyrics would constitute a very unusual denaturalization case, said Taufa, the immigration lawyer.

But, she added, “they can trump up a reason to denaturalize someone if they want to.”

McKinney, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the relatively low number of denaturalization cases that are filed, including those taken up during Trump’s first term, shows how difficult it is for the government to actually strip people of their citizenship.

“But what they can be very successful at is continuing to create a climate of panic and anxiety and fear,” he added. “They’re doing that very well. So, mission accomplished in that regard.”

Calls to strip Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship spark alarm about Trump weaponizing denaturalization
Past administrations, including Obama’s, have sought to denaturalize U.S. citizens, such as terrorists and Nazis. But advocates worry he could target political opponents.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/calls-strip-zohran-mamdanis-citizenship-trump-denaturalization-power-rcna216653

Mirror: CNN halts show for ‘breaking news’ as poll delivers harsh blow to Donald Trump

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CNN’s regular broadcast was interrupted for a breaking news segment, revealing that a significant number of Americans were against Donald Trump’s latest immigration move.

Trump, who was brutally blasted over his new $250 visa fee for travelers, has often boasted about his poll numbers on immigration but the reality is very different.

I’ve separated the poll results into bullet points for readability:

  • As a poll appeared on screen, the news anchor shared, “Just 42% of Americans now approve of how he’s handled immigration,
  • with only 40% approving of his policies on deportation specifically.
  • When it comes to deportations, 55% think Trump has gone too far and that’s up sharply by 10 points since February.”
  • Another poll dissecting the different aspects of deportation showed that 53% of people were against Trump’s plan to increase the ICE Budget by billions.
  • 59% also opposed his move to end the effort to end birthright citizenship.
  • Another 57% Americans opposed the President’s hopes to build new detention centers.
  • A staggering 59% of people were against Trump’s plan to detain undocumented immigrants with no criminal record.
  • When asked if they believed “Trump’s immigration policies are making the US safer,” 53% of Americans said no.

CNN halts show for ‘breaking news’ as poll delivers harsh blow to Trump
President Donald Trump has come under fire from a new poll by CNN, which says 55% of Americans believe that he has gone ‘too far’ with his latest immigration plans

https://www.themirror.com/entertainment/donald-trump-immigration-cnn-poll-1280319

Raw Story: Judge gives Alina [Bimbo #4] Habba lesson in law during blistering rebuke

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This is sizzling — read it all!

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Alina [Bimbo #4] Habba, was admonished in a New Jersey court when Judge André Espinosa of U.S. District Court found her arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka inappropriate.

Raw Story reported in May that the dressing down of the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey by the judge was so significant that the mayor was caught on a hot mic commenting: “Jesus, he tore these people a new a–hole. Good grief.”

Baraka was arrested on trespassing charges on May 9 after attempting to enter an ICE facility in Newark with members of Congress. The charges were dropped days later, but [Bimbo #4] Habba still went to court.

But more details about the dressing down were released Monday.

National security expert Marcy Wheeler posted the full transcript, as provided by the court reporter, in a post on X on Monday.

[Bimbo #4] Habba’s last day in her interim post is Tuesday, unless a panel of judges steps in to extend her job. So far, the appointment has been stalled in the Senate.

“I don’t want to belabor the proceeding today,” the judge began, noting that they were there after [Bimbo #4] Habba’s office claimed to be prosecuting the mayor, only to drop the charges before discussing the case in court.

The judge then eviscerated [Bimbo #4] Habba’s office.

“Please consider sharing with your colleagues this modest reminder of your unique duty as federal prosecutors. Your Office serves the 9.5 million people who live in the District of New Jersey, and your colleagues are charged with working to protect those people and the 13 interests of the Constitution under which we all live and that you and every one of your colleagues swore to uphold when you joined that Office,” the judge said.

“This is an immense responsibility with which comes an imperative for meticulous diligence and unwavering integrity.”

He cited a 1940 address by the Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, who warned against the temptation to prosecute for every possible offense. He told prosecutors, “the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes.”

Espinosa said it’s clear Jackson understood the duty of the prosecutor was for the people, not for a political party or others.

“Justice Jackson warned against using the immense power of the government to pursue weak cases or to make examples without sufficient cause,” the judge continued. “Your discretion, therefore, is not merely a legal tool but a moral compass guiding the exercise of immense power. It demands a judicious restraint, a deep respect for individual liberty, and an unwavering commitment to the principle that justice is never served by arbitrary or ill-conceived actions.”

In this case, in particular, the judge stated that the arrest was “hasty” and “followed by the swift dismissal a mere 13 days later.”

He blasted [Bimbo #4] Habba, claiming that arresting a public figure isn’t to trigger an investigation. It’s the other way around; the investigation should lead to an arrest. It has been key for the office “particularly over the last two decades,” Judge Espinosa added.

The legacy has been “one of careful deliberative action,” the judge said. It implies that in this case, it was clearly ignored. He said that the office only brings charges after an “exhaustive” search for evidence.

“So let this incident serve as an inflection point and a reminder to uphold your solemn oath to the people of this district and to your client Justice itself and ensure that every charge brought is the product of rigorous investigation and earned confidence in its merit mirroring the exemplary conduct that has long defined your Office,” he said.

Raw Story: Judge gives Alina Habba lesson in law during blistering rebuke

https://www.rawstory.com/alina-habba-2673535158

MSNBC: The demise of Trump’s lawsuit against Bob Woodward offers a reminder to his other targets

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The demise of the president’s case against the journalist offers a broader lesson about the benefits of fighting back — and the folly of appeasement.

Late Friday, Donald Trump announced a new lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal’s publisher, corporate parent and individual reporters who wrote an article about Jeffrey Epstein that the president didn’t like. The civil suit — which the Republican described as “a POWERHOUSE Lawsuit” for reasons unknown — marked a historical rarity: There’s no modern precedent for a sitting U.S. president suing a newspaper over an article.

But as it turns out, right around the same time that Trump’s lawyers were filing their WSJ case, their client received some related news. NBC News reported:

A federal judge on Friday dismissed President Donald Trump’s nearly $50 million lawsuit against the journalist Bob Woodward for publishing tapes from interviews for his 2020 best-seller ‘Rage’ as an audiobook. The decision by U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan is a victory for Woodward, his publisher Simon & Schuster and its former owner Paramount Global.

In case anyone needs a fresher, it was in early 2023 when the Republican first filed a civil suit against Woodward and his publisher, claiming that the longtime journalist did not get his consent to release audio recordings of their interviews. Trump sought nearly $50 million in damages.

He’ll end up with nothing but legal bills. (The judge in this case was appointed by George W. Bush.)

The outcome was hardly unfamiliar. When Trump sued CNN and demanded $475 million, the case was thrown out; when he sued The Washington Post, the case was thrown out; and when he sued The New York Times, seeking $100 million, the case was thrown out.

In each instance, the Republican and his legal team filed highly dubious, politically motivated cases, each of which was based on claims that can charitably be described as “thin,” and in each instance, the journalists and their employers fought back — and won.

To be sure, there are some notable exceptions. When Trump filed a similarly weak case against ABC News, the network agreed to a controversial $15 million settlement with the president. More recently, in response to a bizarre lawsuit from the president, CBS News’ corporate parent agreed to an even more controversial $16 million settlement.

The broader lessons should be obvious. For one thing, those wildly unnecessary out-of-court settlements only emboldened Trump, effectively encouraging him to sue other news organizations that bothered him for one reason or another. Indeed, the president explicitly referenced the ABC News and CBS News payments when outing his new civil suit against The Wall Street Journal.

For another, the recent pattern suggests the only way to lose in a fight against Trump is to pursue a course rooted in appeasement. It’s true when it comes to law firms; it’s true when it comes to higher education; and it’s true in his court fights against news organizations.

Since Rupert Murdoch is unlikely to roll over and pay bribe money in feasance to King Donald, this will be King Donald’s biggest legal flop yet.

The demise of Trump’s lawsuit against Bob Woodward offers a reminder to his other targets
The demise of the president’s case against the journalist offers a broader lesson about the benefits of fighting back — and the folly of appeasement.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/demise-trumps-lawsuit-bob-woodward-offers-reminder-targets-rcna219958

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

Inquirer: Filipino workers removed from cruise ship in US immigration raid

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The workers, sent back to the Philippines, are banned from re-entry to the United States for 10 years

At least 18 Filipino workers “were forcibly removed in handcuffs” from a cruise ship at the Port of Norfolk in Virginia recently, sent back to the Philippines and banned from re-entry to the United States for 10 years, Filipino American community leaders said Saturday.

The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) removed the Filipino workers, all with valid 10-year visas, from the Carnival Sunshine cruise line, the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC) and the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) said in a joint statement.

The workers, who have not been charged or found guilty of any crime, were removed “in an alarming escalation of unjust immigration practices,” the PWC and NaFFAA said.

“These crew members are dedicated parents and spouses with exemplary backgrounds, having passed rigorous background checks to obtain their work visas,” they said.

“Their abrupt removal, accompanied by the cancellation of their visas and a shocking 10-year ban from re-entry, has inflicted deep humiliation, plunging their families into dire financial straits.”

The CBP confirmed an ongoing operation but did not provide details, according to a USA Today report. Other cruise lines affected include Viking and Pearl Seas Cruises.

The crew members had valid work visas and were previously cleared to work in the US, the report said.

As the Carnival Sunshine is set to dock again in Norfolk this Sunday, the remaining crew members “are left in fear of being the next victims of these aggressive actions,” the PWC and NaFFAA added.

The Fil-Am groups said the workplace raids reflect “a disturbing national trend that has seen other crew members deported under similar false pretenses, despite their valid visas and lack of criminal charges.”

“Community members are outraged by this blatant mistreatment of Filipino workers and are demanding accountability from Customs and Border Patrol, Carnival Corporate and the Philippine Embassy to safeguard the rights and well-being of Filipino and other cruise ship seafarers,” the groups said.

PWC, NaFFAA, immigration advocates and faith-based leaders will hold a press conference on Sunday.

Filipino workers removed from cruise ship in US immigration raid
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has removed several Filipino cruise ship workers from the Carnival Sunshine cruise line.

https://usa.inquirer.net/175811/filipino-workers-removed-from-cruise-ship-in-us-immigration-raid

Washington Post: Trump officials accused of defying 1 in 3 judges who ruled against him

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A comprehensive analysis of hundreds of lawsuits against Trump policies shows dozens of examples of defiance, delay and dishonesty, which experts say pose an unprecedented threat to the U.S. legal system.

President Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis has found, suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system.

Plaintiffs say Justice Department lawyers and the agencies they represent are snubbing rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly working around court orders and inventing pretexts to carry out actions that have been blocked.

Judges appointed by presidents of both parties have often agreed. None have taken punitive action to try to force compliance, however, allowing the administration’s defiance of orders to go on for weeks or even months in some instances.

Outside legal analysts say courts typically are slow to begin contempt proceedings for noncompliance, especially while their rulings are under appeal. Judges also are likely to be concerned, analysts say, that the U.S. Marshals Service — whose director is appointed by the president — might not serve subpoenas or take recalcitrant government officials into custody if ordered to by the courts.

The allegations against the administration are crystallized in a whistleblower complaint filed to Congress late last month that accused Justice officials of ignoring court orders in immigration cases, presenting legal arguments with no basis in the law and misrepresenting facts. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor also chided the administration, writing that Trump officials had “openly flouted” a judge’s order not to deport migrants to a country where they did not have citizenship.

The Post examined 337 lawsuits filed against the administration since Trump returned to the White House and began a rapid-fire effort to reshape government programs and policy. As of mid-July, courts had ruled against the administration in 165 of the lawsuits. The Post found that the administration is accused of defying or frustrating court oversight in 57 of those cases — almost 35 percent.

Legal experts said the pattern of conduct is unprecedented for any presidential administration and threatens to undermine the judiciary’s role as a check on an executive branch asserting vast powers that test the boundaries of the law and Constitution. Immigration cases have emerged as the biggest flash point, but the administration has also repeatedly been accused of failing to comply in lawsuits involving cuts to federal funding and the workforce.

Trump officials deny defying court orders, even as they accuse those who have issued them of “judicial tyranny.” When the Supreme Court in June restricted the circumstances under which presidential policies could be halted nationwide while they are challenged in court, Trump hailed the ruling as halting a “colossal abuse of power.”

“We’ve seen a handful of radical left judges try to overrule the rightful powers of the president,” Trump said, falsely portraying the judges who have ruled against him as being solely Democrats.

His point was echoed Monday by White House spokesman Harrison Fields, who attacked judges who have ruled against the president as “leftist” and said the president’s attorneys “are working tirelessly to comply” with rulings. “If not for the leadership of the Supreme Court, the Judicial Branch would collapse into a kangaroo court,” Fields said in a statement.

Retired federal judge and former Watergate special prosecutor Paul Michel compared the situation to the summer of 1974, when the Supreme Court ordered President Richard M. Nixon to turn over Oval Office recordings as part of the Watergate investigation. Nixon initially refused, prompting fears of a constitutional crisis, but ultimately complied.

“The current challenge is even bigger and more complicated because it involves hundreds of actions, not one subpoena for a set of tapes,” Michel said. “We’re in new territory.”

Deportations and Defiance

Questions about whether the administration is defying judges have bubbled since early in Trump’s second term, when the Supreme Court said Trump must allow millions in already allocated foreign aid to flow. The questions intensified in several immigration cases, including high-profile showdowns over the wrongful deportation of an undocumented immigrant who came to the United States as a teenager and was raising a family in Maryland.

The Supreme Court ordered the government to “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego García’s return after officials admitted deporting him to a notorious prison in his native El Salvador despite a court order forbidding his removal to that country. Abrego remained there for almost two months, with the administration saying there was little it could do because he was under control of a foreign power.

In June, he was brought back to the United States in federal custody after prosecutors secured a grand jury indictment against him for human smuggling, based in large part on the testimony of a three-time felon who got leniency in exchange for cooperation. And recent filings in the case reveal that El Salvador told the United Nations that the U.S. retained control over prisoners sent there.

“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance.” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, on the government declining to identify officials involved in Kilmar Abrego García’s deportation.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego’s lawyers, said the events prove the administration was “playing games with the court all along.”

Aziz Huq, a University of Chicago law professor, said the case is “the sharpest example of a pattern that’s observed across many of the cases that we’ve seen being filed against the Trump administration, in which orders that come from lower courts are either being slow-walked or not being complied with in good faith.”

In another legal clash, Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg found Trump officials engaged in “willful disregard” of his order to turn around deportation flights to El Salvador in mid-March after he issued a temporary restraining order against removing migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, which in the past had been used only in wartime.

A whistleblower complaint filed by fired Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni alleges that Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told staffers before the flights that a judge might try to block them — and that it might be necessary to tell a court “f— you” and ignore the order.

Bove, who has since been nominated by Trump for an appellate judgeship and is awaiting Senate confirmation, denies the allegations.

In May, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, opined that the government had “utterly disregarded” her order to facilitate the return of a Venezuelan man who was also wrongfully deported to El Salvador. Like Boasberg, who was appointed by Obama, she is exploring contempt proceedings.

Another federal judge found Trump officials violated his court order by attempting to send deportees to South Sudan without due process. In a fourth case, authorities deported a man shortly after an appeals court ruled he should remain in the U.S. while his immigration case played out. Trump officials said the removal was an error but have yet to return him.

One of the most glaring examples of noncompliance involves a program to provide legal representation to minors who arrived at the border alone, often fearing for their safety after fleeing countries racked by gang violence.

In April, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, a Biden appointee, ordered the Trump administration to fund the program. The government delayed almost four weeks and moved to cancel a contract the judge had ordered restarted. While the money was held up, a 17-year-old was sent back to Honduras before he could meet with a lawyer.

Attorneys told the court that the teen probably could have won a reprieve with a simple legal filing. Alvaro Huerta, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in a suit over the funding cuts, said other minors might have suffered the same fate.

“Had they been complying with the temporary restraining order, this child would have been represented,” Huerta said.

Gaslighting the Court:

Another problematic case involves the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created after the 2008 financial crisis to police unfair, abusive or deceptive practices by financial institutions.

A judge halted the administration’s plans to fire almost all CFPB employees, ruling the effort was unlawful. An appeals court said workers could be let go only if the bureau performed an “individualized” or “particularized” assessment. Four business days later, the Trump administration reported that it had carried out a “particularized assessment” of more than 1,400 employees — and began an even bigger round of layoffs.

CFPB employees said in court filings that the process was a sham directed by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service. Employees said counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget told them to brush off the court’s required particularized assessment and simply meet the layoff quota.

“All that mattered was the numbers,” said one declaration submitted to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee.

Jackson halted the new firings, accusing the Trump administration of “dressing” its cuts in “new clothes.”

“There is reason to believe that the defendants … are thumbing their nose at both this Court and the Court of Appeals.” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on the government’s attempt to carry out firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau despite a court order blocking the move.

David Super, a Georgetown law professor, said the government has used the same legal maneuver in a number of cases. “They put out a directive that gets challenged,” Super said. “Then they do the same thing that the directive set out to do but say it’s on some other legal basis.”

He pointed to January, when OMB issued a memo freezing all federal grants and loans. Affected groups won an injunction. The White House quickly announced it was rescinding the memo but keeping the freeze in place.

Justice Department attorneys argued in legal filings that the government’s action rendered the injunction moot, but the judge said it appeared it had been done “simply to defeat the jurisdiction of the courts.”

“It appears that OMB sought to overcome a judicially imposed obstacle without actually ceasing the challenged conduct. The court can think of few things more disingenuous.” U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan on the Trump administration arguing a court order blocking a freeze on federal grants was moot because it had rescinded a memo.

In another case, a judge blocked the administration from ending federal funds for programs that promote “gender ideology,” or the idea that someone might identify with a gender other than their birth sex, while the effort was challenged in court. The National Institutes of Health nevertheless slashed a grant for a doctor at Seattle Children’s Hospital who was developing a health education tool for transgender youth.

The plaintiffs complained it was a violation of the court order, but the NIH said the grant was being cut under a different authority. Whistleblowers came forward with documents showing that the administration had apparently carried out the cuts under the executive order that was at the center of the court case.

U.S. District Judge Lauren King, a Biden appointee, said the documents “have raised substantial questions” about whether the government violated her preliminary injunction and ordered officials to produce documents. The government eventually reinstated the grant.

In a different case, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, was unsparing in her decision to place a hold on the Trump’s administration’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, saying the order was “soaked in animus.”

Then the government issued a new policy targeting troops who have symptoms of “gender dysphoria,” the term for people who feel a mismatch between their gender identity and birth sex, and asked Reyes to dissolve her order.

Reyes was stunned. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had made repeated public statements describing the policy as a ban on transgender troops. Hegseth had recently posted on X: “Pentagon says transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.”

“I am not going to abide by government officials saying one thing to the public — what they really mean to the public — and coming in here to the court and telling me something different, like I’m an idiot,” the judge told the government’s lawyer. “The court is not going to be gaslit.”

Courts have traditionally assumed public officials, and the Justice Department in particular, are acting honestly, lawfully and in good faith. Since Trump returned to the White House, however, judges have increasingly questioned whether government lawyers are meeting that standard.

“The pattern of stuff we have … I haven’t seen before,” said Andrew C. McCarthy, a columnist for the conservative National Review and a former federal prosecutor. “The rules of the road are supposed to be you can tell a judge, ‘I can’t answer that for constitutional reasons,’ or you can tell the judge the truth.”

A Struggle for Accountability

While many judges have concluded that the Trump administration has defied court orders, only Boasberg has actively moved toward sanctioning the administration for its conduct. And he did so only after saying he had given the government “ample opportunity” to address its failure to return the deportation flights to El Salvador.

“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it.” U.S. District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, when moving to sanction the Trump administration.

The contempt proceedings he began were paused by an appeals court panel without explanation three months ago. The two judges who voted for the administrative stay were Trump appointees.

On Friday, the Trump administration brokered a deal with El Salvador and Venezuela to send the Venezuelan deportees at the heart of Boasberg’s case back to their homeland, further removing them from the reach of U.S. courts.

A contempt finding would allow the judge to impose fines, jail time or additional sanctions on officials to compel compliance.

In three other cases, judges have denied motions to hold Trump officials in contempt, but reiterated that the government must comply with a decision, or ordered the administration to turn over documents to determine whether it had violated a ruling. Judges are considering contempt proceedings in other cases as well.

Most lawsuits against the administration have been filed in federal court districts with a heavy concentration of judges appointed by Democratic presidents. The vast majority of judges who have found the administration defied court orders were appointed by Democrats, but judges selected by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have also found that officials failed to comply with orders. Most notably, at least two Trump picks have raised questions about whether officials have met their obligations to courts.

Legal experts said the slow pace of efforts to enforce court orders is not surprising. The judicial system moves methodically, and judges typically ratchet up efforts to gain compliance in small increments. They said there is also probably another factor at work that makes it especially difficult to hold the administration to account.

“The courts can’t enforce their own rulings — that has to be done by the executive branch,” said Michel, the former judge and Watergate special prosecutor.

He was referring to U.S. Marshals, the executive branch law enforcement personnel who carry out court orders related to contempt proceedings, whether that is serving subpoenas or arresting officials whom a judge has ordered jailed for not complying.

Former judges and other legal experts said judges might be calculating that a confrontation over contempt proceedings could result in the administration ordering marshals to defy the courts. That type of standoff could significantly undermine the authority of judges.

The Supreme Court’s June decision to scale back the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions, and the administration’s success at persuading the justices to overturn about a dozen temporary blocks on its agenda in recent months, might only embolden Trump officials to defy lower courts, several legal experts said.

Sotomayor echoed that concern in a recent dissent when she accused the high court of “rewarding lawlessness” by allowing Trump officials to deport migrants to countries that are not their homelands. The conservative majority gave the green light, she noted, after Trump officials twice carried out deportations despite lower court orders blocking the moves.

“This is not the first time the court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” Sotomayor wrote. “Yet each time this court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

Two months after a federal court temporarily blocked Trump’s freeze on billions in congressionally approved foreign aid, an attorney for relief organizations said the government had taken “literally zero steps to allocate this money.”

Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, has ordered the administration to explain what it is doing to comply with the order. Trump officials have said they will eventually release the funds, but aid groups worry the administration is simply trying to delay until the allocations expire in the fall.

Meanwhile, about 66,000 tons of food aid is in danger of rotting in warehouses, AIDS cases are forecast to spike in Africa and the government projected the cuts would result in 200,000 more cases of paralysis caused by polio each year. Already, children are dying unnecessarily in Sudan.

Such situations have prompted some former judges to do something most generally do not — speak out. More than two dozen retired judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents have formed the Article III Coalition to push back on attacks and misinformation about the courts.

Robert J. Cindrich, who helped found the group, said the country is not yet in a constitutional crisis but that the strain on the courts is immense. Citing the administration’s response to orders, as well as its attacks on judges and law firms, Cindrich said, “The judiciary is being put under siege.”

Trump officials accused of defying 1 in 3 judges who ruled against him
A comprehensive analysis of lawsuits against Trump policies shows dozens of examples of defiance, delay and dishonesty, a serious test for the court system.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/21/trump-court-orders-defy-noncompliance-marshals-judges

USA Today: Lawyer details ‘horrendous conditions’ faced by 11th grader detained by ICE

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“This kid has been sleeping on a cement floor for five days, no access to a shower; he’s brushed his teeth twice,” said Marcelo Gomes da Silva’s immigration attorney.

Sleeping on a cement floor in a windowless room. Only brushing your teeth twice in five days and never getting to shower. Being mocked by a guard.

These are among the “horrendous conditions” that Massachusetts high school junior Marcelo Gomes da Silva endured while being held by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, according to his lawyer Robin Nice.

Gomes Da Silva, 18, was arrested by ICE agents on May 31 when he was stopped on his way to volleyball practice with friends in his hometown of Milford. Federal officials said they targeted da Silva’s father, Joao Paulo Gomes-Pereira, who they say is an undocumented immigrant from Brazil, but they detained Gomes da Silva − who came to the United States at the age of 7 with his parents − when they realized he had overstayed his visa.

According to Nice, Gomes Da Silva was subsequently detained for five nights in cells that are intended to hold detainees for hours before being transferred. The cells lack access to basic amenities like beds and showers.

“The Burlington (Massachusetts) facility is not a detention center, it’s a holding cell,” Nice told USA TODAY after a June 5 hearing in Gomes da Silva’s case, which has drawn nationwide attention and fervent local opposition to his detention and possible deportation.

“It’s deplorable,” she added.

Nice first raised the issue in a federal immigration court hearing on whether he would be granted bail.

“He’s being held in just awful conditions no one should be subjected to: sleeping on a cement floor for just a few hours per night,” Nice began, before she was cut off by Immigration Judge Jenny Beverly, who noted the hearing was not the proper venue to raise the issue.

Shackles, teasing, and solitary confinement

Nice provided more details on her client’s confinement in a press conference after the hearing, in which the judge set a $2,000 bond for Gomes da Silva’s release, and in a subsequent interview with USA TODAY.

“This kid has been sleeping on a cement floor for five days, no access to a shower, he’s brushed his teeth twice. He’s sharing a room with men twice his age,” Nice said at the press conference outside the Chelmsford, Massachusetts federal immigration court.

At one point, Gomes da Silva was taken to a hospital emergency room because he was suffering severe headaches and vision loss stemming from a high school volleyball injury days earlier. When he was transferred to and from the hospital, he was handcuffed and kept in leg shackles and then moved to a different room, Nice said.

“He got back to the holding facility at 4 am and then was put in what I would refer to as solitary confinement: it was a room without anyone else, and all of these rooms that people are held in, there is no window,” Nice said. “There is no yard time, because it’s not set up for that.”

“If you are detained in the Burlington ICE facility, you do not see the light of day,” she said. “You don’t know what time it is.”

The isolation that da Silva subsequently endured made him so “desperately lonely” that he took to banging on the walls of his cell to get someone to come talk to him, Nice told USA TODAY. The guards, who he said mostly ignored him, nicknamed him “the knocker” in response.

When Gomes da Silva was held in the room with a larger group, one of the guards played a cruel practical joke on the detainees, Nice said:

“He said when ICE opens the door it means either someone’s coming in or someone’s getting released, so everyone perks up when they open the door. So he sees in a little slit in the door window, one ICE officer motion to another and says ‘watch this,’ and so one ICE officer opens the door to the cell and just stands their for a minute and then says, ‘psych!’ And closes the door. And everyone had just perked up,” Nice recounted.

The isolation in the ICE holding facility extended beyond its walls, Nice said. There was no way for her to call her client there, and he could only make one call for two minutes per day − and not even every day.

Nice wasn’t able to get in to see Gomes da Silva until the fifth day of his confinement. He was so shut off from the outside world that he didn’t know his varsity volleyball team had lost in the semi-finals of the state tournament, even though the match drew media coverage.

ICE did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment on Nice’s allegations.

In a statement on June 2, Patricia Hyde, acting field director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations’ in Boston defended Gomes da Silva’s detention and said the agency intends to pursue deportation proceedings.

“When we go into the community and find others who are unlawfully here, we’re going to arrest them,” Hyde said. “He’s 18 years old and he’s illegally in this country. We had to go to Milford looking for someone else and if we come across someone else who is here illegally, we’re going to arrest them.”

‘Nobody deserves to be down there’

Later on June 5, Gomes da Silva himself addressed reporters after posting the $2,000 bond and being released.

“Nobody deserves to be down there,” da Silva told reporters. “You sleep on concrete floors. The bathroom — I have to use the bathroom in the open with like 35-year-old men. It’s humiliating.”

Gomes da Silva also said they were given only crackers for lunch and dinner. Nice told USA TODAY he was also fed what he described as an undefined “mush” that was “like oatmeal, but not oatmeal.”

A twice-weekly churchgoer, Gomes da Silva asked the guards for a bible but was not provided with one.

Beside him were U.S. Reps. Seth Moulton and Jake Auchincloss, both Democrats from Massachusetts, who said they returned from Washington, D.C., on Thursday to speak with da Silva and to inspect the detention center.

Consequences of an immigration crackdown

The Trump administration has sought to ramp up deportations of undocumented immigrants, including those like da Silva who were brought here as children and have no criminal record. ICE reported holding 46,269 people in custody in mid-March, well above the agency’s detention capacity of 41,500 beds.

USA TODAY has previously reported on allegations of conditions in ICE detention similar to what Gomes da Silva and Nice described.

In March, four women held at the Krome North Processing Center in Miami said they were chained for hours on a prison bus without access to food, water or a toilet. They also alleged they were told by guards to urinate on the floor, slept on a concrete floor, and only got one three-minute shower over the course of three or four days in custody.

The allegations come after two men at Krome died in custody on Jan. 23 and Feb. 20.

Lawyer details ‘horrendous conditions’ faced by 11th grader detained by ICE
“This kid has been sleeping on a cement floor for five days, no access to a shower; he’s brushed his teeth twice,” said the teenager’s attorney.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/05/marcelo-gomes-da-silva-ice-conditions/84057203007

USA Today: ‘Atrocious:’ lawyers, family and friends of detainees describe ICE detention

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One man, Nexan Aroldo Asencio, was forced to sleep on the wet, foul-smelling floor of the bathroom, according to his wife.

  • The comments paint a similar portrait to the description from Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader at Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts who was held in Burlington for six days.
  • The unusually large volume of immigrants in detention meant a backlog was created at the office in Burlington, Massachusetts.
  • “Two days, he was sleeping on the bathroom floor,” one detainee’s wife said her husband told her. “It was a small room and it had a toilet and a sink, but it was always wet the floor.”

Family members and lawyers of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the agency’s office in Burlington, Massachusetts, say their clients have been held for days in overcrowded holding cells with inadequate and unclean drinking water, little food and no opportunity to bathe.

One man, Nexan Aroldo Asencio, has even been forced to sleep on the wet, foul-smelling floor of the bathroom, according to his wife.

“He said, ‘It’s horrible here in Burlington: I’m sleeping on the bathroom floor. It smells like piss. It smells like poop,'” Christina Maria Toledo, Aroldo Ascencio’s wife, told USA TODAY.

“‘Everyone’s coming in and out. It’s so packed. The only thing they gave me crackers and water that was dirty,'” she said her husband told her.

Derege Demissie, a lawyer who has represented several people who have been held in the facility, told USA TODAY the conditions are “untenable.”

“They’re atrocious, they’re just ridiculous,” he said. “They had at one point up to 18 women there in a small room, with one toilet, and there’s a camera over the toilet.

“They don’t have a bed. They don’t have a blanket. They don’t have a pillow. They have only a mylar blanket like you get in the marathon.”

The comments paint a similar portrait to the description given by Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader at Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts, who was held in the Burlington ICE facility for six days. Lawyers for da Silva and other detainees say the holding cells are overflowing because recent widespread ICE raids have brought in more immigrants than ICE’s facilities are equipped to handle.

“Nobody deserves to be down there,” da Silva, 18, told reporters upon his June 5 release. “You sleep on concrete floors. The bathroom – I have to use the bathroom in the open with like 35-year-old men. It’s humiliating.”

In a statement, ICE contradicted some of the claims by detainees and noted that their stays are temporary.

“The ICE field office in Burlington is intended to hold detainees while they are going through the administrative intake process,” the agency said in an emailed response to USA TODAY. “Afterwards, they are usually moved to a detention facility. There are occasions where detainees might need to stay at the Burlington office for a short period that might exceed the anticipated administrative processing time. While these instances are a rarity, the Burlington field office is equipped to facilitate a short-term stay when necessary. Detainees pending processing are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.”

Immigration raids cause overcrowding

The ICE Boston field office in Burlington, Massachusetts, looks like any suburban office: a low-slung, concrete and dark-glass building that could just as easily be a school or customer call center. If ICE detention facilities are the equivalent of jail, where one is held during court proceedings, the office is the police station. The detainees normally spend a few hours there while they’re being processed and awaiting transfer.

But ICE has recently been conducting raids in Massachusetts that brought in nearly 1,500 undocumented immigrants by June 3. The arrests have caused widespread fear among immigrants in Massachusetts towns such as Milford.

Plymouth County Correctional Facility, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is the only ICE detention center in the state. The number of ICE detainees there more than doubled in the first three months of this year, according to an April 10 report from WCVB.

The unusually large influx of immigrants in detention meant a backlog was created at the office in Burlington, causing people arrested on an immigration violation to be held for days in a facility unequipped for the purpose, according to lawyers for the detainees.

“This is not set up for overnight detention,” Demissie said. “It’s just a holding place to process people for a few hours, but they’ve arrested so many people, they’ve created an overcrowding situation.”

Those caught in the dragnet are often surprised to be stuck in a holding cell for days on end.

“He was there the whole time, six days, and he was supposed to be there one to three hours,” said Coleen Greco, the mother of one of Gomes da Silva’s volleyball teammates.

“Two days, he was sleeping on the bathroom floor,” Aroldo Asencio’s wife Toledo said he told her. “It was a small room and it had a toilet and a sink, but it was always wet the floor, it looked like it was piss everywhere and it stunk, he said.”

After some people were transferred out of the facility, Aroldo Asencio was transferred from the bathroom to a holding cell.

Gomes da Silva said after his release on June 5 that there were approximately 40 men in a windowless holding cell without beds.

That’s the room Aroldo Asencio was moved to after his first two nights in Burlington. Among his cellmates was Gomes da Silva, a fellow Milford resident. Gomes da Silva sent Toledo a voice memo in which he stated, “Your husband was treated just like everyone there with no respect – they treated all of us inhumanely.”

Like Gomes da Silva, Aroldo Asencio said he had no access to a shower in Burlington, Massachusetts. His first shower came after he was transferred to a longer-term detention facility in Vermont, four and a half days later.

“He wasn’t able to do anything, not brush his teeth, nothing,” Toledo said.

“They have no sanitary products, like soap,” said Demissie, the immigration lawyer who had several clients in the facility.

For a pillow, Gomes da Silva told his volleyball coach, Andrew Mainini, he used his shoes. The metallic blanket was so thin that he was able to fold it up into a bracelet to bring home with him as a souvenir.

‘I don’t want cake, I want my daddy’

Aroldo Asencio is an immigrant from Guatemala who works as a framer, building houses. He and his wife, who is a native-born U.S. citizen from New Jersey, started a construction business in March. They have two four-year-old sons and Aroldo Asencio has already obtained an I-130, a document that recognizes his marriage to a citizen and is a step in the process of applying for a green card.

According to ICE, of the 1,500 immigrants arrested in Massachusetts before June 3, just under 800 of them have criminal records in the United States or abroad.

Aroldo Asencio has no criminal record, Toledo said. He was arrested by ICE agents on May 30 who were looking for his brother Victor, who got arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol last year.

Shortly after Aroldo Asencio left for work that morning, Toledo heard her 4-year-old son Damian screaming, “Daddy!” because his father was outside. She and her twin sons watched the ICE agents arrest her husband.

“It was one officer that went to him and another one, maybe 10 seconds later, grabbed him aggressively, went to put cuffs on,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Why you being so aggressive? He’s not resisting.’ His shirt was ripped. And another officer went to grab him, and they’re being rough with him. And I’m telling them, ‘He’s not fighting, you don’t need to grab him. And my kids are watching. My kids have asthma, and I don’t need them to be crying the way they are.’”

The reason the arrest occurred right in front of their home, Toledo explained, is that when ICE stopped Aroldo Asencio, he didn’t know who they were and he ran home.

“He gets pulled over, but when he looks back, it’s just a regular SUV. But all he sees is people running out of it with masks on. So he gets scared and runs off, and they’re yelling ‘Victor,’ but he’s not Victor.”

Aroldo Asencio and Toledo explained who he was and shared his immigration status, but the ICE agents arrested him anyway.

“They asked about his status, and I’m like, ‘He has an approved I-130. And they said, ‘If you show us, we’ll let him go,’ Toledo said. But even after she showed them the paperwork, they didn’t release him.

Instead, he was transported to the police station and then to Hartford, Connecticut, and later to Burlington, without notifying his wife.

“It was two days I didn’t know anything about him,” Toledo recalled. Eventually, he was able to call her from detention at the ICE office in Burlington.

Toledo says her children, whose fourth birthday her husband missed on June 11, remain disturbed by what happened to their father and his ongoing absence.

“My son Jhon is the one that’s very attached to his father,” Toledo said. “He didn’t want to blow out the candles on his birthday, because he said, ”I don’t want cake, I want my daddy.’”

Demissie represents a client, Kary Diaz Martinez, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic whom he said is also married to a U.S. citizen and has no criminal record.

At a deportation hearing in Boston on June 3, Martinez was released on her own recognizance by a judge, but ICE arrested her when she exited.

“She did what she was supposed to do: appeared at her hearing,” Demissie noted. “In the meantime, she’s married to a U.S. citizen and would be entitled to seek permanent residency here through what is called an adjustment of status. ICE is basically blocking that whole process.”

“There is no reason to arrest her,” Demissie continued, adding that the “inhumane conditions” violated her constitutional rights.

Demissie filed a motion to get Martinez released on the grounds that the conditions in Burlington were inhumane. ICE then found room for her in a Chittenden, Vermont detention facility. They allowed Demissie to meet with this client at a courthouse, after refusing to let them meet in person.

‘Like cat food’

A constant theme in the testimony of ICE detainees in Burlington is the extreme inadequacy of the food and water.

“When they asked for more food or water, they wouldn’t give it to them,” Toledo said, citing her conversations with her husband.

“They described it as like cat food,” Demissie said, referring to his clients’ description of the food they were given.

That may be because the building lacks the equipment needed for cooking.

“We have no kitchens and no dining rooms, and therefore we cannot keep people overnight or over the weekend,” Bruce Chadbourne, then-New England regional director of ICE, said at a public meeting in 2007.

ICE did not respond to a request from USA TODAY to verify if this is still the case.

In response to an inquiry for a previous story on Gomes da Silva’s conditions, ICE said he was provided meals, including sandwiches.

Whatever Gomes da Silva ate in captivity, it clearly wasn’t enough, according to Mainini, his volleyball coach.

“He seemed thin,” said Mainini, who saw Gomes da Silva the night he was released. “As someone who works out with him and sees him daily, he looked thinner than just six days earlier. And it was pretty noticeable in his face, specifically.”

“ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously,” Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said in a prior statement in response to Gomes da Silva’s allegations. “ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.”

Among the traumas Gomes da Silva described to Greco was that ICE asked his cellmates to sign papers in English, which they did not understand. Gomes da Silva speaks Portuguese and Spanish, so he translated the documents, which were often deportation orders. Some of the men then broke down in tears when he told them what the papers said.

Greco said that Gomes da Silva emerged from captivity famished and immediately ordered a 20-piece chicken McNuggets from McDonald’s.

“He talked the entire ride home,” said Greco, who picked him up because Gomes da Silva’s parents are afraid to leave their house and risk ICE arresting them. (His father was the target when Gomes da Silva was pulled over, according to ICE.)

“I said, ‘You don’t have to talk to me,'” the family friend recalled. “He said, ‘No, I want to tell all these stories.'”

‘Atrocious:’ lawyers, family and friends of detainees describe ICE detention
Lawyers, family and friends of ICE detainees in Burlington, Massachusetts describe “horrible” conditions including insufficient food and clean drinking water, and no soap, showers, or beds.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/13/ice-detention-describe-horrible-conditions/84173121007