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Fox News: ‘Lawless and insane’: Trump admin readies for fight after judges block Abrego Garcia removal for now

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In Nashville, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw on Wednesday ordered Abrego Garcia’s release from criminal custody pending trial, writing in a 37-page ruling that the federal government “fails to provide any evidence that there is something in Abrego’s history, or his exhibited characteristics, that warrants detention.” 

He also poured cold water on the dozens of allegations made by Trump officials, including by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in Nashville last week, that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 gang member.

“Based on the record before it, for the court to find that Abrego is member of or in affiliation with MS13, it would have to make so many inferences from the government’s proffered evidence in its favor that such conclusion would border on fanciful,” he said. 

King Donald’s pathetic band of idiots, suck-ups, and sycophants really needs to learn to quit when they’re behind, way behind in this case.

‘Lawless and insane’: Trump admin readies for fight after judges block Abrego Garcia removal for now
The Trump administration faces setbacks as judges in Tennessee and Maryland block the deportation of Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, with officials suggesting they may violate court orders.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lawless-insane-trump-admin-readies-fight-after-judges-block-abrego-garcia-removal-now

The Nation: Punished for Playing by the Rules: the Deliberate Cruelty of Trump’s Deportation Regime

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Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema, 20, dressed in a red shirt and blue jeans on a Tuesday morning in June and took the subway from Bushwick to Lower Manhattan. She walked into the Jacob Javits Federal building at 26 Federal Plaza, a few blocks north of City Hall, took her keys and phone out of her pockets to pass through security, and got in an elevator up to the 12th-floor courtroom of Judge Donald Thompson. Like the vast majority of people appearing in immigration court, she had no lawyer with her. Chipantiza-Sisalema’s parents and younger brother had made the brutal journey from Ecuador to the United States in 2022, part of an increasing number of Ecuadorans propelled north as their country destabilized. They settled in New York—where a large Ecuadoran population has been part of the city since the 1970s—and filed a claim for asylum. Chipantiza-Sisalema joined her parents last year, crossing into the US at El Paso in May 2024. In the volatile political climate in Ecuador, she had faced threats and stalking, her father later told reporters. Immigration officials in El Paso determined Chipantiza-Sisalema was not a flight risk or a danger to the community, so she was permitted to go on to New York to her family and told to appear in court more than a year later. She followed the rules.

The June 24 hearing at 26 Federal Plaza was her first immigration hearing. It was brief. Judge Thompson scheduled her next date for March 2026. But when Chipantiza-Sisalema stepped out of the courtroom to return home, masked men grabbed her. She was hustled down to the 10th floor of the courthouse. She would remain there for nine days—without being charged or ever given the opportunity to contest her detention, without access to an attorney, sleeping on the floor, with minimal food and nowhere to bathe. In hasty one-minute phone calls, Chipantiza-Sisalema told her parents there were at least 70 other people there. The small number of holding cells in the federal building are meant to be used just for a few hours before someone is transferred to a different facility, attorneys familiar with the building explained. There is no provision for meals and no beds. When she was put on a plane and transferred to the for-profit Richwood Detention facility in Louisiana on the Fourth of July—before a New York judge had a chance to review the habeas corpus petition an attorney filed the day before—she was still wearing that same red shirt and blue jeans.

The overwhelming majority of immigrants whose cases are winding through the immigration court system show up for their hearings, believing that by adhering to the system’s labyrinthine requirements they’ll be rewarded with clearance to stay in the country. Or at least the chance to fight another day. But under President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation regime, abiding by the immigration system’s rules has become increasingly dangerous. Those who show up in court now routinely face arrest. But failure to appear for a hearing generally triggers a deportation order, attorneys explained. Immigrants, advocates, and elected officials at all levels are scrambling to confront what they say is lawlessness inside the courthouse and throughout the ICE detention system. “ICE is just detaining everyone and giving only some a right to a hearing, and it’s only the possibility of having a lawyer who will shout and scream for you that your case is heard,” said Melissa Chua, an attorney at the pro bono New York Legal Assistance Group, who is representing several people who, despite following US immigration procedure, are now in detention.

Chipantiza-Sisalema is just one of hundreds of people taken in the past month by masked ICE agents at Manhattan’s immigration courts, Harold Solis, co–legal director for the Brooklyn-based immigrant rights group Make the Road New York, told The Nation. “The truth is, I don’t think anyone has a full scope of how many people have been held there.” Make the Road is now representing Chipantiza-Sisalema. Similar scenes have played out in courthouses across the country, with immigrants often shuttled between several facilities before their family or attorney can locate them. Beginning in April, it appeared to court observers in Manhattan that ICE was lying in wait for people whose cases were dismissed or who were ordered to be deported. Veteran attorneys say courthouse arrests had previously been extremely unusual. “In all my years of practice, it has never been a fact of life that going to immigration court leads to you being detained,” Solis said. By late June, ICE was routinely taking people even when, like Chipantiza-Sisalema, US immigration judges had ordered them to reappear several months in the future.

“People are being disappeared into this hole of 26 Federal Plaza for a prolonged period of time and in deplorable conditions,” said Kendal Nystedt, an attorney at the rights group Unlocal whose client was held there for six days. The New York Immigration Coalition is representing someone held for three weeks, executive director Murad Awawdeh said. The vast majority, maybe as many as 99 percent, according to a close court watcher who asked not to be identified because of the nature of her work, do not have an attorney.

“If you’re someone without a family member or no one has alerted us to you, there is no way for us to know what has happened,” said Chua. “They are really creating this shadow place that can deny people protections they are afforded by our Constitution.”

In the chaotic seconds as immigrants exit courtrooms, volunteer observers hastily attempt to catch people’s names, alien registration numbers, and contacts for family members before ICE strongarms them into elevators and out of sight. The hope is that by collecting people’s names, their families will be able to find out where they are sent. A diffuse mutual aid network raises commissary funds, tries to connect people to counsel, and offers support to families left behind—often without a breadwinner. Ordinarily when someone is detained, they show up in the ICE detainee locator in a mattered of hours, attorneys said. But those held at 26 Federal Plaza and in irregular detention in courthouses elsewhere are listed only as “in transit” for the days-long duration of their stay. In this limbo state, their lawyers and families can’t reach them.

Chua and other attorneys emphasized that the spectacle of ICE sweeping people up in courthouses was a dramatic departure from norms—even in an immigration system hardly characterized by transparency or compassion. Several members of New York’s congressional delegation, including Representatives Adriano Espaillat, Daniel Goldman, Jerrold Nadler, and Nydia Velasquez, have tried to find out how many people are held at 26 Federal Plaza—and to assess conditions. They’ve all been rebuffed.

In a surreal, Kakfaesque incident, Bill Joyce, deputy director of the New York ICE field office, told Representatives Goldman and Nadler in June that the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza—where a shifting number of immigrants are held against their will for days on end—is not a detention facility. Rather, it is a place ICE is “housing [immigrants] until they can be detained.” Members of Congress have a right to inspect places where people are detained, but not, Joyce argued, a place they are merely “held.” On July 14, Espaillat and Velasquez were again prevented from inspecting the facility. The lawmakers are considering legal action against the Department of Homeland Security for preventing them from exercising their oversight rights, Espaillat said.

That people are held within a courthouse in a sanctuary city that considers itself the capital of immigrant America is an affront that has New York lawmakers searching for solutions. “We’re fighting this from the legal front and the budgeting front and the legislative front. And we’re fighting this in public opinion,” Espaillat said. Likewise, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said his office is seeking litigation in support and praised the efforts of court observers. A coalition of immigrants rights groups in Washington, DC, filed a class action suit in federal district court in DC on July 17, alleging that the courthouse arrests are a violation of due process. New York groups could soon follow.

While ICE is barred by state law from entering New York criminal and civil courts, 26 Federal Plaza is under federal jurisdiction. But standing beside Chipantiza-Sisalema’s bereft and terrified parents at a July 3 press conference, several elected officials called on New York Governor Kathy Hochul to find a way to intervene. Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who represents parts of Brooklyn, thinks lawmakers, whose session ended mid-June, should return to Albany. “I also call on my governor, Kathy Hochul, to pass New York for All and to call us to a special session and get ICE out of our courts,” she said, referring to a bill that would extend some sanctuary protections to immigrants across New York State. Espaillat introduced HR 4176—The No Secret Police Act—in June. In the unlikely event it passes the Republican-controlled Congress, it would bar federal law enforcement officers from wearing masks or hiding their badges except in specific undercover instances. Last week, New York Attorney General Leticia James and a coalition of 20 attorneys general urged Congress to pass the bill and a bundle of similar legislation.

Closer to home, the New York City budget adopted at the end of June increased city funding for pro bono immigration lawyers by $76 million to $120 million in total, and the city’s law department filed amicus briefs in support of two detained New Yorkers this spring. But the New York Immigration Coalition wants to see a full right to counsel extended to immigration court. The rollout of city-funded right-to-counsel in housing court several years ago was not without complications, but it dramatically rebalanced the scale between tenants and landlords and has been copied elsewhere. New York wouldn’t be the first place to guarantee a right to an immigration lawyer. Oregon adopted universal access to representation in most immigration matters in 2022, said Isa Peña, director of strategy for Innovation Law Lab, based in Portland.

As courthouse arrests pile up, lawyers who are able to identify people being held are filing habeas corpus petitions in federal district courts, in hopes of keeping their clients from being transferred to distant detention facilities or deported—but also simply to compel the government to reveal where they are, dispelling the twilight status of being in perpetual “transit.” These petitions have the advantage of being heard by judges who are part of the federal judiciary—and perhaps more attuned to the rule of law than immigration court judges, who serve at the pleasure of the Department of Homeland Security.

In Buffalo, in a case since joined by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Prisoners Legal Service is arguing that ICE’s aggressive presence in the halls of federal courthouses constitutes not just an escalation of Trump’s war on immigrants but a systematic attempt to deprive people of their due-process rights. “It’s a huge deviation in ICE tactics and unlawful in various ways,” said NYCLU attorney Amy Louise Belscher, who is representing Oliver Mata Velasquez in a habeas case. Mata Velasquez, 19, came to the United States from Venezuela in September 2024, using the CBPOne app the Biden administration required of asylum seekers.As with Chipantiza-Sisalema, immigration officials at the border determined Mata Velasquez was not a flight risk or a danger and permitted him to enter the country. He obtained work authorization and showed up May 21 for his first immigration hearing, as instructed. A judge told him to return in February 2026, but before he could leave the courthouse, ICE arrested him. Last week a judge ordered Mata Velasquez immediately released and forbade ICE from detaining him again without permission from the judge.

“Federal judges are finding these courthouse arrests unlawful,” Belscher said. “They are detaining people not because they are at risk of flight or a danger to the community, but because they are easy to find.” The NYCLU’s arguments for Mata Velasquez cite a bundle of cases successfully argued in Oregon, by the Innovation Law Lab. Those cases, named for ICE Seattle field office director Drew Bostock, argue that the courthouse arrests violate the immigrant’s right to due process. That such a violation is occurring precisely in the place one goes to seek justice has scandalized attorneys. “When we saw that people were targeted at the courthouse—where your fundamental freedoms are supposed to be upheld, we moved quickly to intervene,” Innovation Law Lab’s Peña said.

Some of the habeas petitions filed in New York last month resulted in judges’ issuing emergency orders to keep the person nearby, preventing ICE from venue shopping by sending the person to Texas or Louisiana.

People aren’t only being taken at court. Milton Maisel Perez y Perez, a teacher who fled his native Guatemala because of threats from gangs, has been in immigration proceedings for six years. Like hundreds of thousands of immigrants across the country, he gained the right to work legally and was required to check in periodically under the Department of Homeland Security’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). Last month, he went to the ISAP facility in Jamaica, Queens. It was perhaps the 50th time he’d done so, his attorney S. Michael Musa-Obregon said. This time, Perez y Perez was arrested. He was transferred to the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza and held for three days. After Musa-Obregon filed a habeas petition with the Southern District of New York, but before it could be heard by a judge, ICE prepared to move Perez y Perez to detention—clear across the country in Seattle. A judge’s order at the last minute had him removed from the plane and transferred to detention in Goshen, New York.

The courthouse arrests are a cynical campaign, Musa-Obregon said. “They are detaining people with the idea that it is much easier to get people to give up their rights when they are incarcerated,” he said. On the Fourth of July, Trump signed into law his massive spending bill, which included $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security. It makes ICE the largest law enforcement entity in the country and promises to vastly expand the for-profit immigrant detention system. The masked men in the halls of justice are just the beginning. But the ancient writ of habeas corpus appears to be working.

District Judge Analisa Torres ruled on Chipantiza-Sisalema’s habeas petition on July 13, ordering her immediate release. The manner of her arrest, the judge wrote, “offends the ordered system of liberty that is the pillar of the Fifth Amendment.” She was back in her parents’ arms on July 16. Snatched by masked men and held for three weeks, she’s one of the lucky ones.

Punished for Playing by the Rules: the Deliberate Cruelty of Trump’s Deportation Regime
Migrants who show up for their court dates now routinely face arrest by ICE. But failing to appear triggers a deportation order.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/ice-trump-detention-regime-cruelty

Also here:

Punished for Playing by the Rules: the Deliberate Cruelty of Trump’s Deportation Regime

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/punished-for-playing-by-the-rules-the-deliberate-cruelty-of-trump-s-deportation-regime/ar-AA1JcQGd

LA Times: ‘Hell on earth.’ A Venezuelan deportee describes abuse in El Salvador prison

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  • Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, was one of more than 250 Venezuelans sent to El Salvador from the United States in March and incarcerated in the country’s infamous prison.
  • “There was blood, vomit and people passed out on the floor, he said.
  • A one-time professional soccer player, Reyes Barrios left Venezuela last year amid political unrest and attempted to apply for asylum at the Otay Mesa border crossing in California.

When Jerce Reyes Barrios and other Venezuelan deportees entered a maximum security prison in El Salvador this spring, he said guards greeted them with taunts.

“Welcome to El Salvador, you sons of bitches,” Reyes Barrios said the guards told them. “You’ve arrived at the Terrorist Confinement Center. Hell on earth.”

What followed, Reyes Barrios said, were the darkest months of his life. Reyes Barrios said he was regularly beaten on his neck, ribs and head. He and other prisoners were given little food and forced to drink contaminated water. They slept on metal beds with no mattresses in overcrowded cells, listening to the screams of other inmates.

“There was blood, vomit and people passed out on the floor, he said.

Reyes Barrios, 36, was one of more than 250 Venezuelans sent to El Salvador from the United States in March after President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang without normal immigration procedures. Many of the men, including Reyes Barrios, insist that they have no ties to the gang and were denied due process.

After enduring months in detention in El Salvador, they were sent home last week as part of a prisoner exchange deal that included Venezuela’s release of several detained Americans.

Venezuela’s attorney general said interviews with the men revealed “systemic torture” inside the Salvadoran prison, including daily beatings, rancid food and sexual abuse.

One of the former detainees, Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, filed a claim Thursday with the Homeland Security Department, accusing the U.S. of removing him without due process and asking for $1.3 million in damages.

Reyes Barrios spoke to The Times over video Thursday after returning to his hometown of Machiques, a city of 140,000 not far from the Colombian border. He was overjoyed to be reunited with his mother, his wife and his children. But he said he was haunted by his experience in prison.

A onetime professional soccer player, Reyes Barrios left Venezuela last year amid political unrest and in search of economic opportunity. He entered the U.S. on Sept. 1 at the Otay Mesa border crossing in California under the asylum program known as CBP One. He was immediately detained, accused of being a gangster and placed in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A court statement earlier this year from his attorney, Linette Tobin, said authorities tied Reyes Barrios to Tren de Aragua based solely on an arm tattoo and a social media post in which he made a hand gesture that U.S. authorities interpreted as a gang sign.

The tattoo — a crown sitting atop a soccer ball, with a rosary and the word “Díos” or “God” — is actually an homage to his favorite team, Real Madrid, Tobin wrote. She said the hand gesture is sign language for “I Love You.”

While in custody in California, Reyes Barrios applied for political asylum and other relief. A hearing had been set for April 17, but on March 15, he was deported to El Salvador “with no notice to counsel or family,” Tobin wrote. Reyes Barrios “has never been arrested or charged with a crime,” Tobin added. “He has a steady employment record as a soccer player as well as a soccer coach for children and youth.”

The surprise deportation of Reyes Barrios and other Venezuelans to El Salvador drew outcry from human rights advocates and spurred a legal battle with the Trump administration.

Reyes Barrios was not aware of the controversy over deportations as he was ushered in handcuffs from the airport in San Salvador to the country’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, also known as CECOT.

There, Reyes Barrios said he and other inmates were forced to walk on their knees as their heads were shaved and they were repeatedly beaten. He said he was put in a cell with 21 other men — all Venezuelans. Guards meted out measly portions of beans and tortillas and told the inmates they “would never eat chicken or meat again.”

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has detained tens of thousands of his compatriots in CECOT and other prisons in recent years, part of a gang crackdown that human rights advocates say has ensnared thousands of innocent people.

Bukele garnered worldwide attention and praise from U.S. Republicans after he published dramatic photos and videos showing hundreds of prisoners crammed together in humiliating positions, wearing nothing but underwear and shackles. During a meeting with Bukele at the Oval Office this year, Trump said he was interested in sending “homegrowns” — i.e. American prisoners — to El Salvador’s jails.

A spokeswoman for Bukele did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Reyes Barrios said guards told him and the other detained Venezuelans that they would spend the rest of their lives in the prison.

Reyes Barrios said he started praying at night: “God, protect my mother and my children. I entrust my soul to you because I think I’m going to die.”

Then, several days ago, he and the other prisoners were awakened by yelling in the early morning hours. Guards told them they had 20 minutes to take showers and prepare to leave.

“At that moment, we all shouted with joy,” Reyes Barrios said. “I think that was my only happy day at CECOT.”

After arriving in Venezuela, Reyes Barrios and the other returnees spent days in government custody, undergoing medical checks and interviews with officials.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has seized on the treatment of prisoners, airing videos on state television in which some deportees describe suffering abuses including rape, beatings and being shot at with pellet guns. Venezuelan authorities say they are investigating Bukele over the alleged abuse.

Maduro, a leftist authoritarian who has ruled Venezuela since 2013, has maintained his grip on power by jailing — and sometimes torturing — opponents. Many of the 7.7 million Venezuelans who have fled the country in recent years have cited political repression as one reason for leaving.

In Tobin’s court statement, she said Reyes Barrios participated in two demonstrations against Maduro in early 2024. After the second, Reyes Barrios was detained by authorities along with other protesters and tortured, she wrote.

Reyes Barrios said he did not wish to discuss Venezuelan politics. He said he was just grateful to be back with his family.

“My mother is very happy, ” he said.

He was greeted in his hometown by some of the young soccer players he once coached. They wore their uniforms and held balloons. Reyes Barrios juggled a ball a bit, gave the kids hugs and high fives, and smiled.

‘Hell on earth.’ A Venezuelan deportee describes abuse in El Salvador prison
A Venezuelan man who was deported from California to El Salvador and held at one of the country’s infamous prisons recounts his months in custody, recalling meager rations and the torture and beating of fellow inmates.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-07-24/i-think-im-going-to-die-a-venezuelan-deportee-recounts-abuse-in-el-salvador-prison

Knewz: Trump Impeachment Campaign Makes Major Moves in House

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In a powerful show of public dissent, nearly one million Americans signed a petition calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Knewz.com has learned that the signatures were collected by advocacy organizations Free Speech For People and Women’s March and delivered to the leadership of the House Judiciary Committee following a press conference by Representative Al Green of Texas.

Backed by a growing protest movement and a formal campaign known as “Impeach Trump. Again.” led by constitutional lawyers at Free Speech For People, the effort accuses President Trump of a sweeping list of constitutional violations and abuses of power. Supporters of the movement argue that Congress must now act decisively to defend the democracy. Speaking to reporters outside the United States Capitol, Rep. Green expressed his appreciation to Free Speech For People, Women’s March and the nearly one million individuals who had signed the petition calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment. He emphasized that the widespread public support demonstrated the urgency and significance of the issue, which Congress could no longer afford to ignore, he said. “His abuse of power, disregard for the Constitution, authoritarian dictatorship activity and violations of the War Powers Clause demand a response. Impeachment and removal from office is the remedy provided in our Constitution to protect democracy from an authoritarian president whose threat to democracy has become an assault on democracy. This is why the article of impeachment filed in June is the first in the foundation to remove an authoritarian president — but not the last,” Rep. Green said in a statement.

Tamika Middleton, the Managing Director of Women’s March, accused President Trump of “trampling” on the Constitution and attacking “our communities with cruelty and impunity.” She said in her statement, “Nearly one million people demanding impeachment is proof that we will not back down. Congress must act now to protect our freedoms and our futures.” Alexandra Flores-Quilty, the Campaign Director for Free Speech For People, told reporters outside the U.S. Capitol, “What this campaign shows is that nearly 1 million Americans across the country refuse to let Trump and his allies destroy our democracy. … It’s up to Congress to do their job, defend the Constitution and impeach and remove Donald Trump from office for his grave abuses of power.”

According to reports, Rep. Green introduced articles of impeachment against Trump for violating the War Powers Clause of the Constitution following the military attack on Iran without congressional authorization and forced a floor vote on the articles. Seventy-eight members of the House voted in favor of advancing the articles of impeachment introduced by Rep. Green — nearly four times the number who had previously gone on record supporting such action against President Trump. With close to one million petition signatures now submitted in support of impeachment, advocates argue that Congress faces growing public pressure to act on its constitutional responsibilities. “The Framers designed the constitutional remedy of impeachment to deal with a president who would attack the Constitution, trample on the rule of law and engage in High Crimes. … The American people are demanding that Members of Congress abide by their oath to protect and defend the Constitution and impeach and remove Trump,” said John Bonifaz, the co-founder and president of Free Speech For People.

According to the Impeach Trump Again campaign, the allegations against the president span a wide range of constitutional and legal violations. These include unlawfully bypassing Congress’ authority to declare war, deploying military forces against civilian protesters and engaging in the illegal detention, deportation and removal of U.S. residents, migrants and asylum-seekers — sometimes to foreign prisons. He is also accused of attempting to deport immigrants for peaceful protest, defying court orders and undermining judicial authority. Additional charges involve using presidential power for personal retribution, dismantling independent oversight bodies, imposing unauthorized tariffs and accepting prohibited foreign and domestic emoluments. The campaign further alleges he repeatedly overstepped local, state and federal boundaries by abusing emergency and pardon powers, interfering with the judicial process and corruptly dismissing criminal charges against political figures including New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Other serious accusations include denying citizens their birthright, obstructing efforts to secure elections, allegedly planning the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and engaging in corrupt activities during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump Impeachment Campaign Makes Major Moves in House
In a powerful show of public dissent, nearly one million Americans signed a petition calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

https://knewz.com/trump-impeachment-campaign-makes-major-moves-in-house

Latin Times: Florida AG Encourages People To Report Their Ex Partners To Immigration Authorities: ‘We’d Be Happy To Assist’

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“If your ex is in this country illegally, please feel free to reach out to our office,” said James Uthmeier

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier encouraged people to report their ex partners to immigration authorities so they can be deported.

In a social media post, Uthmeier said “we recently got a tip from someone whose abusive ex overstayed a tourism visa” and now he is “cued up for deportation.”

“If your ex is in the country illegally, please feel free to reach out to our office. We’d be happy to assist.”

Uthmeier has also made headlines recently for proposing the construction of the migrant detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” located at a remote airport site surrounded by Everglades wildlife. The facility has in fact been inaugurated and mired by allegations of mistreatment. Legal advocates are calling for the shutting down of the facility, decrying “unlivable” conditions that include mosquito-ridden units and lights being on all the time.

Uthmeier made the post as CBS News reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted some 150,000 deportations in the first six months.

The figure is still far from its self-imposed goal of recording 1 million deportations in the first year of the administration, but the agency has vowed to ramp up efforts, especially after getting tens of billions in funds following the passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Should deportations continue at this pace, they would reach about 300,000 by the end of the year, the highest figure since fiscal year 2014, when the Obama administration conducted 316,000 ICE removals. The highest amount ever recorded was in 2012, when the agency conducted some 410,000 deportations.

However, the administration is significantly ramping up efforts to that end, especially after getting an additional $45 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as well as $30 billion to fund every stage of the deportation process. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said last week that the agency plans to use some of that money to hire 10,000 agents to locate and arrest migrants suspected of being in the country unlawfully.

Asshole!

James Uthmeier is such a pathetic excuse for human detritus!

Florida AG Encourages People To Report Their Ex Partners To Immigration Authorities: ‘We’d Be Happy To Assist’
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier encouraged people to report their ex partners to immigration authorities if they are in the country unlawfully

https://www.latintimes.com/florida-ag-encourages-people-report-their-ex-partners-immigration-authorities-wed-happy-587482

CBS News: ICE head says agents will arrest anyone found in the U.S. illegally

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In an exclusive interview with CBS News, the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said his agents will arrest anyone they find in the country illegally, even if they lack a criminal record, while also cracking down on companies hiring unauthorized workers.

Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, said his agency will prioritize its “limited resources” on arresting and deporting “the worst of the worst,” such as those in the U.S. unlawfully who also have serious criminal histories.

But Lyons said non-criminals living in the U.S. without authorization will also be taken into custody during arrest operations, arguing that states and cities with “sanctuary” policies that limit cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement are forcing his agents to go into communities by not turning over noncitizen inmates.

“What’s, again, frustrating for me is the fact that we would love to focus on these criminal aliens that are inside a jail facility,” Lyons said during his first sit-down network interview on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “A local law enforcement agency, state agency already deemed that person a public safety threat and arrested them and they’re in detention.”

“I’d much rather focus all of our limited resources on that to take them into custody, but we do have to go out into the community and make those arrests, and that’s where you are seeing (that) increase” in so-called “collateral” arrests, Lyons added, referring to individuals who are not the original targets of operations but are nonetheless found to be in the U.S. unlawfully.

Collateral arrests by ICE were effectively banned under the Biden administration, which issued rules instructing deportation officers to largely focus on arresting serious criminal offenders, national security threats and migrants who recently entered the U.S. illegally. That policy was reversed immediately after President Trump took office for a second time in January.

As part of Mr. Trump’s promise to crack down on illegal immigration, his administration has given ICE a broad mandate, with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pushing the agency to conduct 3,000 daily arrests. While ICE has so far not gotten close to that number, the agency just received tens of billions of dollars in additional funds from Congress to turbo-charge its deportation campaign.

Lyons said “it’s possible” to meet the administration’s target of 1 million deportations in a year with the new infusion of funds. ICE has recorded nearly 150,000 deportations in Mr. Trump’s first six months in office, according to internal government data obtained by CBS News.

From Jan. 1 to June 24, ICE deported around 70,000 people with criminal convictions, but many of the documented infractions were for immigration or traffic offenses, according to data obtained by CBS News.

While the administration frequently highlights arrests of non-citizens convicted of serious crimes like murder and rape, ICE also has sparked backlash in communities across the country due to some of its tactics and actions, including the use of masks by agents (which Lyons said will continue due to concerns about the safety of his officers), arrests of asylum-seekers attending court hearings and raids on worksites.

“ICE is always focused on the worst of the worst,” Lyons said. “One difference you’ll see now is under this administration, we have opened up the whole aperture of the immigration portfolio.”

Lyons promises to hold companies accountable 

Another major policy at ICE under the second Trump administration is the lifting of a Biden-era pause on large-scale immigration raids at worksites.

In recent weeks, federal immigration authorities have arrested hundreds of suspected unauthorized workers at a meatpacking plant in Nebraska, a horse racetrack in Louisiana and cannabis farms in southern California. At the cannabis farms alone, officials took into custody more than 300 immigrants who were allegedly in the country unlawfully, including 10 minors.

Amid concerns from industry leaders that Mr. Trump’s crackdown was hurting their businesses, ICE in June ordered a halt to immigration roundups at farms, hotels and restaurants. But that pause lasted only a matter of days. Since then, the president has talked about giving farmers with workers who are not in the U.S. legally a “pass,” though his administration has not provided further details on what that would entail.

In his interview with CBS News, Lyons said ICE would continue worksite immigration enforcement, saying there’s no ban on such actions. He said those operations would rely on criminal warrants against employers suspected of hiring unauthorized immigrants, which he said is not a “victimless crime,” noting such investigations often expose forced labor or child trafficking.  

“Not only are we focused on those individuals that are, you know, working here illegally, we’re focused on these American companies that are actually exploiting these laborers, these people that came here for a better life,” Lyons said.

Asked to confirm that ICE plans to hold those employing immigrants in the U.S. illegally accountable — and not just arrest the workers themselves — Lyons said, “One hundred percent.”

ICE head says agents will arrest anyone found in the U.S. illegally, crack down on employers of unauthorized workers
Immigration agents will arrest anyone they find in the country illegally, even if they lack a criminal record, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in an exclusive CBS News interview.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-head-todd-lyons-agents-will-arrest-anyone-found-illegally-crack-down-on-employers

NBC News: Calls to strip Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship spark alarm about Trump weaponizing denaturalization

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Past administrations, including Obama’s, have sought to denaturalize U.S. citizens, such as terrorists and Nazis. But advocates worry he could target political opponents.

Immediately after Zohran Mamdani became the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City last month, one Republican congressman had a provocative suggestion for the Trump administration: “He needs to be DEPORTED.”

The Uganda-born Mamdani obtained U.S. citizenship in 2018 after moving to the United States with his parents as a child. But Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., argued in his post on X that the Justice Department should consider revoking it over rap lyrics that, he said, suggested support for Hamas.

The Justice Department declined to comment on whether it has replied to Ogles’ letter, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of his claims about Mamdani, “Surely if they are true, it’s something that should be investigated.”

Trump himself has claimed without evidence that Mamdani is an illegal immigrant, and when erstwhile ally Elon Musk was asked about deporting another naturalized citizen, he suggested he would consider it.

The congressman’s proposal dovetails with a priority of the Trump administration to ramp up efforts to strip citizenship from other naturalized Americans. The process, known as denaturalization, has been used by previous administrations to remove terrorists and, decades ago, Nazis and communists.

But the Trump DOJ’s announcement last month that it would “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings” has sparked alarm among immigration lawyers and advocates, who fear the Trump administration could use denaturalization to target political opponents.

Although past administrations have periodically pursued denaturalization cases, it is an area ripe for abuse, according to Elizabeth Taufa, a lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

“It can be very easily weaponized at any point,” she said.

Noor Zafar, an immigration lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said there is a “real risk and a real threat” that the administration will target people based on their political views.

Asked for comment on the weaponization concerns, a Justice Department spokesperson pointed to the federal law that authorizes denaturalizations, 8 U.S.C. 1451.

“We are upholding our duty as expressed in the statute,” the spokesperson said.

Immigrant groups and political opponents of Trump are already outraged at the way the Trump administration has used its enforcement powers to stifle dissent in cases involving legal immigrants who do not have U.S. citizenship.

ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist engaged in campus protests critical of Israel, for more than 100 days before he was released. Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was also detained for two months over her pro-Palestinian advocacy.

More broadly, the administration has been accused of violating the due process rights of immigrants it has sought to rapidly deport over the objection of judges and, in cases involving alleged Venezuelan gang members and Salvadoran man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Supreme Court.

Denaturalization cases have traditionally been rare and in past decades focused on ferreting out former Nazis who fled to the United States after World War II under false pretenses.

But the approach gradually changed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Aided by technological advances that made it easier to identify people and track them down, the number of denaturalization cases has gradually increased.

It was the Obama administration that initially seized on the issue, launching what was called Operation Janus, which identified more than 300,000 cases where there were discrepancies involving fingerprint data that could indicate potential fraud.

But the process is slow and requires considerable resources, with the first denaturalization as a result of Operation Janus secured during Trump’s first term in January 2018.

That case involved Baljinder Singh, originally from India, who had been subject to deportation but later became a U.S. citizen after assuming a different identity.

In total, the first Trump administration filed 102 denaturalization cases, with the Biden administration filing 24, according to the Justice Department spokesperson, who said figures for the Obama administration were not available. The new Trump administration has already filed five. So far, the Trump administration has prevailed in one case involving a man originally from the United Kingdom who had previously been convicted of receiving and distributing child pornography. The Justice Department declined to provide information about the other new cases.

Overall, denaturalization cases are brought against just a tiny proportion of the roughly 800,00 people who become naturalized citizens each year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

‘Willful misrepresentation’

The government has two ways to revoke citizenship, either through a rare criminal prosecution for fraud or via a civil claim in federal court.

The administration outlined its priorities for civil enforcement in a June memo issued by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, which listed 10 potential grounds for targeting naturalized citizens.

Examples range from “individuals who pose a risk to national security” or who have engaged in war crimes or torture, to people who have committed Medicaid or Medicare fraud or have otherwise defrauded the government. There is also a broad catch-all provision that refers to “any other cases … that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”

The denaturalization law focuses on “concealment of a material fact” or “willful misrepresentation” during the naturalization proceeding.

The ACLU’s Zafar said the memo leaves open the option for the Trump administration to at least try to target people based on their speech or associations.

“Even if they don’t think they really have a plausible chance of succeeding, they can use it as a means to just harass people,” she added.

The Justice Department can bring denaturalization cases over a wide range of conduct related to the questions applicants for U.S. citizenship are asked, including the requirement that they have been of “good moral character” in the preceding five years.

Immigration law includes several examples of what might disqualify someone on moral character grounds, including if they are a “habitual drunkard” or have been convicted of illegal gambling.

The naturalization application form itself asks a series of questions probing good moral character, such as whether the applicant has been involved in violent acts, including terrorism.

The form also queries whether people have advocated in support of groups that support communism, “the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship” or the “unlawful assaulting or killing” of any U.S. official.

Failure to accurately answer any of the questions or the omission of any relevant information can be grounds for citizenship to be revoked.

In 2015, for example, Sammy Chang, a native of South Korea who had recently become a U.S. citizen, had his citizenship revoked in the wake of his conviction in a criminal case of trafficking women to work at a club he owned.

The government said that because Chang had been engaged in the scheme during the time he was applying for naturalization, he had failed to show good moral character.

But in both civil and criminal cases, the government has to reach a high bar to revoke citizenship. Among other things, it has to show that any misstatement or omission in a naturalization application was material to whether citizenship would have been granted.

In civil cases, the government has to show “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt” in order to prevail.

“A simple game of gotcha with naturalization applicants isn’t going to work,” said Jeremy McKinney, a North Carolina-based immigration lawyer. “It’s going to require significant materiality for a judge to strip someone of their United States citizenship.”

Targeting rap lyrics

In his June 26 tweet, Ogles attached a letter he sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to consider pursuing Mamdani’s denaturalization, in part, because he “expressed open solidarity with individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.”

Ogles cited rap lyrics that Mamdani wrote years ago in which he expressed support for the “Holy Land Five.”

That appears to be a reference to five men involved in a U.S.-based Muslim charitable group called the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted in 2008 of providing material support to the Palestinian group Hamas. Some activists say the prosecution was a miscarriage of justice fueled by anti-Muslim sentiment following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Ogles’ office and Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Speaking on Newsmax in June, Ogles expanded on his reasons for revoking Mamdani’s citizenship, suggesting the mayoral candidate had “failed to disclose” relevant information when he became a citizen, including his political associations. Ogles has alleged Mamdani is a communist because of his identification as a democratic socialist, although the latter is not a communist group.

Anyone speaking on Newsmax these days is an irrelevant fruitcake.

The Trump administration, Ogles added, could use a case against Mamdani to “create a template for other individuals who come to this country” who, he claimed, “want to undermine our way of life.” (Even if Mamdani were denaturalized, he would not, contrary to Ogles’ claim, automatically face deportation, as he would most likely revert his previous status as a permanent resident.)

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on June 29, Mamdani said calls for him to be stripped of his citizenship and deported are “a glimpse into what life is like for many Muslim New Yorkers and many New Yorkers of different faiths who are constantly being told they don’t belong in this city and this country that they love.”

Targeting Mamdani for his rap lyrics would constitute a very unusual denaturalization case, said Taufa, the immigration lawyer.

But, she added, “they can trump up a reason to denaturalize someone if they want to.”

McKinney, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the relatively low number of denaturalization cases that are filed, including those taken up during Trump’s first term, shows how difficult it is for the government to actually strip people of their citizenship.

“But what they can be very successful at is continuing to create a climate of panic and anxiety and fear,” he added. “They’re doing that very well. So, mission accomplished in that regard.”

Calls to strip Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship spark alarm about Trump weaponizing denaturalization
Past administrations, including Obama’s, have sought to denaturalize U.S. citizens, such as terrorists and Nazis. But advocates worry he could target political opponents.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/calls-strip-zohran-mamdanis-citizenship-trump-denaturalization-power-rcna216653

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.

Daily Caller: ‘Another Win For The American People’: Appeals Court Hands Trump Admin Deportation Victory

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An appellate court ruled the Trump administration can move forward with ending temporary deportation protections for thousands of Afghan and Cameroonian nationals.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is allowed to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for roughly 10,000 Afghans and Cameroonians while a court challenge against the move continues to play out in court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday. The court determined that while CASA — an immigration advocacy group suing DHS — has a plausible case, there is not enough evidence to block the TPS phaseout while the court challenge continues.

“We agree with the district court that CASA, Inc. has stated a plausible claim for relief with regard to the alleged ‘preordained’ decision to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for Afghanistan and Cameroon, and that the balance of the equities and the public interest weigh in favor of CASA, Inc,” the court stated, according to court documents.

“At this procedural posture, however, there is insufficient evidence to warrant the extraordinary remedy of a postponement of agency action pending appeal,” the ruling continued.

The Monday court ruling marks the latest victory in the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to keep TPS designations temporary.

A federal authority first established in the Immigration Act of 1990, TPS bestows sweeping deportation protections and work eligibility to certain foreign nationals living in the U.S., including illegal migrants, whose home countries are experiencing any number of conflicts or devastating natural disasters, making it potentially unsafe for them to go back, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The authority does not grant permanent legal status, according to USCIS. Those who lose TPS become amenable to removal unless they obtain another form of immigration status.

Despite its purpose as a temporary form of deportation protection, the authority has served as a more permanent measure in practice.

Honduras and Nicaragua, for example, were initially designated for TPS roughly 25 years ago based on an environmental disaster that resulted in “substantial, but temporary” disruption of living conditions, according to a DHS memo issued earlier in July. Since that time, however, both Central American countries have seen their TPS designations “continuously extended” over the years, with Nicaragua’s designation being extended a total of 13 consecutive times.

The Trump administration is moving to finally end TPS for Nicaragua and Honduras, arguing that conditions in both countries no longer support the deportation protection designation. Earlier this year, the administration also announced it would nix the Biden White House’s TPS extension for Haiti, a designation the country has enjoyed since 2010, and revoke an 18-month TPS extension granted to roughly 600,000 Venezuelan nationals by Biden officials.

“This is another win for the American people and the safety of our communities,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated Tuesday to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “TPS was never intended to be a de facto asylum program, yet it has been abused as one for decades.”

No, you ignorant bitch, this isn’t a “win” for anyone except our deranged King Donald and his entourage of blind sycophants.

This is a stain on America. We provided shelter for 10,000 Afghans and Cameroonians who were at risk in their home countries; you and your cronies are pulling the rug out from under them. If you actually succeed in deporting them, many, perhaps thousands, will end up injured and murdered.

“DHS records indicate that there are Afghan nationals who are TPS recipients who have been the subject of administrative investigations for fraud, public safety, and national security,” McLaughlin continued. “This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary.”

In May, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem declared TPS for Afghan nationals would end within 60 days, according to a release. The number of Afghans on TPS is relatively small compared to the number of Afghans who arrived to the U.S. en masse amid President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from the country and obtained other forms of immigration benefits.

Roughly 9,600 Afghans and nearly 3,500 Cameroonians currently have TPS, according to The National Immigration Forum. The deportation protections for Afghan nationals were slated to end earlier in July and protections for Cameroonian nationals are set to expire on Aug. 4.

What’s needed now is a direct appeal to the Supreme Court, if they will hear the case, or a conflicting opinion in another circuit, which normally would force the issue to the Supreme Court.

‘Another Win For The American People’: Appeals Court Hands Trump Admin Deportation Victory
An appellate court is allowing the Trump admin to move forward with ending temporary deportation protections for thousands of Afghan and Cameroonian nationals.

https://dailycaller.com/2025/07/22/court-ruling-hands-trump-admin-tps-win