Tag Archives: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Civil rights groups denounce that 48 ICE detainees have been ‘forcibly disappeared’

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19 March 2025

In the first week of March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted an “enhanced enforcement operation” in New Mexico that resulted in the arrest of 48 people, as reported by the agency itself. Their names, whereabouts, whether they have access to counsel and which agency is holding them are all unknown, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which considers them to have been “forcibly disappeared.”

“This is not just a procedural issue, but a grave human rights violation,” said Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico. “When the government detains people and then their whereabouts are unknown and they are unreachable, it exempts them from the protection of the law. Families are left in agonizing uncertainty, desperate to contact their loved ones and ensure their safety. Enforced disappearances are prohibited by both our Constitution and international human rights laws,” she said.

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“We are alarmed and disturbed that these four dozen New Mexican individuals remain unidentified and that insufficient transparency, oversight, and accountability has taken place to date regarding their whereabouts and wellbeing. We call on your offices to exercise the full extent of your authorities to determine their current status and ensure their safety,” the complaint states.

Civil rights groups denounce that 48 ICE detainees have been ‘forcibly disappeared’
The ACLU files a complaint over immigration authorities’ failure to release the identities of residents arrested in New Mexico, noting that ‘arbitrary and enforced disappearance is unlawful under the US Constitution’

Civil rights groups denounce that 48 ICE detainees have been ‘forcibly disappeared’ | U.S. | EL PAÍS English

Robert Reich: If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you.

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With no court to verify anything the Trump regime alleges, you could be arrested and sent to a prison in El Salvador for having views the regime dislikes

Friends,

Let’s say you don’t like what the Trump administration is doing, or you don’t like Trump. You express these views on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

You take a two-week vacation in France. When you try to return to the United States, U.S. immigration agents arrest you. They detain you in solitary confinement. They don’t let you contact your family. They don’t let you contact a lawyer. Then they send you to a brutal prison in El Salvador.

But wait! You scream over and over. You can’t do this! I’m an American citizen!

Your screams have no effect.

…

Do you see how perilously close we are to the edge?

If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you.
With no court to verify anything the Trump regime alleges, you could be arrested and sent to a prison in El Salvador for having views the regime dislikes

If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you.

The Independent: Milwaukee mother of 5 deported to Laos ‘shaken’ as she faces decades without family in U.S.

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Mother of 5 deported to a country she’s never known …

A Milwaukee woman who was deported to Laos by the Trump administration earlier this month is deeply “shaken” by the prospect of spending more than a decade away from her partner and five children back home in Wisconsin, activists helping the family told The Independent.

Ma Yang, a 37-year-old Hmong-American, has been living in a government facility outside the Laotian capital of Vientiane for the past couple of weeks after being forced to leave her family and friends in the U.S.

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Yang was taken to a military hospital on Monday night by the Laotian authorities after staying for days without insulin for her diabetes and running out of her medication for high blood pressure.

Milwaukee mother deported to Laos ‘shaken’ as she faces decades without family in U.S.
Milwaukee mother deported to Laos ‘shaken’ as she faces decades without family in U.S. – SPECIAL REPORT: Despite being born in Thailand and becoming a permanent U.S. resident, Ma Yang has been sent to the other side of the world to a country where she knows no one. Alisha Rahaman Sarkar traces her journey to the Laotian capital of Vientiane

Milwaukee mother deported to Laos ‘shaken’ as she faces decades without family in U.S.

USA Today: Trump slashes homeland security civil rights jobs in ‘Black Friday’ cuts

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Former DHS immigration detention ombudsman: “I think we’ll see people die in custody as a result.”

Homeland Security is eliminating those employees whose job is to keep them operating honestly and legally:

In a move aimed at reducing “roadblocks” to its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has fired most employees within the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and two separate DHS ombudsman offices, a senior DHS official confirmed late Friday.

The actions come amid other changes at DHS that critics say will curtail oversight of immigration efforts by President Donald Trump even as legal challenges intensify over their constitutionality.

A senior DHS official told USA TODAY that the RIF or “reduction in force” efforts were done “to eliminate redundant and counterproductive roles while reallocating resources to frontline enforcement, where they are most effective.”

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Michelle Brané, who served in the Biden administration as the immigration detention ombudsman within DHS, called the cuts a “recipe for disaster.”

Brané said she believes roughly 200 people lost their jobs in what she called “Black Friday” cuts.

“They’re eliminating all the oversight bodies within the Department of Homeland Security at a time when they are being more aggressive than ever and making more mistakes than ever,” Brané said. “I think we’ll see people die in custody as a result.”

Trump slashes homeland security civil rights jobs in ‘Black Friday’ cuts
A senior Homeland Security official says the offices established to protect against abuse were cut because they are “roadblocks’ to enforcement.

Trump slashes homeland security civil rights jobs in ‘Black Friday’ cuts

Miami Herald: ‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments

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Anything to get the numbers up, so that Trump & cronies can claim to be doing something!

Federal authorities in South Florida have recently detained at least 18 Cubans during scheduled immigration appointments, local attorneys say, highlighting that a group that has historically enjoyed special immigration benefits is not immune to the Trump administration’s intensified mass deportation efforts.

Among the Cubans recently detained is Beatriz Monteagudo, 25, her friend Johan Ariel told the Miami Herald. The pair texted each other daily. But the last message he received from Monteagudo was March 10. The Cuban woman, who got an I-220A after entering the U.S. in January 2024, was heading to her required check-in appointment in Miramar.

Ariel quickly grew worried that he hadn’t heard from her following the appointment. When he searched the ICE detainee locator service online, her name showed up. Then came Monteagudo’s call.

When she called Ariel from the detention facility, she told him she was with about 18 others who had also been taken into custody after showing up for their routine appointments. Monteagudo told him she wasn’t told why they were there, aside from officers mentioning the laws had changed.

That’s a blatant lie. No laws changed. Trump and ICE are now retaliating again people who have properly complied with the process up to this point. Most of these Cubans crossed the border after they had arranged appointments to do so with immigration officials.

To date, neither Monteagudo nor Ariel have gotten answers, he says. And this week, Monteagudo, who was living in Miami, was transferred to a detention facility in San Diego.

Transferring detainees to remote prisons is a favorite ICE tactic to make it difficult / impossible for family members and attorneys to assist the detainees.

‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments
Beatriz Monteagudo and Laura de la Caridad Sanchez are two Cuban women detained by ICE after routine appointments in Miramar. More than a dozen others were also possibly detained.

‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments