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Raw Story: Marine’s parents nabbed by ICE as they visited pregnant daughter on military base
The parents of a U.S. Marine in California were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month while en route to visit their pregnant daughter. The father was deported Friday, NBC News reported.
Steve Rios, a U.S. Marine and resident of Oceanside, was traveling with his parents to Camp Pendleton to visit his sister who, along with her husband who’s also a U.S. Marine, is expecting her first child. The trio was stopped at the base’s entrance, however, when ICE agents detained Rios’ parents, who have no criminal history and have pending green card applications.
“I just kept on looking at my parents,” Rios told NBC News. “I didn’t know if it would be the last time I’d see them.”
Rios immediately texted his sister, Ashley Rios, about the incident as it was taking place, the news of which saw her break down in tears.
“My brother texted me that they got stopped,” Ashley Rios said, speaking with NBC News. “And as soon as I heard that, I just started, like, bawling.”
Rios’ parents – Esteban Rios and Luisa Rodriguez, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico more than 30 years ago – were briefly released from ICE custody following their detention, though with ankle monitors and an order to check back in with ICE officials.
Wearing a shirt and hat that bore the phrase “Proud dad of a U.S. Marine,” Rios’ father, alongside Rios’ mother, made good on their pledge to check back in with ICE officials, only for the father to be deported on Friday and the mother detained indefinitely, according to the report.
“It’s just hard because you just want to hear, like, your parents’ voice, that everything will be OK,” Ashley Rios said, telling NBC News that she was worried about her parents missing the birth of her first child. “I’d always want, like, my mom in that delivery room and everything, so it’s just hard to not think about your parents there.”
An ICE spokesperson released a statement regarding Rios’ parents’ arrests and deportation, in which they made a soft acknowledgment that undocumented immigrants with no criminal history, outside of immigrating to the country illegally, were also the target of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy.
“As part of its routine operations, ICE arrests aliens who commit crimes and other individuals who have violated our nation’s immigration laws,” the statement from ICE to NBC News reads. “All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, regardless of nationality.”
Miami Herald: He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him
On the morning of Oct. 3, 2025, Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam walked out of Huntingdon State Correctional Institution, the Pennsylvania prison that had confined him for more than four decades. The 64-year-old had spent nearly his entire adult life behind bars for a murder he did not commit. His conviction had been vacated weeks earlier after a court found that prosecutors had concealed evidence that would have dismantled the state’s case. The Centre County district attorney formally withdrew all charges a day before his expected release.
But Subu never made it home.
As he stood on the threshold of freedom, officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were waiting. Acting on a decades-old deportation order, they detained him and transferred him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an ICE detention facility in central Pennsylvania.
His family, who had prepared to welcome him home, instead learned that Subu would remain in custody — not as a prisoner of the state, but as a detainee of the federal government.
“To our disappointment, Subu was transferred to ICE custody and is currently being held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center,” the family said in a statement posted on a website dedicated to building support for Vedam’s case.
“This immigration issue is a remnant of Subu’s original case. Since that wrongful conviction has now been officially vacated and all charges against Subu have been dismissed, we have asked the immigration court to reopen the case and consider the fact that Subu has been exonerated. Our family continues to wait — and long for the day we can finally be together with him again.”
Subu’s legal odyssey began in 1982, when he was arrested for the 1980 murder of his friend, 19-year-old Thomas Kinser, in Centre County. Prosecutors argued that Subu had shot Kinser with a .25-caliber pistol — a weapon that was never recovered — and based their case largely on circumstantial evidence. He was initially arrested in 1982 and convicted the following year, being finally sentenced to life without parole.
For the next 42 years, Subu maintained his innocence. His appeals were repeatedly denied, and his case languished until the Pennsylvania Innocence Project joined his defense team. In 2022, the project’s attorneys discovered previously undisclosed evidence in the files of the Centre County District Attorney’s Office — including an FBI report and handwritten notes suggesting that the bullet wound in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been caused by a .25-caliber bullet. That revelation undermined the entire prosecution theory.
In August 2025, Judge Jonathan Grine of the Centre County Court of Common Pleas ruled that the concealed evidence represented a constitutional violation of due process. “Had that evidence been available at the time,” Grine wrote, “there would have been a reasonable probability that the jury’s judgment would have been affected.” One month later, District Attorney Bernie Cantorna dismissed the murder charge, saying a retrial would be both impossible and unjust.
By then, Subu had become the longest-serving exoneree in Pennsylvania history — and one of the longest-serving in the United States.
Freedom, however, came with a new peril.
Legacy Deportation Order
ICE cited a “legacy deportation order” dating back to the 1980s, tied not only to the murder charge but also to an earlier drug conviction from Subu’s youth. Before his arrest for murder, he had pleaded guilty at age 19 to intent to distribute LSD — a charge his family describes as a youthful mistake. Although that conviction carried its own immigration consequences, Subu, who was born in India but arrived in the United States when he was 9 months old, was never deported because he was serving a life sentence.
Now, after his exoneration, ICE has revived the decades-old order.
In a statement sent to the Herald, ICE said Philadelphia officers Vedam into custody immediately after his release because his criminal past.
“Pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act, individuals who have exhausted all avenues of immigration relief and possess standing removal orders are priorities for enforcement. ERO notes that Mr. Vedam, a career criminal with a rap sheet dating back to 1980, is also a convicted controlled substance trafficker,” ICE said in an email. “Mr. Vedam will be held in ICE custody while the agency arranges for his removal in accordance with all applicable laws and due-process requirements”.
Mike Truppa, a spokesperson for the family, says the move blindsided Vedam’s family. “They’re emotionally reeling from the fact that he could be sent to a country he doesn’t know,” he said. “There’s some ancestry in India where he might have some nominal relations, but his entire family — all of his family relationships — are here and in Canada.”
Subu’s niece, Zoë Miller Vedam, said the family has little sense of what to expect from the immigration proceedings but continues to hold on to hope. “I’m not sure we have expectations. We definitely have hope,” she said. “It’s been a very long journey toward exonerating my uncle. He spent the last 44 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, and we’ve been fighting and supporting him this whole time.”
Zoë described her uncle as a deeply compassionate man who transformed his decades of imprisonment into a mission of service. “He really did so much over those years to show the person that he is,” she said. “He worked as a teacher, helping many, many people get their degrees — people who’ve spoken to us afterwards about how having him support them while they were incarcerated really changed their lives. He completed multiple degrees himself. He was always learning and caring.”
She added that Subu’s potential deportation to India would be devastating. “India, in many ways, is a completely different world to him,” she said. “He left India when he was nine months old. None of us can remember our lives at nine months old. He hasn’t been there for over 44 years, and the people he knew when he went as a child have passed away. His whole family — his sister, his nieces, his grand-nieces — we’re all U.S. citizens, and we all live here.”
Zoë said her uncle’s wrongful conviction had robbed him of the chance to build a normal life and left him unprepared for exile in a country he doesn’t know. “He’s never been able to work outside the prison system,” she said. “He’s never seen a modern film, he’s never been on the internet, he doesn’t know technology. To send him to India at 64, on his own and away from his family and community, would be just extending the harm of his wrongful incarceration.”
Still Fighting
Subu’s legal team has filed a motion to reopen the immigration case and a petition for a stay of deportation while the motion is pending. The government has until Oct. 24 to respond.
Over the decades, Subu built a life of quiet purpose inside prison walls. By all accounts, he was a model inmate. He designed and led literacy programs, raised funds for Big Brothers Big Sisters, and tutored hundreds of fellow prisoners working toward high school diplomas. He became the first person in the 150-year history of the facility to earn a master’s degree, completing his coursework by correspondence with a 4.0 GPA.
“Subu’s true character is evidenced in the way he spent his 43 years of imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit,” said his sister, Saraswathi Vedam, in a statement. “Rather than succumb to this dreadful hardship and mourn his terrible fate, he turned his wrongful imprisonment into a vehicle of service to others.”
At the heart of the current dispute lies a question of legal timing — and humanity. Because Subu was never formally naturalized, his earlier drug conviction technically makes him deportable under U.S. immigration law. The wrongful murder conviction, now vacated, had kept him in state custody for decades, effectively freezing that process. With his exoneration, ICE argues that the original deportation order can now be executed.
To Subu’s defenders, that logic defies both fairness and decency. The government is portraying him as a “career criminal and drug trafficker.” The defense intends to argue that the totality of circumstances — Subu’s wrongful imprisonment, his lifelong residence in the United States, and his record of rehabilitation — warrants reopening the case.
For his niece, the fight is about more than legal arguments. “After 43 years of having his life taken from him because of a wrongful conviction, to send him to the other side of the world — to a place he doesn’t know, away from everyone who loves him — would just compound that injustice,” Zoë said. “We’re going to keep supporting him and doing everything we can to make sure that, now that he’s finally been exonerated, he’ll be able to be home with his family.”
Independent: More than 100 human rights abuses discovered in immigration detention since Trump took office, senate probe says
Report from Senator Jon Ossoff uncovers dozens of allegations, including medical mistreatment of children women and children
An investigation from the office of Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff uncovered more than 500 allegations of human rights abuses in immigration detention facilities, including more than a two dozen reports involving children and pregnant women and more than 40 instances of physical and sexual abuse.
The senator launched an investigation into conditions inside the nation’s sprawling network of immigration detention facilities after Donald Trump took office in January.
A subsequent report, first published by NBC News on Tuesday, identified 510 “credible reports” of abuse inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, federal prisons, local jails and military bases, including Guantanamo Bay, and on deportation flights.
“Credibly reported or confirmed events to date include deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse, mistreatment of pregnant women, mistreatment of children, inadequate medical care, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, inadequate food or water, exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of access to attorneys, and family separations,” according to the report.
Those events include 41 allegations of physical or sexual abuse, including an alleged incident in El Paso where a detainee was “slammed against the ground, handcuffed, and taken outside” for “stepping out of line in the dining hall.”
The report also uncovered two 911 calls from a California facility referencing sexual assaults or threats of sexual assaults. At a facility in Texas, at least four emergency calls since January have reportedly referenced sexual abuse, the report found.
When a group of detainees in Miami flooded a toilet in protest of poor conditions, officers reportedly threw flash-bang grenades into the room and “shot at the men with what appeared to be pellets or rubber bullets,” according to the report. The detainees were then handcuffed with zip-ties that cut into their wrists when detainees requested food, water and medication, the report says.
The senator’s office uncovered at least 14 reports alleging pregnant women were mistreated in Homeland Security custody, “including not receiving adequate medical care and timely checkups, not receiving urgent care when needed, being denied snacks and adequate meals, and being forced to sleep on the floor due to overcrowding,” according to the report.
A pregnant woman’s partner in custody in Georgia had reported to the senator’s office that she had bled for days before staff took her to a hospital.
Once she was there, “she was reportedly left in a room, alone, to miscarry without water or medical assistance, for over 24 hours,” according to the report. According to documents obtained by NBC News, the woman received a follow-up check-up on April 9, 11 days after she miscarried.
In another case, a pregnant detainee was reportedly told to “just drink water” after requesting medical attention.
Attorneys for other detainees told the senator’s office that their pregnant clients have been forced to wait “weeks” to see a doctor while in custody.
The senator’s office also collected 18 reports involving children, including U.S. citizens, some as young as two years old.
Three of those children reportedly experienced “severe medical issues” while in detention and were denied adequate medical treatment, according to the report.
In another case, an attorney reported that a U.S. citizen child with severe medical issues was hospitalized three times while in custody with her non-citizen mother. According to the report, when the young girl began vomiting blood, the mother begged for medical attention, to which an officer reportedly told her to “just give the girl a cracker.”
A citizen child recovering from brain surgery was reportedly denied access to follow-up care, a case that was publicly reported earlier this year. She faces continued brain swelling and speech and mobility difficulties, according to the senator’s report.
Another previously reported case involving a four-year-old cancer patient is also included in the senator’s report.
“Regardless of our views on immigration policy, the American people do not support the abuse of detainees and prisoners … it’s more important than ever to shine a light on what’s happening behind bars and barbed wire, especially and most shockingly to children,” Ossoff said in a statement shared with The Independent.
Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News that “any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.”
Detainees in ICE custody are provided with “proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members,” she said.
“Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” she told NBC.
The Independent has requested additional comment from Ossoff’s office and Homeland Security.
Ossoff’s report follows nearly eight months of the president’s vast anti-immigration agenda and mass deportation machine, set to receive tens of billions of dollars over the next decade to radically expand detention capacity and the number of ICE agents working to remove people from the country.
Lawsuits and reports from immigration advocates and attorneys have alleged similarly brutal conditions in facilities in California, Texas, Louisiana, New Jersey, Florida and New York, where detainees have reported food shortages, illness and denial of access to legal counsel.
Newsweek: Bill Maher confronts Dr. Phil on joining Trump admin’s ICE raids
Comedian and television host Bill Maher pressed television personality and former clinical psychologist, Dr. Phil, on Friday about his inclusion in the Trump administration’s ongoing nationwide immigration raids.
Why It Matters
Phil McGraw or better known as Dr. Phil who is widely known for his television career, is a vocal supporter of the Trump administration. He has spoken at campaign rallies, interviewed the then-Republican candidate, and been present atImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids since Donald Trump took office in January, including operations in Chicago and Los Angeles.
The Trump administration has spearheaded a major immigration crackdown, vowing to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. The initiative has seen an intensification of ICE raids across the country, with thousands of people detained and many deported.
What To Know
Maher, host of the HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, asked his guest, Dr. Phil, about his reasoning for joining the immigration raids.
“Why are you going on these ICE raids? I don’t understand that,” Maher said. “You’re a guy who we know for so many years who has been working to put families together; to bring families who are apart and heal them. And now you’re going on raids with people who are literally separating families. Explain that to me.”
Dr. Phil quickly countered, “Well, now that’s bull****.”
Maher then interjected, “That’s not bull****…They’re not separating families?”
Dr. Phil continued, “Look, if you arrest somebody that’s a citizen, that has committed a crime or is DUI’d with a child in the backseat, do you think they don’t separate that family right then, right there? Of course they do!”
“But that’s not what’s going on,” Maher argued.
Dr. Phil then referenced part of Maher’s earlier monologue, turning to talk about how ICE agents have to wear masks because of “doxxing” concerns.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported in July that ICE agents “are facing an 830 increase in assaults from January 21st to July 14th compared with the same period in 2024.”
Dr. Phil defended the ICE agents, saying they are simply doing their jobs by carrying out the raids, saying, “They didn’t make the laws; they didn’t make that law. What are you expecting them to do, just not do their job? If you don’t like the law, change it. I don’t like that law, at all. Change the law!”
Maher then asked, “If you don’t like it then why are you going?” which drew applause from the live audience. Dr. Phil responded, “Because that is the law.”
Earlier this summer, large-scale clashes between protesters and immigration officials in Los Angeles prompted the deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marines to the city. Dr. Phil was on the ground in Los Angeles with his TV channel, Merit TV, for the raids, while earlier in January he partook in a ride-along with border czar Tom Homan during the Chicago raids.
What People Are Saying
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement previously shared with Newsweek: “Under Secretary Noem, we are delivering on President Trump’s and the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens to make American safe. Secretary Noem unleashed ICE to target the worst of the worst and carry out the largest deportation operation of criminal aliens in American history.”
A Department of Justice spokesperson previously told Newsweek: “The entire Trump Administration is united in fully enforcing our nation’s immigration laws, and the DOJ continues to play an important role in vigorously defending the President’s deportation agenda in court.”
What Happens Next?
Democratic leaders and human rights advocates have criticized the Trump administration’s immigration policies, citing reports of inhumane conditions in detention centers and during detention procedures. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly defended the department and its facilities, and has called for expanding ICE’s detention capacity.
Raids are expected to continue as the administration pledges to deport people without proper documentation.
Bill Maher confronts Dr. Phil on joining Trump admin’s ICE raids
Maher pressed Dr. Phil on “going on” some of the Trump administration’s immigration raids.
https://www.newsweek.com/bill-maher-confronts-dr-phil-joining-trump-admins-ice-raids-2111269
Guardian: ‘Horrific’: report reveals abuse of pregnant women and children at US Ice facilities
Report from senator Jon Ossoff’s office found 510 credible reports of human rights abuses since Trump’s inauguration
A new report has found hundreds of reported cases of human rights abuses in US immigration detention centers.
The alleged abuses uncovered include deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, mistreatment of pregnant women and children, inadequate medical care, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, inadequate food and water, exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of access to attorneys, and child separation.
The report, compiled by the office of Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat representing Georgia, noted it found 510 credible reports of human rights abuses since 20 January 2025.
His office team’s investigation is active and ongoing, the office said, and has accused the Department of Homeland Security of obstructing congressional oversight of the federal agency, which houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Ossoff said the government was limiting his team’s access to visit more detention sites and interview detainees.
Under the second Trump administration, a Guardian analysis found average daily immigration arrests in June 2025 were up 268% compared with June 2024, with the majority of people arrested having no criminal convictions. And US immigration detention facilities are estimated to be over capacity by more than 13,500 people.
The problem is not new, as before Trump took office again, US immigration detention centers faced allegations of inhumane conditions. But controversy has ramped up amid the current administration’s widespread crackdown on immigration and undocumented communities within the US, including people who have lived and worked in the US for years or came in more recently under various legal programs that Trump has moved to shut down.
Among the reports cited in the new file from Ossoff’s office, there are allegations of huge human rights abuses include 41 cases of physical and/or sexual abuse of detainees while in the custody of the DHS, including reports of detainees facing retaliation for reporting abuses.
Examples include at least four 911 emergency calls referencing sexual abuse at the South Texas Ice processing center since January.
The report also cites 14 credible reports of pregnant women being mistreated in DHS custody, including a case of a pregnant woman being told to drink water in response to a request for medical attention, and another case where a partner of a woman in DHS custody reported the woman was pregnant and bled for days before DHS staff took her to a hospital, where she was left in a room alone to miscarry without water or medical assistance.
The report cites 18 cases of children as young as two years old, including US citizens, facing mistreatment in DHS custody, including denying a 10-year-old US citizen recovering from brain surgery any follow-up medical attention and the detention of a four-year-old who was receiving treatment for metastatic cancer and was reportedly deported without the ability to consult a doctor.
The report from Ossoff’s office was first reported by NBC News. The DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an email to NBC News in response to the report: “any claim that there are subprime conditions at Ice detention centers are false.” She claimed all detainees in Ice custody received “proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members”.
Meredyth Yoon, an immigration attorney and litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, told NBC News she met with the woman who miscarried, a 23-year-old Mexican national.
“The detainee who miscarried described to Yoon witnessing and experiencing ‘horrific’ and ‘terrible conditions’, the attorney said, including allegations of overcrowding, people forced to sleep on the floor, inadequate access to nutrition and medical care, as well as abusive treatment by the guards, lack of information about their case and limited ability to contact their loved ones and legal support,” NBC News reported. DHS denied the allegations.
“Regardless of our views on immigration policy, the American people do not support the abuse of detainees and prisoners … it’s more important than ever to shine a light on what’s happening behind bars and barbed wire, especially and most shockingly to children,” Ossoff said in a statement his office issued about the investigation.
Raw Story: ‘Oversized kennel’: Alligator Alcatraz worker blows the whistle on ‘inhumane’ conditions
An Alligator Alcatraz worker is blowing the whistle on “inhumane” conditions at the notorious immigrant detention facility in South Florida after working there for less than a month.
Speaking to NBC6, Lindsey, a corrections officer, said that she only wanted to give her first name out of fear of retribution against her or her family.
She confirmed she arrived at the facility on July 6 and was there for about a week before she caught COVID and was forced to isolate.
Lindsey’s comments come just 24 hours after Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) announced that they “identified 510 credible reports of human rights abuse” against immigration detainees.
In response to questions about the report, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, said in an email to NBC, “Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.”
DHS bragged on X that they are hard at work attacking “fake news” and announced that they “have the backs of the brave men and women of @ICEgov, who risk their lives every day protecting our homeland.”
But Lindsey said that her experience was different.
“When I got there, it was overwhelming,” she told NBC6. “I thought it would get better. But it just never did.”
She said that she knew going into it that the team would be living in a trailer, but the report described the conditions as “harsh” for the corrections officers as well as the detainees.
“We had to use the porta-johns. We didn’t have hot water half the time. Our bathrooms were backed up,” she said.
“The bathrooms are backed up because you got so many people using them,” she added.
Her story confirms the account from detainees and their family members that DHS has also denied.
When it comes to where the detainees are held, Lindsey called it “an oversized kennel.”
The large cages hold 35 to 38 inmates. There are about eight cages per tent.
“They have no sunlight. There’s no clock in there. They don’t even know what time of the day it is. They have no access to showers. They shower every other day or every four days,” Lindsey continued.
There were reports of flooding at the facility on the day that President Donald Trump toured the tents. Lindsey said that it has continued and each time it rains water floods into the tents.
Lindsey noted that despite Trump’s promise only to deport criminals, there are a number of people there who are not criminals.
“These people are still human. They pulled them from their livelihood. They’re scared. They don’t speak our language,” she said.
When Lindsey got COVID, the facility accused her of trying to falsify medical paperwork, and she was fired. She denies their accusations.
“I was fired. And yeah, I’m pissed off. But more so than ever, like they’re doing wrong,” she said.
Detainees complained last month that there was a lack of food, and when they were provided something to eat, there were worms in it, the Associated Press reported in July. That report also cited the overflowing sewage, which was discounted by spokesperson Stephanie Hartman of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
“The reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false. The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order,” she claimed.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump want to see the facility as the model for others.
LA Times: Contributor: Under Trump, U.S. returns to treating violence against women as a ‘private matter’
The U.S. has been waffling for decades over whether women have a right to refugee protection when fleeing gender-based violence. Under different administrations, the Department of Justice has established and reversed precedents, issued and repealed rulings. But the latest flip-flop by the Trump administration is not just another toggle between rules.
In July, the Trump administration’s high court of immigration, the Board of Immigration Appeals, issued a deeply troubling decision. The ruling held that a “particular social group” — one of the five grounds for refugee protection — cannot be defined by gender, or by gender combined with nationality. The ruling, in a case known as Matter of K-E-S-G-, is binding on all adjudicators across the country.
The legal reasoning is both unpersuasive and alarming. It seeks to return refugee law to an era when violence against women was dismissed as a private matter, not of concern to governments or human rights institutions. It is part of a broader, ongoing assault by the Trump administration on women’s rights and immigrant rights — in this case, attempting to turn back history to 1992.
It was in 1993, at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights, when the catchphrase “women’s rights are human rights” gained global prominence. This was a response to the long-standing focus on the violation of civil and political rights by governments, while much of the violence against women was committed by nonstate actors. Women and girls fleeing gender-based violence were considered outside the bounds of protection. But the Vienna Conference marked a turning point, leading to transformative change in how governments and international bodies addressed gender-based violence — because much of the violence in this world is targeted at women. Laws and policies were adopted worldwide to advance women’s rights, including for those seeking refugee protection.
Under international and U.S. law, a refugee is someone with a well-founded fear of persecution linked to that person’s “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,” which are commonly referred to as the protected grounds. Gender is not explicitly listed, and as a result, women fleeing gender-based forms of persecution, such as honor killings, female genital cutting, sexual slavery or domestic violence, were often denied protection, with their risk wrongly categorized as “personal” or “private,” and not connected to one of the protected grounds.
To address the misconception that women are outside the ambit of refugee protection, beginning in 1985 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a series of guidance documents explaining that although “gender” is not listed as a protected ground, women could often be considered a “particular social group” within a country. The commissioner called on countries that were parties to the international refugee treaty — the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol — to issue guidance for their adjudicators to recognize the ways in which gender-based claims could meet the refugee definition.
The United States was among the first to respond to the call. In 1995, the Department of Justice issued a document instructing asylum officers to consider the evolving understanding of women’s rights as human rights. The following year, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a watershed decision, granting asylum to a young woman fleeing genital cutting. The court recognized that claims of gender-based violence could qualify under the “particular social group” category.
Yet the path forward was anything but smooth. In 1999, the same court denied asylum to a Guatemalan woman who endured a decade of brutal beatings and death threats from her husband, while the state refused to intervene. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno found the decision to be so out of step with U.S. policy that she used her authority to vacate it. And so women remained eligible to be considered a “particular social group” when seeking refuge in the U.S. The view was affirmed by a 2014 case recognizing that women fleeing domestic violence could indeed qualify for asylum.
But that progress was short-lived. In 2018, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions took jurisdiction over the case of Anabel, a Salvadoran survivor of domestic violence to whom the top U.S. immigration court had granted asylum.
Sessions ruled that domestic violence is an act of personal or private violence, rather than persecution on account of a protected ground. This characterization of the violence as personal or private was in direct repudiation of the principle that women’s rights are human rights, deserving of human rights remedies, such as asylum.
The Biden administration sought to undo the damage. In 2021, Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland vacated that ruling and reinstated the 2014 precedent, restoring a measure of protection for gender claims.
Now comes the recent ruling from the immigration court under the Trump administration. Going beyond Sessions’ determination that gender violence is personal, the court is striking at the heart of the legal framework itself by barring gender or gender-plus-nationality as a valid way to define a social group. This erects an even higher barrier for women and girls fleeing persecution. It is a transparent attempt to roll back decades of legal progress and return us to a time when women’s suffering was invisible in refugee law.
The implications are profound. This ruling will make it far more difficult for women and girls to win asylum, even though their claims often involve some of the most egregious human rights violations. But it does not foreclose all claims — each must still be decided on its own facts — and there is no doubt the precedent will be challenged in federal courts across the country.
Another reversal is now sorely needed, to get the struggle for gender equality moving in the right direction again. Our refugee laws should protect women, because women should not be subject to gender-based violence. That is, in fact, one of our human rights.
Contributor: Under Trump, U.S. returns to treating violence against women as a ‘private matter’
Our refugee laws should protect women, because women should not be subject to gender-based violence.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-08-03/womens-rights-refugee-gender-human-rights
Guardian: Men freed from El Salvador mega-prison endured ‘state-sanctioned torture’, lawyers say
Venezuelans back home under Maduro-Trump deal tell of isolation, beatings and dirty water – ‘a living nightmare’
On 14 March, [Ramos Bastidas] shared with his family that maybe he would be able to come back to Venezuela after all …. The next day, he was flown to Cecot.
“They could have deported him to Venezuela,” Alvarez-Jones. “Instead, the US government made a determination to send him to be tortured in Cecot.”
Venezuelans that the Trump administration expelled to El Salvador’s most notorious megaprison endured “state-sanctioned torture”, lawyers for some of the men have said, as more stories emerge about the horrors they faced during capacity.
When José Manuel Ramos Bastidas – one of 252 Venezuelan men that the US sent to El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison – finally made it back home to El Tocuyo on Tuesday, the first thing he did was stretch his arms around his family.
His wife, son and mother were wearing the bright blue shirts they had printed with a photo of him, posed in a yellow and black moto jacket and camo-print jeans. It was the first time they had hugged him since he left Venezuela last year. And it was the first time they could be sure – truly sure – that he was alive and well since he disappeared into the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot) in March.
“We have been waiting for this moment for months, and I feel like I can finally breathe,” said Roynerliz Rodríguez, Ramos Bastidas’s partner. “These last months have been a living nightmare, not knowing anything about José Manuel and only imagining what he must be suffering. I am happy he is free from Cecot, but I also know that we will never be free of the shadow of this experience. There must be justice for all those who suffered this torture.”
The Venezuelan deportees were repatriated last week following a deal between the US and Venezuelan governments. Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, negotiated a prisoner swap that released 10 American citizens in his custody and dozens of Venezuelan political prisoners in exchange for the release of his citizens from Cecot.
This week, after undergoing medical and background checks, they are finally reuniting with their families. Their testimonies of what they experienced inside Cecot are providing the first, most detailed pictures of the conditions inside Cecot, a mega-prison that human rights groups say is designed to disappear people.
Ramos Bastidas and other US deportees were told that they were condemned to spend 30 to 90 years in Cecot unless the US president ordered otherwise, he told his lawyers. They were shot with rubber bullets on repeated occasions – including on Friday, during their last day of detention.
In interviews with the media and in testimony provided to their lawyers, other detainees described lengthy beatings and humiliation by guards. After some detainees tried to break the locks on their cell, prisoners were beaten for six consecutive days, the Atlantic reports. Male guards reportedly brought in female colleagues, who beat the naked prisoners and recorded videos.
Edicson David Quintero Chacón, a US deportee, said that he was placed in isolation for stretches of time, during which he thought he would die, his lawyer told the Guardian. Quintero Chacón, who has scars from daily beatings, also said that he and other inmates were only provided soap and an opportunity to bathe on days when visitors were touring the prison – forcing them to choose between hygiene and public humiliation.
Food was limited, and the drinking water was dirty, Quintero Chacón and other detainees have said. Lights were on all night, so detainees could never fully rest. “And the guards would also come in at night and beat them at night,” said his lawyer Stephanie M Alvarez-Jones, the south-east regional attorney at the National Immigration Project.
In a filing asking for a dismissal of her months-long petition on behalf of her clients’ release, Alvarez-Jones wrote: “He will likely carry the psychological impact of this torture his whole life. The courts must never look away when those who wield the power of the US government, at the highest levels, engage in such state-sanctioned violence.”
Ramos Bastidas has never been convicted of any crimes in the US (or in any country). In fact, he had never really set foot in the US as a free man.
In El Tocuyo, in the Venezuelan state of Lara, and had been working since he was a teenager to support his family. Last year, he decided to leave his country – which has yet to recover from an economic collapse – to seek better income, so he could pay for medical care for his infant with severe asthma.
In March 2024, he arrived at the US-Mexico border and presented himself at a port of entry. He made an appointment using the now-defunct CBP One phone application to apply for asylum – but immigration officials and a judge determined that he did not qualify.
But Customs and Border Protection agents had flagged Ramos Bastidas as a possible member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, based on an unsubstantiated report from Panamanian officials and his tattoos. So they transferred him to a detention facility, where he was to remain until he could be deported.
Despite agreeing to return to Venezuela, he remained for months in detention. “I think what is particularly enraging for José is that he had accepted his deportation,” said Alvarez-Jones. “He was asking for his deportation for a long time, and he just wanted to go back home.”
In December, Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees – so Ramos Bastidas asked if he could be released and make his own way home. A month later, Donald Trump was sworn in as president. Everything changed.
Ramos Bastidas began to see other Venezuelans were being sent to the military base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba – and he feared the same would happen to him. On 14 March, he shared with his family that maybe he would be able to come back to Venezuela after all, after officials began prepping him for deportation.
The next day, he was flown to Cecot.
“They could have deported him to Venezuela,” Alvarez-Jones. “Instead, the US government made a determination to send him to be tortured in Cecot.”
Men freed from El Salvador mega-prison endured ‘state-sanctioned torture’, lawyers say
Venezuelans back home under Maduro-Trump deal tell of isolation, beatings and dirty water – ‘a living nightmare’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/26/venezuela-el-salvador-prison
USA Today: The Trump administration is telling immigrants ‘Carry your papers.’ Here’s what to know.
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.”
