Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks to a crowd of people who held a prayer vigil and rally on his behalf outside the ICE building in Baltimore on Aug. 25, 2025. Lydia Walther Rodriguez with CASA interprets for him. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)

WASHINGTON — The first year of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House was defined by clashes with the judiciary branch, as the president and his administration pushed forward with an aggressive immigration agenda.

In the past year, the Trump administration has aimed to drastically change immigration policy in the United States, including by stripping millions of immigrants of their legal status and attempting to redefine the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.  

The moves have often run directly against the judiciary branch. 

Federal judges briefly stalled the Trump administration’s plans to deploy the National Guard in Portland, Oregon, for immigration enforcement. They also blocked the invocation of an archaic wartime law to expel immigrants from the country — a move that raised concerns, all the way up to the Supreme Court, about skirting the due process rights of immigrants.

In response, the president for the last year frequently battled with federal judges, such as in June, when the Justice Department sued all judges in federal court in Maryland over a two-day pause in deportations to ensure due process rights for immigrants.

Trump also fixated on certain judges that put his policies on hold, such as the District of Columbia’s Chief Judge James Emanuel Boasberg.

Boasberg blocked the Trump administration from deporting certain immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and ordered the return of deportation flights that, despite his restraining order, still landed at a brutal prison in El Salvador. 

Trump’s singling out of Boasberg in late March, and calling for his impeachment, prompted a rare rebuke from conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

But the Supreme Court has often handed wins to the Trump administration on numerous emergency appeals. The high court allowed for deportations of immigrants to countries they have no ties to, referred to as third-country removals, and allowed the use of race in immigration enforcement in Los Angeles. 

The president has found himself at odds with a range of groups in response to his harsh immigration policy.

A group of Quakers sued the Department of Homeland Security after officials removed a so-called sensitive locations policy that limited immigration enforcement in places of worship. 

The Trump administration also faced backlash in its attempt to quickly deport Guatemalan children in the middle of the night, where a Trump nominated judge said the Department of Justice’s arguments for the move “crumbled like a house of cards.”

Out of the dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration, here are the five most significant court cases related to the president’s immigration policies:

Alien Enemies Act

Last March, two deportation planes carrying immigrants removed under an 18th-century wartime law were ordered to return to the U.S. by Boasberg, chief judge for the District Court for the District of Columbia. 

But the planes still landed in El Salvador, and 137 Venezuelan men were sent to a brutal prison known as CECOT after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The wartime law would apply to any Venezuelan national 14 and older who was suspected of being a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. 

Boasberg then spent months probing whether Trump officials defied his order to turn the planes around. Last month, he concluded that the deportations were illegal and carried out in defiance of his order.

The 137 Venezuelan men were eventually released from CECOT last summer through a prisoner exchange. Boasberg determined that even though the men are no longer imprisoned, they still need to be afforded their due process rights and he ordered the Trump administration to propose a way to afford those due process rights. 

In the latest major development, last month he directed the administration to create a plan on how to do that, such as providing some form of video interview before an immigration judge. 

The Trump administration has argued because of the U.S. military operations to extract Venezuela’s president from the county, the situation is fluid, and they cannot provide a timeline for complying with Boasberg’s order from last month. 

The Justice Department’s most recent filing, from Jan. 12, objects to the court’s order to facilitate remote due process hearings, and “given the current political instability in Venezuela, there is a serious risk of intentional interference with remote proceedings.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also submitted a Jan. 12 declaration to the court, saying that “introducing the matter of the disposition of the 137 class members into these discussions at this time would risk material damage to U.S. foreign policy interests in Venezuela.” 

He added that the U.S. does not know where the 137 Venezuelan men are. 

“Given the passage of time, the U.S. government does not know—nor does it have any way of knowing—the whereabouts of class members, including whether anyone has departed Venezuela or whether the regime subsequently took anyone back into custody,” Rubio said. 

Kilmar Abrego Garcia

The wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant and longtime Maryland man, cast a national spotlight on the president’s aggressive immigration crackdown. 

Abrego Garcia’s case has highlighted the Trump administration’s appetite for mass deportations. The case started last March in the District Court of the District of Maryland, after Trump officials mistakenly removed Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, despite removal protections placed by an immigration judge in 2019 because it was likely Abrego Garcia would face violence if returned to his home country. 

But in March, Abrego Garcia was placed on a plane, along with Venezuelans removed under the Alien Enemies Act, to the brutal El Salvador mega-prison known as CECOT.

Federal Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return, but the Trump administration took the issue all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that it could not force another government to comply with the U.S.

The Supreme Court sided with Abrego Garcia, but stopped short of ordering his return.   

Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S. several months later to face a criminal indictment in Tennessee over allegations of human smuggling. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges, and another federal judge has found cause that the Justice Department brought the indictment in a vindictive move against Abrego Garcia.

Since his return, Abrego Garcia has detailed psychological and physical torture he experienced at CECOT. The Trump administration has also tried to remove him to a country to which he has no ties because of the 2019 removal protections.

Trump officials re-detained Abrego Garcia and have tried to remove him to the African nations of Eswatini, Ghana, Uganda and Liberia, despite Costa Rica’s willingness to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee and his willingness to go. 

For that reason, Xinis ordered Abrego Garcia’s release from an ICE facility in Pennsylvania and barred the Trump administration from re-detaining him. 

She is currently overseeing Abrego Garcia’s challenge to his detention on the grounds that the Trump administration is using his imprisonment as punishment rather than for the purpose of removal. 

A Jan. 14 hearing was the most recent development in Abrego Garcia’s case. 

There, Xinis briefly conferred with his lawyers and Department of Justice attorneys regarding the timing of a final order of removal for Abrego Garcia was issued — the question was whether it was in 2019 or January 2025. 

The timing of the order of removal could determine whether the Trump administration can re-detain Abrego Garcia for removal. Xinis in December ordered Abrego Garcia’s release, because she determined the Trump administration was unlawfully detaining him and said ICE failed repeatedly to show a final order of removal existed.

Xinis said she plans to make a final decision in Abrego Garcia’s case by Feb. 12.

Birthright Citizenship

One of Trump’s first executive orders he signed on Inauguration Day was ending the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. 

Under birthright citizenship, all children born in the United States are considered citizens, regardless of their parents’ legal status. There is a small carve-out for the children born of diplomats. 

If birthright citizenship were to be eliminated, more than 250,000 children born each year would not be granted U.S. citizenship and it would effectively create a class of 2.7 million stateless people by 2045, according to a recent study by the think tank the Migration Policy Institute.

In response to Trump’s executive order, multiple lawsuits were filed and lower courts across the country have granted preliminary injunctions against the order. 

One of the challenges to birthright citizenship, brought by Democratic attorneys general, made its way to the Supreme Court, but the Trump administration asked the justices to weigh in on the issue of nationwide injunctions issued by lower courts, rather than the merits of birthright citizenship. 

The justices decided on an order that limited nationwide injunctions, such as class action suits. 

The merits of birthright citizenship are now before the Supreme Court, which is expected to hear oral arguments in February. 

That birthright citizenship case is Barbara v. Trump, which stems from a case in New Hampshire. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to bar the executive order from taking effect against a class of babies born on or after Feb. 20, 2025. Those children would have been denied citizenship under the president’s executive order.  

Lawmakers’ Access to ICE Facilities 

As the Trump administration continues with aggressive immigration enforcement and detention, one of the few tools Democrats have, as the minority party, is oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. 

More than 60,000 immigrants are detained across various ICE facilities in the country, and Democrats argue they need access to conduct oversight at the facilities. Under a 2019 appropriations law, any lawmaker can carry out an unannounced visit at a federal facility that holds immigrants. 

But after several Democrats were denied access to ICE facilities in July, due to a policy instituted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that required seven days notice, a dozen House Democrats sued. 

Last month, a federal judge granted the lawmakers’ request to stay the new policy by Noem. But after Minnesota lawmakers said they were denied an oversight visit to an ICE facility following a deadly shooting by an immigration officer in Minneapolis, Democrats were back in court Jan. 14.

Noem required a seven-day notice, nearly identical to the policy that initially prompted the suit from Democrats last year. 

The federal judge handling the case, Jia Cobb, is probing whether the Trump administration has violated her court order.

Democrats who sued include: Joe Neguse of Colorado, Adriano Espaillat of New York, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Robert Garcia of California, J. Luis Correa of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Veronica Escobar of Texas, Dan Goldman of New York, Jimmy Gomez of California, Raul Ruiz of California, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Norma Torres of California.

Expanded Use of Expedited Removal 

A pillar of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign is the expanded use of expedited removal. The Trump policy allows the removal of immigrants through the interior of the country without an appearance before an immigration judge.

In March, immigration advocacy groups sued the Trump administration over the policy, arguing it stripped due process rights of immigrants. 

In August, the District Court for the District of Columbia issued a stay in the policy, temporarily blocking the Trump administration from using it. The Department of Justice appealed, and in September a panel of appellate judges denied the Trump administration’s request to lift the lower courts’ stay. 

Most recently, in December, the Trump administration defended the merits of its fast-track deportation policy before a panel of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Department of Justice argued that immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years without legal authorization are not guaranteed due process.

There were 105 immigration arrests in October at a horse racetrack in Wilder, Idaho. Idaho saw one of the country’s largest increases in immigration arrests this year through mid-October compared with the same period in the Biden administration. (Photo courtesy of ACLU of Idaho)

Immigration arrests under the Trump administration continued to increase through mid-October, reaching rates of more than 30,000 a month. But, rather than the convicted criminals the administration has said it’s focused on, an ever-larger share of those arrests were for solely immigration violations.

In 45 states, immigration arrests more than doubled compared with the same period last year, during the Biden administration. The largest increases: There were 1,190 arrests in the District of Columbia compared with just seven last year under the Biden administration. Arrests were also more than five times higher in New Mexico, Idaho, Oregon and Virginia.

“The result stands in contrast to the administration’s objective of arresting the ‘worst of the worst,’” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Heightened enforcement is likely increasing “collateral” arrests of people found during searches for convicted criminals, he said.

Comparisons between the Trump and Biden administrations were calculated by Stateline in an analysis of data released by the Deportation Data Project, a research initiative by the universities of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles. About 93% of arrests could be identified by state.

While more people were arrested this year, a lower percentage are convicted criminals.

The share of arrested immigrants who had been convicted of violent crimes has dropped from 9% in January to less than 5% in October. The share under Biden was consistently between 10% and 11% during the same period in 2024.

The same trend applies to people arrested solely on immigration violations: Immigration violations alone were behind 20% in April, then rose to 44% of arrests in October, according to Stateline’s analysis.

In some states and the District of Columbia, a majority of arrests were for immigration violations alone: the District of Columbia (80%), New York (61%), Virginia (57%), Illinois (53%), West Virginia (51%) and Maryland (50%).

States with high immigrant populations also saw the most arrests this year. The largest numeric increases were in Texas (up 29,403, triple last year’s figure), Florida (up 14,693, a fourfold increase) and California (up 13,345, a fourfold increase).

The two states with the largest arrest rate increases have responded very differently to President Donald Trump’s deportation mission.

“We’re going to resist like all of the Democratic states,” New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in an interview with The Santa Fe New Mexican after last year’s election, referring to mass deportation plans. She proposed legislation to ban U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in the state. The legislation failed this year, but Lujan Grisham urged the state legislature to reconsider next year. The state has three privately run ICE detention centers with the capacity for 2,000 people.

Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, is helping ICE under a 287(g) agreement by transporting what his office calls “highly dangerous illegal alien criminals” from county jails to federal custody. The 53 men pictured on the governor’s website have charges ranging from drug possession to sexual assault.

In a news release, the office says the program is intended to take people “after the completion of their sentences,” though an October review by the Idaho Capital Sun found some were transported despite dismissed or still-pending charges.

Nationally, arrests have increased this year from around 17,000 in February, the first full month of President Donald Trump’s current term, to more than 30,000 in September and October. The share of convicted criminals has dropped from 46% to 30%, though the number of convicted criminals arrested still has been higher each month than under President Joe Biden.

Some of the policies that have fed increased arrest numbers face new court battles. This month, a federal judge blocked the administration from making immigration arrests in the District of Columbia without warrants or probable cause.

In August, a federal court blocked the administration’s expansion of expedited removal, which itself allows fast deportations without judicial review. The administration has appealed, arguing that immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years without legal authorization are not guaranteed due process.

Such fast deportations could be used on 2.5 million people, according to a Migration Policy Institute estimate published in September, including 1 million people released at the border with Mexico with court dates and 1.5 million people with temporary protections such as humanitarian parole.

This fall, the share of arrested immigrants with criminal convictions continued to decrease just before and during the federal government shutdown, with only 3% of those arrested and detained having convictions between Sept. 21 and Nov. 16, according to national information analyzed by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data research organization at Syracuse University.

“While ICE is detaining more and more individuals, targeting has shifted sharply to individuals without any criminal convictions,” the TRAC report noted.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify a reference to October detention statistics analyzed by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.