Tag Archives: American Civil Liberties Union

Associated Press: Appeals court blocks Trump administration from ending legal protections for 600,000 Venezuelans

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A federal appeals court on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status for Venezuelans while the case proceeded through court.

An email to the Department of Homeland Security for comment was not immediately returned.

The 9th Circuit judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of temporary protected status because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it. Then-President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration had extended temporary protected status for people from Venezuela.

“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” Judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for panel. The other two judges on the panel were also nominated by Democratic presidents.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that President Donald Trump’s Republican administration overstepped its authority in terminating the protections and were motivated by racial animus in doing so. Chen ordered a freeze on the terminations, but the Supreme Court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.

It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans in the group of 600,000 whose protections expired in April. Their lawyers say some have already been fired from jobs, detained in immigration jails, separated from their U.S. citizen children and even deported. Protections for the remaining 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire Sept. 10.

Congress authorized temporary protected status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country.

In ending the protections, Noem said that conditions in Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the U.S. national interest to allow migrants from there to stay on for what is a temporary program.

Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. Their country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.

Attorneys for the U.S. government argued the Homeland Security secretary’s clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program were not subject to judicial review. They also denied that Noem’s actions were motivated by racial animus.

Appeals court blocks Trump administration from ending legal protections for 600,000 Venezuelans
A federal appeals court has blocked the Trump administration’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States.

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-trump-temporary-status-venezuelans-7c70b2d301c43663a6f506af527637a4

Salon: Florida desensitized my family to cruel and unusual punishment

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It’s not just at Alligator Alcatraz. Horrific conditions exist throughout the Sunshine State’s prisons

In the weeks since Alligator Alcatraz opened deep within the Everglades in southern Florida, there have been mounting reports of the horrific conditions inside: Maggots in the food, sewage overflowing near beds, people having to remove fecal matter from the toilets with their bare hands due to a lack of water. To protest the conditions, detainees have launched a hunger strike, which likely continues, despite the Department of Homeland Security’s attempts to deny and suppress information about it.

Construction at Alligator Alcatraz could be halted indefinitely in the wake of a lawsuit filed by environmental groups and an Indigenous tribe arguing the detention center’s development on protected wetlands violates environmental laws. Another suit brought by the ACLU claims detainees’ constitutional rights are being violated. Florida seems undeterred. The state is planning to build a second detention center at a correctional institution that was shuttered in 2021 after numerous reports of excessive violence and abuse of inmates by guards. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling the facility “the deportation depot.”

This scary reality is snowballing in its brutality as President Donald Trump and his administration, Republican politicians and large swaths of the American population continue to broaden the cultural profile of who we deem dangerous enough to lock up. Several states are developing similar concentration camps, including one at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, and an Indiana facility dubbed “The Speedway Slammer.” I’m not surprised. 

I’m also not surprised that Florida is leading the way in building these facilities. The U.S. has the largest incarcerated population in the world, and Florida locks up a higher percentage of its people than any independent democratic country on earth. To date, no other state has spent as much effort collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the second Trump administration. Following DeSantis’ special session on immigration in January, the Sunshine State passed laws requiring local jurisdictions to enter into agreements with ICE and offering a $1,000 bonus to local officers participating in ICE raids and operations. Immigration detention in Florida quadrupled in less than six months. As the state runs out of space, Florida jails are being used to house detainees, exacerbating overcrowded conditions and forcing people to sleep on the floor. When ICE staff opposed the plans to use Florida jails as ICE detention facilities because it would violate current federal regulations and standards, a local sheriff dismissed the claims, calling them “woke.” 

Prisoners in the Florida Department of Corrections system are often held under many of the same inhumane conditions present at Alligator Alcatraz. My uncle is one of them. 

I’ve visited him in facilities up and down the state: In detention centers; maximum security units; psych wards; private correctional institutions; facilities with barbed wire fences, search dogs and rooftops decorated with armed guards; places in towns so small the only store for miles is a Piggly Wiggly.

I don’t pretend that many of Florida’s prisoners are not guilty of the crimes they’ve been charged with, and I won’t downplay the severity of the crimes committed — my uncle’s included. Unlike the detainees held in Alligator Alcatraz, they have ostensibly been given due process, though we could argue about the justice system’s version of the right that is often applied to Black, brown and poor people. Regardless of the circumstances, however, I believe every person deserves to be treated with dignity and humanity. I don’t believe that violence and cruelty has ever nudged anyone toward a better version of themselves.

One Wednesday in May, I woke up to frantic voicemails from my mom. My uncle had been stabbed multiple times, and she wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead. It had happened two days earlier, but she’d just found out that morning from a fellow prisoner’s girlfriend. Details were spotty. My uncle was an inmate at Dade Correctional Institution, a facility in south Miami deemed the “deadliest in Florida” by the Miami Herald following an investigation into a record number of inmate deaths in 2017. An earlier investigation into the facility revealed that officers had made “sport” of tormenting mentally ill inmates, including forcing inmates into a specially rigged, scalding hot shower as punishment for unruly behavior. 

My uncle had been transferred to the facility from another prison a few years ago because Dade Correctional Institution has an Americans With Disabilities Act unit and he, a lifer, has gone deaf from decades of loud, echoing conditions. 

Since he’s deaf, he didn’t hear the man — or men — coming up on him with the knife. Despite our many requests, the Florida Department of Corrections has not gotten him a hearing aid that doesn’t beep loudly in his ears, so he prefers to stay in his own, soundless world. 

I imagined him walking into the same yard where we’ve sat for visits, thinking about how he’ll get to pet his favorite rescue dog later, the one corrections officers  bring in for training. He prefers the dogs to humans, saying they’re the only redeeming thing about the place. In my mind, he was thinking about the dog when he was surrounded by the other men. He was thinking about the dog as the knife pierced his skin, plunging into the back of his neck and then into his ear. I imagined and reimagined the scene, watching him get caught by surprise, his eyes widening at the pain. 

Did he fall to the ground? Call out for help? The woman who called my mom said four other inmates were also stabbed, and that corrections officers were involved, but it’s impossible to verify. 

There are so many questions. Did the officers provide the knife? Join in on the stabbing? Simply look the other way?

My mom and siblings and I called and emailed each of the prison’s classification officers, coordinators and wardens. This was not the first time in my uncle’s 30-year incarceration that we’ve had to hound the Florida Department of Corrections for answers about his well-being. It was not the first time we’ve received calls from another inmate’s girlfriend or relative about my uncle. There was the time, a few years ago at another facility, when he was taken to the medical unit for lesions in his stomach. He was kept on a gurney in a hallway for days without treatment. He was in so much pain he thought he might die, so he had a friend get in touch with us to let us know. 

Then, like now, we called and tried to get information from the staff and were given the run around. The person with answers was always on break. The warden was never available. We were treated like nuisances for caring. They informed me I was not on “the list” to receive information, a bold-faced lie. I pleaded with anyone I could get on the line. They gave me one-word answers and told me to calm down in an almost bored tone. I cried, begging them to have some compassion, to imagine it was their loved one who was hurt. 

I canceled a few work calls. Without thinking much about it, I texted my co-worker and told her my uncle was stabbed. She expressed alarm and concern. I kept calling, relaying information to my mom and siblings. I reached out to the media, including the writer who investigated Dade Correctional Institution years ago. She recommended that I request copies of my uncle’s inmate file, which is public record, and any incident reports involving his name. I did this and got nothing. I tried again — still, nothing. Unfortunately, none of this was newsworthy, and my sources inside were not considered credible, so the reporters I spoke with didn’t have much to go on. I reached out to an advocacy group and received a reply three months later stating that, due to a lack of resources and too much demand, they could not help me.

A coordinator at the prison eventually told us my uncle was alive, that he had received medical treatment and was being held in solitary confinement for his safety. We were given nothing else. When I asked why we weren’t notified of the incident, I was told that it’s the inmate’s responsibility to notify loved ones — as if he could call us after being stabbed multiple times, and while he was in solitary confinement with a disability that makes it difficult to communicate by phone. 

Several weeks later, my uncle was transferred to another facility at the opposite end of the state. He had 28-day-old sutures he contemplated removing himself because they itched so badly. My fury was exhausting. My family and I stopped talking about the incident and went back to business as usual, putting money on his commissary, sending him books and figuring out how to get messages to him via the new facility’s byzantine communications systems. I dropped any hope of trying to get information about what happened, even from my uncle, who, speaking on a recorded line, just said, “Shit happens in here.” The upside, for him: At least the new facility has air conditioning.

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, including the denial of necessary medical care for inmates. But thanks to the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, it’s incredibly challenging for inmates to bring suits against this treatment, and just about 1% of all cases actually win. One ongoing lawsuit against Dade Correctional Institution concerns the lack of air conditioning that led to four inmates dying last year in Miami, where heat indexes can rise up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. The Florida Department of Corrections sought to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the deaths were not caused by heat, but a federal judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed. The majority of Florida’s prison housing units are not air-conditioned.

I imagine the detainees in Alligator Alcatraz without adequate shelter or air conditioning in the middle of hurricane season in a South Florida swamp. I think of the cavalier way Republican lawmakers have denied claims about the detention camp’s conditions. I think of Isidro Perez, the 75-year-old Cuban man who died in ICE custody at the Krome Detention Center in Miami in July. I think of the elderly prisoner in a wheelchair who begged for help in the heat at Dade Correctional Institution and died after being refused medical attention. I think of all the lives we have lost to the normalization of cruel punishment, and how many more there are to lose. 

Over the last 50 years, our bureaucratic desensitization to incarceration has grown largely unchecked. Prisons are built quietly, out of sight from the public. Visiting my uncle, regardless of where he is, requires a long drive, countless forms and hours waiting, adherence to seemingly arbitrary rules that differ from place to place and can change at any moment without notice. The point is isolation, to forget about these people. To systematically dehumanize them — first prisoners, then immigrants — and to watch as the public starts to believe they don’t deserve to be treated like humans.

Florida desensitized my family to cruel and unusual punishment
It’s not just at Alligator Alcatraz. Horrific conditions exist throughout the Sunshine State’s prisons

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/17/florida-desensitized-my-family-to-cruel-and-unusual-punishment

Newsweek: Trump supporter detained by ICE Agents regrets vote: “Were all brainwashed”

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A California man who voted for President Donald Trump has spoken out after being detained by immigration agents.

Brian Gavidia, a 29-year-old American citizen from Montebello, joined a lawsuit challenging immigration enforcement tactics after federal agents detained him on June 12, NBC 4 Los Angeles reported.

“I truly believe I was targeted because of my race,” Gavidia told the outlet, adding elsewhere in the interview, “We were all brainwashed.”

“While conducting a lawful immigration enforcement operation in Montebello, CA, Brian Gavidia was arrested for assaulting a law enforcement officer and interfering with agents during their duties,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek.

“Javier Ramirez was detained on the street for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants,” she added.

Why It Matters

Millions of Americans voted for Trump in support of his promise to carry out widespread deportations of migrants living in the U.S. illegally, particularly those with criminal records. As immigration enforcement efforts ramp up across the country, concerns are mounting that the Trump administration is not, as it pledged, targeting the “worst first.”

Newsweek has documented several cases of Trump supporters being affected by the immigration raids.

What To Know

Gavidia voted for Trump, believing that his administration’s immigration agenda would target criminals, not everyday citizens, NBC 4 Los Angeles reported.

He told the outlet that during an immigration enforcement operation in the San Gabriel Valley, a federal agent pushed him against a wall and demanded proof of citizenship, asking him the name of the hospital where he was born.

Footage circulating on social media shows Gavidia shouting, “I was born here in the states, East LA bro!”

The video shows agents, who are wearing vests with “Border Patrol Federal Agent” on them, holding Gavidia’s hands behind his back.

Agents allegedly confiscated his Real ID and phone. Gavidia was later released and recovered his phone, but he said he never received his ID.

Convinced he was targeted because of his Latino heritage, Gavidia now rejects his prior support for the president.

“I believe it was a mistake because he ran on lies,” Gavidia said. “He said criminals.”

“If this was going to happen, do you think we would have voted? We’re humans. We’re not going to destroy our community. We’re not going to destroy our people,” he continued.

“We were all manipulated. We were all brainwashed,” Gavidia told NBC 4 Los Angeles. “And now look at us. We are all suffering because of it, and I feel guilty 100 percent.”

Gavidia is among seven plaintiffs in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit that resulted in a court order limiting when federal agents can initiate immigration enforcement.

The filing requested that the court prohibit raids conducted without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. It also said agents concentrated operations in places where Latino workers were often found, such as local car washes and outside Home Depot locations.

California has been a key battleground state for immigration enforcement operations after Trump ordered federal agents to ramp up arrests in Democratic cities.

On August 1, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary restraining order, originally issued by a federal judge, that placed limits on how the federal government could carry out immigration enforcement operations in Southern California.

An attorney for the Trump administration argued before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, seeking a stay of the temporary restraining order while the case was appealed. The panel denied the request.

The decision upholds a July 11 ruling granting a restraining order sought by immigrant rights advocates to limit federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles and other areas of Southern California. Under Judge Maame E. Frimpong’s directive, officers and agents may not detain individuals unless they have reasonable suspicion that the person is in the United States in violation of immigration law.

What People Are Saying

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek: “Any allegations that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are FALSE. What makes someone a target is if they are in the United States illegally. These types of disgusting smears are designed to demonize and villainize our brave ICE law enforcement. This kind of garbage has led to a more than 1,000 percent increase in the assaults on ICE officers. Politicians and activists must turn the temperature down and tone down their rhetoric.

“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence. We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability.

“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets.”

Brian Gavidia told NBC 4 Los Angeles: “I believe I was racially profiled. I believe I was attacked because I was walking while brown. Where is the freedom? Where is the justice? We live in America. This is why I’m fighting today. This is why I’m protecting the Constitution.”

What Happens Next

Despite the legal restrictions, immigration raids continue. The Trump administration has appealed the Ninth Circuit’s decision that upheld the temporary restraining order. The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which will decide whether to lift or uphold the restrictions limiting broad-based immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.

Trump supporter detained by ICE Agents regrets vote: “Were all brainwashed”
“I truly believe I was targeted because of my race,” Brian Gavidia of Montebello, California, told NBC 4 Los Angeles.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-supporter-detained-ice-agents-immigration-2112676

Associated Press: Trump’s rhetoric about DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime

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President Donald Trump has taken control of D.C.’s law enforcement and ordered National Guard troops to deploy onto the streets of the nation’s capital, arguing the extraordinary moves are necessary to curb an urgent public safety crisis.

Even as district officials questioned the claims underlying his emergency declaration, the Republican president promised a “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” His rhetoric echoed that used by conservatives going back decades who have denounced cities, especially those with majority non-white populations or led by progressives, as lawless or crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention.

“This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump promised Monday.

As D.C. the National Guard arrived at their headquarters Tuesday, for many residents, the prospect of federal troops surging into neighborhoods represented an alarming violation of local agency. To some, it echoes uncomfortable historical chapters when politicians used language to paint historically or predominantly Black cities and neighborhoods with racist narratives to shape public opinion and justify aggressive police action.

April Goggans, a longtime D.C. resident and grassroots organizer, said she was not surprised by Trump’s actions. Communities had been preparing for a potential federal crackdown in D.C. since the summer of 2020, when Trump deployed troops during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd.

“We have to be vigilant,” said Goggans, who has coordinated local protests for nearly a decade. She worries about what a surge in law enforcement could mean for residents’ freedoms.

“Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated,” she said.

Other residents reacted with mixed feelings to Trump’s executive order. Crime and homelessness has been a top concern for residents in recent years, but opinions on how to solve the issue vary. And very few residents take Trump’s catastrophic view of life in D.C.

“I think Trump’s trying to help people, some people,” said Melvin Brown, a D.C. resident. “But as far as (him) trying to get (the) homeless out of this city, that ain’t going to work.”

“It’s like a band-aid to a gunshot wound,” said Melissa Velasquez, a commuter into D.C. “I feel like there’s been an increase of racial profiling and stuff, and so it’s concerning for individuals who are worried about how they might be perceived as they go about their day-to-day lives.”

Uncertainty raises alarms

According to White House officials, troops will be deployed to protect federal assets and facilitate a safe environment for law enforcement to make arrests. The Trump administration believes the highly visible presence of law enforcement will deter violent crime. It is unclear how the administration defines providing a safe environment for law enforcement to conduct arrests, raising alarm bells for some advocates.

“The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, across the country,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s D.C. chapter.

“We’ve seen before how federal control of the D.C. National Guard and police can lead to abuse, intimidation and civil rights violations — from military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice protesters in 2020 to the unchecked conduct of federal officers who remain shielded from full accountability,” Hopkins said.

A history of denigrating language

Conservatives have for generations used denigrating language to describe the condition of major cities and called for greater law enforcement, often in response to changing demographics in those cities driven by nonwhite populations relocating in search of work or safety from racial discrimination and state violence. Republicans have called for greater police crackdowns in cities since at least the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles.

President Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968 after campaigning on a “law and order” agenda to appeal to white voters in northern cities alongside overtures to white Southerners as part of his “Southern Strategy.” Ronald Reagan similarly won both his presidential elections after campaigning heavily on law and order politics. Politicians, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former President Bill Clinton have cited the need to tamp down crime as a reason to seize power from liberal cities for decades.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump’s takeover of local police “unsettling” but not without precedent. Bowser kept a mostly measured tone during a Monday news conference but decried Trump’s reasoning as a “so-called emergency,” saying residents “know that access to our democracy is tenuous.”

Trump threatened to “take over” and “beautify” D.C. on the campaign trail and claimed it was “a nightmare of murder and crime.” He also argued the city was “horribly run” and said his team intended “to take it away from the mayor.” Trump on Monday repeated old comments about some of the nation’s largest cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and his hometown of New York City. All are currently run by Black mayors.

“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities in a very bad, New York is a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore. They’re so far gone. We’re not going to let it happen,” he said.

Civil rights advocates see the rhetoric as part of a broader political strategy.

“It’s a playbook he’s used in the past,” said Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Trump’s rhetoric “paints a picture that crime is out of control, even when it is not true, then blames the policies of Democratic lawmakers that are reform- and public safety-minded, and then claims that you have to step in and violate people’s rights or demand that reforms be reversed,” Wiley said.

She added that the playbook has special potency in D.C. because local law enforcement can be directly placed under federal control, a power Trump invoked in his announcement.

Leaders call the order an unjustified distraction

Trump’s actions in Washington and comments about other major cities sent shock waves across the country, as other leaders prepare to respond to potential federal action.

Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement that Trump’s plan “lacks seriousness and is deeply dangerous” and pointed to a 30-year-low crime rate in Baltimore as a reason the administration should consult local leaders rather than antagonize them. In Oakland, Mayor Barbara Lee called Trump’s characterization of the city “fearmongering.”

The administration already faced a major flashpoint between local control and federal power earlier in the summer, when Trump deployed National Guard troops to quell protests and support immigration enforcement operations in LA despite opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.

Civil rights leaders have denounced Trump’s action in D.C. as an unjustified distraction.

“This president campaigned on ‘law and order,’ but he is the president of chaos and corruption,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. “There’s no emergency in D.C., so why would he deploy the National Guard? To distract us from his alleged inclusion in the Epstein files? To rid the city of unhoused people? D.C. has the right to govern itself. It doesn’t need this federal coup.”

Trump’s rhetoric about DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime
President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in his federal takeover of Washington police echoes that of conservative politicians going back decades who’ve denounced American cities with majority non-white populations or progressive leaders as crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-washington-dc-takeover-race-39388597bad7e70085079888fe7fb57b

Defense One: How Trump’s DC takeover could supercharge surveillance

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The emergency declaration, combined with new tech, will give government broad new abilities to watch and monitor citizens.

President Trump’s declaration of a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., will further entwine the U.S. military—and its equipment and technology—in law-enforcement matters, and perhaps expose D.C. residents and visitors to unprecedented digital surveillance. 

Brushing aside statistics that show violent crime in D.C. at a 30-year low, Trump on Monday described a new level of coordination between D.C. National Guard units and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, ICE, and and the newly federalized D.C. police force. 

“We will have full, seamless, integrated cooperation at all levels of law enforcement, and will deploy officers across the district with an overwhelming presence. You’ll have more police, and you’ll be so happy because you’re being safe,” he said at a White House press conference. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing beside Trump, promised close collaboration between the Pentagon and domestic authorities. “We will work alongside all DC police and federal law enforcement to ensure this city is safe.” 

What comes next? The June 2020 deployment of National Guard units to work alongside D.C. police offers a glimpse: citywide use of sophisticated intelligence-gathering technologies normally reserved for foreign war zones.

Some surveillance platforms will be relatively easy to spot, such as spy aircraft over D.C.’s closely guarded airspace. In 2020, authorities deployed an RC-26B, a military-intelligence aircraft, and MQ-9 Predator drones. The FBI contributed a Cessna 560 equipped with “dirtboxes”: devices that mimic cell towers to collect mobile data, long used by the U.S. military to track terrorist networks in the Middle East.

Other gear will be less obvious.The 2020 protests saw expanded use of Stingrays, another type of cellular interception device. Developed to enable the military to track militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, Stingrays were used by the U.S. Secret Service in 2020 and 2021 in ways that the DHS inspector general found broke the law and policies concerning privacy and warrants. Agency officials said “exigent” circumstances justified the illicit spying.

Now, with federal agencies and entities working with military personnel under declared-emergency circumstances, new gear could enter domestic use. And local officials or the civilian review boards that normally oversee police use of such technologies may lack the power to prevent or even monitor it. In 2021, the D.C. government ended a facial-recognition pilot program after police used it to identify a protester at Lafayette Square. But local prohibitions don’t apply to federalized or military forces. 

Next up: AI-powered surveillance 

How might new AI tools, and new White House measures to ease sharing across federal entities, enable surveillance targeting?

DHS and its sub-agencies already use AI. Some tools—such as monitoring trucks or cargo at the border for contraband, mapping human trafficking and drug networks, and watching the border—serve an obvious public-safety mission. Last year, DHS used AI and other tools to identify 311 victims of sexual exploitation and to arrest suspected perpetrators. They also helps DHS counter the flow of fentanyl; last October, the agency cited AI while reporting a 50 percent increase in seizures and an 8 percent increase in arrests.

TSA uses facial recognition across the country to match the faces and documents of airline passengers entering the United States in at least 26 airports, according to 2022 agency data. The accuracy has improved greatly in the past decade, and research suggests even better performance is possible: the National Institute of Standards and Technology has shown that some algorithms can achieve 99%-plus accuracy under ideal conditions. 

But conditions are not always ideal, and mistakes can be costly. “There have been public reports of seven instances of mistaken arrests associated with the use of facial recognition technology, almost all involving Black individuals. The collection and use of biometric data also poses privacy risks, especially when it involves personal information that people have shared in unrelated contexts,” noted a Justice Department report in December. 

On Monday, Trump promised that the increased federal activity would target “known gangs, drug dealers and criminal networks.” But network mapping—using digital information to identify who knows who and how—has other uses, and raises the risk of innocent people being misidentified. 

Last week, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request concerning the use of two software tools by D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. Called Cobwebs and Tangles, the tools can reveal sensitive information about any person with just a name or email address, according to internal documents cited in the filing.

Cobwebs shows how AI can wring new insights from existing data sources, especially when there are no rules to prohibit the gathering of large stores of data. Long before the capability existed to do it effectively, this idea was at the center of what, a decade ago, was called predictive policing. 

The concept has lost favor since the 2010s, but many law-enforcement agencies still pursue versions of it. Historically, the main obstacle has been too much data, fragmented across systems and structures. DHS has legal access to public video footage, social media posts, and border and airport entry records—but until recently, these datasets were difficult to analyze in real time, particularly within legal constraints.

That’s changing. The 2017 Modernizing Government Technology Act encouraged new software and cloud computing resources to help agencies use and share data more effectively, and in March, an executive order removed several barriers to interagency data sharing. The government has since awarded billions of dollars to private companies to improve access to internal data.

One of those companies is Palantir, whose work was characterized by the New York Times as an effort to compile a “master list” of data on U.S. citizens. The firm disputed that in a June 9 blog post: “Palantir is a software company and, in the context of our customer engagements, operates as a ‘data processor’—our software is used by customers to manage and make use of their data.”

In a 2019 article for the FBI training division, California sheriff Robert Davidson envisioned a scenario—now technologically feasible—in which AI analyzes body-camera imagery in real time: “Monitoring, facial recognition, gait analysis, weapons detection, and voice-stress analysis all would actively evaluate potential danger to the officer. After identification of a threat, the system could enact an automated response based on severity.”

The data DHS collects extends well beyond matching live images to photos in a database or detecting passengers’ emotional states. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, for instance, handles large volumes of multilingual email. DHS describes its email analytics program as using machine learning “for spam classification, translation, and entity extraction (such as names, organizations, or locations).”

Another DHS tool analyzes social-media posts to gather “open-source information on travelers who may be subject to further screening for potential violation of laws.” The tool can identify additional accounts and selectors, such as phone numbers or email addresses, according to DHS documentation.

Meanwhile, ICE’s operational scope has expanded. The White House has increased the agency’s authority to operate in hospitals and schools, collect employment data—including on non-imigrants, such as “sponsors” of unaccompanied minors—and impose higher penalties on individuals seen as “interfering” with ICE activities. Labor leaders say they’ve been targeted for their political activism. Protesters have been charged with assaulting ICE officers or employees. ICE has installed facial-recognition apps on officers’ phones, enabling on-the-spot identification of people protesting the agency’s tactics. DHS bulletins sent to local law enforcement encourage officers to consider a wide range of normal activity, such as filming police interactions, as potential precursors to violence.

Broad accessibility of even legally collected data raises concerns, especially in an era where AI tools can derive specific insights about people. But even before these developments, government watchdogs urged greater transparency around domestic AI use. A December report by the Government Accountability Office includes several open recommendations, mostly related to privacy protections and reporting transparency. The following month, DHS’s inspector general warned that the agency doesn’t have complete or well-resourced oversight frameworks. 

In June, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and several co-signers wrote to the Trump White House, “In addition to these concerning uses of sentiment analysis for law enforcement purposes, federal agencies have also shown interest in affective computing and deception detection technologies that purportedly infer individuals’ mental states from measures of their facial expressions, body language, or physiological activity.” 

The letter asks the GAO to investigate what DHS or Justice Department policies govern AI use and whether those are being followed. Markey’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Writing for the American Immigration Council in May, Steven Hubbard, the group’s senior data scientist, noted that of DHS’ 105 AI applications, 27 are “rights-impacting.”

“These are cases that the OMB, under the Biden administration, identified as impacting an individual’s rights, liberty, privacy, access to equal opportunity, or ability to apply for government benefits and services,” Hubbard said.

The White House recently replaced Biden-era guidance on AI with new rules meant to accelerate AI deployment across the federal government. While the updated guidelines retain many safety guardrails, they do include some changes, including merging “privacy-impacting” and “safety-impacting” uses of AI into a single category: “high impact.”

The new rules also eliminate a requirement for agencies to notify people when AI tools might affect them—and to offer an opt-out.

Precedents for this kind of techno-surveillance expansion can be found in countries rarely deemed models for U.S. policy. China and Russia have greatly expanded surveillance and policing under the auspices of security. China operates an extensive camera network in public spaces and centralizes its data to enable rapid AI analysis. Russia has followed a similar path through its “Safe Cities” program, integrating data feeds from a vast surveillance network to spot and stop crime, protests, and dissent.

So far, the U.S. has spent less than these near-peers, as a percent of GDP, on surveillance tools, which are operated under a framework, however strained, of rule-of-law and rights protections that can mitigate the most draconian uses.

But the distinction between the United States and China and Russia is shrinking, Nathan Wessler, deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in July. “There’s the real nightmare scenario, which is pervasive tracking of live or recorded video, something that, by and large, we have kept at bay in the United States. It’s the kind of thing that authoritarian regimes have invested in heavily.” 

Wessler noted that in May, the Washington Post reported that New Orleans authorities were applying facial recognition to live video feeds. “At that scale, that [threatens to] just erase our ability to go about our lives without being pervasively identified and tracked by the government.”

How Trump’s DC takeover could supercharge surveillance
The emergency declaration, combined with new tech, will give government broad new abilities to watch and monitor citizens.

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/08/how-trumps-dc-takeover-could-supercharge-surveillance/407376

KTLA: ICE officers barred from using deceptive tactics in Southern California home raids

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are no longer allowed to identify themselves as local police or use deceptive tactics during home arrests in Southern California, following a court-approved settlement reached in a class action lawsuit.

The settlement, approved Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Otis D. Wright II in Kidd v. Noem, prohibits ICE officers in the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office from falsely claiming to be state or local law enforcement or misrepresenting the nature of their visit in order to enter a home or persuade a resident to come outside.

The case was filed in 2020 by Osny Sorto-Vazquez Kidd and two immigrant advocacy organizations, the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA). The lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of ICE’s home arrest practices in Los Angeles and surrounding counties.

Under the agreement, ICE officers may not claim to be conducting criminal investigations, probation or parole checks, or other public safety inquiries unless those claims are accurate. Officers are also prohibited from using pretexts, such as suggesting a problem with a resident’s vehicle, to lure individuals outside.

“This settlement makes clear immigration officers are not above the Constitution and will be held accountable for their deceptive practices,” said Diana Sanchez, a staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, which represented the plaintiffs. “We’ll be monitoring to ensure ICE does not violate the rights of our community members.”

As part of the settlement, ICE officers in the Los Angeles Field Office must wear visible identifiers clearly labeling them as “ICE” whenever they display the word “POLICE” on their uniforms. The measure aims to prevent confusion among residents and reduce the possibility that individuals might mistake federal immigration agents for local law enforcement.

“For far too long, ICE disrespected the privacy of community members by taking shortcuts around the Constitution’s requirement that law enforcement have a warrant signed by a judge to enter a home,” said Annie Lai, director of the Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic at the UC Irvine School of Law. “Thanks to this settlement, ICE must now be transparent about who they are if they don’t have a warrant and want to speak with someone at their home.”

The settlement also mandates new training protocols. ICE must inform all Los Angeles Field Office officers of the new policies through broadcast messages and regular trainings. Officers will be required to document certain details when conducting home arrests, and ICE must share those records with class counsel to ensure compliance. This oversight will remain in place for three years.

The Los Angeles Field Office covers seven counties: Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.

The settlement follows a related court ruling issued in May 2024, which found that ICE officers and Homeland Security Investigations agents may not enter the private area around a home, known legally as the “curtilage,” without a judicial warrant or consent if their intent is to make a warrantless arrest. The combined effect of the two rulings significantly limits ICE’s authority to carry out home arrests without judicial oversight.

Angelica Salas, executive director of CHIRLA, said the decision brings meaningful safeguards. “By prohibiting ICE agents from using trickery, for example, falsely claiming that there is an issue with a resident’s vehicle, to lure people out of their homes, this settlement protects all its occupants and creates a safer community.”

Lizbeth Abeln, deputy director at the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, called the agreement a long overdue victory.

“For years, we’ve heard the testimonies: ICE agents impersonating local police, showing up at people’s doors, lying about their purpose, and using fear to tear families apart,” she said. “ICE can no longer use deception to target our communities.”

Giovanni Saarman González, a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP and counsel for the plaintiffs, said the settlement, combined with the earlier ruling, offers meaningful relief to the classes and the broader Southern California community.

ICE officers barred from using deceptive tactics in Southern California home raids
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are no longer allowed to identify themselves as local police or use deceptive tactics during home arrests in Southern California, following a court…

https://ktla.com/news/california/ice-officers-barred-deceptive-tactics-home-raids

Investigate West: Accused of racism and retaliation, this Idaho sheriff is now working with ICE

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Former employees say Sheriff Larry Kendrick made racist jokes at work and was demeaning to women

This is a lengthy article that illustrates type the quality of bigoted & abusive local law enforcement agencies that are signing up as ICE partners. Click one of the links below to read the article.

Accused of racism and retaliation, this Idaho sheriff is now working with ICE
Former employees say Sheriff Larry Kendrick made racist jokes at work and was demeaning to women

https://www.investigatewest.org/accused-of-racism-and-retaliation-this-idaho-sheriff-is-now-working-with-ice

San Francisco Chronicle: Trump asks SCOTUS to allow profiling in California ICE raids

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Any attorney who files or argues in favor of this appeal should be disbarred!

Any justice who votes in favor of this appeal should impeached and removed!

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow officers to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants in Southern California because of how they look, what language they’re speaking and what kind of work they’re doing, factors that federal judges have found to be baseless and discriminatory.

Last month’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong, upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, “threatens to upend immigration officials’ ability to enforce the immigration laws in the Central District of California,” D. John Sauer, the Justice Department’s solicitor general, said Thursday in a filing with the Supreme Court. “This Court should end this attempted judicial usurpation of immigration-enforcement functions” and suspend the injunction while the case is argued in the lower courts, Sauer wrote.

The Central District, which includes Los Angeles County and six other counties, has nearly 20 million residents, more than any other federal court district in the nation. It became the focus of legal disputes over immigration enforcement after President Donald Trump took control of the California National Guard in June and sent thousands of its troops to the streets in Los Angeles to defend immigration agents against protesters of workplace raids.

A 9th Circuit panel upheld Trump’s commandeering of the National Guard, rejecting a lawsuit by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But Frimpong, an appointee of President Joe Biden, ruled July 11 that immigration officers were overstepping legal boundaries in making the arrests, and issued a temporary restraining order against their practices.

In a ruling Aug. 1 upholding the judge’s decision, another 9th Circuit panel said federal officers had been seizing people from the streets and workplaces based on four factors: their apparent race or ethnicity, the language they spoke or accent in their voice, their presence in a location such as a car wash or an agricultural site, and the type of work they were doing.

That would justify the arrest of anyone “who appears Hispanic, speaks Spanish or English with an accent, wears work clothes, and stands near a carwash, in front of a Home Depot, or at a bus stop,” the panel’s three judges said. They agreed with Frimpong that officers could not rely on any or all of those factors as the basis for an arrest.

But the Trump administration’s lawyers said those factors were valid reasons for immigration arrests in the Central District.

In April, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston issued a similar order against the Border Patrol, prohibiting immigration arrests in the Eastern District of California unless officers have a reasonable suspicion that a person is breaking the law. The district is based in Sacramento and extends from Fresno to the Oregon border.

“You can’t just walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” Thurston, a Biden appointee, said at a court hearing, CalMatters reported. The Trump administration has appealed her injunction to the 9th Circuit.

The administration’s compliance with the Central District court order was questioned by immigrant advocates on Wednesday after a raid on a Home Depot store near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, in which officers said 16 Latin American workers were detained. An American Civil Liberties Union attorney, Mohammad Tajsar, said the government “seems unwilling to fulfill the aims of its racist mass deportation agenda without breaking the law.”

There is ample evidence that many businesses in the district “unlawfully employ illegal aliens and are known to hire them on a day-to-day basis; that certain types of jobs — like day labor, landscaping, and construction — are most attractive to illegal aliens because they often do not require paperwork; that the vast majority of illegal aliens in the District come from Mexico or Central America; and that many only speak Spanish,” Sauer told the Supreme Court.

“No one thinks that speaking Spanish or working in construction always creates reasonable suspicion” that someone is an illegal immigrant, the Justice Department attorney said. “But in many situations, such factors — alone or in combination — can heighten the likelihood that someone is unlawfully present in the United States.”

The Supreme Court told lawyers for the immigrants to file a response by Tuesday. 

The case is Noem v. Perdomo, No. 25A169.

Trump asks SCOTUS to allow profiling in California ICE raids
The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to let officers arrest suspected undocumented immigrants in Southern California because of how they look.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/scotus-immigration-california-20809308.php

The Intercept: ICE Contractor Locked a Mother and Her Baby in a Hotel Room for Five Days

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Valentina Galvis’s case raises questions about the types of facilities being turned into de facto detention centers as the Trump administration ramps up its deportation campaign.

From her room on the third floor of the Sonesta Chicago O’Hare Airport Rosemont hotel, Valentina Galvis could see flight crews and travelers coming and going. Families enjoyed summer dining on the outdoor patio. Friends snapped selfies commemorating their stays. Children fidgeted as they waited for shuttles to deliver them to the nearby airport.

But for Galvis and her seven-month-old son, the hotel was not a vacation — it was a jail. The phone had been removed from the room, and Galvis had no way to contact the outside world. Private guards contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stood watch at all times. She had no idea when she and her son Naythan, who is a U.S. citizen, would ever get to leave.

Galvis and her son were detained at the Sonesta for five days in early June after they were apprehended at the Chicago Immigration Court by federal agents.

“I was sad, confused, and often terrified,” Galvis said. “I wanted to call my husband, my attorney, or anyone at all to let them know where I was.”

In screenshots taken by family members and reviewed by Injustice Watch and The Intercept, Galvis appeared on the ICE locator to be held over 700 miles away in Washington, D.C.

Galvis’s detention at the airport hotel came as federal immigration authorities have rounded up more than 100,000 immigrants nationwide in an effort to meet arrest targets set out by the Trump administration. The spike in immigration arrests has overwhelmed detention centers around the country: Immigrants have been packed into overcrowded holding cells, forced to sleep on floors, and subjected to “unlivable” conditions at a hastily built detention camp in the Florida Everglades.

Though a hotel may seem preferable to these conditions, advocates said Galvis’s detention raises concerns about what types of facilities are being turned into de facto detention centers and how many people are quietly held in Illinois.

Xanat Sobrevilla, who works with Organized Communities Against Deportations, says it’s not the first time she’s heard of an Illinois mother of an infant baby appearing to be in Washington, D.C. — which has no detention center.

“We know we can’t trust the ICE detainee locator,” she said. “People get lost in this system.” 

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., called the false location listing “chilling” and likened the secretive hotel detention to a “kidnapping.”

Illinois and Chicago have some of the nation’s strongest laws aimed at protecting immigrants like Galvis by prohibiting state and local agencies from cooperating with ICE. But her and Naythan’s detention at the Sonesta shows the limits of the state’s efforts to block ICE detention. The federal government can still use commercial facilities like hotel rooms to hold individuals and families in its custody.

“Nothing that the states or local governments can do will stop ICE from carrying out its operations,” said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has backed legislation that defends immigrants in the state, declined to comment.

Ramirez said private companies are violating the spirit of sanctuary legislation — and she called for a state investigation into what happened with Galvis.

“This requires the [Illinois] attorney general to conduct an investigation and to consider what legal action must be taken in the state of Illinois” against the security company that detained Galvis and Naythan as well as the hotel they were confined in, Ramirez said.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to Injustice Watch, Sonesta, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, asserted it “has no knowledge of any illegal detentions at any hotels in the Sonesta portfolio.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment.

ICE Detention by Another Name

Galvis doesn’t remember the name of the company the civilian guards said they worked for. But she recognized a photo of JoAnna Granado, an employee for MVM Inc., a longtime ICE contractor with active contracts to transport children and families and a track record of confining unaccompanied migrant children in office buildings as well as in hotels. Granado confirmed to Injustice Watch and The Intercept that she transported Galvis and her son from the Sonesta O’Hare. MVM did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

Since fiscal year 2020, MVM has entered into contracts worth more than $1.3 billion from ICE — the vast majority of it for the transportation of immigrant children and families.

In 2020, when an attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project attempted to reach unaccompanied children being held in a McAllen hotel, he was physically turned away. ICE acknowledged MVM was at the hotel in question. The Texas Civil Rights Project and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Trump administration, and the government ultimately transferred the children out of the hotel.

More recently, attorneys filed suit against MVM last year for enforced disappearance, torture, and child abduction — among other claims — for its role during the first Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy that separated thousands of children from their parents near the border. The company’s effort to get the case dismissed failed.

Calls to the Sonesta O’Hare in June and July after Galvis’s release confirmed that MVM had rooms there.

ICE’s standards for temporary housing allow for the use of hotel suites to hold noncitizens “due to exigent circumstances including travel delays, lack of other bedspace, delay of receipt of travel documents, medical issues, or other unforeseen circumstances.” The standards require ICE or its contractors to explain to the detainee why they are at the hotel and how long they will be there, and to inform the detainee of the right to file a grievance, as well as “unlimited availability of unmonitored telephone calls to family, friends, and legal representatives” and various oversight agencies. Galvis said she wasn’t allowed to make any calls and was never told she was able to file a complaint. 

In its statement, Sonesta said that “all guest rooms at the property have a telephone and seating” at the O’Hare hotel. 

Two Sonesta O’Hare workers said they were familiar with MVM — one added that the company had a special rate there. (In a phone call with Injustice Watch, Sonesta O’Hare’s general manager, Sandra Wolf, said she was “unaware” of MVM or the confinement of detainees at her hotel.)

Calls to other airport Sonesta hotels suggest that MVM’s detention of immigrants may be more widespread.

When called in June, a front-desk worker at the Sonesta Atlanta Airport South in Georgia said that MVM usually has rooms at the hotel. On a call, an attendant at the Sonesta Select Los Angeles LAX El Segundo immediately recognized the company name and explained that MVM books rooms at a nearby property.

A front-desk agent at the nearby Sonesta Los Angeles Airport LAX acknowledged by phone that MVM regularly has rooms at the hotel. The hotel’s general manager Robert Routh later said he’d never heard of MVM and wasn’t familiar with the practice of holding ICE detainees in his hotel.

In a written statement, Sonesta wrote that it “does not condone illegal behavior of any kind at its hotels, and we endeavor to comply with the law and with law enforcement in the event of any suspected illegal behavior at any property within the Sonesta portfolio.” The company declined to answer questions about whether it has any contractual obligations to MVM or whether MVM received a special rate at its hotels.

Snatched From Immigration Court

Galvis knew before she went to Chicago’s immigration court on Thursday, June 5, from news and social media reports that ICE had been arresting people like her when they had shown up to court for their immigration cases.

But her husband, Camilo, a long-haul truck driver, had been granted asylum in the same court just two weeks earlier. The facts of their cases were almost identical. They had come to the U.S. together in 2022, fleeing far-right paramilitary violence in their native Colombia. Galvis had also survived a brutal assault from the paramilitary group.

So she came to the court at 55 E. Monroe Street with her infant son, Naythan, hoping to walk out without incident.

Instead, as with thousands of other immigrants in recent months, federal prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss her case, ending the asylum process. Plainclothes agents were waiting to detain her the moment she left the courtroom.

The agents shuttled Galvis and Naythan first to a nearby building, where she was fingerprinted and her phone and documents — including Naythan’s U.S. passport and birth certificate — were seized. Mother and son were then taken to an initial hotel where they spent several hours late into Thursday night. She was told that they would be flown to Texas before dawn on Friday — the sole detention center, ICE claimed, that could accommodate families. She was allowed one call to her husband; in a call that lasted a few seconds, she told him she was heading to Texas. 

The terror that Naythan might be torn away consumed her thoughts. She could endure detention and deportation alongside her son, Galvis said. Without him, she believed grief alone might kill her.

Around 2:30 a.m., two people dressed in civilian clothing arrived. They said their names were Alejandro and Lori and told Galvis in Spanish that they worked for a private company, though Galvis doesn’t remember which one. They encouraged her to ask any questions about her case to the ICE agents while she still had the chance, because the two of them wouldn’t be able to answer them.

Soon after, they brought Galvis and Naythan to the Sonesta, where they would spend the next five days cut off from the outside world.

They were held in a two-room suite and monitored at all times by one or two civilian guards, sometimes Alejandro and Lori and sometimes others. They were given fast food: Panera Bread, Subway, McDonald’s; Galvis picked out little pieces of vegetables to feed to her son, who was just beginning to eat solid foods.

On Friday, the day after she and Naythan were detained by ICE, Galvis’s attorney William G. McLean III filed a writ of habeas corpus, petitioning for her release. U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama soon ordered that the Trump administration “shall not remove Petitioners from the jurisdiction of the United States, nor shall they transfer petitioners to any judicial district outside the State of Illinois” before June 12. Judge Valderrama set an afternoon hearing for Tuesday, June 10, on the matter.

In emails reviewed by Injustice Watch and The Intercept, McLean pleaded with an ICE field officer for days to know his client’s whereabouts. “We do not know where they are located,” he wrote on Saturday. “I feel that it is very important to know that everything is OK,” he wrote the following Monday. ICE didn’t reveal his client’s location.

Galvis, meanwhile, had no idea about her lawyer’s efforts to release her. One day, she was told by one of the civilian guards that she would be deported with her son to Colombia. Other days, she said, she was told they’d be taken to Texas. She continued to fear that her son would be taken from her.

Finally, on the fifth day, Granado and another guard loaded Galvis and Naythan in a car but wouldn’t divulge where they were headed, Galvis said. While the airport was only minutes away, she noticed the navigation system indicated a 40-minute drive. Her heart sank, thinking they were taking her to a new location where her son could be taken from her.

Galvis kept quiet in the car, caressing Naythan and silently praying. As they approached their destination, Granado turned to her, Galvis said. 

“I think they’re going to let you go,” Galvis remembered her saying.

Galvis didn’t believe her. But moments later, she was at the Department of Homeland Security’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program office in Chicago. Agents gave her paperwork, including some of Naythan’s documents, and placed an electronic bracelet monitor on her wrist. Relief overcame her, mixed with uncertainty about what could happen next.

“I was obviously very scared of being deported, but my principal fear was being deported without my baby,” Galvis said. “I don’t think I could have survived that.” 

The dismissal in Galvis’s original immigration case is on appeal, and she now has a new asylum case with a new immigration judge in the same court. Galvis has regular online and in-person check-ins. Her next immigration court date is scheduled for January.

ICE Contractor Locked a Mother and Her Baby in a Hotel Room for Five Days
The case raises questions about the types of facilities being turned into de facto detention centers as the Trump administration ramps up deportations