Telegraph: Trump begins removing legal migrants under new crackdown

Migrants living legally in the US are facing deportation under a new Trump administration crackdown.

In an attempt to fulfil his campaign pledge to carry out the largest deportation program in US history, Donald Trump has set his sights on 1.2 million people granted temporary protection to stay in the US.

Temporary Protective Status (TPS) had been granted to migrants fleeing wars and natural disasters by Joe Biden and other presidents. It allows migrants to work in the country for up to 18 months and can be extended.

But in recent weeks Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, terminated protections for more than 700,000 in the TPS programme, according to Axios.

Those impacted include 348,187 Haitians fleeing violence and human rights abuses, 348,187 Venezuelans, who fled Nicolás Maduro’s regime and 11,700 Afghans.

A Haitian granted TPS, who came to the US as a student before their country’s government collapsed and was overrun by criminal gangs, told Axios: “I didn’t come here illegally and I never stayed here illegally, and I’m not a criminal by any means.”

They added: “If I need to go to Haiti, I would pray that I don’t get shot.”

Among those affected include 52,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans, who have had protections since 1999.

Leonardo Valenzuela Neda, the Honduran embassy’s deputy chief of mission in the US, said the country is not ready for the return of tens of thousands of migrants.

The Trump administration is also targeting potentially hundreds of thousands of migrants given humanitarian “parole” under the Biden administration.

Immigration judges have been dismissing status hearings for parole cases, which grants migrants the ability to live and work in the US for a set period.

‘Removalpalooza’

Migrants have been detained by ICE agents and put on a “fast track” for deportation without full court hearings, a tactic immigration rights groups have called “Removalpalooza”, Axios reported.

The shift change in policy could hand Mr Trump the large numbers of deportations as the administration continues ramping up ICE raids in a bid to hit targets.

The Trump administration has determined that migrants who crossed into the US illegally will not be eligible for a bond hearing while deportation proceedings are played out in court.

Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, told officers in an July 8 memo that migrants could be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings”, according to documents seen by the Washington Post.

Removal proceedings can take months or years and could apply to millions of migrants who crossed the border in recent years.

It comes after Congress passed a spending package to allocate $45 billion (£33.6 billion) over the next four years to spend on detaining undocumented immigrants.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesman, said programmes such as TPS “were never intended to be a path to permanent status or citizenship” and that they were “abused” by the Biden administration.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/07/15/trump-begins-removing-legal-migrants-under-new-crackdown

Showbiz 411: Trump Epstein Fake Out: Says He Might Revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship (Which He Knows He Can’t Do)

There’s nothing to quote, it’s all in the title. Our pathetic King Donald is making a royal ass of himself in front of 340 million Americans and assorted billions elsewhere.

El Pais: Support for immigration reaches historic high in US despite Trump crusade

Gallup poll shows 79% of Americans favor immigrants, a significant increase from a year earlier and a high point in a nearly 25-year trend

About 8-in-10 Americans, 79%, say immigration is “a good thing” for the country today, up sharply from 64% a year ago and a high point in a nearly 25-year trend. In contrast, only two in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing, down from 32% last year.

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-07-13/support-for-immigration-reaches-historic-high-in-us-despite-trump-crusade.html

Closer to the Edge: George Retes Was Abducted. ICE Is Hiding Him.

They didn’t arrest George Retes — they abducted him. Let’s call it what it is. On July 10th, 2025, ICE agents smashed through the window of his car, pepper-sprayed him in the face, tackled him to the ground like an enemy combatant, and then vanished him. George Retes is a 25-year-old disabled U.S. Army veteran. He is a U.S. citizen. But that didn’t matter. Not to the badge-wearing cowards who swept through Camarillo, California like thugs on a purge night, armed with the full force of a government that no longer feels bound by law, reason, or humanity.

And now? George Retes is missing. His family has no idea where he is. The local sheriff has no clue, the city police can’t help, the county officials pretend their hands are tied. Every institution that is supposed to keep citizens safe and accounted for is shrugging its shoulders, as if a man can just be snatched off the street and dropped into some Kafkaesque black site without consequence. This is what state-sponsored kidnapping looks like when it wears a federal badge.

The Carrillo Law Firm is now representing George’s family, and they’re not mincing words. This was an abduction. The firm knows the playbook well—they’re already handling a disturbingly similar case involving Andrea Velez, a 32-year-old U.S. citizen who was kidnapped by ICE agents during a prior raid. It took them more than a day just to locate her, because ICE operates like a rogue paramilitary, shuffling detainees like pawns between jails and detention centers, ensuring that families and attorneys are always one step behind.

George wasn’t even part of the protests that flared up when ICE invaded Glass House Farms. He was doing his job—working security. But ICE doesn’t need cause anymore. They saw a brown-skinned man, decided they didn’t like the way he looked, and treated his military service and citizenship like a clerical error they could correct with handcuffs and brute force. This wasn’t law enforcement. This was a rogue agency acting like the Gestapo, punishing the public for existing while Latino.

We don’t know where George is. His family doesn’t know. His lawyers don’t know. Nobody knows. There are only guesses—Ventura County Jail, the ICE Los Angeles Field Office, Adelanto ICE Processing Center, Mesa Verde in Bakersfield, Otay Mesa in San Diego. Places with reputations for dehumanization, violence, and neglect. Places that turn human beings into numbers and numbers into ghosts. ICE isn’t talking because they don’t have to. They have the cover of bureaucracy and the implicit backing of a government that has decided some citizens are worth less than others. Due process? Habeas corpus? Constitutional protections? Those are bedtime stories for children now.

What ICE is doing isn’t just morally obscene — it’s legally criminal. Under 42 U.S. Code § 1983, every federal agent who strips a citizen of their constitutional rights can be held personally liable. That includes the ICE agents who destroyed George Retes’s car, attacked him, and dragged him away. It includes the supervisors who ordered it, the bureaucrats who processed it, and the cowards who stood by watching. Americans have been tackled, beaten, pepper-sprayed, and hidden away — all under the guise of national security, all while their families suffer in confusion and grief. Every time this happens, a piece of the Constitution is set on fire, and ICE lights the match.

This is terrorism funded by your tax dollars. This is what America looks like when its own government decides that some of us don’t count, that citizenship is conditional, and that veterans who fought for the country can be discarded like defective equipment. George Retes is gone because ICE wanted him gone, and the system is built to make sure nobody answers for that.

The Carrillo Law Firm is demanding answers, but they’re doing more than that — they’re offering to help any family of a U.S. citizen who’s been abducted by ICE, and they’re doing it with no upfront cost. If your loved one has disappeared under the boots of these fascist thugs, call them at 626-799-9375. They know how to navigate this nightmare. They know how to track the untrackable. And when they find your loved one, they know how to burn the bastards who did it in court.

We will not shut up about George Retes. We will not let this go. If ICE can disappear a disabled Army veteran, then none of us are safe. They aren’t deporting anymore — they’re disappearing. And unless we fight back, unless we call it what it is, they’ll keep doing it until no one is left to protest.

https://www.closertotheedge.net/p/george-retes-was-abducted-ice-is

MSNBC: Rep. Ogles is openly calling on Pam Bondi to betray the constitution

Last week, Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that called for a federal investigation to determine whether New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda — should be subject to denaturalization proceedings based on eight-year-old rap lyrics that Ogles claims could constitute material support for terrorism. At a news conference Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that the allegations, “if true, were something that should be investigated.”

And earlier in June, the Justice Department issued a memo announcing its directive to “maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings.”

The Trump administration made denaturalization a priority during the first term, creating a special Justice Department section to pursue these cases. The administration now appears positioned to expand these efforts with a policy requiring that denaturalization be pursued wherever legally possible.

As the apparent next step in the Trump administration’s mass deportation regime, this rarely used but potentially far-reaching government power is getting newfound attention. As legal scholars who study denaturalization, we believe the new Justice Department policy could significantly expand the circumstances under which naturalized Americans might lose their citizenship in ways that raise serious constitutional questions.

… the [Supreme] court held denaturalization was unconstitutional in most circumstances, leaving open only cases in which someone “illegally procured” citizenship by not meeting requirements or obtaining it through fraud or concealment of material facts. In the half-century after this decision, fewer than 150 Americans were denaturalized, mostly former war criminals who had hidden their pasts.

More fundamentally, we argue that aggressive denaturalization policies conflict with constitutional principles of citizenship. The framers envisioned citizens as sovereign, serving as the source of government power rather than its subjects. Allowing the government to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans for decades-old conduct creates exactly the kind of arbitrary governmental authority the Constitution was designed to prevent.

The administration’s “maximal enforcement” approach means pursuing cases beyond clear instances of fraud, potentially including any situation in which evidence might support denaturalization regardless of strength or age. This approach will inevitably result in cases involving ambiguous evidence that can be arbitrarily interpreted by the government.

While supporters of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts argue that denaturalization maintains the integrity of the naturalization system, we contend that the policy risks creating different classes of citizenship, with naturalized Americans facing ongoing vulnerability that native-born citizens never experience. This effectively creates the kind of second-class citizenship that our constitutional system forbids.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-doj-denaturalization-zohran-mamdani-andy-ogles-constitution-rcna216056

India Today: Will not accept this intimidation: Zohran Mamdani reacts to Trump’s arrest threat

The Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is not backing down. In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), Mamdani blasted President Donald Trump for what he described as a direct threat to his rights and citizenship. The comments come amid Trump’s escalating rhetoric on immigration enforcement and his vow to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations if reelected.

“The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp, and deported,” Mamdani wrote in a statement posted online. “Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.”

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/us-news/story/zohran-mamdani-reacts-to-trump-arrest-threat-says-will-not-accept-this-intimidation-glbs-2749232-2025-07-02

Guardian: Ice arrests of US military veterans and their relatives are on the rise: ‘a country that I fought for’

As Trump urges more deportations, veterans are seeing their parents, children and even themselves detained

The son of an American citizen and military veteran – but who has no citizenship to any country – was deported from the US to Jamaica in late May.

Jermaine Thomas’s deportation, recently reported on by the Austin Chronicle, is one of a growing number of immigration cases involving military service members’ relatives or even veterans themselves who have been ensnared in the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.

As the Chronicle reported, Thomas was born on a US army base in Germany to an American citizen father, who was originally born in Jamaica and is now dead. Thomas does not have US, German or Jamaican citizenship – but Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency deported him anyway to Jamaica, a country in which he had never set foot.

Thomas had spent two-and-a-half months incarcerated while waiting for an update on his case. He was previously at the center of a case brought before the US supreme court regarding his unique legal status.

The federal government argued that Thomas – who had previously received a deportation order – was not a citizen simply because he was born on a US army base, and it used prior criminal convictions to buttress the case against him. He petitioned for a review of the order, but the supreme court denied him, finding his father “did not meet the physical presence requirement of the [law] in force at the time of Thomas’s birth”.

In another recent case, the wife of another Marine Corps veteran was detained by Ice despite still breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. According to the Associated Press, the veteran’s wife had been going through a process to obtain legal residency.

In March, Ice officials arrested the daughter of a US veteran who had been fighting a legal battle regarding her status. Alma Bowman, 58, was taken into custody by Ice during a check-in at the Atlanta field office, despite her having lived in the US since she was 10 years old.

Bowman was born in the Philippines during the Vietnam war, to a US navy service member from Illinois stationed there. She had lived in Georgia for almost 50 years. Her permanent residency was revoked following a minor criminal conviction from 20 years ago, leading her to continue a legal battle to obtain citizenship in the US.

In another recent case, a US army veteran and green-card holder left on his own to South Korea. His deportation order was due to charges related to drug possession and an issue with drug addiction after being wounded in combat in the 1980s, for which he earned the prestigious Purple Heart citation.

“I can’t believe this is happening in America,” Sae Joon Park, who had held legal permanent residency, told National Public Radio. “That blows me away – like, [it is] a country that I fought for.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/28/us-military-veterans-detained-trump

Latin Times: Dozens of US Citizens Were Deported by ICE Before Trump Started His Second Term: Report

Multiple administrations have reportedly been deporting U.S. citizens since at least 2015

… a newly released government watchdog report revealed that at least 70 documented U.S. citizens were deported between 2015 and 2020.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that toward the end of former President Barack Obama’s second term and throughout President Donald Trump’s first, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 674 possible U.S. citizens, detained 121 and deported at least 70, though the actual numbers may be higher.

“ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens,” the report revealed.

The problem is systemic, according to Migrant Insider, since “ICE has not implemented a reliable system to track and correct its mistakes.”

https://www.latintimes.com/dozens-us-citizens-were-deported-ice-before-trump-started-his-second-term-report-585608

Washington Post: A powerful tool in Trump’s immigration crackdown: The routine traffic stop

ICE has vastly expanded its work with local police to arrest undocumented immigrants at traffic stops. In a break with past practice, many of the detained have no violent criminal record.

Chelsea White and her husband were driving home from cleaning office buildings one May evening when they happened upon a Tennessee Highway Patrol checkpoint. It was a situation the couple feared — and had taken precautions to avoid.

White rolled down the driver’s side window on the Ford Fusion with their company’s logo. She drove because her husband, Hilario Martínez García, 46, is undocumented and cannot obtain a license in Tennessee.

One of the officers looked at Martínez, she recalled, and instructed them to pull into a nearby parking lot and step out of the car. Agents in black vests began patting them down and reaching into their pockets. They let White, 31, go when they saw her driver’s license. But her husband had no proof of U.S. citizenship.

The officers escorted him away.

“That was the last time I saw him,” she said.

The searches were clearly unconstitutional.

After Martínez was arrested, White did not hear anything for a week. She began to worry that her husband had been taken to Guantánamo or El Salvador. She couldn’t eat or sleep. She became so stressed she thought she was going to miscarry.

Finally, with the help of a lawyer, she made contact. “First thing that came out of his mouth was, ‘Are you okay and are the kids okay?’ And I said the same thing — ‘How are you?’” White said. He told her the guards hadn’t allowed him to make calls at the jail until he was about to be transferred to an ICE detention center.

Last week, Martinez was deported back to Mexico. It’s not clear what the next steps are for him. Though there is a pathway to citizenship through his 2013 marriage to White, a U.S. citizen, he never got his papers because they could not afford the legal fees. Now, his lawyer, Michael Holley, said his wife could petition for a visa for him, and he could apply for an exemption from the 10-year ban on his return that is currently in place. But that process, if successful, would take at least five years, the attorney said.

In the month and a half since Martinez has been gone, White’s life has begun to unravel. Without her husband’s income, she has fallen behind on rent. One of her cars was repossessed. And she was forced to withdraw from classes at a community college where she was pursuing a nursing degree, a lifelong dream.

She still gets questions from her children, who are 6, 9 and 11. They didn’t know their father was undocumented, and she has struggled to explain it — and why they are paying the price.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/06/22/trump-ice-deportation-arrests-traffic-stops

Independent: Texas man returns from honeymoon alone after wife is arrested by ICE in US Virgin Islands

Taahir Shaikh of Arlington says his wife, Ward Sakeik, was detained by ICE in February in St. Thomas

A recently-married Texas couple has spent over 120 days apart after the bride was detained by ICE during their honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands.

Taahir Shaikh of Arlington says his wife, Ward Sakeik, was detained by ICE in February in St. Thomas, despite having a pending green card application and documentation of her stateless status.

“She’s considered stateless, which essentially just means you’re born in a country that doesn’t give you birthright citizenship. And since she was a Palestinian refugee that was born in Saudi Arabia, they weren’t recognized as Saudi nationals,” Shaikh told NBC DFW.

Shaikh said Sakeik was just 8 years old when her family arrived in the U.S. on a visa. Although their asylum request was denied, her lack of citizenship meant the government couldn’t deport them. Instead, they were placed under an order of supervision and required to check in with immigration authorities once a year.

Since then, Sakeik has graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington and now works as a wedding photographer. She has always complied with immigration rules for 14 years, Shaikh said.

[Her husband] says they carefully chose to travel to the U.S. Virgin Islands for their honeymoon, believing it wouldn’t jeopardize her pending immigration status.

ICE addressed Sakeik’s arrest in a statement to NBC DFW, writing, “The arrest of Ward Sakeik was not part of a targeted operation by ICE. She chose to leave the country and was then flagged by CBP trying to re-enter the U.S.

“The facts are she is in our country illegally. She overstayed her visa and has had a final order by an immigration judge for over a decade. President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to restoring integrity to the visa program and ensuring it is not abused to allow aliens a permanent one-way ticket to remain in the U.S.”

ICE concluded, “She had a final order of removal since 2011. Her appeal of the final order was dismissed by the Board of Immigration Appeals on February 12, 2014. She has exhausted her due process rights and all of her claims for relief have been denied by the courts.”

But as the government has already admitted, she has nowhere to go. Period. Stop. That should be the end of the story.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/wife-arrested-texas-ice-couple-b2774196.html