Scripps News: Judge questions if Spanish-language journalist can stay in immigration detention without charges
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Monthly Archives: August 2025
Guardian: Judge blocks Trump administration from deporting Kilmar Ábrego García again
Federal judge says man wrongfully deported to El Salvador cannot be expelled until October as asylum case proceeds
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García, who was already wrongfully deported once, cannot be deported again until at least early October, according to multiple reports.
CNN reported that the US district judge Paula Xinis, who is presiding over the case, scheduled an evidentiary hearing for 6 October, and said that she intends to have Trump administration officials testify about the government’s efforts to re-deport Ábrego.
At the same hearing, Ábrego’s lawyers informed the court that he plans to seek asylum in the United States, according to the Associated Press.
Ábrego’s case has drawn national attention since he was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March.
Following widespread pressure, including from the supreme court, the Trump administration returned him to the US in June. Upon his return, however, he immediately faced criminal charges related to human smuggling, allegations that his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”.
Ábrego, who is 30 years old and a Salvadorian native, was released from criminal custody in Tennessee on Friday while awaiting trial.
But over the weekend, the Trump administration announced new plans to deport him to Uganda.
Then on Monday, Ábrego was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during a scheduled immigration check-in in Baltimore, which was one of the conditions of his release.
He is currently being held in a detention center in Virginia.
Ábrego’s legal team swiftly filed a lawsuit on Monday, challenging both his current detention and his potential deportation to Uganda. In court filings, they argued that the government is retaliating against Ábrego for challenging his deportation to El Salvador.
“The only reason he was taken into detention was to punish him,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney representing Ábrego, on Monday. “To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”
Later on Monday, Xinis issued a ruling temporarily barring the government from deporting Ábrego until at least Friday. On Wednesday, she extended her order until Ábrego’s current deportation challenge in court is resolved, according to ABC News.
It added that Xinis said she would issue a ruling within 30 days of the 6 October hearing, and also ordered that Ábrego must remain in custody within a 200-mile (320km) radius of the court in Maryland.
She also reportedly said she would not order Ábrego released from immigration custody, leaving that decision for an immigration judge.
Ábrego entered the US without authorization around 2011 as a teenager. According to court documents, he was fleeing gang violence.
In 2019, a federal court granted him protection from deportation to El Salvador. Despite that ruling, in March, he was mistakenly deported there by the Trump administration.
In court documents in April, the Trump administration admitted that Ábrego’s deportation had been due to an “administrative error”.
Since then, Trump administration officials have repeatedly accused him of being affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family have denied.
Judge blocks Trump administration from deporting Kilmar Ábrego García again
Federal judge says man wrongfully deported to El Salvador cannot be expelled until October as asylum case proceeds
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/27/kilmar-abrego-garcia-deportation-trump-asylum
Slingshot News: ‘He Came Over And Hugged Me’: Trump Makes Up A Fake Story Of Maryland Governor Wes Moore In Embarrassing Oval Office Moment
‘He Came Over And Hugged Me’: Trump Makes Up A Fake Story Of Maryland Governor Wes Moore In Embarrassing Oval Office Moment
Donald Trump signed a batch of executive orders several days ago in the Oval Office. During his gaggle with the press, Trump made up a fake story about Maryland Governor Wes Moore hugging him and calling him the “greatest president” of his lifetime. Moore responded with a 3-letter statement: lol.
Latin Times: Trump Admin Already Sending Migrants To African Country As Part Of Deportation Agreement
Seven migrants from third countries were sent to Rwanda, the country confirmed
The Trump administration deported seven migrants from third countries to Rwanda in August as part of an agreement, the African nation confirmed on Thursday.
Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo said in a statement that the group arrived to the country in mid-August, ABC News reported.
They were “accommodated by an international organization,” Makolo added, and are being visited both by members of the International Organization for Migration and the Rwandan social services.
“Three of the individuals have expressed a desire to return to their home countries, while four wish to stay and build lives in Rwanda,” the spokeswoman added. They are also set to receive workforce training and healthcare. She provided no information of the migrants sent to the country.
Rwanda will take up to 250 migrants following an agreement signed in June.
Four African countries accepted receiving migrants from third countries from the U.S., the other ones being Eswatini, South Sudan and Uganda.
Uganda is the latest one to do so, with CBS News reporting earlier this month that it agreed to the deal as long as deportees don’t have criminal records. It is not clear how many migrants the country is willing to accept.
Overall, at least a dozen countries have already accepted or agreed to accept deportees from third nations so far in the second Trump administration.
Earlier this month the Miami Herald reported that more than three in ten migrants deported to third countries are Venezuelan. The outlet scanned through data obtained by the University of California’s Deportation Data Project. It showed that Venezuelans make up the largest share of deportees sent to countries where they were neither born nor were citizens.
Overall, close to 3,000 Venezuelans were deported to third countries during the first six months of the year, although the outlet clarified that the dataset is likely incomplete. Over two hundreds were infamously sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador, where many claimed to be subjected to numerous abuses before being released as part of a three-part agreement involving the U.S., Venezuela and the Central American country.
Most have been sent to Spanish-speaking countries including Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Spain. However, two were sent to Austria, one to Italy, one to Syria and one to Vanuatu, in the Pacific.
Overall, 7,900 such deportations were recorded by then, with Venezuelans representing 36.71% of the total. They are followed by Guatemalans (20%) and Hondurans (7.8%).
Daily Beast: Trump Takes Revenge Against FEMA Workers Who Warned He’s Risking Disaster
FEMA employees were abruptly placed on administrative leave Tuesday—just 24 hours after they signed an explosive open letter warning Donald Trump that the agency is being dragged back to its pre-Katrina dark ages.
The letter, signed by 191 current and former FEMA staffers, was sent to Congress and top officials on Monday. Its message was blunt—the people now running FEMA are inexperienced, politically driven, and dismantling the very programs that keep Americans safe when disaster strikes.
The writers warned that, left unchecked, the agency could stumble into catastrophe. By Tuesday evening, FEMA’s administrator’s office had fired back with suspension letters.
The employees were told they would remain in “non-duty status” but keep their pay and benefits, effectively being benched for speaking out.
The letter also cited decisions made by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem as a reason the agency could fail to manage disaster responses.
FEMA confirmed that multiple employees were placed on immediate leave, though the exact number remains unclear. Of the nearly 200 signatories, only about 36 revealed their names publicly, The Washington Post and CNN reported.
“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform. Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo, who have forgotten that their duty is to the American people not entrenched bureaucracy,” a FEMA spokesperson told the Daily Beast.
“Under the Biden Administration, the American people were abandoned as disasters ravaged North Carolina, and needed aid was denied based on party affiliation in Florida. Our obligation is to survivors, not to protecting broken systems. Under the leadership of Secretary Noem, FEMA will return to its mission of assisting Americans at their most vulnerable.”
Former President George W. Bush was heavily criticized for his administration’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina particularly in New Orleans, where much of the city was left underwater. In its aftermath, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (PKEMRA), which added safeguards to prevent another botched response.
The letter from FEMA employees warns that the Trump administration is rolling back those protections and calls on Congress to intervene. Their demands include shielding FEMA from “further interference” from the DHS, stopping “illegal impoundments of appropriated funding,” and protecting FEMA workers from “politically motivated firings.”
Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, was already under fire in July over the response to flooding in Texas that left about 135 people dead. Critics blamed a new rule she insisted upon, which required her personal sign-off on any contract or grant over $100,000, which delayed the deployment of an Urban Search and Rescue team by at least three days.
At least two FEMA staffers placed on leave had been part of that Texas flood response, The Washington Post reported.
Jeremy Edwards, a former FEMA press secretary who signed the “FEMA Katrina Declaration,” said the number of signatories “signifies the severity of the problem.”
“They are that scared of us being so inadequately unprepared. It speaks a lot to the situation right now,” Edwards told The Post.
The Trump administration also placed about 140 Environmental Protection Agency employees on leave in July after they signed a letter protesting the agency’s management and the treatment of federal workers.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Slingshot News: ‘I Thought We’d Have That Settled Easier’: Trump Demonstrates His Incompetence, Defends His Failed Negotiations With Russia During Press Conference
‘I Thought We’d Have That Settled Easier’: Trump Demonstrates His Incompetence, Defends His Failed Negotiations With Russia During Press Conference
During his remarks at a press conference in June, President Trump defended his failed negotiations with Russia. Trump stated, “I thought we’d have that settled easier.”
Slingshot News: ‘Let Somebody Else Get Rich’: Trump Plans To Complete His Dismantling Of The Education Department By Selling Off The Buildings
‘Let Somebody Else Get Rich’: Trump Plans To Complete His Dismantling Of The Education Department By Selling Off The Buildings
During a cabinet meeting at the White House yesterday, Donald Trump discussed plans to close down Department of Education buildings and selling them off so that somebody else can “get rich with the real estate.”
Associated Press: US deportation flights hit record highs as carriers try to hide the planes, advocates say
Immigration advocates gather like clockwork outside Seattle’s King County International Airport to witness deportation flights and spread word of where they are going and how many people are aboard. Until recently, they could keep track of the flights using publicly accessible websites.
But the monitors and others say airlines are now using dummy call signs for deportation flights and are blocking the planes’ tail numbers from tracking websites, even as the number of deportation flights hits record highs under President Donald Trump. The changes forced them to find other ways to follow the flights, including by sharing information with other groups and using data from an open-source exchange that tracks aircraft transmissions.
Their work helps people locate loved ones who are deported in the absence of information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which rarely discloses flights. News organizations have used such flight tracking in reporting.
Tom Cartwright, a retired J.P. Morgan financial officer turned immigration advocate, tracked 1,214 deportation-related flights in July — the highest level since he started watching in January 2020. About 80% are operated by three airlines: GlobalX, Eastern Air Express and Avelo Airlines. They carry immigrants to other airports to be transferred to overseas flights or take them across the border, mostly to Central American countries and Mexico.
Cartwright tracked 5,962 flights from the start of Trump’s second term through July, a 41% increase of 1,721 over the same period in 2024. Those figures including information from major deportation airports but not smaller ones like King County International Airport, also known as Boeing Field. Cartwright’s figures include 68 military deportation flights since January — 18 in July alone. Most have gone to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The work became so demanding that Cartwright, 71, and his group, Witness at the Border, turned over the job this month to Human Rights First, which dubbed its project “ICE Flight Monitor.”
“His work brings essential transparency to U.S. government actions impacting thousands of lives and stands as a powerful example of citizen-driven accountability in defense of human rights and democracy,” Uzrz Zeya, Human Rights First’s chief executive officer, said.
The airlines did not respond to multiple email requests for comment. ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which would not confirm any security measures it has taken.
La Resistencia, a Seattle-area nonprofit immigration rights group, has monitored 59 flights at Boeing Field and five at the Yakima airport in 2025, surpassing its 2024 total of 42.
Not all are deportation flights. Many are headed to or from immigration detention centers or to airports near the border. La Resistencia counted 1,023 immigrants brought in to go to the ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, and 2,279 flown out, often to states on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“ICE is doing everything in its power to make it as hard as possible to differentiate their contractors’ government activities from other commercial endeavors,” organizer Guadalupe Gonzalez told The Associated Press.
Airlines can legally block data
The Federal Aviation Administration allows carriers to block data like tail numbers from public flight tracking websites under the Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed program, or LADD, said Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for FlightRadar24.
“Tail numbers are like VIN numbers on cars,” Gonzalez said.
Planes with blocked tail numbers no longer appear on websites like FlightRadar24 or FlightAware. The tracker page identifies these them as “N/A – Not Available” as they move across the map and when they are on the tarmac. Destinations and arrival times aren’t listed.
Carriers have occasionally used LADD for things like presidential campaigns, but in March, FlightRadar24 received LADD notices for more than a dozen aircraft, Petchenik said. It was unusual to see that many aircraft across multiple airlines added to the blocking list, he said. The blocked planes were often used for ICE deportations and transfers, he said.
Of the 94 ICE Air contractor planes that La Resistencia was tracking nationwide, 40 have been unlisted, Gonzalez said.
Similar things happened with the call signs airlines use to identify flights in the air, Gonzalez said.
Airlines use a combination of letters in their company name and numbers to identify their planes. GlobalX uses GXA, for example. But in the past few months, the ICE carriers have changed their regular call signs, making it more difficult to locate their immigration activates, he said.
US deportation flights hit record highs as carriers try to hide the planes, advocates say
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flights reach record highs, the airlines running the trips have taken steps to make it more difficult to track the planes used to carry shackled people across the country and around the world.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-deportation-immigration-flights-f61941d31adf43a6a01cccc720f3bb01
Axios: Trump’s CDC director ousted in stunning departure
Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez has abruptly left the post just weeks after being sworn in, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed on Wednesday.
Why it matters: The career government scientist’s departure is the latest sign of upheaval within the Trump administration’s health bureaucracy.
- Daniel Jernigan, CDC’s director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, also resigned his post on Wednesday, according to an internal email viewed by Axios.
- Requests for comment from HHS and the White House were not immediately returned.
Monarez’s departure comes the same day HHS announced it will limit who is eligible for COVID vaccines.
- During her brief tenure, the agency was targeted in an attack on its Atlanta headquarters by a gunman influenced by anti-vaccine rhetoric and moved ahead with hundreds of job cuts.
Between the lines: Monarez was confirmed to the job on July 29 after being nominated in May by President Trump after the president’s previous pick Dave Weldon was pulled.
- She walked a fine line during hearings in her support for vaccines while not contradicting HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Catch up quick: Her departure continued a series of abrupt personnel changes throughout federal health agencies that saw FDA’s lead vaccine regulator Vinay Prasad return to his post earlier this month after he unexpectedly departed in late July.
What do you expect when your boss is still recovering from brain worms and your boss’s boss is a three-quarters dead narcissist?
Trump’s CDC director ousted in stunning departure
Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez has abruptly left the post just weeks after being sworn in, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed on Wednesday. Why it matters: The career government scientist’s departure is the latest sign of upheaval within the Trump administration’s health bureaucracy. Daniel Jernigan, CDC’s director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, also resigned his post…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/trump-s-cdc-director-ousted-in-stunning-departure/ar-AA1LlBv4
Knewz: Trump admin faces double legal blow in just hours
Donald Trump and his administration suffered two major legal setbacks as federal judges in California and Rhode Island ruled against key policies pursued by the White House.
In California, U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Thurston ordered the release of Salam Maklad, a Syrian national from the Druze religious minority, who had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers earlier this summer.
In Rhode Island, Senior District Judge William Smith blocked the administration from imposing new restrictions on domestic violence funding programs connected to the president’s recent executive order targeting what he described as “gender ideology.” Details of both rulings were shared by Politico’s legal affairs reporter, Kyle Cheney, on X.
With Republicans in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the judiciary has become a critical check on Trump’s agenda. Courts have previously halted efforts to penalize law firms representing cases against Trump, blocked attempts to revoke protections for Haitian migrants and struck down sanctions aimed at employees of the International Criminal Court. The California case centered on Maklad, who entered the United States in 2002 without valid documentation and applied for asylum. Court records show she later married a man who was granted asylum, which her legal team argued made her eligible for legal immigration status. ICE recently detained her after she attended what she believed was a routine “check-in” meeting and subsequently placed her in expedited removal proceedings and threatened her with deportation. Thurston emphasized Maklad’s clean record and lack of flight risk, writing that “the balance of the equities and public interest weigh in favor of Ms. Maklad.”
The judge ordered her release and barred authorities from rearresting her without “compliance with constitutional protections, which include, at a minimum, pre-deprivation notice — describing the change of circumstances necessitating her arrest — and detention, and a timely bond hearing.” Thurston further ruled that “Respondents are PERMANENTLY ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from rearresting or re-detaining Ms. Maklad absent compliance with constitutional protections. … At any such hearing, the Government SHALL bear the burden of establishing, by clear and convincing evidence, that Ms. Maklad poses a danger to the community or a risk of flight, and Ms. Maklad SHALL be allowed to have her counsel present.”
On the same day, Judge Smith ruled against the administration in a case tied to President Trump’s Executive Order 14168, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The directive, issued earlier this year, declared that sex is an “immutable biological classification as male or female” and instructed federal agencies to “prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms” tied to this definition.
Following the order, the Office on Violence Against Women revised its grant policy in May 2025 to prohibit funding for “inculcating or promoting gender ideology.” A coalition of 17 nonprofit groups challenged the restrictions, arguing they undermined their work with survivors of domestic violence. Judge Smith sided with the organizations, ruling that the new requirements “could result in the disruption” of critical services for victims of sexual and domestic violence. Together, the rulings marked another day of judicial pushback against the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape immigration enforcement and federal gender policy.
