A Baptist chaplain at a privately-run ICE lockup in Pennsylvania is facing accusations of sexually abusing a detainee over the course of more than a year, beginning shortly after he gained her trust by gifting her a Bible.
Pastor Mark Melhorn, 67, engaged in “extraordinary misconduct” at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center “under the guise of providing pastoral services,” according to a federal lawsuit obtained by The Independent.
His “repeated and pervasive” misconduct started with sexualized comments and gestures, with Melhorn telling the plaintiff in the case, who is identified as Jane Doe in court filings, that she was “hermosa,” “bonita,” and “preciosa,” according to the complaint.
“Melhorn would ask Ms. Doe if she liked how he looked, stare at her breasts, and lick his lips while staring at her,” the complaint alleges. “While Melhorn and detained women sang hymns together, he would position himself so that he could stare at Ms. Doe from behind. When she tried to change her position so that he could not stare at her from behind, he would change his position and continue staring at her.”
On numerous occasions, Melhorn approached Doe and placed his hands on her head as if he was praying for her, but instead ran them down her body suggestively, according to the complaint. From there, it says things got worse until Melhorn one day entered Doe’s cell and allegedly sexually assaulted her. He then warned Doe not to tell anybody about what had happened, because “even if she did, nothing would happen.”
Doe in fact reported Melhorn – twice – to higher-ups at Moshannon, the complaint says. And, according to the complaint, nothing happened.
“The system absolutely failed our client,” Doe’s attorney Trina Realmuto told The Independent. “It takes a lot of courage to speak up, [especially] when you’re fighting an immigration case in a detention facility.”
Realmuto, the executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said Doe, an undocumented Dominican citizen living in New Jersey, remains deeply traumatized by the experience, and continues to suffer from anxiety, nightmares and a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Melhorn did not respond to The Independent’s requests for comment.
On August 21, 2023, Doe arrived at Moshannon in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, where she was assigned a two-person cell in the women’s housing unit, according to her complaint. It was filed two years later, almost to the day, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
The 1,800-bed facility has been at the center of significant controversy, once again making headlines last month when a 32-year-old detainee from China died by suicide as he awaited a hearing with the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Melhorn visited the women’s housing unit every weekday afternoon, and conducted a church service for female detainees at least one evening a month, the complaint continues. Doe, a devout Christian, met Melhorn a few days after getting to Moshannon and was “comforted to know that a chaplain was available to provide religious guidance.”
She trusted Melhorn, and when he asked him to bring her a Bible, he did so, the complaint states.
Shortly after Doe first met Melhorn, things started getting creepy, the complaint alleges. Beyond showering her with inappropriate comments, Melhorn “began to go out of his way to touch Ms. Doe,” according to the complaint. Oftentimes, it says, Melhorn would enter Doe’s cell to give her printouts of Bible passages, but instead of simply handing them to her, he would set them down on her lap and rub her inner thigh.
In October 2023, Doe’s complaint claims she caught Melhorn peering into her cell while she was partially nude.
“At first, she believed it was her roommate and was not concerned, so she showered,” the complaint states. “When she got out of the shower, however, she saw that her roommate was asleep and that Melhorn was standing on his toes so that he could see Ms. Doe over the [privacy] screen.”
During the next several months, Melhorn’s overtures gradually got “forceful and more invasive,” until eventually becoming “even more extreme,” according to the complaint.
On March 29, 2024, Melhorn entered Doe’s cell while she was sleeping, woke her up and groped her under the sheets, the complaint maintains.
“Ms. Doe was terrified and got up abruptly,” it says. “Melhorn immediately warned Ms. Doe not to report him. He told her no one would believe her. Ms. Doe thought this was true and decided not to report Melhorn’s actions to anyone. Because Ms. Doe did not report Melhorn, his conduct continued and worsened.”
The following month, Melhorn walked into Doe’s call under the pretext of bringing her religious pamphlets, according to the complaint. It says he stood in front of her bed, and began to make “sexually explicit comments,” then grabbed at her breasts, inner thighs, buttocks and crotch, after which he forced Doe to touch his erect penis, the complaint alleges. Melhorn only stopped when Doe’s cellmate returned, according to the complaint.
At that point, it says Doe walked out of the cell and went to the unit’s common area. But, Melhorn followed her and continued to force himself upon her, the complaint contends. Melhorn again told Doe not to tell on him, and said other women had tried to report him, but that no one had believed them, according to the complaint.
As before, Doe believed Melhorn and kept quiet.
On April 16, 2024, Doe met with a social worker at Moshannon Valley. She said she was having trouble sleeping, and asked for a prescription that might help her relax, the complaint states. When the social worker asked Doe why she was so anxious, the complaint says she finally opened up about Melhorn.
The social worker told Doe that she was obligated to report the allegations, under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, or, PREA, and that she was glad she spoke up “because Melhorn had done things like this before,” according to the complaint. This, the complaint asserts, was corroborated by a nurse at Moshannon Valley, who told Doe that Melhorn had earned a reputation at the facility as “a pervert.”
Further, a female guard told Doe that she and another employee had complained about Melhorn after he entered the women’s locker room while staffers were changing or using the bathroom, according to the complaint.
Roughly three weeks later, the jail’s PREA investigator closed Doe’s case, deeming her allegations unsubstantiated due to insufficient evidence, the complaint states. (According to Doe, most of the incidents with Melhorn occurred in areas not covered by surveillance cameras; a lack of video evidence is what led to the “unsubstantiated” determination, the PREA investigator told Doe, according to the complaint.)
Because of this, the complaint says Melhorn – who had been removed from the women’s housing unit while the PREA investigation was underway – would be permitted to return. But when the other women in the unit turned on Doe and threatened her for “snitching” on Melhorn, she was moved into protective custody, the complaint says.
On July 5, 2024, Melhorn located Doe in protective custody and stood outside her cell, staring at her while she used the toilet, according to the complaint.
“Melhorn sang Ms. Doe’s name and asked her what she had done to end up in protective custody,” it continues. “Ms. Doe, frightened, immediately yelled out for an officer.”
Melhorn left the area, and Doe asked to speak with a supervisor. A new PREA investigation was opened, and Doe was transferred to a different segregation unit, the complaint explains. But, once again, without the necessary video evidence, Doe’s allegations were subsequently closed as “unsubstantiated,” according to the complaint.
Doe’s anxiety and nightmares worsened, and on August 29, 2024, Doe’s immigration lawyer submitted a request to ICE that her client be released, “based on, among other things, Melhorn’s sexual abuse,” the complaint states. The next day, Doe was sent home, where she remains, fighting deportation.
Doe’s complaint suggests that she was far from alone, citing an August 2022 report issued by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in response to “a concerning number of reports of sexual assault and harassment” at Moshannon Valley. Federal authorities, along with the GEO Group, which operates the Moshannon Valley facility under a contract with ICE, are legally obligated to prevent such abuse.
“Despite this knowledge, they failed to act,” the complaint says.
In an email, Lauren DesRosiers, who heads the Immigration Law Clinic at Albany Law School, told The Independent, “I wish that the abuse alleged in the complaint was an isolated incident. There’s good documentation that abuse is a widespread problem – for example, Senator Jon Ossoff’s office recently released this report on abuse of pregnant women and children in detention.”
Kristina M. Fullerton Rico, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, emphasized the point, saying that Doe’s allegations are “part of a larger pattern of sexual violence perpetrated by staff and volunteers on people who are under their supposed care. This has been documented for decades.”
Realmuto, the attorney representing Doe in her suit against Melhorn – which also names the U.S. government, the GEO Group, and Moshannon Valley’s PREA investigator – hopes to hear from others who have gone through similar experiences to the one Doe says she endured.
“There are an untold number of women who have passed through this facility who have been subjected to the same or worse types of sexual abuse,” Realmuto told The Independent. “… It’s particularly disturbing when it’s coming from the clergy, which, for many people who are detained, is supposed to be a source of comfort.”
Doe’s lawsuit alleges 11 individual causes of action, including negligence, intrusion upon seclusion, and violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. She is seeking compensatory damages and punitive damages to be determined in court, plus attorneys’ fees.
ICE and the GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment. The Moshannon Valley PREA investigator, whose full name is not listed in court records, was unable to be reached.
Liset Fernandez spent most of the summer worried about her dad, Luis, but a few weeks ago she got some good news. After Luis was held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody for weeks, an immigration judge in Texas granted him release on a $5,000 bond.
Luis, who came to the US from Ecuador in 1994, had been held in detention at a facility in Livingston, Texas, thousands of miles away from his home in Queens. Liset, 17, had taken on extra shifts working a retail job to support her mom and nine-year-old brother. Luis’s co-workers at the Square Diner, a railcar-style greasy spoon in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood for more than 100 years, had raised more than $20,000 to support him and his family.
But when Liset logged on to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) website to pay the bond, she got a message telling her that her dad was ineligible for release. It fell to her to tell her dad that instead of coming home that day, he would remain detained. “It was upsetting for everyone,” Liset said. “His voice sounded completely disappointed.”
Luis was being detained because of a new DHS policy arguing that all people who enter the US illegally are ineligible for bond, regardless of how long they have been here and whether or not they pose a flight risk. In Fernandez’s case, DHS went even further, deploying a rarely used maneuver to pause the immigration judge’s bond ruling while it appealed his ruling. Federal regulations allow the agency to automatically stay an immigration judge’s bond decision while they appeal the case to the board of immigration appeals.
The maneuver means Fernandez will remain detained while his case is pending before the board of immigration appeals. Since the board is being bogged down with appeals, it’s unclear how long it could take to resolve the case, said Craig Relles, an immigration attorney representing Fernandez.
Fernandez’s case shows how the Trump administration is “ratcheting up every aspect of the immigration system” for people who are in the US illegally no matter how long they’ve been in the US, said Suchita Mathur, a lawyer at the American Immigration Council.
“At every step of the way, they’re inflicting the maximum punishment on people,” she said. “It’s all part and parcel of the administration’s effort to make this process so punitive and unbearable that people give up.”
The justice department, which oversees immigration courts, adopted the procedure for automatically pausing an immigration judge’s bond ruling in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks amid concerns about national security. At the time, there were concerns about how it could be used to unjustly detain people. Both Mathur and Relles said they had rarely seen the appeal-and-stay practice used until this summer. Now, they said, the practice is widespread.
Lawyers representing the Department of Homeland Security have been instructed to appeal every decision in which someone is granted bond and immediately pause the judge’s ruling while the appeal is pending, according to an agency official familiar with the matter. They have also been told they will be fired if they do not take such action, the person said.
Asked whether lawyers were being told to automatically appeal in all cases where bond was granted, the Department of Homeland Security said: “Every decision to appeal is based on the facts of the case. No one has been fired for not appealing a case.”
In recent months, federal judges across the country, including in Minnesota, Nebraska and Maryland, have ruled in favor of detained immigrants who have challenged the practice. Appealing the bond ruling and automatically staying an immigration judge’s decision to grant bond, the judges have said, puts the due process rights of detainees at risk.
“The government’s discretion in matters of immigration is deep and wide, but surely its chop does not overcome the banks of due process enshrined in the constitution,” Julie Rubin, a US district judge in Maryland, wrote this month in a ruling granting release of an immigrant who was detained even though an immigration judge had ordered bond. “Invocation of the automatic stay renders the [immigration judge’s] custody redetermination order an ‘empty gesture’ absent demonstration of a compelling interest or special circumstance left unanswered by [the immigration judge].”
“It seems like there’s a nationwide policy from headquarters instructing them to file these automatic stays,” Mathur said. Such a policy “would raise even more questions about due process. Because if they’re not even conducting individualized analyses before filing these, that’s even more shocking.”
The Department of Homeland Security said Fernandez had entered the country illegally and had two prior convictions for driving while intoxicated. The agency did not provide more information on the cases, but told Tribeca Citizen, a local news site, the charges were from 2003 and 2014.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
But that is not what Fernandez’s co-workers knew of him. At the Square Diner, he was known as a hard worker who would work overtime to support Liset and his nine-year-old son. He was the person who would welcome new employees into the fold, always quick with a joke, and who would cover for someone who needed to step out for an emergency and then give them the earnings they missed. He would FaceTime his kids during long shifts and never say a bad word about customers who were stingy with tips. The only thing he would ever eat at work – sometimes with some teasing – were big salad bowls filled with soup. Usually chicken, but occasionally different types mixed together.
The fact that Luis had been in the United States for so long, was working and paying taxes, and had two children who are US citizens made him someone who was clearly eligible for bond, Relles said.
“The Department of Homeland Security had the opportunity to present any and all evidence indicating that he was a danger, that there were serious infractions in the past. And he was able to meet his burden, establishing that he was not a danger and is not a flight risk,” Relles said.
“He’s human. He has heart,” said one co-worker who asked to remain anonymous because they feared for their safety. “He’s [an] extremely honest person. With money, with food, with anything, you just name it. And the most important thing is the best father.” The co-worker said they had spoken to Luis recently and he was working in the kitchen of the detention center where he is being held. Recently he volunteered to give the other detainees haircuts.
The last time Liset saw her dad in person was early in the morning on 24 June when he came to her bedroom to say goodbye. He had been summoned to appear that morning for a check-in on his asylum application in Long Island. The day before he was set to leave, Luis became suspicious that something might happen to him. He shared the location on his phone with Liset. Still, Liset didn’t think there was much to worry about and said goodbye.
It was a scorching hot day in New York and Liset went to the beach with her cousin to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of summer vacation. While she was there, Luis called her. She could tell from the tone of his voice that something was wrong. He told her not to worry, but that he was going to be arrested. “They’re going to take me, Ice is here, and I’m not coming home anytime soon,” he told her. “If anything happens, make sure you take care of yourself.”
Fernandez is one of thousands of immigrants arrested by the Trump administration as part of its effort to ramp up deportations. Half of the immigrants arrested in the New York City area this year have been arrested, like Fernandez was, at routine check-ins at immigration offices, according to federal data analyzed by the New York Times.
Liset didn’t hear from her dad for a few days. But when she eventually got hold of him, he had been transferred to a facility in Texas. Since he’s been detained, Liset has talked to her dad almost every day, usually for just a few minutes. He’s told her that there are about 20 people in his room and that it’s extremely cold because air conditioners are running 24/7. The first few weeks in detention, Liset said, Luis would share a cup of ramen noodles with two other men for meals.
Liset described her dad as a hard worker who wanted to make sure his family was taken care of financially while also making sure he could spend time with them. Since her mom only speaks limited English, it’s fallen on Liset to take the lead on her dad’s legal case while also taking on more shifts at work.
“This is incredibly draining,” she said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/30/immigration-custody-bail-trump
“The message that ICE is sending to immigrants and their communities by changing the phrasing is that they are going to treat such persons not as human beings but as criminals.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has maintained its use of the term “alien” when referring to noncitizens, pointing to statutory requirements. The decision has sparked backlash over the Trump administration’s language regarding immigration policy, with critics claiming that such terminology dehumanizes individuals. DHS officials have defended the usage as consistent with existing laws. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guidance directs staff to use “alien” and “alienage,” replacing Biden-era “noncitizen” terminology.
DHS stated, “‘Undocumented immigrant’ is the immigration equivalent of ‘they/them.’ DHS has no interest in the left’s open borders pronouns. ‘Alien’ is the technical legal term, and that is what DHS will use.”
DHS added, “‘Illegal’ is the only way to correctly describe lawbreakers. Next thing you know you will be calling burglars ‘undocumented houseguests.’ ‘Alien’ is the technical legal term, and that is what DHS will use.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) updated its policy manual to match the terminology, reflecting statutes that use “aliens” for admissibility, deportation, crimes, and public benefits eligibility.
Critics said the change stigmatizes immigrants and hints at harsher treatment, while supporters have argued it aligns with U.S. Code and clarifies program language. Immigration advocates have continued advocating for “noncitizen” or “undocumented” terminology, despite the changes.
Immigration Lawyer Hector Díaz said, “The message that ICE is sending to immigrants and their communities by changing the phrasing is that they are going to treat such persons not as human beings but as criminals.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dhs-uses-terms-alien-and-illegal-despite-backlash/ss-AA1LwCtG
The Trump administration is planning to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. without their parents, according to a letter sent Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, and the Central American country said it was ready to take them in.
The removals would violate the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s “child welfare mandate and this country’s long-established obligation to these children,” Wyden told Angie Salazar, acting director of the office within the Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for migrant children who arrive in the U.S. alone.
“This move threatens to separate children from their families, lawyers, and support systems, to thrust them back into the very conditions they are seeking refuge from, and to disappear vulnerable children beyond the reach of American law and oversight,” the Democratic senator wrote, asking for the deportation plans to be terminated.
It is another step in the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement efforts, which include plans to surge officers to Chicago for an immigration crackdown, ramping up deportations and ending protections for people who have had permission to live and work in the United States.
Guatemalan Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Martínez said Friday that the government has told the U.S. it is willing to receive hundreds of Guatemalan minors who arrived unaccompanied to the United States and are being held in U.S. facilities.
Guatemala is particularly concerned about minors who could age out of the facilities for children and be sent to adult detention centers, he said. The exact number of children to be returned remains in flux, but they are currently discussing a little over 600. He said no date has been set yet for their return.
That would be almost double what Guatemala previously agreed to. The head of the country’s immigration service said last month that the government was looking to repatriate 341 unaccompanied minors who were being held in U.S. facilities.
“The idea is to bring them back before they reach 18 years old so that they are not taken to an adult detention center,” Guatemala Immigration Institute Director Danilo Rivera said at the time. He said it would be done at Guatemala’s expense and would be a form of voluntary return.
The plan was announced by President Bernardo Arévalo, who said then that the government had a moral and legal obligation to advocate for the children. His comments came days after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Guatemala.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest move, which was first reported by CNN.
Quoting unidentified whistleblowers, Wyden’s letter said children who do not have a parent or legal guardian as a sponsor or who don’t have an asylum case already underway “will be forcibly removed from the country.”
The idea of repatriating such a large number of children to their home country also raised concerns with activists who work with children navigating the immigration process.
“We are outraged by the Trump administration’s renewed assault on the rights of immigrant children,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, president and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “We are not fooled by their attempt to mask these efforts as mere ‘repatriations.’ This is yet another calculated attempt to sever what little due process remains in the immigration system.”
Santana, Seitz and Gonzalez write for the Associated Press. Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas. AP writers Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City and Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
From where you stand, it may look like you’re just watching unimaginable stuff go down, and nobody’s stepping in to stop it. In only eight months of his second term, President Donald Trump has managed to undermine the Constitution, disrupt the economy, send military troops to cities without congressional approval and divide the country over immigration, civil rights and more. It seems like there’s nothing regular Americans can do to stop him as he continues to complete the missions of his 2024 campaign, but many political leaders are offering suggestions to fight back in ways never seen before.
From local state officials to journalists and influential internet personalities, these powerful voices are urging folks to rebel against the Trump administration, and here’s exactly how they say it needs to be done.
https://www.theroot.com/these-leaders-are-calling-for-americans-to-rebel-agains-2000058801
Under President Donald Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has become the driving force of his sweeping crackdown on migrants, bolstered by record funding and new latitude to conduct raids, but staff are contending with long hours and growing public outrage over the arrests.
Those internal pressures are taking a toll.
Two current and nine former ICE officials told Reuters the agency is grappling with burnout and frustration among personnel as agents struggle to keep pace with the administration’s aggressive enforcement agenda.
The agency has launched a recruitment drive to relieve the stress by hiring thousands of new officers as quickly as possible, but that process will likely take months or years to play out.
All of those interviewed by Reuters backed immigration enforcement in principle. But they criticized the Trump administration’s push for high daily arrest quotas that have led to the detention of thousands of individuals with no criminal record, as well as long-term green card holders, others with legal visas, and even some U.S. citizens.
Most of the current and former ICE officials requested anonymity due to concerns about retaliation against themselves or former colleagues.
Americans have been inundated with images on social media of often masked agents in tactical gear handcuffing people on neighborhood streets, at worksites, outside schools, churches, and courthouses, and in their driveways. Videos of some arrests have gone viral, fueling public anger over the tactics.
Under Trump, average daily arrests by the 21,000-strong agency have soared, up over 250% in June compared to a year earlier, although daily arrest rates dropped in July.
Trump has said he wants to deport “the worst of the worst,” but ICE figures show a rise in non-criminals being picked up.
Immigration emergency justifies long hours
ICE arrests of people with no other charges or convictions beyond immigration violations during Trump’s first six months in office rose to 221 people per day, from 80 people per day during the same period under former President Joe Biden last year, according to agency data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
Some 69% of immigration arrests under Trump were of people with a criminal conviction or pending charge, the figures show. Some ICE investigators are frustrated that hundreds of specialized ICE investigative agents, who normally focus on serious crimes such as human trafficking and transnational gangs, have been reassigned to routine immigration enforcement, two current and two former officials said.
In an interview with Reuters, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, acknowledged that the long hours and reassignment ofspecialist agents had frustrated some ICE personnel but said Trump’s January 20 declaration of a national emergency around illegal immigration warranted it.
“There’s some staff that would rather be doing other types of investigations, I get that, but the president declared a national emergency,” Homan said.
Homan, who spent three decades in immigration enforcement and joined ICE at its inception in 2003, said the long hours should lessen as hiring of new ICE staff speeds up.
“I think morale is good. I think morale will get even better as we bring more resources on,” he said.
Another stress factor for more senior officials is the perpetual threat of being removed for failure to produce arrests,underscored by multiple changes of leadership at ICE since Trump took office in January, five of the ICE officials said.
In response to a request for comment, a senior official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, downplayed concerns about morale, saying officers were most bothered by being targeted in assaults, as well as criticism from Democrats.
The senior official said ICE personnel “are excited to be able to do their jobs again” after being subjected to limits under Biden.
Agents under intense pressure
At the center of the complaints, the current and former ICE officials said, was the demand by the White House for ICE to sharply increase immigration arrest numbers to about 3,000 a day, 10 times the daily arrest rate last year under Trump’s Democratic predecessor.
In some cases, officers on raids have gone to wrong addresses following leads that relied on artificial intelligence, increasing the chances of picking up the wrong person or putting an officer in danger, according to one current and two former officials.
“The demands they placed on us were unrealistic. It was not done in a safe manner or the manner to make us most successful,” the current official said.
During recent raids in several U.S. cities, masked ICE agents have been confronted by angry residents demanding they identify themselves and chasing them out of neighborhoods.
“In a lot of communities, they’re not looked upon favorably for the work they do. So I’m sure that’s stressful for them and their families,” said Kerry Doyle, a former top legal adviser at ICE.
ICE also faced backlash during Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency, when activists and some Democrats made “Abolish ICE” a rallying cry, but the agency’s more aggressive enforcement in recent months has further thrust it into the spotlight. Trump’s public approval rating on immigration fell to 43% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll in August from a high of 50% in March as Americans took an increasingly dim view of his heavy-handed tactics against migrants.
That view has been shaped in part by news reports of students being arrested on campuses or on their way to sportspractice, parents being detained while dropping children at school, ICE officers breaking windows and pulling people from cars, and men surrounded and shackled while waiting at bus stops or at Home Depots to travel to work.
One former ICE official said at the beginning of the administration, several former colleagues told him they were happy the “cuffs are off.”
But several months later, he said, they are “overwhelmed” by the arrest numbers the administration is demanding.
“They would prefer to go back to focused targeting,” he said. “They used to be able to say: ‘We are arresting criminals.'”
A 10,000-person hiring spree
A Republican-backed spending package passed by the Congress in July gave ICE more money than nearly all other federal law enforcement agencies combined ‒ $75 billion over a little more than four years ‒ including funds to detain at least 100,000 migrants at any given time.
The Trump administration has launched a vigorous recruitment drive on the back of the new funding to meet its goal of hiring 10,000 ICE officers over the next four years.
Using wartime-style posters and slogans such as “America needs you,” ICE has launched a media blitz highly unusual for a government agency, running ads on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
Homeland Security said more than 115,000 “patriotic Americans” had applied for jobs with ICE, although it did not say over what time period.
The ICE hiring spree resembles a similar surge to onboard Border Patrol agents in the mid-2000s, which critics say increased corruption and misconduct in its ranks.
Asked about the risk of bringing in less qualified people in the rush to staff up, Homan said ICE should choose “quality over quantity.”
“Officers still need to go through background investigations, they still need to be vetted, they still need to make sure they go to the academy,” Homan said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that immigration operations will soon be expanded in Chicago, confirming plans for a stepped-up presence of federal agents in the nation’s third-largest city as President Trump continues to lash out at Illinois’ Democratic leadership.
Noem’s comments came a day after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson struck back against what he called the “out-of-control” plan to surge federal officers into the city. The Chicago Police Department will be barred from helping federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement or any related patrols, traffic stops and checkpoints during the surge, according to an executive order Johnson signed Saturday.
The Homeland Security Department last week requested limited logistical support from officials at the Naval Station Great Lakes to support the agency’s anticipated operations. The military installation is about 35 miles north of Chicago.
“We’ve already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago … but we do intend to add more resources to those operations,” Noem said during a Sunday appearance CBS News’ ”Face the Nation.”
Noem declined to provide further details about the planned surge of federal officers. It comes after the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops to Washington, saying they were needed to target crime, immigration and homelessness, and two months after it sent troops to Los Angeles.
Trump lashed out against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a social media posting Saturday, warning him that he must straighten out Chicago’s crime problems quickly “or we’re coming.” The Republican president has also been critical of Johnson.
Johnson and Pritzker, both Democrats, have denounced the expected federal mobilization, noting that crime has fallen in Chicago. They are planning to sue if Trump moves forward with the plan.
In his order signed Saturday, Johnson directed all city departments to guard the constitutional rights of Chicago residents “amidst the possibility of imminent militarized immigration or National Guard deployment by the federal government.”
Asked during a news conference about federal agents who are presumably “taking orders,” Johnson replied: “Yeah, and I don’t take orders from the federal government.”
Johnson also blocked Chicago police from wearing face coverings to hide their identities, as most federal immigration officers have done since Trump launched his crackdown.
The federal surge into Chicago could start as early as Friday and last about 30 days, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.
Pritzker, in an interview aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” said that Trump’s expected plans to mobilize federal forces in the city may be part of a plan to “stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections.”
Noem said it was a Trump “prerogative” whether to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago as he did in Los Angeles in June in the midst of protests there against immigration raids.
“I do know that L.A. wouldn’t be standing today if President Trump hadn’t taken action,” Noem said. “That city would have burned if left to devices of the mayor and governor of that state.”
Unlike the recent federal takeover of policing in Washington, the Chicago operation is not expected to rely on the National Guard or military and is focused exclusively on immigration, rather than being cast as part of a broad campaign against crime, Trump administration officials have said.
Chicago is home to a large immigrant population, and both the city and the state of Illinois have some of the country’s strongest rules against cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts. That has often put the city and state at odds with the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Johnson’s order builds on the city’s longtime stance, that neither Chicago nor Illinois officials have sought or been consulted on the federal presence and they stand against Trump’s mobilization plan.
During his news conference Saturday, Johnson accused the president of “behaving outside the bounds of the Constitution” and seeking a federal presence in Democratic cities as retribution against his political rivals.
“He is reckless and out of control,” Johnson said. “He’s the biggest threat to our democracy that we’ve experienced in the history of our country.”
In response, the White House contended that the potential flood of federal agents was about “cracking down on crime.”
“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the President, their communities would be much safer,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email Saturday.
Critics have noted that Trump, while espousing a tough-on-crime push, is the only felon ever to occupy the White House.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump Administration from deporting hundreds of unaccompanied children back to their home country of Guatemala, just as some of the children were boarded on planes and ready to depart.
The last-minute order wrapped up a frenetic legal battle that began in the early hours of Sunday morning, when immigration advocacy groups filed an emergency lawsuit after discovering shelters holding unaccompanied children were abruptly told to prepare them for deportation within two hours.
District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a temporary block on the deportations at 4 a.m. and called a hearing for Sunday afternoon. That hearing was moved forward when she heard the deportations were already underway, and the judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking deny deportations for 14 days.
“I do not want there to be any ambiguity about what I am ordering,” Judge Sooknanan said, adding that the government “cannot remove any children” while the case is ongoing.
The judge ordered the children to be taken off the planes and made clear that her ruling applies to all Guatemalan minors who arrived in the U.S. without their parents or guardians.
Some children were taken off planes as they were waiting to take off on the tarmac. A government lawyer said in the hearing that one plane had taken off, but later came back when the order was issued.
In their lawsuit, lawyers from the National Immigrant Law Center (NILC) said the children—who are in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)—were due to be handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Guatemala on Sunday.
The ORR sent memos to shelters holding the children on Saturday telling them to “take proactive measures to ensure [unaccompanied children] are prepared for discharge within 2 hours of receiving this notification.” The memo called for the shelters to “have two prepared sack lunches” and one suitcase per child.
The NILC attorneys said in the lawsuit that they were filing on behalf of “hundreds of Guatemalan children at imminent risk of unlawful removal from the United States,” aged between 10 and 17 years.
The lawsuit said the estimated 600 children had “active proceedings before immigration courts across the country,” and removing them from the country violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Constitution.
“All unaccompanied children — regardless of the circumstances of their arrival to the United States — receive the benefit of full immigration proceedings, including a hearing on claims for relief before an immigration judge,” the attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
“Congress provided even further procedural protection to unaccompanied minors in removal proceedings by mandating that their claims for asylum be heard in the first instance before an asylum officer in a non-adversarial setting rather than in an adversarial courtroom setting,” they added.
Judge Sooknanan granted the plaintiffs’ request for a restraining order to block the deportations early Saturday morning “to maintain the status quo until a hearing can be set.”
At the hearing on Sunday, lawyers for the U.S. government insisted that the children were being repatriated with their parents. Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign said it was “outrageous that the plaintiffs are trying to interfere with these reunifications.”
That claim was contested by the immigration advocacy groups and attorneys for some of the children, who said at least some of the children said they did not want to return and some faced danger back in Guatemala.
“I have conflicting narratives from both sides here,” Sooknanan said.
“Absent action by the courts, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to very dangerous situations,” she added.
Ensign told Judge Sooknanan the deportations were underway when the order was issued and that he believed one plane had taken off, but had come back.
Minutes after the hearing ended, the Associated Press reported that five charter buses pulled up to a plane parked at an airport near the border in Harlingen, Texas, where deportation flights are known to depart from.
Efrén C. Olivares, vice president of litigation and legal strategy at the National Immigration Law Center, said the deportations could have caused the children “irreperable harm.”
“In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,” he said in a statement following the ruling.
“We are heartened the Court prevented this injustice from occurring before hundreds of children suffered irreparable harm. We are determined to continue fighting to protect the interest of our plaintiffs and all class members until the effort is enjoined permanently,” he added.
The ORR, which lies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said the deportations were the result of an agreement between the U.S. and Guatemala. Attorneys representing the children were sent memos informing them that the “Government of Guatemala has requested the return of certain unaccompanied alien children in federal custody for the purposes of reunifying the UAC with suitable family members.”
“This communication is provided as advance notice that removal proceedings may be dismissed to support the prompt repatriation of the child,” the memo, which was reviewed by TIME, said.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller criticized Sooknanan for blocking the deportations.
“The minors have all self-reported that their parents are back home in Guatemala. But a Democrat judge is refusing to let them reunify with their parents,” he wrote on X.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
https://time.com/7313641/deportation-guatemala-ice-judge-blocked
