Mexican nationals are more likely to be detained after being apprehended by federal immigration officers, according to data compiled by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
TRAC figures show that in July, 57 percent of Mexican nationals arrested for crossing the border or for being in the country illegally were held in detention centers while their proceedings take place in immigration court.
By contrast, overall, only 30 percent of migrants were detained after their apprehensions.
According to TRAC, ICE determines when a person is held, and that there is no specific pattern in the decision-making.
“In reality, little is known about the factors that influence these custody decisions,” writes TRAC. “The ICE agents have wide discretion to make decisions and their criteria is rarely revealed.”
According to TRAC, it appears decisions are taken by the agents themselves and are influenced by their own backgrounds and ethnic identity.
However, the state in which migrants are apprehended can also determine whether they are detained.
TRAC says being detained can have major implications, adding that individuals who remain in custody have a more difficult time obtaining the documents and the legal help to make a case against deportation.
TRAC also says that the vast majority of individuals in ICE custody, through June 30, had no criminal record, and that 4 out of 5, either had no record or had only committed a minor offense such as a traffic violation.
Tag Archives: Nicaragua
CNN: Immigration raid at New York business left workers terrified and slowed production, co-owner says
When Lenny Schmidt arrived at his family-run nutrition bar manufacturing business in upstate New York Thursday morning, federal immigration agents were already there.
“The agents were swarming the plant,” he said. “There were probably over 100 of these agents, on four-wheelers, on foot, they had dogs.”
“They had surrounded the facility and forced their way through into the plant … using, I think, crowbars,” Schmidt, the company’s co-owner and vice president, told CNN’s Laura Coates on Friday.
By the end of the hourslong raid at Nutrition Bar Confectioners in Cato, a rural community about 30 miles northwest of Syracuse, dozens of employees had been detained.
The raid in Cato coincided with a similar operation in Ellabell, Georgia, where federal agents detained 475 workers, mostly Korean nationals suspected of living or working in the US illegally. It marked the largest sweep yet in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown at worksites, which has increasingly targeted industries like manufacturing and agriculture that often depend on immigrant labor.
At the New York facility, agents sealed the exits, halting production and corralling workers for questioning.
“They cornered all of our workers, seemingly targeting just the Hispanic employees, separated everybody … later on, they ended up escorting them into vans,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt said his company, which has been operating since 1978, complies with all federal labor laws.
“We vet each person as best as we can in accordance with those laws and get the correct documentation to support this,” he said, adding that all his employees possessed the necessary documentation to legally work in the US.
ICE told CNN affiliate WSTM the raid was a “court-authorized enforcement operation,” but did not provide further details. Employees told WSTM that around 60 workers were detained. CNN has reached out to the agency for details.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul sharply condemned the raid, calling it a cruel disruption to immigrant families.
“What they did was shatter hard-working families who are simply trying to build a life here, just like millions of immigrants before them,” the governor said.
‘Everyone got scared’
The operation began around 9 a.m., according to a Guatemalan worker who has been working on the production line for two years. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the worker described the mounting panic as agents surrounded the building and gathered up to 70 workers – many from Guatemala and Nicaragua – into the lunchroom, where the entire workforce was questioned.
“They surrounded the building. Everyone got scared.”
The worker, a legal US resident, said ICE agents neither showed warrants nor explained the reason for the raid.
“They went straight to the workers,” the employee said. “They asked what country we were from, if we had permission to be in the US. They demanded papers.”
After showing his identification card, the worker was released within half an hour, but others, including coworkers with valid work permits, were taken into custody, he said.
CNN contacted the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to find out if the detainees had valid work permits and awaits a response.
Some employees who were released from detention returned to the plant almost immediately, Schmidt said.
“It’s heartbreaking … some of them came back to work. I remember seeing somebody punching the clock and I walked up to him and I couldn’t believe my eyes. So I shook his hand and gave him a hug,” he said.
Production at the plant came to a standstill during the raid, but Schmidt said operations have resumed – though at reduced capacity.
“It’s going to slow us down probably half speed or just less until we get hopefully some of these workers back,” Schmidt said, adding they will also start the hiring process for new workers this weekend.
“What makes us successful is having these wonderful workers,” he said. “We hope and pray for our workers to be safe and to return home to their families and, hopefully, back to work.”

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/06/us/cato-new-york-immigration-raid-business-owner-hnk
News Nation: ICE officer attacked while trying to take man into custody: Sheriff
A federal immigration officer was attacked and injured while trying to take a man into custody in Florida, according to local authorities.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the incident unfolded Tuesday morning in Lakeland.
Two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had followed Denis Corea Miranda, 21, because he had a warrant for deportation, according to the sheriff’s office.
Authorities said Miranda was in a vehicle with two other people, who were also allegedly in the country illegally. Miranda was in the passenger seat of the vehicle.
An ICE officer walked to the passenger side of the car and informed Miranda that they were going to take him into custody. It was at that point that a fight began, Judd said.
“I’m told that the fight lasted about five minutes,” he said, later emphasizing that five minutes is a “very long tussle.”
Officials said Miranda was on top of the ICE officer when the second officer sprayed Miranda with pepper spray. Miranda then ran into the woods, according to Judd.
The ICE officers chased after Miranda but said they lost him in the woods. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office was then called to assist, launching a helicopter, drones and sending out K-9 teams.
“They were just overwhelmed. The issue is ICE needs help,” Judd said, explaining that the officers were also monitoring the two other people in the car.
The ICE officer who got into a fight with Miranda was taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for a shoulder injury and is expected to recover.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time we’ve had an ICE agent injured in the line of duty, and he was significantly injured, he had to go to the hospital,” Judd said.
An employee at a nearby business eventually encountered Miranda hiding among several steel drums, according to officials. Judd said Miranda asked the employee for water, but the employee felt something was off.
The employee went inside and called 911, alerting law enforcement officers to Miranda’s location. Authorities said Miranda was arrested soon after.
An employee at another nearby business told NewsNation affiliate WFLA she saw deputies with their guns drawn.
“You could tell that it was kind of like a manhunt situation,” she said. “So my first response, honestly, was like we need to lock the doors.”
Judd referenced a photo showing deputies taking Miranda, who was smiling, into custody.
“We have him under arrest. He’s smiling,” the sheriff said. “I bet we’ve wiped the smile off his face.”
According to the sheriff’s office, Miranda faces a slew of charges, which all have been upgraded to more serious felonies due to Florida’s recently passed immigration legislation.
The charges include battery of a law enforcement officer, resisting with violence, resisting without violence, false imprisonment, and burglary of an occupied structure.
Judd said the two other people who were in the car with Miranda cooperated with law enforcement and were taken into ICE custody.
The employee said she is glad the situation wasn’t worse, and also glad Miranda didn’t come into her business.
“That’s scary to think about because he chose violence with cops. If I wouldn’t have let him in or if he came in before we lock the doors, what would happen, you know?” she said.
According to officials, Miranda, who is from Nicaragua, is believed to have entered the country in 2021. Judd said he was stopped by Border Patrol and was later released with a court date.
Miranda was arrested in July 2024 in Galveston, Texas, for DUI, but was released and never showed up for court, according to authorities.
“This guy just wanted to get away, and he was going to do whatever he needed to do to get away,” Judd said.
Resist!
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/ice-officer-attacked-florida-arrest
Washington Examiner: Judges get emotional on Trump efforts to end temporary immigration programs
The Trump administration has faced various legal setbacks in its efforts to implement sweeping deportations and immigration policies, with some of the judges issuing orders accusing officials of racism and unfavorable comparisons in dramatic opinions.
Judge Trina Thompson, a Biden appointee on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, offered the latest lengthy opinion, aimed at the morals of Trump administration officials trying to end temporary immigration programs for foreign nationals.
Challenges to revoking TPS bring racism allegations by judges
In a 37-page opinion Thursday blocking the administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua, she accused officials of “racial animus” based on their statements about criminal migrants.
“By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, [Homeland] Secretary [Kristi] Noem’s statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population,” Thompson wrote in her opinion.
Thompson wrote in her rejection that she “shares” the “concern” of those suing the Trump administration regarding the president’s ability to end TPS at his discretion. The Biden-appointed judge added that her court “does not forget that this country has bartered with human lives” and included a lengthy footnote discussing the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
“The emancipation of slaves saw the same pattern, but in reverse. Many whites were uncomfortable with the idea of free non-white people in their communities, even if they had lived in the United States for generations,” Thompson wrote in her opinion. “Plaintiffs’ allegations echo these same traditions.”
Thompson also alleges that ending TPS for the three countries and requiring those who had the temporary status to return to their home country is the equivalent of freed slaves being removed from the U.S. and sent to Africa.
Earlier this year, Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS for Venezuela and accused the Trump administration of similar claims of racial animus in his 78-page opinion.
“Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes,” Chen wrote in his March order.
The Trump administration’s official reasons for ending the Temporary Protected Status for the countries have been that the reasons outlined for initially granting TPS are no longer applicable, and conditions have improved.
Other decisions bring emotional responses
While many dramatic opinions from federal judges blocking the Trump administration’s policies have come in TPS lawsuits, judges have also made fiery accusations in other issues. A ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday made another unfavorable comparison about the Trump administration’s policies.
Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, compared the president’s policies blocking the administration from rapidly deporting people who had previously been paroled into the country to the countries that illegal immigrants have fled in her order.
“This case’s underlying question, then, asks whether parolees who escaped oppression will have the chance to plead their case within a system of rules,” Cobb wrote. “Or, alternatively, will they be summarily removed from a country that, as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers without explanation or charges … may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?”
Among the various rulings against the Trump administration in district courts, a case regarding the administration’s cancellation of diversity, equity, and inclusion grants at the National Institutes of Health brought another dramatic racial discrimination claim.
“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” U.S. District Judge William Young said in his ruling in June. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”
While the Trump administration has faced dramatic and blistering opinions at lower district courts, it has racked up several wins on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket on various issues, including terminating TPS.
The Supreme Court’s order allowing the administration to proceed with various policies, including immigration policies, has typically been accompanied by fiery dissents from the liberal minority on the high court.
The judges are seeing right through the Trump regime’s disgusting racist agenda!
Washington Examiner: Judge blocks ICE deportation strategy for paroled immigrants
A federal judge on Friday blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “expedited removal” deportation strategy to detain paroled immigrants as quickly as possible.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration’s use of expedited removal exceeded the Department of Homeland Security’s legal authority, in addition to being arbitrary and capricious. The order temporarily halts the federal government’s efforts to deport immigrants previously paroled into the United States at a port of entry.
Cobb specifically blocked three actions: a DHS memo dated Jan. 23 directing immigration officials to apply expedited removal as broadly as possible; an ICE directive dated Feb. 18 authorizing officers to consider expedited removal for “paroled arriving aliens”; and a DHS notice dated March 25 terminating the Biden-era parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.
The court took issue with the administration’s actions to dismiss parole immigrants’ pending proceedings in immigration court and proceed to arrest them outside the courtroom afterward.
“This case’s underlying question, then, asks whether parolees who escaped oppression will have the chance to plead their case within a system of rules,” Cobb wrote in the 84-page ruling. “Or, alternatively, will they be summarily removed from a country that, as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers without explanation or charges, may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?”
Such an incident occurred in June, when New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for refusing to leave an immigrant whose case was dismissed moments earlier. Lander and his companion were both restrained by masked plainclothes officers as seen in a viral video.
A growing number of Democratic lawmakers have since crafted legislation to bar ICE officers from wearing masks, which the agency says are used to protect its officers from getting doxxed.
Friday’s order is estimated to affect “hundreds of thousands of paroled aliens,” Cobb wrote.
The Trump administration criticized the ruling, saying it defies a Supreme Court ruling from May that upheld the termination of parole status for more than 530,000 illegal immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
“Judge Cobb is flagrantly ignoring the United States Supreme Court, which upheld expedited removals of illegal aliens by a 7-2 majority,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “This ruling is lawless and won’t stand.”
Whine, bitch, whine!

Daily Caller: ‘Another Win For The American People’: Appeals Court Hands Trump Admin Deportation Victory
An appellate court ruled the Trump administration can move forward with ending temporary deportation protections for thousands of Afghan and Cameroonian nationals.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is allowed to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for roughly 10,000 Afghans and Cameroonians while a court challenge against the move continues to play out in court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday. The court determined that while CASA — an immigration advocacy group suing DHS — has a plausible case, there is not enough evidence to block the TPS phaseout while the court challenge continues.
“We agree with the district court that CASA, Inc. has stated a plausible claim for relief with regard to the alleged ‘preordained’ decision to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for Afghanistan and Cameroon, and that the balance of the equities and the public interest weigh in favor of CASA, Inc,” the court stated, according to court documents.
“At this procedural posture, however, there is insufficient evidence to warrant the extraordinary remedy of a postponement of agency action pending appeal,” the ruling continued.
The Monday court ruling marks the latest victory in the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to keep TPS designations temporary.
A federal authority first established in the Immigration Act of 1990, TPS bestows sweeping deportation protections and work eligibility to certain foreign nationals living in the U.S., including illegal migrants, whose home countries are experiencing any number of conflicts or devastating natural disasters, making it potentially unsafe for them to go back, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
The authority does not grant permanent legal status, according to USCIS. Those who lose TPS become amenable to removal unless they obtain another form of immigration status.
Despite its purpose as a temporary form of deportation protection, the authority has served as a more permanent measure in practice.
Honduras and Nicaragua, for example, were initially designated for TPS roughly 25 years ago based on an environmental disaster that resulted in “substantial, but temporary” disruption of living conditions, according to a DHS memo issued earlier in July. Since that time, however, both Central American countries have seen their TPS designations “continuously extended” over the years, with Nicaragua’s designation being extended a total of 13 consecutive times.
The Trump administration is moving to finally end TPS for Nicaragua and Honduras, arguing that conditions in both countries no longer support the deportation protection designation. Earlier this year, the administration also announced it would nix the Biden White House’s TPS extension for Haiti, a designation the country has enjoyed since 2010, and revoke an 18-month TPS extension granted to roughly 600,000 Venezuelan nationals by Biden officials.
“This is another win for the American people and the safety of our communities,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated Tuesday to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “TPS was never intended to be a de facto asylum program, yet it has been abused as one for decades.”
No, you ignorant bitch, this isn’t a “win” for anyone except our deranged King Donald and his entourage of blind sycophants.
This is a stain on America. We provided shelter for 10,000 Afghans and Cameroonians who were at risk in their home countries; you and your cronies are pulling the rug out from under them. If you actually succeed in deporting them, many, perhaps thousands, will end up injured and murdered.
“DHS records indicate that there are Afghan nationals who are TPS recipients who have been the subject of administrative investigations for fraud, public safety, and national security,” McLaughlin continued. “This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary.”
In May, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem declared TPS for Afghan nationals would end within 60 days, according to a release. The number of Afghans on TPS is relatively small compared to the number of Afghans who arrived to the U.S. en masse amid President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from the country and obtained other forms of immigration benefits.
Roughly 9,600 Afghans and nearly 3,500 Cameroonians currently have TPS, according to The National Immigration Forum. The deportation protections for Afghan nationals were slated to end earlier in July and protections for Cameroonian nationals are set to expire on Aug. 4.
What’s needed now is a direct appeal to the Supreme Court, if they will hear the case, or a conflicting opinion in another circuit, which normally would force the issue to the Supreme Court.

https://dailycaller.com/2025/07/22/court-ruling-hands-trump-admin-tps-win
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
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.
Huffington Post: Trump’s Immigration Arrests Are Seeing A Wave Of Resistance
Recent weeks have seen the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” program kick into overdrive.
Militarized federal agents are working hard to meet the White House’s sky-high arrest quotas, and the number of people in immigration detention is surging past record highs. That means focusing even more on otherwise law-abiding people who happen to have irregular immigration statuses ― people who pay taxes, show up to court dates and check-ins, work hard to provide for their families, and followed previous administrations’ rules to apply for humanitarian protections. It also means interrogating people at swap meets, and underground parties, or those who just have brown skin.
The nation disapproves, polling shows. Massive protests around the country ― in both large urban areas and small towns ― have showcased Americans’ fury at having their loved ones and neighbors ripped out of their communities at random.
Across the country, people are also taking action to slow down what they see as the egregious over-enforcement of immigration law, attempting to starve Trump’s mass deportation machine of fuel and to throw sand in its gears.
…
But activists and community organizers have worked for generations to slow down deportations ― and, as it turns out, Trump’s deportation agenda relies upon some crucial choke points. Here they are.
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One key opportunity for bystanders to intervene in the deportation process comes during the actual moments where immigration agents may be making an arrest.
Take the case of Bishop-elect Michael Pham, Pope Leo XIV’s first bishop appointment in the United States. On World Refugee Day last week, Pham and other faith leaders visited an immigration court. The ICE agents who in recent weeks have been arresting immigrants showing up to routine hearings in the building “scattered” and did not take anyone into custody, Times of San Diego reported.
In Chicago, two National Guard soldiers appeared in uniform with their mother at her immigration appointment, alongside two members of Congress. The soldiers’ mother returned home without incident.
Not everyone has the star power to discourage detentions by their mere presence. But at courthouses and ICE check-ins where Trump has taken advantage of a legal maneuver known as “expedited removal” to arrest and deport people without due process, volunteers accompanying immigrants can document arrests and sometimes provide informal legal information to people who might not know about ICE’stactics.
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Spreading information about people’s legal rights during interactions with law enforcement, known as “know your rights” information, has also grown enormously popular.
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Getting Everyone Legal Representation: The data is clear. Legal representation is associated withbetter outcomes in immigration court.
That’s because the deck is stacked against people in the immigration legal system. Unlike in criminal court, people in the immigration process are not guaranteed free legal representation if they can’t afford it, even if they’re detained behind bars.
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Opposing Local Cooperation With The Feds: Even though immigration enforcement is a federal job, local cooperation is a crucial part of the operation.
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Fighting Trump’s Massive DHS Budget Increase
Mirror: Texas man born on U.S. Army Base abroad deported to country he’s never been to and left stateless
A man from Texas claims that he was locked up in an ICE detention center for months before being sent to his father’s home country, where he has never been before.
A Texas man is currently stranded in Jamaica after getting deported for being born on a U.S. Army base in Germany.
Jermaine Thomas was dragged onto a deportation flight by immigration agents last week over a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he did not qualify for U.S. citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Thomas was born in 1986 on a U.S. Army Base in Germany, where his Jamaican-born father had served for nearly two decades. However, the military brat says he has never visited the Caribbean island before.
Now, he is stranded there by a fluke without citizenship to any country, rendering him stateless. He is unsure how long he will be trapped there and, in the meantime, is unsure how to find employment, especially since he struggles to understand the native dialect.
Long article, he almost got deported to Nicaragua instead of Jamaica. Click on links below to read the entire article:

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/texas-man-born-us-army-1230810