The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Tuesday the opening of a migrant detention facility in Nebraska as President Trump’s administration ramps up the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) detention capabilities.
The new facility, located in the southwest part of the state, was dubbed “Cornhusker Clink” and will house “criminal illegal aliens” arrested by ICE, DHS said in a press release. The detention center came as a result of a partnership between the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services and ICE, expanding the capacity by up to 280 beds.
The officials are using the existing minimum security prison work camp in McCook, located around 210 miles west of Lincoln.
“Today, we’re announcing a new partnership with the state of Nebraska to expand detention bed space by 280 beds,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “Thanks to Governor Pillen for his partnership to help remove the worst of the worst out of our country. If you are in America illegally, you could find yourself in Nebraska’s Cornhusker Clink. Avoid arrest and self-deport now using the CBP Home App.”
The administration has continued adding detention buildings nationwide to help hold migrants whom agencies have arrested. DHS opened “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades last month and an East Montana detention facility in El Paso, Texas, this week. DHS will also hold up to 1,000 migrants in a “Speedway Slammer” detention facility in Indiana.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced Tuesday that the Nebraska National Guard will provide “administrative and logistical” support to ICE officials based in Nebraska to help enforce immigration laws. About 20 Army National Guard soldiers will be a part of the mission, with training beginning next week, according to DHS.
“I am also proud that the Nebraska State Patrol and National Guard will be assisting ICE enforcement efforts, as well,” Pillen said in a statement. “Homeland security starts at home, and, just as when I twice deployed troops to secure our southern border during the failed Biden administration, Nebraska will continue to do its part.”
A New Zealand woman claims she is being unfairly held by ICE with her six-year-old son after being detained while attempting to re-enter the U.S. from Canada.
The woman in question is Sarah Shaw, who has lived in Washington state for more than three years. Speaking to The Guardian, she said she crossed to Canada to drop off her two eldest children at the Vancouver airport so they could take a flight to New Zealand to stay with their grandparents.
When attempting to enter the U.S. again she was detained with her son. Victoria Besancon, a friend of Shaw’s who is helping raise money for her legal fight, described the incident as “terrifying.”
“They didn’t really explain anything to her at first, they just kind of quietly took her and her son and immediately put them in like an unmarked white van,” she said. Shaw’s phone was confiscated and both she and her son were taken to a processing center in South Texas.
The outlet explained that Shaw was living in the U.S. on what is described as a “combo card” visa: one obtained through employment and another one, the I-360, which grants immigration status to survivors of domestic violence. She only realized that the latter part had not been fully approved. Her son’s was, and because of that Besancon said he is being held “illegally.”
“She gives therapy and counselling to some of our most at risk youth … and to be treated like a criminal herself has just been absolutely devastating,” Besancon said.
Shaw’s case is among many others that have made headlines throughout the Trump administration. In mid-July, an Irish tourist who overstayed his visa three days as a result of a health issue was prevented from leaving the country by ICE and detained for roughly 100 days.
Another high-profile case involved Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney, who was detained over an incomplete visa in March.
Florida Republicans have removed merchandise related to a new migrant detention center dubbed “Deportation Depot” after Home Depot complained about being linked to it.
“The Deport Depot” merchandise had a logo that was similar to The Home Depot, including the recognizable orange box and stenciled font, according to the Miami Herald.
Home Depot spokeswoman Beth Marlowe said the company had not approved the use of its branding or logo and “reached out to the Republican Party of Florida to resolve this issue,” she said.
The outlet noted that items were still for sale as of Saturday afternoon, with items ranging from $15 to $28 and sales going as political contributions to the party. However, they were removed hours after it published a story on the matter.
Governor Ron DeSantis said last week his administration is taking steps towards holding migrants at the North Florida detention center. “It is not going to take forever, but we are also not rushing to do this right this day,” he said.
The prison is located in a rural area between Tallahassee and Jacksonville. Officials intend to hold up to 1,300 migrants at the Baker Correctional Institution, which has been closed since 2021 due to staff shortages.
The decision comes as a federal judge in Florida judge is considering whether to order the shutdown of the immigrant detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” over claims that it could cause “irreparable” harm to the Everglades area in which it is set up.
The Miami Herald noted that the groups are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop operations at the site. They are Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Miccosukee Tribe.
They sued the Trump and DeSantis administrations, accusing them of dodging a federal law requiring an environmental review of the site before pursuing the initiative. The injunction would stop all operations and further halt construction until there is a verdict. Florida authorities have also sought to fundraise with merchandise related to the center.
Maryland politicians and advocates publicly confronted the interim director of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Baltimore field office last week at the state’s premier gathering for policymakers, questioning her agents’ tactics for targeting and detaining immigrants and imploring her to resist what they called the harsher edicts of the Trump administration’s enforcement crackdown.
“Your officers have to do your job, but do you have to do it in a manner where the windows are broken?” Del. Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s) asked ICE director Nikita Baker during a heated question-and-answer session at the Maryland Association of Counties Conference in Ocean City.
Peña-Melnyk, one of several in the audience to question Baker on Thursday afternoon, questioned why ICE agents would use force to detain otherwise cooperative people, especially in front of children, and pleaded with the acting director to honor “due process.”
“We need to be respectful because we are lacking empathy right now in this country, and we are abusing people and we have laws for a reason,” Peña-Melnyk said. “Can you please go back to your office and tell them to be kinder?”
Baker said she would go back to her agents and convey that message. She defended them as professionals who have a job to do: “I can understand your feelings about it, but, however, I can’t stop doing my job. And my job is to enforce the law.”
The emotional back-and-forth mirrored the alarm many throughout the Washington region have been saying about President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown since he took office earlier this year. The president declared a crime emergency last week in the District — mobilizing federal police agents and deploying the National Guard — and daily arrest sweeps have focused on immigration enforcement.
In Maryland, where many immigrant families reside, lawmakers are mobilizing to raise the issue during the 2026 state legislative session.
“What do we have to lose?” Peña-Melnyk said in an interview after the panel. “What in the world do we need to lose when we’re losing it all?”
While the General Assembly was in session from January to April this year, advocates warned lawmakers about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, including detaining people with no history of criminal violations. In one incident, ICE agents in Maryland broke car windows in front of children during arrests, according to the Baltimore Banner.
But the comprehensive policy agenda that was introduced at the start of the session was narrowed in the end, with lawmakers barely beating the clock to pass the Maryland Values Act. That law requires law enforcement to notify officials when they are conducting activity at “sensitive locations,” including schools, libraries and courthouses.
But the law doesn’t include language championed by the Democratic majority in the House of Delegates that would have banned 287(g) partnerships, which are signed agreements between local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement that enable collaboration among agencies to deport people.
The Senate killed the effort to curtail the 287(g) program, with Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore County) saying he feared the move could provoke the White House amid Trump’s immigration crackdown and threaten critical federal funding amid a budget crisis in Maryland.
Those who championed the proposed law to limit 287(g), many of whom were in Ocean City for Thursday’s panel, said those fears have come true despite the state’s attempts to assuage the president.
“From the start, I believed that they were going to be who they are,” said Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s), chair of the Latino Caucus. “It’s our responsibility to be who we are as a state.”
Passing a ban on 287(g) agreements, Martinez said, would “highlight how we as Maryland are a welcoming state.”
Del Nicole Williams (D-Prince George’s), who championed the effort to ban 287(g) agreements, spoke on the Ocean City panel and announced that she will likely refile legislation that would curtail ICE’s power to deputize local police to enforce federal immigration laws.
“The Trump administration will probably continue to ramp up the enforcement activities that we have been seeing here in Maryland and across the country,” she said, noting that she has received a lot of requests urging her to reintroduce the 287(g) ban.
The panel focused on the relationship between Maryland and ICE, which varies substantially from county to county. Panelist Daniel Galbraith, the warden at the Harford County Detention Center, told the crowd about his county’s participation in the 287G program, a federal partnership between the Harford County Sheriff and ICE.
Baker outlined her agency’s responsibilities and championed its work to prioritize the deportation of violent criminals. She said the Baltimore field office had removed more sex offenders than any other in the nation, and had removed the second-largest number of alleged gang members. She also defended the choice of some of her officers to wear masks while arresting people because of incidents of immigration agents being doxed, threatened or followed home.
During her presentation, Williams called attention to the detention of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man who entered the United States illegally when he was a teenager and applied for asylum in 2019. He was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by ICE and accused, without evidence, of being a gang member. The Supreme Court said in an unsigned ruling in April that his removal to El Salvador was illegal.
Baltimore City council member Odette Ramos, the first and only Latina on the council, recounted reports of masked ICE agents arresting city residents and taking them away in unmarked cars, and criticized the conditions of temporary holding cells in Baltimore that have drawn the attention of the state’s congressional delegation. Ramos urged Baker to use her position to make her agents act differently.
“It’s just really abhorrent that this is happening,” Ramos said. “I’m asking you to resist. I’m asking you to stop doing this.”
Other local officials and immigration reform advocates repeatedly questioned Baker over reported incidents of ICE allegedly violating due process rights and holding detainees in inhumane conditions. Baker’s responses drew mumbled rebuttals from the crowd.
Martinez, who moderated the panel, said he was glad the conference invited a group of people with differing perspectives on immigration enforcement to come together.
“We are having a lot of these conversations but in silos, right?” Martinez said. “Folks that are in support or folks that are opposed of the current enforcement measures of this administration are talking amongst themselves. I think this panel provided us an opportunity to get all the stakeholders in the room to have an honest and truthful conversation in a way that’s respectful of one another’s point of views.”
After the panel, a woman from the audience approached Williams and showed her a picture of her young granddaughter, whose father was deported a few years ago. The woman told Williams that she doesn’t know whether they’ll see him again, and that his absence has had a negative impact on her granddaughter.
“That’s the human side of this story that we’re dealing with,” Williams said. “And this is why I do what I do and why I fight so hard. Because these are actual human beings, these are my friends, these are family members, this is my community.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/19/maryland-ice-detention-legislature-baltimore
More than 100 Filipinos have been removed from various cruise ships this year, says the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California
Four more Filipino seafarers were removed from the Carnival Sunshine cruise line and deported when it docked in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday, according to a worker advocacy group.
In a memo sent to supporters on Sunday, Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California (PWC) Executive Director Aquilina Soriano Versoza said they were “worried that again there will be no due process and the revocation of their visas with no evidence, charges or convictions and that they will be quickly deported.”
On Monday, Versoza said the four workers have already been deported, bringing the total number of Filipinos removed from Carnival Sunshine to 28.
Versoza said more than 100 Filipino workers have been removed from various cruise ships this year.
The latest CBP raid took place as the Philippine Senate started to investigate the reported unjust deportation of Filipino cruise ship workers.
On June 28, CBP officers raided Carnival Sunshine while it was docked at the port of Norfolk, Virginia. During the raid, several Filipino workers – all with valid 10-year visas – were removed from the ship, deported and banned from re-entry to the United States for 10 years.
An investigation conducted by the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) revealed that the deported seafarers, who were accused of consuming child pornography, were not given due process.
The Filipino workers were not informed of their right to consular representation as stated in Article 36 of the Vienna Convention, Olalia said as he presented the agency’s findings during the Senate committee on migrant workers’ inquiry into the reported unjust deportations.
The Consulate of the Philippines was not even informed that the seafarers were detained, interviewed and deported, Olalia added.
On Sunday, PWC reached out to Congressman Bobby Scott, Senator Tim Kaine, the Philippine Embassy and Carnival Cruise for assistance to the affected workers, including a restaurant steward, laundry attendant, deck department staff and a 3rd officer, according to Versoza.
“We have had some success that there hadn’t been any more deportations from the Carnival Sunshine until now, and the Philippines held a Senate hearing on these deportations and are now providing some financial assistance to those already deported,” said Versoza, who was on her way to the Philippines to seek assistance for the deported Filipinos.
“But of course that is not enough. We must get the seafarers’ visas reinstated and stop these deportations now.”
https://usa.inquirer.net/177431/4-more-filipino-cruise-ship-workers-deported-in-us-immigration-raid
Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is flush with cash after the president signed his so-called Big Beautiful Bill, so it should probably come as no surprise that the agency has decided to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on new trucks to showcase in social media posts.
The Department of Homeland Security posted a video Thursday on X featuring music by rapper DaBaby and footage of a Ford Raptor pickup truck and GMC Yukon SUV traveling the streets of Washington, D.C., and parked outside the White House and the U.S. Capitol. The trucks, which have the same color scheme as Trump’s private jet, sport ICE’s logo and the phrase: “Defend the Homeland.” The words “President Donald J. Trump” appear on the back window of at least one of the vehicles.
The Homeland Security Department’s thread directs users to ICE’s job recruiting website, as it works toward hiring 10,000 officers. Another post with images of the trucks declares: “We will have our country back.”
In the past two weeks, Trump’s administration spent $384,000 on new Ford Raptors and GMC Yukons for “recruitment purposes,” according to federal procurement data. The administration also spent $182,000 this week on “graphic wrap design and application for law enforcement vehicles.”
Under the Big Beautiful Bill, Trump’s legislation to slash taxes for the rich and health care for the poor, the administration received tens of billions of dollars to hire thousands of new ICE agents. Trump officials are now seeking to recruit agents all over the country, from coast to coast, border to border, to supercharge the president’s militarized immigration crackdown.
The decision to parade new ICE trucks around the nation’s capital comes as Trump has troops in the streets and is leading a federal takeover of Washington because a group of teenagers allegedly beat up a Trump administration staffer known as “Big Balls.”
A $560,000 expense on trucks and wraps the administration can use in social media posts looks downright frugal compared to the $200 million that DHS is spending on ads thanking Trump for deporting immigrants. (Those ad buys are being placed by the firm that bought most of the ads for Trump’s 2024 campaign.)
The Trump administration also spent up to $45 million on a military parade through D.C. on the president’s birthday.
Every now and then, there’s a study done whose results are so obvious some may wonder “Why did we need someone to take the time to research something we already know?” But the truth is, as intuitive as something may be, we don’t officially know until we look into it. As such, researchers from the School of Medicine at University of California Riverside recently looked into the effect of U.S. immigration policy and practice on the mental health of children. Their work, published in Psychiatric News in July, found children who have been separated from their parents, or who simply live with the possibility of such separation, can experience “profound emotional harm.”
“Immigration policy in the United States is a source of chronic fear, instability, and trauma for millions of immigrants, with the expansion of enforcement mechanisms transforming daily life for families and children,” the report reads. “Psychiatry cannot remain on the periphery.”
Examining previous research on the topic along with clinical experiences of the UC researchers and others, study authors found a rise in pediatric depression, chronic anxiety, and even PTSD among children whose families have experienced separation from Trump administration immigration policies. Notably, this was not just among children who experienced deportation or detention — either themselves or their parents — but those who had even one parent who might be deported or detained. “The mental health of immigrant children is inseparable from the conditions in which they live, grow, and imagine their futures,” the study observes in its conclusion.
Uncertainty, researchers said — including inconsistent enforcement actions, lack of transparency, and the ubiquity of raids, including at locations once held as safe such as schools, health care facilities, and immigration court — has intensified fear within immigrant communities and among children. Even those who enjoy some legal status have been swept up in immigration enforcement action, adding to the sense within communities that anyone can be detained or deported.
This has resulted not only in worsened mental health outcomes, but withdrawal from public life (including school), sleep and appetite disturbances, emotional dysregulation, and developmental regression.
Researchers also note that while daily deportations are down by double digit percentages (nearly 11% overall), prolonged and indefinite detentions are on the rise, which can be just as traumatizing — leading to increased instances of suicidal ideation and alcohol use — for the children left to cope with separation from a parent.
“Both real and threatened separations can undermine attachment, derail developmental processes, and contribute to persistent traumatic stress,” the study says, continuing. “Immigration enforcement becomes a formative, often traumatic, force in children’s lives.”
President Donald Trump‘s proposal for a new national census that excludes people living in the United States illegally could reduce Texas’ political power by reducing both its number of Electoral College votes and seats in the House of Representatives.
Why It Matters
The Trump administration is pushing for a new census despite the next one not being due until 2030. Excluding those in the U.S. illegally from the figures would reduce the political representation of states with disproportionately high illegal migrant populations, such as California and Texas.
Citing “two people with knowledge of the effort,” The Texas Tribune reported that the administration’s primary goal behind the new census was to boost Republicans politically, though some experts have expressed skepticism over whether this would happen.
What To Know
On August 7, Trump said he had instructed the Department of Commerce to begin work on a new national census that would exclude illegal migrants, using data from the 2024 presidential election as a baseline.
Census Bureau data is used to determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives and also how many Electoral College votes it gets during presidential elections. So if a state loses population disproportionately once illegal migrants are excluded, it would see its political influence decrease.
In 2024, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that in January 2022 there were 10,990,000 people residing in the U.S. illegally. It found that California had the largest illegal migrant population with 2,600,000 people, followed by Texas with 2,060,000, Florida with 590,000 and New Jersey with 490,000.
Speaking with Newsweek, Joshua Blank, who heads the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said a new census without illegal migrants would reduce the state’s population and therefore its House representation. He added that Texas “did nothing to promote census participation” in 2020.
Blank said: “While, ostensibly, this move would reduce Texas’ population size for the purpose of congressional districts, it’s probably the case that it’s less than it would if Texas were to have engaged in a serious effort to get a good count in the first place.”
In terms of the nationwide political effect, Blank added: “This would apply to other states, including other states with large immigrant populations, and those that actually sought to get an accurate count, like California. So the overall exchange of seats, since the number of overall congressional seats remains fixed, is pretty hard to game out.”
Trump’s new census plan would almost certainly face legal challenges, with critics arguing that it violates the 14th Amendment, which states that seats in the House should be based on “counting the whole number of persons in each State.”
What People Are Saying
Gil Guerra, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, told Newsweek: “These numbers matter enormously for apportionment—states like California, Texas, and Florida have substantial undocumented populations that currently contribute to their congressional representation.”
Speaking with The Texas Tribune about the president’s new census proposal, Robert Warren, a demographer at the Center for Migration Studies, said: “It wouldn’t shift enough [House] seats to make any difference, and that’s been true for five straight censuses.”
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on August 7: “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024. People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
A Department of Commerce spokesperson told Newsweek: “The Census Bureau will immediately adopt modern technology tools for use in the Census to better understand our robust Census data. We will accurately analyze the data to reflect the number of legal residents in the United States.”
What Happens Next
If Trump pushes ahead with his plan, it will almost inevitably spark a major legal battle. Even if the courts approve, experts agree that the overall effect on American politics is hard to determine, though states with a high illegal migrant population—such as Texas—will likely lose some influence.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-new-census-could-bad-news-texas-2114326
A federal judge in California has shot down an attempt by the Trump administration to scrub away the government’s 28-year-old Flores Settlement Agreement, which calls for court-mandated oversight on the treatment of immigrant children in federal custody.
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee issued a 20-page order on Friday, keeping the 1997 agreement in place as Justice Department lawyers “fail to identify any new facts or law” that warrant its termination “at this time,” according to the Barack Obama appointee.
The administration had previously tried terminating the Flores agreement in 2019 at the end of Donald Trump‘s first term, but was unsuccessful then, too. Gee reportedly called a hearing last week on the matter “deja vu” as the government tried propping up similar arguments.
“The court remains unconvinced,” Gee wrote in Friday’s order. “There is nothing new under the sun regarding the facts or the law.”
Under the Flores Settlement Agreement, immigrant children must be held at “state-licensed” facilities — treated properly and humanely — before being released into the custody of family members or guardians “as expeditiously as possible,” per Gee’s order. The settlement is named after Jenny Lisette Flores, a 15-year-old detainee who sparked a class-action lawsuit to be filed in 1985.
The Trump administration recently argued that the Flores agreement was no longer needed because Congress had approved legislation to help deal with the issues the settlement addressed. It also claimed that government agencies had implemented practices and standards to ensure youths were being treated properly.
“The legal basis for the agreement has withered away,” DOJ lawyers argued in a May 22 motion for relief. “Congress enacted legislation protecting UACs [unaccompanied alien children], and the agencies promulgated detailed standards and regulations implementing that legislation and the terms of the FSA,” the lawyers said, blasting the agreement as an “intrusive regime” that has “ossified” federal immigration policy.
“The legal and policy landscape has also changed beyond recognition,” they added.
Gee noted Friday how she had heard this all before.
“These improvements are direct evidence that the FSA is serving its intended purpose, but to suggest that the agreement should be abandoned because some progress has been made is nonsensical,” the judge blasted.
“Incredulously, defendants posit that DHS need not promulgate regulations containing an expeditious release provision because ‘this Court has interpreted [expeditious release] to apply to accompanied children,'” Gee explained. “But ‘the FSA was intended to provide for prompt release of unaccompanied children.’ This is plainly incorrect and ignores the rulings of at least three separate courts.”
Gee concluded her order by saying it was ultimately the Trump administration that “continues to bind itself to the FSA by failing to fulfill its side of the parties’ bargain.”
Lawyers for immigrant children named in the class action complaint that spurred all this have said Trump’s second term has seen similar violations of the Flores agreement that have been alleged in the past.
“In CBP facilities across the country, including in cases documented by class counsel in New York, Maine, Illinois, Ohio, Arizona, Texas, and California, plaintiffs report being held for days and sometimes weeks in restrictive, traumatic conditions,” the lawyers said in a June 17 motion to enforce the FSA. One parent, whose allegations were included in the motion, described how they and their child were held at a facility where “the rooms have hard walls, like cement, and there is a window facing the hall but you cannot go out or see the sun,” per the motion.
“We are never allowed to go out,” the parent said. “The children keep telling us, ‘This is not America.’ They feel imprisoned and confused. They are seeing the sun for the first time in this interview room. They both ran to the window and stared out, and my son asked, ‘Is that America?'”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers accused the Trump administration of wanting to be released from the settlement “not because they have complied with and will continue to observe its fundamental principles, but because they want the flexibility to treat children however they wish,” according to the June motion.
DOJ officials did not respond to Law&Crime’s requests for comment Sunday.
