Tag Archives: American Immigration Council

Guardian: ‘I’m not coming home’: Trump policy holds people in Ice custody without bail

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Restaurant worker’s case shows how Trump administration is ‘inflicting the maximum punishment’, experts say

Liset Fernandez spent most of the summer worried about her dad, Luis, but a few weeks ago she got some good news. After Luis was held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody for weeks, an immigration judge in Texas granted him release on a $5,000 bond.

Luis, who came to the US from Ecuador in 1994, had been held in detention at a facility in Livingston, Texas, thousands of miles away from his home in Queens. Liset, 17, had taken on extra shifts working a retail job to support her mom and nine-year-old brother. Luis’s co-workers at the Square Diner, a railcar-style greasy spoon in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood for more than 100 years, had raised more than $20,000 to support him and his family.

But when Liset logged on to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) website to pay the bond, she got a message telling her that her dad was ineligible for release. It fell to her to tell her dad that instead of coming home that day, he would remain detained. “It was upsetting for everyone,” Liset said. “His voice sounded completely disappointed.”

Luis was being detained because of a new DHS policy arguing that all people who enter the US illegally are ineligible for bond, regardless of how long they have been here and whether or not they pose a flight risk. In Fernandez’s case, DHS went even further, deploying a rarely used maneuver to pause the immigration judge’s bond ruling while it appealed his ruling. Federal regulations allow the agency to automatically stay an immigration judge’s bond decision while they appeal the case to the board of immigration appeals.

The maneuver means Fernandez will remain detained while his case is pending before the board of immigration appeals. Since the board is being bogged down with appeals, it’s unclear how long it could take to resolve the case, said Craig Relles, an immigration attorney representing Fernandez.

Fernandez’s case shows how the Trump administration is “ratcheting up every aspect of the immigration system” for people who are in the US illegally no matter how long they’ve been in the US, said Suchita Mathur, a lawyer at the American Immigration Council.

“At every step of the way, they’re inflicting the maximum punishment on people,” she said. “It’s all part and parcel of the administration’s effort to make this process so punitive and unbearable that people give up.”

The justice department, which oversees immigration courts, adopted the procedure for automatically pausing an immigration judge’s bond ruling in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks amid concerns about national security. At the time, there were concerns about how it could be used to unjustly detain people. Both Mathur and Relles said they had rarely seen the appeal-and-stay practice used until this summer. Now, they said, the practice is widespread.

Lawyers representing the Department of Homeland Security have been instructed to appeal every decision in which someone is granted bond and immediately pause the judge’s ruling while the appeal is pending, according to an agency official familiar with the matter. They have also been told they will be fired if they do not take such action, the person said.

Asked whether lawyers were being told to automatically appeal in all cases where bond was granted, the Department of Homeland Security said: “Every decision to appeal is based on the facts of the case. No one has been fired for not appealing a case.”

In recent months, federal judges across the country, including in Minnesota, Nebraska and Maryland, have ruled in favor of detained immigrants who have challenged the practice. Appealing the bond ruling and automatically staying an immigration judge’s decision to grant bond, the judges have said, puts the due process rights of detainees at risk.

“The government’s discretion in matters of immigration is deep and wide, but surely its chop does not overcome the banks of due process enshrined in the constitution,” Julie Rubin, a US district judge in Maryland, wrote this month in a ruling granting release of an immigrant who was detained even though an immigration judge had ordered bond. “Invocation of the automatic stay renders the [immigration judge’s] custody redetermination order an ‘empty gesture’ absent demonstration of a compelling interest or special circumstance left unanswered by [the immigration judge].”

“It seems like there’s a nationwide policy from headquarters instructing them to file these automatic stays,” Mathur said. Such a policy “would raise even more questions about due process. Because if they’re not even conducting individualized analyses before filing these, that’s even more shocking.”

The Department of Homeland Security said Fernandez had entered the country illegally and had two prior convictions for driving while intoxicated. The agency did not provide more information on the cases, but told Tribeca Citizen, a local news site, the charges were from 2003 and 2014.

“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

But that is not what Fernandez’s co-workers knew of him. At the Square Diner, he was known as a hard worker who would work overtime to support Liset and his nine-year-old son. He was the person who would welcome new employees into the fold, always quick with a joke, and who would cover for someone who needed to step out for an emergency and then give them the earnings they missed. He would FaceTime his kids during long shifts and never say a bad word about customers who were stingy with tips. The only thing he would ever eat at work – sometimes with some teasing – were big salad bowls filled with soup. Usually chicken, but occasionally different types mixed together.

The fact that Luis had been in the United States for so long, was working and paying taxes, and had two children who are US citizens made him someone who was clearly eligible for bond, Relles said.

“The Department of Homeland Security had the opportunity to present any and all evidence indicating that he was a danger, that there were serious infractions in the past. And he was able to meet his burden, establishing that he was not a danger and is not a flight risk,” Relles said.

“He’s human. He has heart,” said one co-worker who asked to remain anonymous because they feared for their safety. “He’s [an] extremely honest person. With money, with food, with anything, you just name it. And the most important thing is the best father.” The co-worker said they had spoken to Luis recently and he was working in the kitchen of the detention center where he is being held. Recently he volunteered to give the other detainees haircuts.

The last time Liset saw her dad in person was early in the morning on 24 June when he came to her bedroom to say goodbye. He had been summoned to appear that morning for a check-in on his asylum application in Long Island. The day before he was set to leave, Luis became suspicious that something might happen to him. He shared the location on his phone with Liset. Still, Liset didn’t think there was much to worry about and said goodbye.

It was a scorching hot day in New York and Liset went to the beach with her cousin to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of summer vacation. While she was there, Luis called her. She could tell from the tone of his voice that something was wrong. He told her not to worry, but that he was going to be arrested. “They’re going to take me, Ice is here, and I’m not coming home anytime soon,” he told her. “If anything happens, make sure you take care of yourself.”

Fernandez is one of thousands of immigrants arrested by the Trump administration as part of its effort to ramp up deportations. Half of the immigrants arrested in the New York City area this year have been arrested, like Fernandez was, at routine check-ins at immigration offices, according to federal data analyzed by the New York Times.

Liset didn’t hear from her dad for a few days. But when she eventually got hold of him, he had been transferred to a facility in Texas. Since he’s been detained, Liset has talked to her dad almost every day, usually for just a few minutes. He’s told her that there are about 20 people in his room and that it’s extremely cold because air conditioners are running 24/7. The first few weeks in detention, Liset said, Luis would share a cup of ramen noodles with two other men for meals.

Liset described her dad as a hard worker who wanted to make sure his family was taken care of financially while also making sure he could spend time with them. Since her mom only speaks limited English, it’s fallen on Liset to take the lead on her dad’s legal case while also taking on more shifts at work.

“This is incredibly draining,” she said.

‘I’m not coming home’: Trump policy holds people in Ice custody without bail
Restaurant worker’s case shows how Trump administration is ‘inflicting the maximum punishment’, experts say

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/30/immigration-custody-bail-trump

Independent: Trump team has fined immigrants who didn’t self-deport $6 billion — and now it’s coming to collect

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Department of Homeland Security threatens lawsuits and massive tax bills to collect balances ‘owed’ by thousands of immigrants

Immigrants have been racking up as much as $1,000 a day in fines if they disregard orders to deport, totaling more than $6 billion that the Trump administration now intends to collect.

Since Donald Trump returned to office, the Department of Homeland Security has issued roughly 21,500 fines, part of a pressure campaign to encourage millions of people to leave the country with a promise that the government would waive the fees against them.

In recent weeks, the government has threatened immigrants with lawsuits, debt collectors and massive tax bills if they don’t pay those penalties, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The new system, put in place by the Trump administration in June, means immigrants are not only at risk of arrest and forced removal from the U.S. but also crushing financial debt that is virtually impossible to escape. One immigration attorney told the WSJ that it amounts to “psychological warfare.”

DHS has issued past-due notices for unpaid fines with growing interest and threatened to garnish tax refunds, deploy private collection agencies and alert credit bureaus to delinquent payments owed by targeted immigrants, many of whom are low-wage workers, according to WSJ.

The agency has also suggested it could report unpaid fines to the IRS, which could then treat the balance as taxable income.

The message from Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “is clear: if you’re in the country illegally, leave now or face the consequences,” a senior DHS official said in a statement to The Independent.

Under rules introduced in June, DHS officers can send letters threatening fees on noncitizens over failure to deport, and all rights of appeal could be eliminated if they fail to reply within 15 days.

The process is permitted under a law passed by Congress in 1996 as part of a wider immigration package. But over the last three decades, threats of fees — which can now reach up to $998 a day — have rarely been enforced. Officers instead focused on removal, rather than adding another layer of punishment.

But that changed under Trump, largely because the process for sending out threatening fines with potentially financially disastrous results is much easier, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigration policy research group.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has vowed to recoup “funds owed to Americans.”

“As part of the effort to fulfill President Trump’s agenda, Treasury’s Debt Collection Service is actively working with ICE to secure payment for all civil fines and penalties owed by illegal aliens to the U.S. government,” Bessent said on social media.

According to TV ads and social media announcements from DHS, immigrants who choose to “self-deport” will “not have to pay these fines.”

Instead, immigrants are offered “financial assistance up to $1,000” and “a free flight home,” as well as “the potential opportunity to return to the United States the legal, right way,” according to the agency.

Immigrants can do so using the CBP Home app, formerly the CBP One app, a Joe Biden-era product that allowed more than 1 million immigrants to begin their immigration process before reaching the country. The Trump administration has revoked legal status for all immigrants who entered the country with that app.

A senior DHS official told The Independent that “iIlegal aliens should use the CBP Home app to fly home for free and receive $1,000 stipend, while preserving the option to return the legal, right way.”

“It’s an easy choice: leave voluntarily and receive [a] $1,000 check or stay and wait till you are fined $1,000 [a] day, arrested, and deported without a possibility to return legally,” the official said.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association has called that promise “a deeply misleading and unethical trick.”

Under current law, anyone living in the U.S. for more than six months without legal permission cannot return as an immigrant for at least three years. Immigrants who were in the country for more than a year could be blocked from reentering for at least 10 years.

Immigrants with a record of deportation also are more likely to face lengthy waiting periods, or outright denials, when applying for future visas.

Noem has claimed that more than 1.6 million immigrants have “left” the country within the first 200 days of the administration.

In May, a Honduran woman who has lived in the U.S. for two decades was hit with nearly $2 million in fines for failing to leave the country after receiving a removal order in 2005.

“I live with anxiety… I can’t sleep… I don’t feel,” the 41-year-old mother-of-three U.S. citizens told CBS News.

Another woman — a mother-of-four in New York who has been living in the U.S. for 25 years and trying to get her removal order tossed so she can get a green card — had considered self-deporting out of fear that the Treasury Department would repossess her house, according to WSJ.

She faces more than $2 million in overdue penalties, with growing daily interest. She could also be subject to administrative costs totaling at least 32 percent of her fine, or more than half a million dollars, according to DHS.

To carry out the president’s plans for mass deportations, the Trump administration has pushed to “de-legalize” millions of immigrants who were granted humanitarian protections and other protective orders to legally live and work in the country.

More than 1 million people are at risk of being removed from the U.S. after the administration revoked Temporary Protected Status for several countries.

Another 1 million immigrants who entered legally through the CBP One app also are at risk of being arrested and removed, while thousands of people with pending immigration cases are being ordered to court each week only to have those cases dismissed, and find federal agents waiting to arrest them on the other side of the courtroom doors.

Those reversals have radically expanded a pool of “undocumented” people to add to Trump’s deportation numbers.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/migrants-self-deport-fines-trump-administration-b2815156.html

Raw Story: ICE seizes 11-year-old to force dad’s deportation — despite torture risk

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President Donald Trump is trying to deport a Russian man who passed the U.S. screening process for asylum. The U.S. government has also taken away his son.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, posted an excerpt of a New York Times report revealing that the man fled to the United States after his wife was locked up for her political views.

Pavel Snegir and his 11-year-old son, Aleksandr, already passed the initial screening and confirmed that if Snegir is sent back to Russia, he will likely be tortured.

“But the Trump admin is still trying to deport him anyway, and has taken away his son until he agrees to be deported,” wrote Reichlin-Melnick.

Snegir and his son had been in ICE custody, but in May he was taken to an airport in San Diego. He was told he could take his son to the court hearing in New York. But once they were at the airport, Snegir was scared to board the plane, convinced he was about to be deported back to Russia.

“Later that day, after the flight had left, an ICE official told him he would be separated from his son because he refused to be deported,” the report said.

Snegir said he refused to give the government his child. ICE followed with threats he’d be thrown “to the ground, handcuffed and taken away if he did not relent.”

He didn’t move and “everything she promised happened,” Snegir recalled.

His son witnessed the whole ordeal. He previously watched his mother be taken by the Russian government, too.

Now, ICE is telling Snegir that he can self-deport back to Russia, or they’ll deport him anyway, without his son. They claimed he may never see his son again.

Snegir relented, but the following day, he was approved under the protection screening, which means ICE can deport him, but he can’t be sent to Russia.

This week, the administration also published its guidance on birthright citizenship, which will allow ICE to enter maternity wards and demand papers from families after their infants are born. If the parents can’t prove their citizenship, the government can take the newborn away from its parents and deport it to whatever country it wants, one legal analyst described.

ICE seizes 11-year-old to force dad’s deportation — despite torture risk

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-deportation-2673860882

Washington Post: He left Iran 40 years ago. He may be deported to Romania. Or Australia.

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The withholding of a removal order that Reza Zavvar felt protected him from deportation is now being wielded by the Trump administration to send him to a country he doesn’t know.

Sharp knocks on the front door interrupted Firouzeh Firouzabadi’s Saturday morning coffee. On the porch of her suburban Maryland home were two law enforcement agents and a very familiar pit bull mix named Duke.

“Can you take this dog?” Firouzabadi recalled one of the men saying. “I said, ‘This is my son’s dog. Where is he?’ They wouldn’t say.”

At that moment, her adult son, Reza Zavvar, was handcuffed in the back of an SUV parked two houses down in the Gaithersburg neighborhood where the Iranian-born family has lived since 2009 — apprehended, he later said, that late June day by at least five federal immigration agents in tactical gear who told Zavvar they had been waiting for him to take Duke out for his regular morning walk.

More than a month later, Zavvar, 52, remains in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody,part of a surge of arrests of immigrants with standing court orders barring their deportation to their native countries.

The Trump administration has increasingly turned to sending people to third countries. In court papers, ICE said it plans to send Zavvar to Australia or Romania. He has no ties to either place.

Zavvar left Tehran alone when he was 12, arriving in Virginia in 1985 on a student visa secured by his parents as a way to escape eventual conscription into the Iranian army. He eventually received U.S. asylum, and then a green card.

His family joined him and they settled in Maryland, but in his 20s, Zavvar’s guilty pleas in two misdemeanor marijuana possession cases jeopardized his immigration status. In 2007, an immigration judge issued a withholding of removal order, determining it was unsafe for Zavvar to return to Iran. He built a life, went to college and has been working as a white-collar recruiter for a consulting firm.

…

So he pleaded guilty 27 years ago to a couple marijuana possessions charges (legal today in 24-40 states, depending on purpose of usage) and now ICE wants to deport him to a third country (possibly Romania or Australia).

Click one of the links below to read the rest of the article.

He left Iran 40 years ago. He may be deported to Romania. Or Australia.
Handcuffed outside his Maryland home while walking his dog, Reza Zavvar is among a surging number of immigrants arrested with standing court orders barring deportation to their native countries.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/08/03/immigration-arrests-third-country-removals

He left Iran 40 years ago. He may be deported to Romania. Or Australia.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/he-left-iran-40-years-ago-he-may-be-deported-to-romania-or-australia/ar-AA1JOsY5

USA Today: The Trump administration is telling immigrants ‘Carry your papers.’ Here’s what to know.

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Papers, please!

Amid the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration, the nation’s immigration service is warning immigrants to carry their green card or visa at all times.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services posted the reminder July 23 on social media: “Always carry your alien registration documentation. Not having these when stopped by federal law enforcement can lead to a misdemeanor and fines.”

Here’s what immigrants – and American citizens – need to know.

‘Carry your papers’ law isn’t new

The law requiring lawful immigrants and foreign visitors to carry their immigration documents has been on the books for decades, dating to the 1950s.

The Immigration and Nationality Act states: “Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him.”

But the law had rarely been imposed before the Trump administration announced earlier this year that it would strictly enforce it.

The “carry your papers” portion fell out of use for cultural and historical reasons, said Michelle Lapointe, legal director of the nonprofit American Immigration Council.

In contrast to the Soviet bloc at the time the requirement was written, “We have never been a country where you have to produce evidence of citizenship on demand from law enforcement.”

In a “Know Your Rights” presentation, the ACLU cautions immigrants over age 18 to follow the law and “carry your papers with you at all times.”

“If you don’t have them,” the ACLU says, “tell the officer that you want to remain silent, or that you want to consult a lawyer before answering any questions.”

A ‘precious’ document at risk

Many immigrants preferred to hold their green card or visa in safe-keeping, because, like a passport, they are expensive and difficult to obtain.

Historically, it was “a little risky for people to carry these precious documents such as green card, because there is a hefty fee to replace it and they are at risk of not having proof of status – a precarious position to be in,” Lapointe said.

But as immigration enforcement has ramped up, the risks of not carrying legal documents have grown.

Failure to comply with the law can result in a $100 fine, or imprisonment of up to 30 days.

Immigration enforcement and ‘racial profiling’

U.S. citizens aren’t required to carry documents that prove their citizenship.

But in an environment of increasing immigration enforcement, Fernando Garcia, executive director of the nonprofit Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso, Texas, said he worries about U.S. citizens being targeted.

“With massive raids and mass deportation, this takes a new dimension,” he said. “How rapidly are we transitioning into a ‘show me your papers’ state?”

“The problem is there are a lot of people – Mexicans, or Central Americans – who are U.S. citizens who don’t have to carry anything, but they have the burden of proof based on racial profiling,” he said. “There are examples of U.S. citizens being arrested already, based on their appearance and their race.”

American citizens targeted by ICE

The Trump administration’s widening immigration crackdown has already netted American citizens.

In July, 18-year-old Kenny Laynez, an American citizen, was detained for six hours by Florida Highway Patrol and Border Patrol agents. He was later released.

Federal agents also detained a California man, Angel Pina, despite his U.S. citizenship in July. He was later released.

Elzon Limus, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen from Long Island, New York, decried his arrest by ICE agents in June, after he was released. In a video of the arrest, immigration agents demand Limus show ID, with one explaining he “looks like somebody we are looking for.”

In updated guidance, attorneys at the firm of Masuda, Funai, Eifert & Mitchell, which has offices in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles, advise U.S. who are concerned about being stopped and questioned “to carry a U.S. passport card or a copy of their U.S. passport as evidence of U.S. citizenship.”

“Papers, please!” is so un-American. 🙁

The Trump administration is telling immigrants ‘Carry your papers.’ Here’s what to know.
Immigrants have long been required to carry ID proving they’re in the US legally, but the rule was not enforced. Until now.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/07/25/carry-your-papers-law-enforcement-immigrants-citizens/85374881007

Alternet: Revealed: Officials informed that Trump program ‘intended for white people’ only

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A Friday report from Reuters claims that a senior Trump administration official recently informed diplomats in South Africa that a refugee program set up by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year was explicitly intended for white people.

According to Reuters, American diplomats in South Africa earlier this month asked the U.S. State Department whether it was allowed to process refugee claims from South African citizens who spoke the Afrikaans language but who were of mixed-race descent.

The diplomats received a response from Spencer Chretien, the senior bureau official in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, who informed them that “the program is intended for white people,” writes Reuters.

The State Department told Reuters that the scope of the program is actually broader than what was outlined in Chretien’s message and that its policy is “to consider both Afrikaners and other racial minorities for resettlement,” which lines up with guidance posted earlier this year stating that applicants for refugee status under the program “must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa.”

Trump back in February issued an executive order establishing a refugee program for what the order described as “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” The president also lobbed baseless accusations at South African President Cyril Ramaphosa this past May that his government was engaging in “genocide” against white farmers in his country.

The notion that whites in South Africa face severe racial discrimination, let alone the threat of genocide, is difficult to square with the reality that white South Africans own three-quarters of the private land in the nation despite being a mere 7% of the population.

Dara Lind of the American Immigration Council, reacting to the Reuters report, explained on social media platform Bluesky the reasons that Trump’s refugee program for Afrikaners is highly unusual. Lind pointed to the fact that the United States government at the moment is still trying to block refugees who have already gone through a two-year vetting process from entering the country, whereas it let many Afrikaner refugees into the country after a mere two weeks of vetting.

“Two years of vetting is insufficient, but two weeks is enough to know if someone will ‘be assimilated easily’—as admin officials said when the Afrikaners came,” she observed.

Fucking racist pig Trump!!!

Officials informed that Trump program ‘intended for white people’ only

https://www.alternet.org/trump-south-africa-2673764215

Raw Story: ‘Irate’ Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi appointee screams at prosecutors after jury fails to indict LA protester

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A Trump administration appointee has been going hard after demonstrators in Los Angeles who in recent weeks have been protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations—but it seems like he’s having a hard time getting grand juries to go along.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Bill Essayli, who was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi earlier this year to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, recently became “irate” and could be heard “screaming” at prosecutors in the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles when a grand jury declined to indict an anti-ICE protester who had been targeted for potential felony charges.

And according to the LA Times’ reporting, this failure to secure an indictment against demonstrators was far from a one-off.

“Although his office filed felony cases against at least 38 people for alleged misconduct that either took place during last month’s protests or near the sites of immigration raids, many have been dismissed or reduced to misdemeanor charges,” the paper writes. “In total, he has secured only seven indictments, which usually need to be obtained no later than 21 days after the filing of a criminal complaint. Three other cases have been resolved via plea deal.”

It is incredibly rare for prosecutors to fail to secure indictments from grand juries, which only require a determination that there is “probable cause” to believe a suspect committed a crime and which do not hear arguments from opposing counsels during proceedings.

Meghan Blanco, a former federal prosecutor and current defense attorney representing one of the anti-ICE protesters currently facing charges, told the LA Times that there’s a simple reason that grand juries aren’t pulling the trigger on indictments: Namely, prosecutors’ cases are full of holes.

In one case, Blanco said she obtained video evidence that directly contradicted a sworn statement from a Border Patrol officer who alleged that her client had obstructed efforts to chase down a suspect who assaulted him. When she presented this video at her client’s first court hearing, charges against him were promptly dropped.

“The agent lied and said he was in hot pursuit of a person who punched him,” Blanco explained. “The entirety of the affidavit is false.”

So why aren’t these scumbags prosecuted for perjury?

One anonymous prosecutor who spoke with the LA Times similarly said that ICE agents have been losing credibility when their actions and statements are put under a legal microscope.

“There are a lot of hotheaded [Customs and Border Protection] officers who are kind of arresting first and asking questions later,” they said. “We’re finding there’s not probable cause to support it.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, was floored by the failures to secure indictments against the anti-ICE demonstrators.

“Incredible,” he wrote on social media website X. “Federal prosecutors are seeing many cases of people accused of assaulting Border Patrol agents being turned down by grand juries! Los Angeles federal prosecutors are privately saying it’s because CBP agents are just ‘arresting first and asking questions later.'”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) similarly bashed prosecutors for using easily discredited statements from ICE officers to secure indictments.

“I’m a former prosecutor and can confirm that any prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich,” he wrote. “Except the top prosecutor in L.A. Why? Because this article points out ICE AGENTS ARE MAKING S–T UP. You want your agents respected? Tell them to stop lying.”

Don’t get your hopes up. ICE & CBP are the dregs from the bottom of the barrel. They’re not capable of doing any better.

‘Irate’ Pam Bondi appointee screams at prosecutors after jury fails to indict LA protester

https://www.rawstory.com/irate-bondi-appointee-screams-at-prosecutors-after-jury-fails-to-indict-la-protester

The Intercept: State Cops Quietly Tag Thousands as Gang Members — and Feed Their Names to ICE

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Gang databases are often racially biased and riddled with errors. States and cities send their flawed information to immigration authorities.

Police gang databases are known to be faulty. The secret registries allow state and local cops to feed civilians’ personal information into massive, barely regulated lists based on speculative criteria — like their personal contacts, clothing, and tattoos — even if they haven’t committed a crime. The databases aren’t subject to judicial review, and they don’t require police to notify the people they peg as gang members.

They’re an ideal tool for officials seeking to imply criminality without due process. And many are directly accessible to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

An investigation by The Intercept found that at least eight states and large municipalities funnel their gang database entries to ICE — which can then use the information to target people for arrest, deportation, or rendition to so-called “third countries.” Some of the country’s largest and most immigrant-dense states, like Texas, New York, Illinois, and Virginia, route the information to ICE through varied paths that include a decades-old police clearinghouse and a network of post-9/11 intelligence-sharing hubs.

Both federal immigration authorities and local police intelligence units operate largely in secret, and the full extent of the gang database-sharing between them is unknown. What is known, however, is that the lists are riddled with mistakes: Available research, reporting, and audits have revealed that many contain widespread errors and encourage racial profiling.

The flawed systems could help ICE expand its dragnet as it seeks to carry out President Donald Trump’s promised “mass deportation” campaign. The administration has cited common tattoos and other spurious evidence to create its own lists of supposed gang members, invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to send hundreds to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center prison, also known as CECOT. Gang databases The Intercept identified as getting shared with ICE contain hundreds of thousands of other entries, including some targeted at Central American communities that have landed in the administration’s crosshairs. That information can torpedo asylum and other immigration applications and render those seeking legal status deportable.

“They’re going after the asylum system on every front they can,” said Andrew Case, supervising counsel for criminal justice issues at the nonprofit LatinoJustice. “Using gang affiliation as a potential weapon in that fight is very scary.”

Information supplied by local gang databases has already driven at least one case that became a national flashpoint: To justify sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT in March, federal officials used a disputed report that a disgraced Maryland cop submitted to a defunct registry to label him as a member of a transnational gang. The report cited the word of an unnamed informant, Abrego’s hoodie, and a Chicago Bulls cap — items “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture,” it said.

The case echoed patterns from Trump’s first term, when ICE leaned on similar information from local cops — evidence as flimsy as doodles in a student’s notebook — to label immigrants as gang members eligible for deportation. As Trump’s second administration shifts its immigration crackdown into overdrive, ICE is signaling with cases like Abrego’s that it’s eager to continue fueling it with local police intelligence.

Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, argued that this kind of information-sharing boosts ICE’s ability to target people without due process.

“This opens the door to an incredible amount of abuse,” she said. “This is our worst fear.”

In February, ICE arrested Francisco Garcia Casique, a barber from Venezuela living in Texas. The agency alleged that he was a member of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang at the center of the latest anti-immigrant panic, and sent him to CECOT.

Law enforcement intelligence on Garcia Casique was full of errors: A gang database entry contained the wrong mugshot and appears to have confused him with a man whom Dallas police interviewed about a Mexican gang, USA Today reported. Garcia Casique’s family insists he was never in a gang.

It’s unclear exactly what role the faulty gang database entry played in Garcia Casique’s rendition, which federal officials insist wasn’t a mistake. But ICE agents had direct access to it — plus tens of thousands of other entries from the same database — The Intercept has found.

Under a Texas statute Trump ally Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in 2017, any county with a population over 100,000 or municipality over 50,000 must maintain or contribute to a local or regional gang database. More than 40 Texas counties and dozens more cities and towns meet that bar. State authorities compile the disparate gang intelligence in a central registry known as TxGANG, which contained more than 71,000 alleged gang members as of 2022.

Texas then uploads the entries to the “Gang File” in an FBI-run clearinghouse known as the National Crime Information Center, state authorities confirmed to The Intercept. Created in the 1960s, the NCIC is one of the most commonly used law enforcement datasets in the country, with local, state, and federal police querying its dozens of files millions of times a day. (The FBI did not answer The Intercept’s questions.)

ICE can access the NCIC, including the Gang File, in several ways — most directly through its Investigative Case Management system, Department of Homeland Security documents show. The Obama administration hired Palantir, the data-mining company co-founded by billionaire former Trump adviser Peter Thiel, to build the proprietary portal, which makes countless records and databases immediately available to ICE agents. Palantir is currently expanding the tool, having signed a $96 million contract during the Biden administration to upgrade it.

TxGANG isn’t the only gang database ICE can access through its Palantir-built system. The Intercept trawled the open web for law enforcement directives, police training materials, and state and local statutes that mention adding gang database entries to the NCIC. Those The Intercept identified likely represent a small subset of the jurisdictions that upload to the ICE-accessible clearinghouse.

New York Focus first reported the NCIC pipeline-to-immigration agents when it uncovered a 20-year-old gang database operated by the New York State Police. Any law enforcement entity in the Empire State can submit names to the statewide gang database, which state troopers then consider for submission to the NCIC. The New York state gang database contains more than 5,100 entries and has never been audited.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice, which did not respond to requests for comment, has instructed its intelligence bureau on how to add names to the NCIC Gang File as recently as 2023, The Intercept found. Virginia has enshrined its gang database-sharing in commonwealth law, which explicitly requires NCIC uploading. In April, Virginia authorities helped ICE arrest 132 people who law enforcement officials claimed were part of transnational gangs.

The Illinois State Police, too, have shared their gang database to the FBI-run dataset. They also share it directly with the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s umbrella agency, through an in-house information-sharing system, a local PBS affiliate uncovered last month.

The Illinois State Police’s gang database contained over 90,000 entries as of 2018. The data-sharing with Homeland Security flew under the radar for 17 years and likely violates Illinois’s 2017 sanctuary state law.

“Even in the jurisdictions that are not inclined to work with federal immigration authorities, the information they’re collecting could end up in these federal databases,” said Gupta.

Aside from the National Crime Information Center, there are other conduits for local police to enable the Trump administration’s gang crusade.

Some departments have proactively shared their gang information directly with ICE. As with the case of the Illinois State Police’s gang database, federal agents had access to the Chicago Police Department’s gang registry through a special data-sharing system. From 2009 to 2018, immigration authorities searched the database at least 32,000 times, a city audit later found. In one instance, the city admitted it mistakenly added a man to the database after ICE used it to arrest him.

The Chicago gang database was full of other errors, like entries whose listed dates of birth made them over 100 years old. The inaccuracies and immigration-related revelations, among other issues, prompted the city to shut down the database in 2023.

Other departments allow partner agencies to share their gang databases with immigration authorities. In 2016, The Intercept reported that the Los Angeles Police Department used the statewide CalGang database — itself shown to contain widespread errors — to help ICE deport undocumented people. The following year, California enacted laws that prohibited using CalGang for immigration enforcement. Yet the California Department of Justice told The Intercept that it still allows the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office to share the database, which contained nearly 14,000 entries as of last year, with the Department of Homeland Security.

“Each user must document their need to know/right to know prior to logging into CalGang,” and that documentation is “subject to regular audit,” a California Department of Justice spokesperson said.

Local police also share gang information with the feds through a series of regional hubs known as fusion centers. Created during the post-9/11 domestic surveillance boom, fusion centers were meant to facilitate intelligence-sharing — particularly about purported terrorism — between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Their scope quickly expanded, and they’ve played a key role in the growth of both immigration- and gang-related policing and surveillance.

The Boston Police Department told The Intercept that agencies within the Department of Homeland Security seek access to its gang database by filing a “request for information” through the fusion center known as the Boston Regional Intelligence Center. In 2016, ICE detained a teenager after receiving records from the Boston gang database, which used a report about a tussle at his high school to label him as a gang member. Boston later passed a law barring law enforcement officials from sharing personal information with immigration enforcement agents, but it contains loopholes for criminal investigations.

In the two decades since their creation, fusion center staff have proactively sought to increase the upward flow of local gang intelligence — including by leveraging federal funds, as in the case between the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, which works directly with the Department of Homeland Security. An email from 2013, uncovered as part of a trove of hacked documents, shows that an employee at the Maryland fusion center threatened to withhold some federal funding if the D.C. police didn’t regularly share its gang database.

“I wanted to prepare you that [sic] your agency’s decision … to NOT connect … may indeed effect [sic] next years [sic] funding for your contractual analysts,” a fusion center official wrote. “So keep that in mind…………..”

Four years later, ICE detained a high schooler after receiving a D.C. police gang database entry. The entry said that he “self-admitted” to being in a gang, an Intercept investigation later reported — a charge his lawyer denied.

For jurisdictions that don’t automatically comply, the Trump administration is pushing to entice them into cooperating with ICE. The budget bill Trump signed into law on the Fourth of July earmarks some $14 billion for state and local ICE collaboration, as well as billions more for local police. Official police partnerships with ICE had already skyrocketed this year; more are sure to follow.

Revelations about gang database-sharing show how decades of expanding police surveillance and speculative gang policing have teed up the Trump administration’s crackdowns, said Gupta of the American Immigration Council.

“The core problem is one that extends far beyond the Trump administration,” she said. “You let the due process bar drop that far for so long, it makes it very easy for Trump.”

State Cops Quietly Tag Thousands as Gang Members — and Feed Their Names to ICE
Gang databases are often racially biased and riddled with errors. States and cities send their flawed information to ICE.

Newsweek: Economic Warning as More Than Half-Million People Could Leave US This Year

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The U.S. could see hundreds of thousands leave the country this year thanks to President Donald Trump‘s immigration agenda, but experts believe his aggressive campaign of deportations and entry limitations could shrink the foreign-born labor force to the detriment of the economy.

In a paper recently published by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI), researchers estimated that U.S. net migration could end up between a negative 525,000 and 115,000 this year, which they said reflects “a dramatic decrease in inflows and somewhat higher outflows.” This compares to nearly 1.3 million in 2024, according to Macrotrends, and 330,000 in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic brought global travel to an abrupt standstill.

If their lower-end forecasts prove correct, it would represent the first time the U.S. has seen negative net migration in decades.

Given much of the American labor force consists of foreign-born workers—19.2 percent, per the Department of Labor—and immigrants also make up a significant share of the spending market, such a decline could put downward pressure on the labor force and consumer spending and reduce GDP this year by up to 0.4 percent.

This echoes the findings of another paper, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas last week that estimates the decline in immigration could mean a 0.75 percent to 1.0 percent hit to GDP growth this year.

“The drop in migrant inflows, and the drop in the foreign-born population more broadly, will have adverse effects on growth in the U.S. labor force, which will spill over into almost every sector of the economy,” Madeline Zavodny, one of the authors of Dallas Fed paper, told Newsweek.

This is exacerbated by the country’s low birth rate—already a source of economic unease—which is leading to a shrinking share of the population in the “working-age” bracket.

“The U.S. population is aging,” Zavodny said, “and we rely on new immigrants to help fuel growth in the labor force and key sectors, from agriculture to construction to health care.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, in response to some of these fears, told Newsweek: “President Trump’s agenda to deport criminal illegal aliens will improve Americans’ quality of life across the board. American resources, funded by American taxpayers, will no longer be stretched thin and abused by illegals.”

“President Trump is ushering in America’s golden age and growing our economy with American workers,” she added.

Bullshit!!!

Giovanni Peri, a labor economist and professor at the University of California, Davis, said that the jobs impact of a sustained decline in net inflows will be felt the strongest in lower-skilled areas such as construction, agriculture, hospitality and personal services, and roles where American-born workers are unlikely to offset declining migrant inflows. As a consequence, he told Newsweek, prices in these sectors will likely increase.

Stan Veuger, senior fellow in economic policy studies at AEI and one of the authors of the working paper, similarly said that the agriculture, leisure and construction sectors will be hit hardest by the drop in labor supply. He added that, on the demand side, a drop in foreign-born workers will impact real estate, as well as the retail and utilities sectors, the most.

“Large firms may be able to attract some more workers to replace them, usually paying higher wages,” Peri said, “while smaller firms will be more at risk of staying in business as they have smaller productivity and margins.”

Zavodny also said that small businesses will suffer the most—given these traditionally struggle to access temporary worker programs such as H-2A and H-2B visas—but that large employers will be affected too, and that “everyone will lose part of their customer base.”

The American Immigration Council estimates that the country’s foreign-born population possesses about $1.7 trillion in spending power—of which $299 billion comes from undocumented immigrants—and paid $167 billion in rent in 2023.

As outlined in AEI’s paper, lower spending will reduce business revenues, prompting layoffs and putting another form of pressure on the labor market besides the declining workforce.

Despite the potential economic fallout, Trump shows no signs of relenting on his campaign promises regarding immigration, with deportations in full swing and the president having recently signed the GOP reconciliation bill that frees up about $150 billion to help enforce that part of his agenda.

“I would hope so, though I am not optimistic,” said AEI’s Stan Veuger, when asked whether the impact on economic growth could prompt a reconsideration of the administration’s stance.

“I think the people driving immigration policy in the White House do not care about the economic [or humanitarian] impact of their immigration policies.”

Giovanni Peri, a labor economist and professor at the University of California, Davis, said that the jobs impact of a sustained decline in net inflows will be felt the strongest in lower-skilled areas such as construction, agriculture, hospitality and personal services, and roles where American-born workers are unlikely to offset declining migrant inflows. As a consequence, he told Newsweek, prices in these sectors will likely increase.

Stan Veuger, senior fellow in economic policy studies at AEI and one of the authors of the working paper, similarly said that the agriculture, leisure and construction sectors will be hit hardest by the drop in labor supply. He added that, on the demand side, a drop in foreign-born workers will impact real estate, as well as the retail and utilities sectors, the most.

“Large firms may be able to attract some more workers to replace them, usually paying higher wages,” Peri said, “while smaller firms will be more at risk of staying in business as they have smaller productivity and margins.”

Zavodny also said that small businesses will suffer the most—given these traditionally struggle to access temporary worker programs such as H-2A and H-2B visas—but that large employers will be affected too, and that “everyone will lose part of their customer base.”

The American Immigration Council estimates that the country’s foreign-born population possesses about $1.7 trillion in spending power—of which $299 billion comes from undocumented immigrants—and paid $167 billion in rent in 2023.

As outlined in AEI’s paper, lower spending will reduce business revenues, prompting layoffs and putting another form of pressure on the labor market besides the declining workforce.

Despite the potential economic fallout, Trump shows no signs of relenting on his campaign promises regarding immigration, with deportations in full swing and the president having recently signed the GOP reconciliation bill that frees up about $150 billion to help enforce that part of his agenda.

“I would hope so, though I am not optimistic,” said AEI’s Stan Veuger, when asked whether the impact on economic growth could prompt a reconsideration of the administration’s stance.

“I think the people driving immigration policy in the White House do not care about the economic [or humanitarian] impact of their immigration policies.”

Economic warning as more than half-million people could leave US this year
Predicted decline in net migration will have impact that one economist said could “spill over into almost every sector of the economy.”

https://www.newsweek.com/economic-warning-half-million-leave-us-2100225

NBC News: Immigrants in overcapacity ICE detention say they’re hungry, raise food quality concerns

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As the Trump administration ramps up immigration arrests, recent detainees and advocacy groups are raising concerns about food in ICE facilities nationwide.

Immigrants being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in at least seven states are complaining of hunger, food shortages and spoiled food, detainees and immigration advocates say. They say some detainees have gotten sick; others say they have lost weight. In one facility, an incident involving detainees reportedly broke out in part because of food.

The food problems come amid overcrowding at ICE facilities tied to the Trump administration’s push to quickly ramp up immigration arrests. While capacity data isn’t publicly available for every ICE detention facility, nationwide figures on the availability of beds show a system beyond its overall capacity. As of mid-June, ICE was detaining nearly 60,000 people, almost 45% above the capacity provided for by Congress.

Although many of ICE’s detention centers are run by private contractors, the problems are happening all over the country regardless of who’s running a given facility, advocates say. A former ICE official told NBC News it is difficult for a facility to stay stocked with the right amount of food when, on any given day, it may face an unexpected surge of new detainees. While the agency can move money around to cover the cost of detaining more immigrants, planning for unexpected daily spikes can be difficult for facilities and could lead to food being served late or in small quantities, the former ICE official said.

On top of that, there are now fewer avenues for detainees to submit concerns while they are in ICE custody, advocates say, pointing to recent job cuts to an independent watchdog within the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency.

“We haven’t seen any company-specific trends,” said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel with the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It just goes to the overall detention system and how overcrowded the detention system is as a whole.”

Alfredo Parada Calderon, a Salvadoran man who has been detained for almost a year, says he has recently had meals that have left him feeling hungry.

Detainees have sometimes been given flavorless meat that is so finely ground that it is almost liquefied, he told NBC News from the Golden State Annex detention facility in California.

“It looks like little, small pebbles, and that will be the ounces that they give you,” he said, referring to meat portions he has had in meals.

Jennifer Norris, a directing attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center with clients at multiple California detention centers, said it has gotten several complaints from clients in other facilities about the food being “inedible” and in one case “moldy.” The complaints come as some centers reach capacity with recent arrests, she said.

A woman named Rubimar, who asked that she and her husband, Jose, be identified by their first names only because he was deported Wednesday and fears fallout in Venezuela as a result of talking to the media, said Jose was detained by ICE in El Paso, Texas, for about three months and had complained about a lack of food there.

“He tells me many are given two spoonfuls of rice and that many are still hungry,” Rubimar said in an interview before Jose was deported to Venezuela.

Russian immigrant detainee Ilia Chernov said the conditions, including food, have gotten worse since he was detained at the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana on July 24, 2024.

“The portions got smaller,” Chernov said through a Russian translator. “I have to deal with hunger, so I am getting used to the hunger. So I have lost weight.”

DHS said Winn Correctional Center has received no complaints from Russian detainees. However, Chernov’s lawyers said he has submitted complaints about food to ICE in writing, at least one as recently as April.

The detainees’ complaints are consistent with what advocates say they are hearing from other detainees and their lawyers across the country.

Liliana Chumpitasi, who runs a hotline for detainees at the immigration advocacy group La Resistencia in Washington state, said she gets 10 to 20 calls a day from ICE detainees complaining about conditions. They have told her that the meals used to be delivered on a regular schedule, such as 6 a.m. for breakfast and noon for lunch, but that now breakfast may not come until 9 a.m. and dinner is often not served until midnight. Some detainees have also said meals are now half the size they were last year, she said.

According to ICE’s food service standards, detainees are required to be served three meals a day, two of which are supposed to be hot, and with “no more than 14 hours between the evening meal and breakfast.”

Congress has funded ICE to detain up to 41,500 people, including facilities, food, staffing and supplies. But as of the week of July 7, ICE had over 57,000 detainees in its facilities across the country, according to ICE data. However, there is an expectation that more space will be added with the passage this month of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which allocates $45 billion for ICE detention centers until the end of September 2029. According to an estimate by the American Immigration Council, that amount could “likely fund an increase in ICE detention to at least 116,000 beds” per year.

Two other former ICE officials said the agency can hold more people than Congress has funded it for but only for short periods. A current senior ICE official, who asked not to be named to freely discuss ongoing funding issues, said the agency has pulled money from other parts of DHS to continue funding detention through Sept. 30.

Asked about specific allegations of food scarcity and substandard food, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News in a statement, “Any claim that there is lack of food or subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.”

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment and have opportunity to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” McLaughlin said. “Meals are certified by dieticians. Ensuring the safety, security and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE.”

‘Improper food handling practices’

In Tacoma, Washington, at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, Chumpitasi fears the increase in people being held there has contributed to poor food safety.

Seven food violations have been found there in 2025 so far, compared with two in 2024 and one in 2023, according to inspection data by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. According to ICE data, 1,081 people were detained there as of June 23, compared with 719 at the end of fiscal year 2024 and 570 at the end of fiscal year 2023. (The federal government’s fiscal year runs through Sept. 30.)

One morning in mid-April, the facility contacted the local Health Department to report 57 cases of suspected foodborne illness, with symptoms including diarrhea, stomachache and bloating, according to the Health Department. After an investigation, the department concluded that reheated collard greens that had been served at the facility had tested positive for Bacillus cereus, a bacterium that can cause food poisoning. The collard greens were a substitute food for that day and not posted on the day’s menu, according to health department documents. Food poisoning caused by Bacillus cereus is often related to leftover food that has been improperly cooled or reheated.

The Health Department went back to the Northwest Processing Center for an unannounced visit and found “several improper food handling practices.” It worked with the staff there to correct them, and as of June 18 the facility had passed inspection.

Asked about that, McLaughlin said in an email, “While the Health Department was notified, the on-site medical team concluded that there was no evidence linking the illness to a specific food item, as claimed by the detainees.”

‘I am getting used to the hunger’

Over the past month, the American Immigration Lawyers Association has received at least a dozen food-related complaints from advocacy groups and lawyers representing detainees across the country, according to Dojaquez-Torres.

“The common complaint is that there is just not enough food,” she said in an interview. “What I am hearing is that there are extended periods of time when people are not being fed, and when they are, they are being given chips or a slice of bread.”

“We have been getting reports from around the country from our members … and conditions have been declining rapidly,” she said. She also said that some detainees haven’t been given beds and that some have said they aren’t given access to showers.

In early June, a “melee” broke out in Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, because of conditions inside the facility, which included “paltry meals served at irregular hours,” according to The New York Times, which spoke to several lawyers representing detainees inside the facility and family members.

Geo Group pushed back against the Times’ reporting in an emailed statement at the time, saying, “Contrary to current reporting, there has been no widespread unrest at the facility.”

DHS also denied allegations of food issues at the Newark immigration detention facility when NBC News asked about them.

“Allegations that there are chronic food shortages at Delaney Hall are unequivocally false. The facility regularly reviews any detainee complaints. The Food Service Operations Director conducted a review of food portions and detainees are being fed the portions as prescribed by the nutritionist, based on a daily 2400 to 2600 caloric intake,” McLaughlin said.

DHS didn’t respond to a follow-up question about how recently the food service operations director — or any oversight body reviewing food in ICE detention facilities nationwide — had last visited and made an assessment.

In late May, Rubimar said, her husband, Jose, had called and told her that the gas at his facility wasn’t functioning and that they had been given only a bag of tuna to eat in the meantime. But even before that, she said, her husband said the food was “too little.”

McLaughlin said a dietitian had recently approved the meal plan at the El Paso Service Processing Center and indicated “the total caloric intake for ICE detainees at the facility was 3,436 per day — which exceeds the average daily recommended minimums.”

LaSalle Corrections, which operates the Winn Correctional Center, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The GEO Group, which operates the ICE facilities in Newark and Tacoma, as well as the Golden State Annex and many others nationwide, didn’t respond to specific allegations about food service and instead provided this statement: “We are proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Over the last four decades, our innovative support service solutions have helped the federal government implement the policies of seven different Presidential Administrations. In all instances, our support services are monitored by ICE, including on-site agency personnel, and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure strict compliance with ICE detention standards.”

Reduced oversight

Beyond overcrowding, immigration advocates also blame the alleged food issues at detention facilities in part on cutbacks to a team of inspectors inside DHS.

The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, an office that previously oversaw conditions inside ICE and ICE-contracted facilities, was entirely or mainly shuttered this year after the “majority of the workforce” was issued reduction-in-force notices, according to ongoing litigation regarding the cuts.

“One of the things that made the [Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman] is that we actually had case managers in the facilities and they were accessible to the detainees,” a former DHS employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about future government employment. “They would actually go into the kitchen [to see] if there were deficiencies and work with kitchen management.”

Karla Gilbride, a lawyer with Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group suing the Trump administration over the firings of people in the office, said the office has been completely dismantled.

“That is our position, that they have shut down the office. They put everyone on leave. They were told to stop interacting with everyone who filed complaints” from detention, Gilbride said.

The former DHS employee said the dismantling of the ombudsman’s office means detainees have fewer options if they have complaints or concerns about things like food, overcrowding, sanitation, access to legal counsel and clean clothes.

“At the end of the day, it really just means that there are less people to sound an alarm,” the former DHS employee said.

McLaughlin didn’t respond to requests for comment about the dismantling of the ombudsman’s office. DHS has maintained in court filings that the ombudsman’s office remains open and that efforts to restaff certain positions affected by the layoffs are underway.

In a status report filed in court in early July, government lawyers said they are onboarding three new employees at the ombudsman’s office and that files have been created for all new complaints since the end of March.

There have been way too many of these complaints about insuffieient and low quality food at the ICE detention centers. Outside investigation (international Red Cross?) is needed.

Immigrants in overcapacity ICE detention say they’re hungry, raise food quality concerns
As the Trump administration ramps up immigration arrests, recent detainees and advocacy groups are raising concerns about food in ICE facilities nationwide.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/immigrants-overcapacity-ice-detention-say-hungry-raise-food-quality-co-rcna214193