A Central American asylum applicant arrested outside an L.A. immigration court is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security and the Trump administration for her immediate release and that of her two children, including her 6-year-old son stricken with cancer.
The Honduran woman, not named in court documents, filed a petition for writs of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility. She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras, as her children cry and pray nightly to be released from a Texas holding facility, according to court documents.
She and her two children, including a 9-year-old daughter, are facing two removal proceedings concurrently: a previous removal proceeding involving their asylum request and this recent expedited removal process.
The woman claims the government violated many of their rights, including the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.
Her attorneys noted that DHS determined she was not a flight risk when she was paroled and that her detention was unjustified.
The woman’s lawyers also argued that she was not given an opportunity to contest her family’s detention in front of a neutral adjudicator, and that the family’s 4th Amendment right to not be unlawfully arrested was violated.
The Honduran mother is being represented by several groups, including attorney Kate Gibson Kumar of the Texas Civil Rights Project”So often, you’ll hear all the rhetoric in this country that immigrants should be doing it ‘the right way,’ and it’s ironic in this case because we’re in a situation where this family did it ‘the right way’ and they’re being punished for it,” Kumar told The Times on Friday morning. “They followed the process, went where they were supposed to go and did everything that was asked of them.”
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio on Tuesday. Kumar said a Texas judge issued an order late Thursday evening that compelled the government to respond to the habeas corpus petition by July 1.
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, countered in an email to The Times on Friday morning that the legal process was playing out fairly.
“This family had chosen to appeal their case — which had already been thrown out by an immigration judge — and will remain in ICE custody until it is resolved.”
One of the focal points of the lawsuit is the fate of the woman’s son.
The youth was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 3 and has undergone chemotherapy treatments, including injecting chemotherapeutic agents into his cerebrospinal fluid, according to court documents.
He began treatment in Honduras and completed two years of chemotherapy, at which point the mother believes he no longer has leukemia cells in his blood, according to court documents.
The son, however, needs regular monitoring and medical care for his condition, according to court documents.
Last year, the family fled to the United States to “seek safety” after they were subject to “imminent, menacing death threats” in Honduras, according to court documents.
They applied for entrance while waiting in Mexico and received a CBP One app appointment in October to apply for asylum. They presented themselves at an undisclosed border entry, were processed and were paroled in the U.S., according to court documents.
They were scheduled to appear before a Los Angeles immigration court and moved to the area to live with family.
Both children enrolled in local public schools, attended Sunday church and were learning English, according to court documents.
“They’re asylum seekers fleeing from violence, who had an appointment at the border, were paroled into the country and the government made an assessment that they didn’t have to be detained,” Kumar said. “There should be some sort of protection for this family, which is doing everything right.”
The trio arrived at court May 29 for a hearing for their asylum request and were caught off guard when a Homeland Security lawyer asked for their case to be dismissed, according to court documents.
The woman told an immigration judge “we wish to continue [with our cases],” according to court documents.
The judge granted the dismissal and the Honduran mother and two children were immediately arrested by plainclothes ICE agents upon leaving the courtroom in the hallway, according to court documents. The woman had a June 5 medical appointment scheduled for her son’s cancer diagnosis, which he couldn’t attend because of the arrest.
The family was detained for hours on the first floor before being taken to an undisclosed immigration center in the city, according to court documents.
All three “cried in fear” and the young boy urinated on himself and remained in wet clothing “for hours,” according to court documents.
The trio were placed on a flight to San Antonio along with several other families. The date of the flight was not available.
After landing, the family was transported to a detention center in Dilley, Texas, where they remain.
“Fortunately, the minor child in question has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year, and has been seen regularly by medical personnel since arriving at the Dilley facility,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin added that no family member had been denied emergency care.
“The implication that ICE would deny a child the medical care they need is flatly FALSE, and it is an insult to the men and women of federal law enforcement,” she said. “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”
The children have cried each night and prayed “for God to take them out of the detention center,” according to court documents.
The mother claims that the federal government did nothing to monitor her son’s leukemia for days.
Her lawyers have also sought the boy’s release for medical treatment, a request that was not fulfilled.
Tag Archives: Mexico
Miami Herald: Exclusive: Hundreds at Alligator Alcatraz have no criminal charges, Miami Herald learns
Hundreds of immigrants with no criminal charges in the United States are being held at Alligator Alcatraz, a detention facility state and federal officials have characterized as a place where “vicious” and “deranged psychopaths” are sent before they get deported, records obtained by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times show.
Mixed among the detainees accused and convicted of crimes are more than 250 people who are listed as having only immigration violations but no criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States. The data is based on a list of more than 700 people who are either being held under tents and in chain link cells at Florida’s pop-up detention center in the Everglades or appear slated for transfer there.
A third of the detainees have criminal convictions. Their charges range from attempted murder to illegal re-entry to traffic violations. Hundreds of others only have pending charges. The records do not disclose the nature of the alleged offenses, and reporters have not independently examined each individual’s case.
The information — subject to change as the population of the facility fluctuates — suggests that scores of migrants without criminal records have been targeted in the state and federal dragnet to catch and deport immigrants living illegally in Florida.
Nationally, nearly half of detainees in ICE custody as of late June were being held for immigration violations and did not have a criminal conviction or charge, according to data from Syracuse University. Polls have shown that American voters support the deportation of criminals but are less supportive of the arrest and detention of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants. South Florida’s congressional representatives have called on the Trump administration to be more compassionate in its efforts to round up and deport immigrants with status issues.
“That place is supposedly for the worst criminals in the U.S.,” said Walter Jara, the nephew of a 56-year-old Nicaraguan man taken to the facility following a traffic stop in Palm Beach County. The list obtained by the Herald/Times states that his uncle, Denis Alcides Solis Morales, has immigration violations and makes no mention of convictions or pending criminal charges. Jara said his uncle arrived here legally in 2023 under a humanitarian parole program, and has a pending asylum case.
Reporters sent the list to officials at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the absence of a criminal charge in the United States doesn’t mean migrants detained at the site have clean hands.
“Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.,” McLaughlin told the Herald/Times. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally. It is not an accurate description to say they are ‘non-criminals.’”
McLaughlin said the Trump administration is “putting the American people first by removing illegal aliens who pose a threat to our communities” and said “70% of ICE arrests have been of criminal illegal aliens with convictions or pending charges.”
She added that the state of Florida oversees the facility, not ICE, an argument echoed in court by Thomas P. Giles, a top official involved in enforcement and removal operations.
“The ultimate decision of who to detain” at Alligator Alcatraz “belongs to Florida,” he wrote as part of the federal government’s response to a lawsuit challenging the detention facility on environmental grounds.
A spokesperson for ICE referred reporters to Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, which oversees the detention facility. The Florida agency did not respond to a request for comment.
The records offer a glimpse into who is being sent to Alligator Alcatraz. The network of trailers and tents, built on an airstrip off of U.S. Highway 41, has been operating for a little more than a week. It is already housing about 750 immigrant detainees, a figure that state officials shared with Democratic state Sen. Carlos Guillermo-Smith, one of several Florida lawmakers who toured the site on Saturday afternoon.
The records obtained by the Herald/Times show detainees are from roughly 40 countries around the world. Immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba made up about half the list. Ages range from 18 to 73. One is listed as being from the United States. Reporters were unable to locate his family or attorney.
Lawmakers who visited the facility Saturday said they saw detainees wearing wristbands, which state officials explained were meant to classify the severity of their civil or criminal violations. The colors included yellow, orange and red — with yellow being less severe infractions and red meaning more severe offenses, said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.
When the detention facility opened on July 1, President Donald Trump visited the site and said it would soon house “some of the most vicious people on the planet.” He and Gov. Ron DeSantis have said the detention center is creating more space to house undocumented immigrants who otherwise would have to be released due to a lack of beds.
The state has refused to make public a roster of detainees at Alligator Alcatraz, instead offering selective information about who is being detained there. On Friday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office released the names of six men convicted of crimes to Fox News, and later to the Herald/Times upon request. The charges against the men — all included on the list obtained by the Herald/Times — ranged from murder to burglary.
“This group of murderers, rapists, and gang members are just a small sample of the deranged psychopaths that Florida is helping President Trump and his administration remove from our country,” Uthmeier’s spokesman, Jeremy Redfern, said in a statement.
One of those men is Jose Fortin, a 46-year-old from Honduras who was arrested in 2017 on attempted murder charges. Records show Fortin was deported to his home country in August 2019. A month later, he re-entered the country illegally. Border patrol agents picked him up in Texas.
Another man identified as a detainee by Uthmeier’s office, Luis Donaldo Corado, was convicted of burglary and petty theft after he was accused of being a “peeping tom” — watching a woman through her apartment window in Coral Gables. And Eddy Lopez Jemot, a 57-year-old Cuban man, was accused of killing a woman and setting her house on fire in Key Largo in 2017. The state dropped homicide charges against him in a plea deal this year and convicted him of arson.
But other detainees left off the attorney general’s list face lesser charges — such as traffic violations, according to attorneys and family members. An attorney told the Herald/Times her client was detained by federal immigration agents after a routine-check in at an ICE field office. Some are asylum seekers.
Solís Morales, the 56-year-old Nicaraguan, ended up in Alligator Alcatraz after he was unexpectedly detained on his way to a construction job in Palm Beach County on July 1, according to Jara, his nephew. He was a passenger in a Ford F-150 when the driver was pulled over by the Florida Highway Patrol for an unsecured load, Jara told the Herald/Times on Saturday.
Solís Morales arrived in the United States from Nicaragua in 2023 under humanitarian parole and has a pending asylum case, Jara said.
Miami immigration attorney Regina de Moraes said she’s representing a 37-year-old Brazilian man being held at Alligator Alcatraz who entered the United States lawfully on a tourist visa in 2022 and then applied for asylum, which is pending.
She said the man, who has a five-year work permit and owns a solar panel business in the Orlando area, was arrested on a DUI charge in 2024. While he was attending a probation hearing on June 3, he was detained by the Orange County Sheriff’s office, which is participating in a federal immigration program known as 287(g). He was transferred from there to Alligator Alcatraz on Thursday, according to information provided to her by the man’s sister.
De Moraes, a seasoned immigration lawyer, said she doesn’t understand why the Brazilian man was transferred to the state-operated detention facility in the Everglades. She asked the Herald/Times not to identify her client.
“He’s not subject to mandatory detention and he’s not subject to removal because he has a pending asylum application,” de Moraes told the Herald/Times. “He has one DUI and he’s not a threat to others. This is ridiculous. This is a waste of time and money. … He’s not the kind of person they should be picking up.”
“They should be picking up people with sexual battery or armed robbery records,” de Moraes said.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article310541810.html
Washington Post: ICE declares millions of undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings
A memo from ICE’s acting director instructs officers to hold immigrants who entered the country illegally “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years.
The Trump administration has declared that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
In a July 8 memo, Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told officers that such immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years. Lawyers say the policy will apply to millions of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few decades, including under Biden.
In the past, immigrants residing in the U.S. interior generally have been allowed to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. But Lyons wrote that the Trump administration’s departments of Homeland Security and Justice had “revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities” and determined that such immigrants “may not be released from ICE custody.” In rare exceptions immigrants may be released on parole, but that decision will be up to an immigration officer, not a judge, he wrote.
The provision is based on a section of immigration law that says unauthorized immigrants “shall be detained” after their arrest, but that has historically applied to those who recently crossed the border and not longtime residents.
Lyons, who oversees the nation’s 200 immigration detention facilities, wrote that the policy is expected to face legal challenges.
ICE did not respond to requests for comment. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott issued similar guidance last week; that agency also did not respond to questions.
The sweeping new detention policy comes days after Congress passed a spending package that will allocate $45 billion over the next four years to lock up immigrants for civil deportation proceedings. The measure will allow ICE to roughly double the nation’s immigrant detention capacity to 100,000 people a day.
Since the memos were issued last week, the American Immigration Lawyers Association said members had reported that immigrants were being denied bond hearings in more than a dozen immigration courts across the United States, including in New York, Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia. The Department of Justice oversees the immigration courts.
“This is their way of putting in place nationwide a method of detaining even more people,” said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s requiring the detention of far more people without any real review of their individual circumstances.”
Immigration hawks have long argued that detaining immigrants is necessary to quickly deport those who do not qualify for asylum or another way to stay in the United States permanently. They say detaining immigrants might also discourage people from filing frivolous claims, in hopes of being released as their cases proceed in the backlogged immigration courts.
“Detention is absolutely the best way to approach this, if you can do it. It costs a lot of money obviously,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors enforcement. “You’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to remove the person, if there’s a negative finding, if he’s in detention.”
In its 2024 annual report, however, ICE said it detains immigrants only “when necessary” and that the vast majority of the 7.6 million people then on its docket were released pending immigration proceedings. Keeping them detained while their case is adjudicated has not been logistically possible, and advocates have raised concern for migrants’ health and welfare in civil immigration detention.
Immigrants are already subject to mandatory detention without bond if they have been convicted of murder or other serious crimes, and this year the Republican-led Congress added theft-related crimes to that list after a Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, was killed by a man from Venezuela who had been picked up for shoplifting and not held for deportation.
Immigration lawyers say the Trump administration is expanding a legal standard typically used to hold recent arrivals at the southern border toa much broader group — including immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades. Many have U.S. citizen children, lawyers say, and likely have the legal grounds to defend themselves against deportation.
Forcing them to remain in detention facilities often in far-flung areas such as an alligator-infested swamp in Florida or the Arizona desert would make it more difficult to fight their cases, because they will be unable to work or easily communicate with family members and lawyers to prepare their cases.
“I think some courts are going to find that this doesn’t give noncitizens sufficient due process,” said Paul Hunker, an immigration lawyer and former ICE chief counsel in the Dallas area. “They could be held indefinitely until they’re deported.*
ICE is holding about 56,000 immigrants a day as officers sweep the nation for undocumented immigrants, working overtime to fulfill Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million people in his first year. Officials have reopened family detention centers that the Biden administration shuttered because ofsafety concerns, stood up soft-sided facilities such as one in the Everglades, and begun deporting immigrants with little notice to alternative countries such as conflict-ridden South Sudan.
Immigration lawyers say the new ICE policy is similar to a position that several immigration judges in Tacoma, Washington, have espoused in recent years, denying hearings to anyone who crossed the border illegally.
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle filed a lawsuit in March on behalf of detainees challenging the policy, arguing that their refusal to consider a bond hearing violated the immigrants’ rights.
The original plaintiff in the case, Ramon Rodriguez Vazquez, has lived in Washington state since 2009, works as a farmer and is the “proud grandfather” of 10 U.S. citizens, court records show. His eight siblings are U.S. citizens who live in California.
He also owns his home, where ICE officers arrested him in February for being in the United States without permission. In April, a federal judge in Washington found that he has “no criminal history in the United States or anywhere else in the world” and ordered immigration officers to give him a bond hearing before a judge. A judge denied him bond and he has since returned to Mexico, his lawyer said.
But that decision does not apply nationwide, lawyers said.
Aaron Korthuis, a lawyer in the case, said Rodriguez is typical of the type of immigrants who now face prolonged detention as they fight deportation in immigration courts. He called the government’s new interpretation of bond hearings “flagrantly unlawful.”
“They are people who have been living here, all they’re doing is trying to make a living for their family,” Korthuis said in an interview. He said the policy “is looking to supercharge detention beyond what it already is.”
Newsweek: Trump backs ICE crackdown as farmworkers say they feel ‘hunted’
Undocumented farm workers say they are being “hunted like animals” as President Donald Trump expands ICE raids targeting agricultural sites. Amid rising arrest quotas and shifting enforcement policies, workers report living in fear, losing wages, and facing mounting pressure to surrender autonomy in exchange for continued employment.
What to know:
- ICE raids under Trump have led to injuries, mass arrests, and at least one death
- Trump has proposed deferring immigration enforcement to farm owners
- Advocacy groups warn that the policy undermines civil rights and worker protections
- Many undocumented farm workers have gone into hiding to avoid arrest
- Critics liken the enforcement approach to indentured servitude or forced compliance
- Nearly 40 percent of farm workers in the US are undocumented
- ICE quotas have tripled under the Trump administration
- Labor unions say raids are unconstitutional and are executed without judicial oversight
In June, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Houston arrested five undocumented migrants with extensive criminal histories. Among them was 56-year-old Cuban national Adermis Wilson-Gonzalez, convicted in 2003 for hijacking a plane from Cuba to Florida. He was taken into custody on June 29.
On June 13, ICE arrested Arnulfo Olivares Cervantes, a 47-year-old Mexican national and former Mexicles gang member. Cervantes had entered the U.S. illegally six times and faced convictions for attempted murder, drug trafficking, and evading arrest.
Luis Pablo Vasquez-Estolano, 29, also from Mexico, was arrested on June 10. He had been deported six times and held convictions for homicide, aggravated robbery, and drug possession.
Jose Meza, 40, was arrested on June 24. ICE reported Meza had entered the U.S. illegally four times and was convicted of sexual assault of a minor and theft.
On June 23, ICE detained 51-year-old Javier Escobar Gonzalez, who had prior convictions for sexual indecency with a minor, criminal trespass with a deadly weapon, and unauthorized firearm use.
ICE officials say the arrests reflect ongoing efforts to remove individuals deemed threats to public safety.
ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in Houston is pushing back against criticism of its recent immigration enforcement actions, with acting Field Office Director Gabriel Martinez praising agents for their work in removing individuals deemed threats to public safety. In a statement, Martinez said ICE officers are “targeting dangerous criminal aliens” and highlighted recent deportations across Southeast Texas as evidence of their commitment.
The agency reported the removal of individuals with criminal convictions, including child predators and gang members, as part of its broader strategy to restore what it calls integrity to the immigration system. Martinez emphasized that ICE’s mission is being undermined by “false and malicious rumors,” but insisted that agents remain focused on protecting communities.
The statement follows a series of high-profile deportations and increased scrutiny of ICE’s tactics, particularly in Houston, where arrests have surged in recent months.
Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the Portland International Jetport on Saturday to protest Avelo Airlines’ partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The airline has been conducting deportation flights out of Arizona since May, prompting backlash from immigration advocates and local residents.
Protesters expressed concern that Avelo, which recently began offering commercial flights between Portland and New Haven, Connecticut, is receiving public incentives despite its federal contract. Organizers called for a boycott and urged city officials to reconsider support for the airline.
Avelo maintains that its ICE-related operations are limited to Arizona and are not connected to its Portland service. However, critics argue that any business involved in deportation efforts should not benefit from public resources.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced a new initiative to provide direct cash assistance to immigrants impacted by the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration raids.
The funds will be distributed as cash cards valued at “a couple hundred” dollars each and is expected to become available within the next week, Bass said
Newsweek has contacted Bass’ office for comment via email outside of office hours.
President Donald Trump has vowed to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history to address illegal immigration and border security. However, the policy has sparked concerns about its potential effects on the economy. The GOP’s flagship immigration policy under Trump is causing people to avoid going to work amid fears over workplace raids.
California has become one of the key battleground states for immigration enforcement after President Trump directed ICE to increase operations in sanctuary states.
California State Senator María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) issued a forceful statement Friday condemning the treatment of immigrant children detained in Los Angeles, following the release of a video showing two dozen minors handcuffed and led through a federal building. Durazo called the footage “a moral failure of the highest order,” denouncing the practice as cruel and fundamentally un-American.
The senator urged the Trump administration to end what she described as barbaric tactics and emphasized that no child should be shackled or separated from their parents. She praised U.S. District Judge Frimpong’s recent ruling that blocked federal immigration raids based on racial profiling and ordered access to legal counsel for detainees.
Durazo criticized the White House’s decision to appeal the ruling, warning that it signals a disregard for constitutional protections. She reaffirmed her commitment to defending immigrant families and called for policies rooted in compassion and justice.
Florida State Rep. Fentrice Driskell criticized the Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention facility during an interview on CNN, calling the site “inhumane” and a misuse of taxpayer funds. Driskell described overcrowded conditions, sweltering heat, and limited access to sanitation and legal counsel. She said detainees are housed in cages with three toilets per pod and shackled during medical screenings.
Driskell also claimed that some Republican lawmakers privately expressed discomfort with the facility, saying it did not reflect what they had envisioned when supporting immigration enforcement. She questioned the $450 million price tag and suggested contractors with ties to the DeSantis administration may be benefiting.
The facility, located in the Florida Everglades, has drawn criticism from tribal leaders, environmental groups, and immigrant advocates. Driskell warned that the center’s conditions and lack of oversight could have lasting consequences for Florida communities.
Undocumented farm workers say they feel “hunted like animals” as President Donald Trump’s administration intensifies immigration enforcement across U.S. farms, The Guardian reported. ICE raids have disrupted livelihoods, forced workers into hiding, and sparked protests, including one in Ventura County where a worker died after falling from a greenhouse during a raid.
Trump has proposed letting farmers oversee immigration enforcement on their properties, a move critics say strips workers of legal protections and dignity. Labor advocates warn the policy amounts to coercion, with workers forced to rely on employers to avoid deportation.
Despite mixed signals from the White House, the administration has raised ICE arrest quotas and reversed earlier directives to avoid targeting agricultural sites. Officials say the crackdown is necessary to secure the food supply and remove undocumented labor, while critics argue it threatens both human rights and economic stability.
Farmworkers and organizers say the raids have traumatized communities, disrupted families, and risked food shortages. With undocumented workers making up an estimated 40 percent of the U.S. farm labor force, advocates warn that continued enforcement could reverberate far beyond the fields.
Federal immigration agents detained a California woman outside a Home Depot during a workplace raid and used excessive force during her arrest, a family friend told Newsweek.
Alejandra Anleu, a 22-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents outside the store located at San Fernando and 26th Street in Los Angeles on Monday, June 30, 2025.
She had been working there when immigration enforcers detained her.
Joyce Sanchez, a 28-year-old U.S. citizen and family friend, told Newsweek: “They used excessive force on a young woman, which was unnecessary.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told Newsweek: “FALSE. On June 30, U.S. Border Patrol encountered Alejandra Anleu, an illegal alien from Guatemala. During the encounter, Anleu freely admitted to being an illegal alien and she was placed under arrest without any injuries reported.”
Footage obtained by Newsweek shows federal agents leading her away without incident.
Federal officials on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s intensifying deportation campaign, including a controversial raid at two California cannabis farms that left one worker dead and sparked widespread protests. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said the administration would appeal a federal judge’s ruling that temporarily blocked immigration detentions based on racial profiling and restricted access to legal counsel for detainees.
“We will appeal, and we will win,” Noem said on Fox News Sunday, denying that the administration used discriminatory tactics. Homan added on CNN that physical characteristics could be one factor in establishing reasonable suspicion during enforcement actions.
The July 10 raids in Camarillo and Carpinteria resulted in 361 arrests, including 14 migrant minors, according to DHS. Protesters clashed with federal agents, and Democratic Rep. Salud Carbajal said he witnessed officers firing smoke canisters and projectiles into a crowd of civilians. ICE later accused Carbajal of sharing an agent’s business card with demonstrators.
United Farm Workers confirmed that one farmworker died from injuries sustained during the raid. Senator Alex Padilla, who was forcibly removed from a Noem press conference in June, condemned the administration’s tactics. “It’s causing ICE to get more aggressive, more cruel, more extreme, and these are the results,” Padilla said. “It’s people dying”.
Chris Landry, a longtime New Hampshire resident and green card holder, was denied re-entry into the United States after a family vacation in Canada, sparking personal and political upheaval. Landry, 46, has lived in the U.S. since he was three years old and was traveling with three of his five American-born children when he was stopped at the border in Holton, Maine.
“They pulled me aside and started questioning me about my past convictions in New Hampshire,” Landry told NBC News from New Brunswick, Canada. His record includes a 2006 marijuana possession charge and a 2007 suspended license violation—both resolved with fines and no further offenses since.
Despite his legal permanent resident status, border agents denied him entry and warned he could be detained if he returned. “I never expected that I wouldn’t be able to go back home,” Landry said. “It was scary. I felt like I was being treated like a criminal.”
Landry now faces an uncertain future, requiring an immigration judge’s approval to return. The experience has shaken his political beliefs. Once a vocal supporter of Donald Trump’s immigration policies, Landry said, “I feel differently now. I’ve been torn from my family. My life has been disregarded completely”.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection defended the decision, stating that “possessing a green card is a privilege, not a right,” and that prior convictions can trigger mandatory detention or additional scrutiny at ports of entry.
Landry has reached out to New Hampshire’s congressional delegation for help, while his children prepare to return to the U.S. without him.
A GoFundMe campaign for Jaime Alanis, a 57-year-old California farmworker who died Saturday from injuries sustained in a 30-foot fall during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid, has raised over $150,000 as of Sunday evening.
Newsweek has reached out to Alanis’ niece, Yesenia Duran, for comment via GoFundMe on Sunday.
Alanis’ death is among the first reported during an ICE raid under President Donald Trump‘s second term. The 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.
Congress has allocated funding for tens of thousands of additional detention beds in the current tax bill, as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) moves to expand detention capacity and ramp up arrests.
A federal judge on Friday concluded that immigration agents had been “unlawfully” arresting suspected illegal immigrants in Los Angeles and six surrounding counties, marking the latest legal clashes between California and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong imposed two temporary restraining orders (TRO) banning law enforcement from detaining suspected illegal migrants in the area without reasonable suspicion and insisting that those arrested must have access to legal counsel.
Jaime Alanis, a 57-year-old farmworker, died Saturday from injuries sustained during a chaotic federal immigration raid at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, California. Alanis fell roughly 30 feet from a greenhouse roof while reportedly fleeing agents, according to family members. He had worked at the farm for a decade and was the sole provider for his wife and daughter in Mexico.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed it executed criminal search warrants at the cannabis facility and a second site in Carpinteria, arresting approximately 200 undocumented individuals and identifying at least 10 migrant children on-site. DHS stated Alanis was not in custody and was not being pursued when he climbed the roof and fell.
The United Farm Workers union, which does not represent workers at the raided farm, condemned the operation, calling it “violent and cruel” and warning of its impact on food supply chains and immigrant families.
Protests erupted during the raid, with demonstrators clashing with agents in military gear. Tear gas and smoke forced crowds to disperse. Four U.S. citizens were arrested for allegedly assaulting officers, and the FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information about a suspect who fired a gun at agents.
Glass House Farms said it complied with federal warrants and is assisting detained workers with legal support. The company denied knowingly violating hiring practices or employing minors.
Democratic lawmakers condemned Florida’s newly opened Everglades immigration detention center after touring the facility Saturday, describing it as overcrowded, unsanitary, and infested with insects. “There are really disturbing, vile conditions, and this place needs to be shut the hell down,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who joined other Democrats in criticizing the 3,000-bed site dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Republicans on the same tour disputed those claims, with State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia calling the facility “well-run” and “clean.” Sen. Jay Collins added that the center was “functioning well” and equipped with backup generators and dietary tracking systems.
The tour followed an earlier attempt by Democrats to access the site, which was denied. Lawmakers have since filed a lawsuit against the DeSantis administration, alleging obstruction of oversight authority.
The detention center, built in days on a remote airstrip, is part of President Donald Trump’s push to expand migrant detention capacity to 100,000 beds. While officials say detainees have access to medical care, air conditioning, and legal services, advocates and relatives report worm-infested food, overflowing toilets, and limited hygiene access.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said any issues “have been addressed” and suggested other states may adopt similar models. The facility remains controversial, with critics calling it a political stunt and supporters touting its efficiency.
Vice President JD Vance encountered heckling and widespread protests during a family visit to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, over the weekend.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the theme park, the Los Angeles Times reported, voicing their disapproval of Vance’s presence amid ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across California.
Jane Fleming Kleeb, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, later confronted Vance inside the park while the Republican walked with his child. Vance’s visit disrupted park operations as security measures increased, resulting in prolonged wait times and temporary ride closures for other guests, according to The Independent.
Newsweek has contacted Vance’s team via email outside of normal office hours for comment.

https://www.newsweek.com/immigration-trump-ice-raids-green-card-visa-live-updates-2098579
Reuters: ICE may deport migrants to countries other than their own with just six hours notice, memo says
U.S. immigration officials may deport migrants to countries other than their home nations with as little as six hours’ notice, a top Trump administration official said in a memo, offering a preview of how deportations could ramp up.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will generally wait at least 24 hours to deport someone after informing them of their removal to a so-called “third country,” according to a memo dated Wednesday, July 9, from the agency’s acting director, Todd Lyons.
ICE could remove them, however, to a so-called “third country” with as little as six hours’ notice “in exigent circumstances,” said the memo, as long as the person has been provided the chance to speak with an attorney.
The memo states that migrants could be sent to nations that have pledged not to persecute or torture them “without the need for further procedures.”
The new ICE policy suggests President Donald Trump’s administration could move quickly to send migrants to countries around the world.
The Supreme Court in June lifted a lower court’s order limiting such deportations without a screening for fear of persecution in the destination country.
Following the high court’s ruling and a subsequent order from the justices, the Trump administration sent eight migrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam to South Sudan.
The administration last week pressed officials from five African nations – Liberia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon – to accept deportees from elsewhere, Reuters reported.
The Washington Post first reported the new ICE memo.
The administration argues the third country deportations help swiftly remove migrants who should not be in the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
Advocates have criticized the deportations as dangerous and cruel, since people could be sent to countries where they could face violence, have no ties and do not speak the language.
Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit against such rapid third-county deportations at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the policy “falls far short of providing the statutory and due process protections that the law requires.”
Third-country deportations have been done in the past, but the tool could be more frequently used as Trump tries to ramp up deportations to record levels.
During Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency, his administration deported small numbers of people from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala.
Former President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration struck a deal with Mexico to take thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, since it was difficult to deport migrants to those nations.
The new ICE memo was filed as evidence in a lawsuit over the wrongful deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.
LA Times: Abcarian: Do you believe that deported farmworkers will be replaced by Medicaid recipients?
You know, it’s not just the large language models of AI that are hallucinating.
The Trump administration is promoting the idea that if it deports all the undocumented farmworkers who plant and pick our crops, the labor gaps will be filled by able-bodied adults currently sitting around the house playing video games and mooching off taxpayers for their publicly funded healthcare.
This is absurdity masquerading as arithmetic.
The other day, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that, contrary to Trump’s own recent statements, the administration is not planning to back off mass deportations of agricultural workers.
“The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way, and we move the workforce towards automation and 100 percent American participation,” she said during an event at U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters. “With 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”
That figure is grossly misleading, and a thinly veiled effort to vilify Medicaid — Medi-Cal in California — recipients as idle, which, overwhelmingly, they are not. The number of able-bodied Americans on Medicaid who might be able to pick our lettuce and apricots or who might be able to harvest our watermelons and strawberries is closer to 5 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
But whether the number is 34 million or 5 million, it’s a fantasy to believe that Americans will do the jobs currently filled by migrant farmworkers.
“Not gonna happen,” said Manuel Cunha, head of the Nisei Farmers League, a grower support organization founded 54 years ago in response to the United Farm Workers labor movement.
In the 1990s, Cunha was involved in a disastrous attempt to get adults off welfare and into the California farming workforce. Growers coordinated with the state’s Employment Development Department, arrangements were made for child care and transportation. And yet, as Cunha told the U.S. Senate’s immigration subcommittee in 1999, only three people showed up to work in the fields. “There was no interest on the part of welfare individuals to work in agriculture.”
And there is no reason to think that would be any different today.
Farm work requires skill and physical tenacity that comes from years of experience. You don’t just plop someone into a peach orchard and tell them to go prune a tree. Or let them loose on a strawberry field and expect them to come back the next day. In 2013, my colleague Hector Becerra decided to experience farm labor for himself, and arranged to spend a day picking strawberries in Santa Maria.
The experience sounded, frankly, hellish. He worked alongside three dozen Mexican migrants “bent at an almost 90-degree angle, using two hands to pack strawberries into plastic containers that they pushed along on ungainly one-wheeled carts.”
He could not keep up with the other pickers, and by lunchtime, Hector wrote, he was sore and exhausted. He lasted little more than seven hours, and then “surrendered.”
Many of California’s thousands of migrant farmworkers have been here for decades. They cannot easily be replaced. “They are skilled laborers and their families are part of our small rural communities,” Cunha told me. “My farmers deserve a workforce that can do the job. Provide them with a work authorization card.”
It was only a few years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cunha recalled, that the country heaped praise on farmworkers. “Everybody said they were the most essential front-line workers. Every worker put their life on the line to feed the world, and today we can’t give them a little piece of paper to be here legally?”
Rollins’ claim that growers are moving “toward automation” is as preposterous as assuming native-born Americans will take to the fields.
“As far as automation,” a San Joaquin Valley grower told me, “there is no automation.” He did not want me to use his name because he’s afraid of calling attention to his fields, where workers are currently harvesting.
“If I could replace those 20 people with machines,” he said, “I would.”
But melons, strawberries and tree fruit are delicate. (“If you look at an apricot the wrong way, it will turn brown,” Cunha joked.)
Farmers can use machines to harvest produce like tomatoes that are destined for a cannery, for example. But when it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables, the grower told me, “The American consumer wants perfect fruit and there is no machine that can harvest like human hands can.”
We are at this pathetic moment because President Trump’s brand of authoritarianism is incompatible with good faith efforts to find a workable solution to our dysfunctional immigration system.
When it comes to agriculture, hospitality and construction, we need immigrant workers, most of whom are from Mexico. Our economy cannot function without them. In my view, the raids happening at California farms and Home Depot parking lots are a form of state-sponsored terrorism, aimed at instilling fear and panic in hard-working communities. They have no bearing on Trump’s campaign promise to deport violent criminals.
In May, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José), offered a new version of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a comprehensive immigration and labor bill that would offer a path to legalization for some farmworkers, reform and expand the current H-2A guest worker program, allocate funds to improve farmworker housing and require employers to use E-verify for all workers. Similar bills were passed by the House in 2019 and 2021 but died in the Senate at the hands of hard-line immigration critics. This time, Lofgren has said that the Senate will have to take it up first, as her fellow Californian, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), who chairs the House’s Immigration Subcommittee, does not support it. Don’t hold your breath.
In Trump’s world, there is no appetite for real immigration solutions. As many have noted, the president and his supporters are reveling in the violent theater of it all — the images of masked, armed men terrorizing people in the streets and fields. They see no downside to the cruelty.
Maybe they will reconsider when crops rot in the fields, hotel rooms stay dirty and construction sites are stilled. One day, the bill for this folly will come due.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-07-13/deportation-farmworkers-medicaid-brooke-rollins
Associated Press: A day outside an LA detention center shows profound impact of ICE raids on families
At a federal immigration building in downtown Los Angeles guarded by U.S. Marines, daughters, sons, aunts, nieces and others make their way to an underground garage and line up at a door with a buzzer at the end of a dirty, dark stairwell.
It’s here where families, some with lawyers, come to find their loved ones after they’ve been arrested by federal immigration agents.
For immigrants without legal status who are detained in this part of Southern California, their first stop is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in the basement of the federal building. Officers verify their identity and obtain their biometrics before transferring them to detention facilities. Upstairs, immigrants line up around the block for other services, including for green cards and asylum applications.
On a recent day, dozens of people arrived with medication, clothing and hope of seeing their loved one, if only briefly. After hours of waiting, many were turned away with no news, not even confirmation that their relative was inside. Some relayed reports of horrific conditions inside, including inmates who are so thirsty that they have been drinking from the toilets. ICE did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
Just two weeks ago, protesters marched around the federal complex following aggressive raids in Los Angeles that began June 6 and have not stopped. Scrawled expletives about President Donald Trump still mark the complex’s walls.
Those arrested are from a variety of countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, India, Iran, China and Laos. About a third of the county’s 10 million residents are foreign-born.
Many families learned about the arrests from videos circulating on social media showing masked officers in parking lots at Home Depots, at car washes and in front of taco stands.
Around 8 a.m., when attorney visits begin, a few lawyers buzz the basement door called “B-18” as families wait anxiously outside to hear any inkling of information.
9 a.m.
Christina Jimenez and her cousin arrive to check if her 61-year-old stepfather is inside.
Her family had prepared for the possibility of this happening to the day laborer who would wait to be hired outside a Home Depot in the LA suburb of Hawthorne. They began sharing locations when the raids intensified. They told him that if he were detained, he should stay silent and follow instructions.
Jimenez had urged him to stop working, or at least avoid certain areas as raids increased. But he was stubborn and “always hustled.”
“He could be sick and he’s still trying to make it out to work,” Jimenez said.
After learning of his arrest, she looked him up online on the ICE Detainee Locator but couldn’t find him. She tried calling ICE to no avail.
Two days later, her phone pinged with his location downtown.
“My mom’s in shock,” Jimenez said. “She goes from being very angry to crying, same with my sister.”
Jimenez says his name into the intercom – Mario Alberto Del Cid Solares. After a brief wait, she is told yes, he’s there.
She and her cousin breathe a sigh of relief — but their questions remain.
Her biggest fear is that instead of being sent to his homeland of Guatemala, he will be deported to another country, something the Supreme Court recently ruled was allowed.
9:41 a.m.
By mid-morning, Estrella Rosas and her mother have come looking for her sister, Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen. A day earlier, they saw Velez being detained after they dropped her off at her marketing job at a shoe company downtown.
“My mom told me to call 911 because someone was kidnapping her,” Rosas said.
Stuck on a one-way street, they had to circle the block. By the time they got back, she says they saw Velez in handcuffs being put into a car without license plates.
Velez’s family believes she was targeted for looking Hispanic and standing near a tamale stand.
Rosas has her sister’s passport and U.S. birth certificate, but learns she is not there. They find her next door in a federal detention center. She was accused of obstructing immigration officers, which the family denies, but is released the next day.
11:40 a.m.
About 20 people are now outside. Some have found cardboard to sit on after waiting hours.
One family comforts a woman who is crying softly in the stairwell.
Then the door opens, and a group of lawyers emerge. Families rush to ask if the attorneys could help them.
Kim Carver, a lawyer with the Trans Latino Coalition, says she planned to see her client, a transgender Honduran woman, but she was transferred to a facility in Texas at 6:30 that morning.
Carver accompanied her less than a week ago for an immigration interview and the asylum officer told her she had a credible case. Then ICE officers walked in and detained her.
“Since then, it’s been just a chase trying to find her,” she says.
12:28 p.m.
As more people arrive, the group begins sharing information. One person explains the all-important “A-number,” the registration number given to every detainee, which is needed before an attorney can help.
They exchange tips like how to add money to an account for phone calls. One woman says $20 lasted three or four calls for her.
Mayra Segura is looking for her uncle after his frozen popsicle cart was abandoned in the middle of the sidewalk in Culver City.
“They couldn’t find him in the system,” she says.
12:52 p.m.
Another lawyer, visibly frustrated, comes out the door. She’s carrying bags of clothes, snacks, Tylenol, and water that she says she wasn’t allowed to give to her client, even though he says he had been given only one water bottle over the past two days.
The line stretches outside the stairwell into the sun. A man leaves and returns with water for everyone.
Nearly an hour after family visitations are supposed to begin, people are finally allowed in.
2:12 p.m.
Still wearing hospital scrubs from work, Jasmin Camacho Picazo comes to see her husband again.
She brought a sweater because he had told her he was cold, and his back injury was aggravated from sleeping on the ground.
“He mentioned this morning (that) people were drinking from the restroom toilet water,” Picazo says.
On her phone, she shows footage of his car left on the side of the road after his arrest. The window was smashed and the keys were still in the ignition.
“I can’t stop crying,” Picazo says.
Her son keeps asking: “Is Papa going to pick me up from school?”
2:21 p.m.
More than five hours after Jimenez and her cousin arrive, they see her stepfather.
“He was sad and he’s scared,” says Jimenez afterwards. “We tried to reassure him as much as possible.”
She wrote down her phone number, which he had not memorized, so he could call her.
2:57 p.m.
More people arrive as others are let in.
Yadira Almadaz comes out crying after seeing her niece’s boyfriend for only five minutes. She says he was in the same clothes he was wearing when he was detained a week ago at an asylum appointment in the city of Tustin. He told her he’d only been given cookies and chips to eat each day.
“It breaks my heart seeing a young man cry because he’s hungry and thirsty,” she says.
3:56 p.m.
Four minutes before visitation time is supposed to end, an ICE officer opens the door and announces it’s over.
One woman snaps at him in frustration. The officer tells her he would get in trouble if he helped her past 4 p.m.
More than 20 people are still waiting in line. Some trickle out. Others linger, staring at the door in disbelief.

Guardian: The desperate drive to secure passports for thousands of US-born Haitian kids – before it’s too late
Advocates in Springfield, Ohio – a city thousands of Haitians now call home – fear the fallout of Trump’s DHS revoking temporary protected status for Haitian nationals
Among the group is a small number of charity volunteers working to avoid a potential humanitarian disaster: that thousands of US-born Haitian children could become stateless, or separated from their families.
“In the last several months we realized that the closer we got to the deportations and revocation of statuses meant that all these people who have babies … if they don’t have passports for their children, how are they going to take them out of the country with them?” says Casey Rollins, a volunteer at the local St Vincent de Paul chapter.
“All you have to look at is the previous [Trump] administration.” A Reuters report from 2023 found that nearly 1,000 children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border in 2017 and 2018 had never been reunited.
Springfield is home to about 1,217 and counting American-born Haitian children under the age of four, with several thousand more dependants under the age of 18. While the number of adults in the Ohio town of 60,000 people legally in the country on TPS is not known, local leaders estimate 10,000 to 15,000 Haitian nationals have come to Springfield, drawn by employment opportunities, since 2017. In April, data provided by the Springfield city school district to the Springfield News-Sun found that the district had 1,258 students enrolled as English language learners in K-12 schools, though that doesn’t mean all are children of Haitian descent.
For three months, Rollins, volunteers at Springfield Neighbors United and others have been working with dozens of Haitians who turn up at charity organizations seeking advice and help every day. One of the most requested issues from parents, Rollins says, is figuring out how to apply for birth certificates for their children, before it’s too late.
“If we can’t stop the deportations, we want to help get them a passport. That way, if they are deported or go to Canada or another welcoming nation, they’d be able to take the child,” she says.
“If it takes three or four months [to complete the bureaucratic process from securing a birth certificate to acquiring a passport], we have got to get moving on this.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/04/passports-haitian-kids-tps-trump-administration
Guardian: Ice arrests of US military veterans and their relatives are on the rise: ‘a country that I fought for’
As Trump urges more deportations, veterans are seeing their parents, children and even themselves detained
The son of an American citizen and military veteran – but who has no citizenship to any country – was deported from the US to Jamaica in late May.
Jermaine Thomas’s deportation, recently reported on by the Austin Chronicle, is one of a growing number of immigration cases involving military service members’ relatives or even veterans themselves who have been ensnared in the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.
As the Chronicle reported, Thomas was born on a US army base in Germany to an American citizen father, who was originally born in Jamaica and is now dead. Thomas does not have US, German or Jamaican citizenship – but Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency deported him anyway to Jamaica, a country in which he had never set foot.
Thomas had spent two-and-a-half months incarcerated while waiting for an update on his case. He was previously at the center of a case brought before the US supreme court regarding his unique legal status.
The federal government argued that Thomas – who had previously received a deportation order – was not a citizen simply because he was born on a US army base, and it used prior criminal convictions to buttress the case against him. He petitioned for a review of the order, but the supreme court denied him, finding his father “did not meet the physical presence requirement of the [law] in force at the time of Thomas’s birth”.
…
In another recent case, the wife of another Marine Corps veteran was detained by Ice despite still breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. According to the Associated Press, the veteran’s wife had been going through a process to obtain legal residency.
…
In March, Ice officials arrested the daughter of a US veteran who had been fighting a legal battle regarding her status. Alma Bowman, 58, was taken into custody by Ice during a check-in at the Atlanta field office, despite her having lived in the US since she was 10 years old.
Bowman was born in the Philippines during the Vietnam war, to a US navy service member from Illinois stationed there. She had lived in Georgia for almost 50 years. Her permanent residency was revoked following a minor criminal conviction from 20 years ago, leading her to continue a legal battle to obtain citizenship in the US.
…
In another recent case, a US army veteran and green-card holder left on his own to South Korea. His deportation order was due to charges related to drug possession and an issue with drug addiction after being wounded in combat in the 1980s, for which he earned the prestigious Purple Heart citation.
“I can’t believe this is happening in America,” Sae Joon Park, who had held legal permanent residency, told National Public Radio. “That blows me away – like, [it is] a country that I fought for.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/28/us-military-veterans-detained-trump
Newsweek: Green card-holder with 2 US citizen kids held by ICE for over two months
Claudio Cortez-Herrera, a green card holder from Mexico who has lived in the U.S. for more than two decades and has two U.S. citizen children, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials for over two months.
…
Cortez-Herrera, 34, has been in the U.S. for over two decades, his fiancee Leticia Ortiz Lopez wrote in an online fundraiser seeking financial assistance for legal fees and child support. He is the father of their two U.S. citizen children, a 2-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son with autism.
She told local outlet 13 On Your Side that he was on his way to work and “putting in the house payment across the street at the drop box post office, when he got surrounded by 10 ICE agents, and he was taken.”
ICE confirmed in a Facebook post that Cortez-Herrera was arrested by Detroit-based immigration officials on April 23. Newsweek confirmed in the ICE detainee database that he is still in custody, held at the Calhoun County Correctional Center in Battle Creek, Michigan.
In the Facebook post, ICE noted Cortez-Herrera’s previous criminal record, writing, “Convicted in New Castle, Del [Delaware],” noting that his conviction was for “Planning first-degree arson & first-degree reckless endangering.”
Newsweek has been unable to independently verify the conviction.
His wife said in the GoFundMe: “Over 20 years ago, as a teen, he made a mistake. He took responsibility and left that life behind.”

https://www.newsweek.com/green-card-holder-2-us-citizen-kids-held-ice-over-two-months-2091660