The altered photo of the vice president might’ve revealed his weird, sweaty soul better than Hillbilly Elegy ever could.

This week, a 21-year-old Norwegian tourist named Mads Mikkelsen was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Newark Airport, and the most important part of the story is NOT that there’s another guy named Mads Mikkelsen. The most important part of the story is that Mikkelsen claims he was detained and eventually returned to Norway at least in part because of an image CBP agents found on his phone, which is this doctored photo of JD Vance.

Upon his return to Norway, Mikkelsen gave an interview to local newspaper Nordlys, saying that CBP agents threatened him with a $5,000 fine if he did not unlock his phone and allow them to scroll through his photos, and when they saw this hilarious and unsettling image, that was the last straw. The story spread far and wide, and CBP felt the need to address the situation on social media.

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Because the CBP chose to address the story publicly rather than let it blow over, the JD Vance meme has been on the front page of European newspapers and websites all week long, which is the dumbest and funniest and most obvious possible outcome. It is proof that people in power do not understand the Streisand Effect.

How U.S. Customs and Border Protection Accidentally Sent a JD Vance Meme into the Viral Stratosphere

The altered photo of the vice president might’ve revealed his weird, sweaty soul better than Hillbilly Elegy ever could.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a65223992/us-customs-and-border-protection-jd-vance-meme

Families could see their annual expenses rise by $2,150 due to President Donald Trump‘s hardline deportation policies, according to a new report by FWD.us.

The additional costs stem from stricter rules, including work permit cancellations, mass deportations, and reduced legal immigration, which are expected to drive up prices for everyday goods and services nationwide.

Families face $2,150 bill from Trump’s immigration policies—Study

An expert told Newsweek that removing immigrant workers leads to shortages in goods and services, which pushes prices higher.

https://www.newsweek.com/prices-rising-trump-immigration-policies-2091532

• 8 migrants have died in ICE detention centers since January
• Migrant rights groups allege insufficient medical care in ICE facilities
• ICE says every death at a facility is ‘a significant cause for concern’

A Canadian citizen held in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Miami became the 11th person to die in an ICE facility since October after he was found unresponsive this week.

The agency said Thursday that Johnny Noviello, 49, died in the ICE facility and that his cause of death remains under investigation.

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ICE officials say that any death that occurs in a detention facility is a “significant cause for concern” and that the agency prioritizes the health, safety and well-being of all migrants in ICE custody. Eight people have died in ICE detention centers this year alone — including four in Florida — according to federal data.

Noviello became a legal permanent resident in the U.S. in 1991 but was convicted in 2023 of racketeering and drug trafficking in Florida, ICE officials said this week. He was sentenced to spend a year in prison before he was arrested in May by ICE at the Florida Department of Corrections Probation office. He was given a notice to appear and was charged with being deported for violating state law.

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In 2024, an American Civil Liberties Union report indicated that 95% of deaths that took place in ICE facilities between 2017 and 2021 could have been prevented or possibly prevented. The investigation, which was conducted by the ACLU, American Oversight and Physicians for Human Rights, analyzed the deaths of the 52 people who died in ICE custody during that time frame.

“ICE has failed to provide adequate — even basic — medical and mental health care and ensure that people in detention are treated with dignity,” Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project and report co-author, said last year. “Abuses in ICE detention should no longer go ignored. It’s time to hold ICE accountable and end this failed, dangerous mass detention machine once and for all.”

The report alleged that ICE had “persistent failings in medical and mental care” that caused preventable deaths, including suicides. It also said that the federal agency failed to provide adequate medical care, medication and staffing.

Of the 52 deaths that the study analyzed, 88% involved cases in which the organizations found that incomplete, inappropriate and delayed treatments or medications contributed directly to the deaths of migrants being held in ICE custody.

Migrant deaths in ICE custody spark concerns

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5374028-migrant-deaths-in-ice-custody-canadian-citizen-florida

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

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

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

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

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

How DHS facial recognition tech spread to ICE enforcement

Facial recognition technology, originally developed for border crossings, has been expanded to help drive mass deportation efforts.

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

The Trump administration has announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti, impacting over 520,000 Haitian nationals residing in the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that the designation will expire on August 3, 2025, with the termination taking effect on September 2, 2025. This decision reverses an 18-month extension granted under former President Joe Biden‘s administration, which would have extended protections until February 2026.

Trump administration terminates legal status for more than 500K immigrants

For more than a decade, Haitian TPS holders have been legally living and working in the U.S. following the 2010 earthquake.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-haiti-dhs-legal-status-tps-noem-2091814

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

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

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

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

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

Newsweek has been unable to independently verify the conviction.

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

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

Claudio Cortez-Herrera, who has been in the U.S. for decades but served seven months on a racketeering charge as a teen, has been detained by ICE.

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

President Donald Trump seemed to stumble when responding to a reporter’s question during a press conference in Florida on Tuesday, where he had traveled for the opening of “Alligator Alcatraz,” a controversial detention facility designed to accommodate migrants.

When asked how long detainees are expected to remain at the detention center, the president replied, “I’m gonna spend a lot. This is my home state. I love it. I’ll spend a lot of time here,” sidestepping the actual question.

The president’s unexpected answer sparked concern, prompting political commentators to question his cognitive well-being.

Journalist Mike Rothschild said: “He’s obviously losing his cognition and coherence in a way that’s becoming impossible to cover up or work around. And the more he declines, the more his sycophants prop him up as doing ‘better than ever.’ It’s an unsustainable situation that could easily end in chaos.”

MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye said: “Clear sign of cognitive decline here.”

https://www.alternet.org/trump-florida-migrants

New rule will eliminate the 30-day warning period before fines begin.

The Trump administration is looking to speed up its ability to fine those in the United States illegally — up to $1,000 per day — according to a rule set to be published Friday in the Federal Register that was obtained by ABC News.

Currently, the government can alert those in the U.S. illegally 30 days before it starts issuing fines.

The rule proposed by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security allows the government to immediately start fining those in the U.S. illegally.

Trump administration eliminating warning period for fining those in the US illegally: Exclusive

Trump administration to speed up fines for those in the U.S. illegally — up to $1,000 per day — according to rule to be published Friday in the Federal Register.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-eliminating-warning-period-fining-us-illegally/story?id=123249981

According to the study, 2.28 million immigrants living in California are undocumented; they make up nearly 8% of the state’s workforce

Earlier this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a statement in which it said the agency had arrested more than 66,000 undocumented immigrants as well as deported an additional 65,682 people during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term.

ICE’s stepped-up enforcement has focused heavily on sanctuary cities, including Los Angeles, as the administration seeks to meet its stated target of 3,000 deportations per day.

As immigration enforcement actions intensify, a new study by the University of California, Merced warns that mass deportations could cause serious damage to the state’s economy. The report estimates that removing California’s undocumented immigrant population would result in a $275 billion economic hit and a loss of $23 billion annually in local, state and federal tax revenue.

Mass Deportations of Undocumented Immigrants Could Cost California $275 Billion, Study Finds

A new study by the University of California, Merced warns that mass deportations could cause serious damage to the state’s economy.

https://www.latintimes.com/mass-deportations-undocumented-immigrants-could-cost-california-275-billion-study-finds-585491

A federal judge in Manhattan has halted the Trump administration’s effort to shutter the Job Corps training program — the nation’s largest residential career training program for thousands of low-income youth — while litigation on the matter continues.

U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday extended his temporary restraining order (TRO) by granting a request for a preliminary injunction in the case, reasoning that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) unilateral closing of the program created and authorized by Congress violated federal law.

‘Not free to do as it pleases’: Judge says Trump admin lacks authority to shutter Job Corps

A federal judge has halted the Trump administration’s effort to shutter the Job Corps training program nationwide while litigation on the matter continues.