WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland Tuesday barred U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia, saying the Trump administration lacks plans to remove him from the United States.

“Respondents have done nothing to show that Abrego Garcia’s continued detention in ICE custody is consistent with due process,” District of Maryland Judge Paula Xinis wrote in her order. 

Tuesday’s order solidifies a temporary decision from Xinis last year that blocked immigration officials from re-detaining him. 

Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran immigrant and longtime Maryland resident whose wrongful deportation to a brutal megaprison last year cast a national spotlight on the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. 

His case has remained a focal point for the Trump administration, which brought Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. to face criminal charges lodged against him stemming from a traffic stop in Tennessee. 

Those charges were made while Abrego Garcia remained imprisoned in El Salvador, and after the Supreme Court found his deportation unlawful and said the Trump administration should facilitate his return. 

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to those charges of human smuggling and that case continues.

Since Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S., the Trump administration has tried to deport him to a third country, because he has deportation protections from his home country of El Salvador. An immigration judge in 2019 found he would likely face violence if returned there. 

Costa Rica has offered to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee and he has agreed to be removed there, but the Trump administration has tried to deport him to three African countries: Liberia, Eswatini and Uganda.

“Indeed, since Abrego Garcia secured his release from criminal custody in August 2025, Respondents have made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” Xinis wrote. 

Xinis added that because the Trump administration has not secured any travel documents for a third country of removal for Abrego Garcia, his detention would be unlawful. The Supreme Court deemed that immigrants cannot be held longer than six months in detention if the federal government is not actively making efforts to remove them. 

“From this, the Court easily concludes that there is no ‘good reason to believe’ removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future,” she wrote.

Abrego Garcia remains in Maryland with his wife, a U.S. citizen, and their three children. 

Despite immigration detention numbers receding from recent highs and even as conservative judges are opting to release more detainees by rejecting President Donald Trump’s mass detention policy, tools for detainees to seek release or appeal cases are disappearing. 

A proposed federal rule will make it harder to appeal immigration cases nationally. And a federal appeals court ruling stops immigrants from requesting release on legal grounds in three Southern states if they entered the country illegally, no matter how long they’ve been here. 

As of late January, there were 70,766 people in immigration detention, up from about 40,000 at the start of the second Trump administration, with about 74% having no criminal convictions. (The number of detainees declined to 68,289 as of Feb. 7 amid increasing releases of immigration prisoners by federal judges, even many appointed by the Trump administration.)

This month’s court ruling in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which affects immigrants held in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, is a victory for a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy set last July. It requires detention without bond for many immigrants who arrived at the border without permission, even if they had been paroled with a court date. 

It comes as habeas petitions from people claiming illegal detention skyrocket — from a few dozen a week in early 2025 to thousands a week recently, according to a ProPublica report. The largest numbers of cases are in Texas, California, Minnesota, Florida and Georgia. 

Rekha Sharma-Crawford, an immigration attorney in Missouri and second vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she believes hundreds of other federal judges disagree with the Feb. 6 appeals court order. 

‘Mandatory detention’

The ruling found that a landmark Clinton-era immigration law, called The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), “unambiguously provides for mandatory detention” for people who crossed the border illegally. 

A dissenting judge, Dana Douglas, wrote that drafters of that law ”would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people. For almost thirty years there was no sign anyone thought it had done so.” 

Sharma-Crawford said the ruling would likely be challenged, but that it may be too late for people who may give up under the stress of detention, and agree to deportation. 

“I have a client in detention who’s been here [in the United States] 30 years, no criminal history, and has a family,” Sharma-Crawford said in an interview. “In the past the individual would be eligible for a bond hearing and be able to fight their immigration case in due course. These people are not accustomed to being in jail.”  

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised the court decision on social media, saying “activist judges have ordered the release of alien after alien based on the false claim that DHS was breaking the law” and said the ruling proved the administration “was right all along.”

Another obstacle for detainees

Similarly, a new rule on the federal Board of Immigration Appeals makes it harder for immigrants to appeal cases like denial of asylum in immigration court.   

Open for comment until it takes effect March 9, the rule shrinks the deadline to appeal a decision to 10 days from 30 days, and the board will automatically deny a case unless a majority of the board votes to hear it.

Immigration attorney Raul Natera of Fort Worth, Texas, who posted a comment critical of the proposed rule, told Stateline it would be a “flat-out assault on due process,” because the Department of Justice could appoint board members who will not vote to hear appeals. Last year the Trump administration fired board members who had been appointed during the Biden administration. 

“Judges can make wrong decisions. If we do not ensure that those decisions can be reviewed, then there is no point to the judicial system in this country,” Natera said.

The Department of Justice argues in its proposed rule that denying appeals in most cases will speed up the process and clear a backlog of immigration cases.

Others disagree. The new rule will increase strain on courts if immigrants can no longer appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals and instead must file more lawsuits with appeals courts, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a lawyer and policy analyst at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute.

“The federal courts are already buckling under the weight of all these habeas petitions [alleging illegal detention],” Bush-Joseph said. “It’s a huge lift to be litigating all this.”

Sharma-Crawford called both measures a “numbers game” to get deportation numbers up before court challenges can make a difference. 

“All these things don’t happen quickly, and people will suffer while litigation is ongoing,” she said. “How much travesty and injustice is going to occur while the courts grapple with the legality of what the administration is doing?”

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

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress on Thursday sought a ruling from a federal judge to block yet another Department of Homeland Security policy that required a notice for lawmakers to conduct oversight visits to immigration detention facilities.

The policy is the third from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on the subject, and it is nearly identical to the previous two. 

Noem’s policies put in place a new requirement that members of Congress must give DHS seven days notice before conducting an oversight visit at a facility that holds immigrants, despite a 2019 appropriations law that allows for unannounced visits by lawmakers. 

On Feb. 2, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb blocked a seven-day notification policy ordered by Noem one day after the deadly shooting of Renee Good by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. 

On the same day as Cobb’s ruling, Noem issued a nearly identical policy, after Democrats said they would refuse to approve new DHS funding unless changes in enforcement tactics were made following a second deadly shooting of Alex Pretti by two Customs and Border Protection officers.

With disagreement between both parties, and Thursday’s failed vote to move forward on funding the Homeland Security bill for fiscal year 2026, the agency will be shut down beginning early Saturday. 

However, even if DHS is shut down, Immigration and Customs Enforcement still has $75 billion in funding due to the tax cuts and spending package signed into law last year.

Agency shutting down

Department of Justice attorneys on Thursday argued because DHS will be shut down, the appropriations law will expire by the end of the week and therefore the unannounced oversight provision for members of Congress will no longer be in effect.

An attorney for the members of Congress, Christine L. Coogle, rejected that argument and said just because the funds expire does not mean the law, which is a rider in the Homeland Security funding bill, does as well. 

“The law itself does not expire,” she said. “And so the oversight rider remains on the books.” 

Cobb said she would extend her temporary restraining order until March 2, or until she rules, whichever comes first.

Visits denied

Under a 2019 appropriations law, any member of Congress can carry out an unannounced visit to a federal facility that holds immigrants, referred to as Section 527. But in June, multiple Democrats were denied visits to ICE facilities, so they sued. 

“What we’re really seeking here is a return to the status quo,” Coogle said in court Thursday. 

In December, Cobb granted the request to stay Noem’s policy, finding it violated the 2019 law. 

But in the second policy Noem issued on Jan. 8, she argued because the ICE facilities are using funds through the Republican spending and tax cuts law, known as the “One, Big Beautiful Bill,” and not the DHS appropriations bill, those facilities are therefore exempt from unannounced oversight visits by members of Congress. 

Cobb earlier this month, rejected that argument from the Trump administration and temporarily blocked the policy for the plaintiffs in the case. 

The House Democrats who sued include Joe Neguse of Colorado, Adriano Espaillat of New York, Kelly Morrison of Minnesota, 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.

A demonstrator waves a red cloth as hundreds gather after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good through her car window Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026 near Portland Avenue and 34th Street. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

Despite the high-profile U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Minnesota, ICE arrests were down slightly in January compared to December, according to new data. 

Immigrant detention nationwide also reached a new high in January, and a growing percentage — nearly three-quarters — of people in detention have no criminal convictions.

ICE arrested 36,579 people in  January compared with December (37,842); the numbers haven’t changed much since October (36,621), according to new estimates from a Syracuse University professor.

The number of people in immigration detention reached 70,766 as of Jan. 24, a new high, according to a different report by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, also at Syracuse University.  

The number in detention has gone up steadily from about 40,000 at the start of the second Trump administration, and the latest number is the largest since the organization, known as TRAC, began tracking immigrant detention in 2019. 

Of those detainees 74.2%, or 52,504, had no criminal convictions, up from 70.4% in June.  

“Since the summer, nearly all of the growth in ICE detention has come from people without criminal convictions or charges — an area of tremendous sustained growth that contradicts the Trump administration’s narrative that they are focused on the worst of the worst,” Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University who researches immigration enforcement, wrote in a substack posting. 

Kocher is a former researcher for TRAC but is no longer associated with the organization and created estimates of monthly arrests based on detention check-ins. 

Detention facilities in Texas had the largest number of detainees, 18,684, followed by Louisiana (8,207), California (6,422), Florida (5,187) and Georgia (4,178) as of Jan. 24. 

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

U.S. House Democrats, from left, Kelly Morrison, Ilhan Omar and Rep. Angie Craig, all of Minnesota, arrive outside of the regional Immigration and Customs Enfrocement headquarters at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on Jan. 10, 2026. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a Trump administration policy that prevented members of Congress from making unannounced oversight visits at facilities that hold immigrants.

The temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of District of Columbia federal court blocked a seven-day notice requirement that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem established earlier this month. The order allows congressional Democrats to access facilities that are central to the national debate over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“The Court’s decision today to grant a temporary restraining order against ICE’s unlawful effort to obstruct congressional oversight is a victory for the American people,” Colorado Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse, who is the lead plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. “We will keep fighting to ensure the rule of law prevails.”

Noem issued the policy Jan. 8, one day after federal immigration officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis, the site of an aggressive immigration operation for nearly two months. 

A second Minneapolis resident, 37-year-old Alex Pretti, was shot and killed by a Customs and Border Protection officer and Border Patrol agent on Jan. 24. 

Following the Jan. 7 shooting, U.S. House Democrats from Minnesota tried to conduct unannounced oversight visits at a Department of Homeland Security facility that held immigrants, as allowed under a 2019 appropriations law. Democrats have argued the notice policies issued by Noem violate that appropriations law. 

Noem argued the notice policy was acceptable, despite the spending law, because the facilities were funded through the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” not an appropriations law, and were therefore exempt from the unannounced oversight visit policy.

Cobb rejected that argument, for now, while the case continues, saying the administration had not shown how the department could effectively separate the funds from each law. Cobb said the argument raised “practical challenges.”

“Perhaps reflecting that difficulty, Defendants have not seriously attempted to argue that DHS and ICE ensured that only OBBBA-funded resources were used before promulgating and first implementing the January 8 policy,” she wrote. 

A dozen Democratic lawmakers brought the suit in July, after DHS created a seven-day notice policy to visit a facility where immigrants are detained. In the filing, lawmakers argued that DHS overreached its authority in creating the policy and that it violated a 2019 appropriations law.

Cobb in December also issued a temporary block on that policy.

The House Democrats who sued include Neguse, 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.

Demonstrators gather outside of the Henry Whipple Federal Building, shouting at federal vehicles and recording their plates Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

A Minneapolis-based human rights group is suing the Department of Homeland Security, accusing DHS officials and agents of illegally and systematically preventing detained immigrants from meeting with their lawyers.

The proposed class action lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court of Minnesota, was brought on behalf of the Advocates for Human Rights and a St. Paul woman referred to by the initials “L.H.M.”

According to the complaint, L.H.M., who has lived in Minnesota since 2019 and has a pending asylum claim, was arrested Monday after a routine check-in at ICE’s Office of Intensive Supervision in Bloomington.

After L.H.M.’s family contacted her attorney, the lawyer immediately travelled to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building but was unilaterally refused access to L.H.M.

L.H.M. recently underwent cranial surgery, the lawsuit states, and “has significant medical needs that may be severely adversely affected by detention conditions or involuntary transfer out of state.”

According to the claim, federal agents at the Whipple Building — and at least one ICE attorney — have repeatedly told frustrated lawyers that “no visitation between detainees and attorneys is or has ever been permitted at Whipple.”

“This is false,” the complaint continues. “Whipple has rooms labeled ‘ERO Visitation,’ where attorneys have met with clients held at Whipple for years.”

Nowadays, when lawyers attempt to arrange visits at Whipple, phone calls and emails allegedly go unanswered.

According to the suit, one lawyer was recently threatened with arrest at the Whipple Building, despite having received prior permission from agency officials. Another attorney attempting to speak to a client was “confronted by six armed security personnel, one of whom said, ‘We’re not having a debate here, turn your car around and get the hell out of here.’”

The lawsuit asserts claims under the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Administrative Procedures Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act. 

A spokesperson for Homeland Security responded: “Any allegations people detained by ICE do not have access to attorneys are false. Illegal aliens in the Whipple Federal Building have access to phones they can use to contact their families and lawyers. Additionally, ICE gives all illegal aliens arrested a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys. All detainees receive full due process.”

(Homeland Security has a burgeoning record of providing false information to the public, as detailed in a recent Stateline story; after the recent killing of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol, a Homeland Security spokesperson claimed Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” even though he never drew his gun, for which he had a permit.)

This is not the first time DHS has been sued for impeding detainees’ access to counsel. Similar suits in New York and Illinois have resulted in court orders.

DHS also has a recent history of defying court orders.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, chief judge of the Minnesota district, issued an order in a habeas petition in which he identified 96 court orders that ICE has violated since January 1 – a tally that he said is likely an undercount because it was assembled in haste.

“This list should give pause to anyone — no matter his or her political beliefs — who cares about the rule of law,” wrote Schiltz, who was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush and clerked for Antonin Scalia, the late Supreme Court justice and conservative icon.

“ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” Schiltz wrote.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Most people taken into custody by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not have a criminal conviction, recent reports show.

PolitiFact reported Jan. 23 that as of Jan. 7, 74% of immigrants being held in detention did not have a criminal conviction.

The libertarian Cato Institute, saying it received leaked ICE data, reported in September that over the previous year, 73% taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction; 8% had a violent or property conviction.

In late September, the number of people in immigration detention who had no criminal record outnumbered those convicted of crimes, The Guardian reported, citing ICE data.

ICE data for fiscal 2026, through Nov. 15, showed 72% of booked detainees did not have a criminal conviction.

Under 30% of people arrested in crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and across Massachusetts had a criminal conviction, The New York Times reported in December.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• PolitiFact: Do 70% of immigrant detainees have criminal convictions or charges? Fact-checking Kristi Noem
• Cato Institute: 5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions
• The Guardian: Immigrants with no criminal record now largest group in Ice detention
• Cato Institute: FY2026 YTD ICE Book-ins
• New York Times: Most Immigrants Arrested in City Crackdowns Have No Criminal Record
• Stateline: An ever-larger share of ICE’s arrested immigrants have no criminal record

Do most people arrested by ICE have a criminal conviction? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

At least 40 immigrants ICE arrested in Minneapolis in recent weeks are being detained at the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, three detainees told Source New Mexico. (Patrick Lohmann/Source NM)

Dozens of immigrants currently housed at a New Mexico detention facility arrived there recently from the Minneapolis area, the site of a massive federal immigration operation and intensifying protests.

Three detainees at the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia told Source New Mexico in phone interviews Wednesday evening that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested them separately in Minnesota on or around Jan. 5 before quickly flying them to a detention facility in El Paso, which was rapidly filling with new arrestees as they stayed there for several days. 

On Jan. 11, officers woke them up around 4 a.m. and bussed about 40 of them to Estancia, a journey that required detainees to be awake for 24 hours, detainee Jorge Cordoba told Source. Everyone on the bus to Estancia was arrested in Minneapolis or nearby, he said. 

Cordoba, 33, said he has lived in Minneapolis for more than 20 years and lives in the United States legally under protected Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival status granted to immigrants who arrived here as children. His parents brought him here from Mexico when he was 10, he said. 

“My wife is a U.S. citizen. I have four kids,” he said. “I’ve been a pretty good citizen. It’s been more than 10 years since I got a speeding ticket.”

Cordoba’s protected status didn’t stop an ICE agent from arresting him around 4:30 a.m. Jan. 5 on his way to work at a humidity control company, he said. ICE agents took him to a temporary detention facility in the city and, by 10 p.m. that night, Cordoba was already in El Paso, he said. 

While Source could not independently corroborate his account, Innovation Law Lab, an immigrant legal advocacy group, provided details of its own interviews with recent jail arrivals, including one account that matches Cordoba’s. 

Now Cordoba remains in New Mexico awaiting a hearing before a judge to demonstrate that he still has DACA status.

“I’m stuck here,” he said. 

Irina Vaynerman, a Minnesota-based lawyer with the organization Groundwork Legal, told Source on Thursday that ICE is deliberately shipping detainees to far-away facilities to deprive them of legal access and family support. 

Her organization is seeking a federal judge’s order to return one of her clients from New Mexico. In a legal filing Wednesday, she argued that “Oscar O.T.”, a Guatemalan man seeking asylum, is being denied constitutional due process and that his transfer to New Mexico violates a judicial order that he be able to face a judge in Minnesota. 

“This is just part of a much bigger story about not just the unlawful detentions that are happening, but on top of that, the intentional evading of the court’s orders and court’s jurisdiction,” she said.

She said ICE shipping detainees out-of-state prevents “individuals who have been unlawfully detained from being able to connect with local counsel and file the legal actions they need to be able to get free.”

In Oscar’s case, she said, ICE’s system for lawyers to track their clients was not working, so they had no clue where he was until she got an email from ICE saying he was being held in “Albuquerque.” 

No ICE detention facility exists in Albuquerque, so Vayneman said it’s possible he is actually in Estancia, an hour or so away from Albuquerque, and was bussed there along with fellow Minneapolis residents from El Paso. 

“That is the type of insanity that is going on, the intentional disappearing of Minnesotans who have been unlawfully detained,” she said. “It is genuinely the government’s effort to try to erase entire swaths of the U.S. population in an unlawful way.”

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to Source’s request for comment about why the agency would hold Minneapolis arrestees in Estancia. A spokesperson for CoreCivic, which owns and operates the facility, referred Source’s request for comment to ICE.

It’s not clear exactly how many Minneapolis arrestees are held in Estancia. Tiffany Wang, a lawyer with Innovation Law Lab, told Source on Wednesday that a “decent number” of roughly 100 detainees the group spoke with last week were from Minnesota. The Portland-based immigrant legal advocacy group does weekly jail visits. 

Wang said her best guess as to why ICE would select Estancia is that the jail has space, following a reduction in detainees that coincided with a two-month-long contract expiration between ICE and CoreCivic late last year. She noted that many detainees previously arrived there from a makeshift ICE facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

“TCDF just has served as this holding place for people caught in other states, and sent here with really no regard to the family that they have in other places or with the attorneys that they may have in their home states, or anything,” she said.

The Legislature is currently considering a ban on public entities like Torrance County from contracting with ICE and CoreCivic for the purpose of immigrant detention. One reason lawmakers cite is to prevent public bodies from being complicit in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push in New Mexico and across the country. 

A New Mexico House committee is scheduled to take up the bill Thursday afternoon.

Cordoba, along with fellow Estancia detainees Cirilo Figueroa and Felix Garcia, all told Source they worry most about their families more than 1,200 miles away in Minnesota amid protests and an immigration crackdown that have seized the city. Like Cordoba, Garcia and Figueroa said they’ve lived in the city more than 20 years. Garcia, 59, has 12 grandchildren, as well as a nephew whom ICE briefly detained despite him being a US citizen, he said. 

All have watched local news reports from inside the jail showing the chaos in their hometown, they said, and described feeling powerless to help their families from so far away. 

“It’s not fair,” Cordoba said, his voice cracking, “what’s happening.”

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Nashville press conference on July 18, 2025, to discuss arrests of immigrants during recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps. (Photo by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

WASHINGTON — A panel of appellate judges Wednesday heard a challenge from civil rights groups to the Trump administration’s decision to revoke an extension, as well as end, temporary protections for nearly 1 million immigrants from Haiti and Venezuela. 

The challenge comes from the National TPS Alliance, which represents immigrants with Temporary Protected Status because their home country is deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, war, natural disasters or other instability. 

The hearing came two weeks after the U.S. military actions in Venezuela, where the country’s president and his wife were captured and brought to New York City to face an indictment. 

Despite the upheaval in the Venezuelan government from the U.S. operation, the Trump administration has continued to move forward with stripping TPS for more than 600,000 Venezuelans. 

Before Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vacated extended protections put in place by the Biden administration, TPS for Venezuelans was set to expire in October. TPS for roughly 330,000 nationals from Haiti is set to expire Feb. 3, which the panel of judges acknowledged could make the issue of TPS for Haiti moot.

Ahilan T. Arulanantham, from the UCLA Center for Immigration Law, who is representing the National TPS Alliance, said there are members in all 50 states who are experiencing harm as a result of their TPS being terminated by the Trump administration.

He said some of those harms include “people separated from their infant children, families deported, people detained, lots of people detained.”

The panel of judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Wednesday’s oral arguments are Kim McLane Wardlaw, Salvador Mendoza, Jr. and Anthony D. Johnstone. 

Former President Bill Clinton nominated Wardlaw and former President Joe Biden nominated Mendoza and Johnstone.

DOJ says Supreme Court in agreement

Department of Justice attorney Sarah Welch said because the Supreme Court has twice granted the Trump administration’s request to move forward with TPS termination for Venezuelans, the high court must have determined the Trump administration was likely to prevail in court. 

A lower court in December found that Noem’s decision to vacate protections for Venezuelans and end their TPS destination was unlawful.  

Wardlaw questioned how the Supreme Court’s decision, which was made on an emergency basis and gave no reasoning, impacted the case before the panel.

Welch said the Supreme Court “must have concluded that we were likely to succeed on the merits of that claim, whether or not it provided reasoning published in an opinion.”

Arulanantham said the Supreme Court’s orders regarding TPS for Venezuelans are “not precedent because the Supreme Court does not treat them as precedent.” He added that in the past, the Supreme Court has reversed its initial rulings, especially those made on an emergency basis. 

He also pushed back against Welch’s argument that Noem had the statutory authority to vacate an extension granted under TPS for Venezuelans. 

“The statute says once you have made an extension, it lasts for the time prior that’s given in the Federal Register notice,” Arulanantham said, referring to the TPS statute.

He added that the authority to vacate a TPS extension that Noem claimed is “nowhere written in the statute.” 

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., left, and Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., arrive at the regional ICE headquarters at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building on Jan. 10, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The lawmakers attempted to access the facility where the Department of Homeland Security has been headquartering operations in the state. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A dozen Democratic members of Congress Monday asked a federal judge for an emergency hearing, arguing the Department of Homeland Security violated a court order when Minnesota lawmakers were denied access to conduct oversight into facilities that hold immigrants.

The oversight visits to Minneapolis ICE facilities followed the deadly shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by federal immigration officer Jonathan Ross. Federal immigration officers have intensified immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities following the shooting, leading to massive protests there and across the country. 

“On Saturday, January 9—three days after U.S. citizen Renee Good was shot dead by an ICE agent in Minneapolis—three members of Congress from the Minnesota delegation, with this Court’s order in hand, attempted to conduct an oversight visit of an ICE facility near Minneapolis,” according to Monday’s filing in the District Court for the District of Columbia. 

Democratic U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar, Angie Craig and Kelly Morrison of Minnesota said they were denied entry to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building shortly after arriving for their visit on Saturday morning.

Lawmakers said in the filing the Minnesotans were denied access due to a new policy from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The new Noem policy, similar to one temporarily blocked by U.S. Judge Jia Cobb last month, requires seven days notice for lawmakers to conduct oversight visits.

“The duplicate notice policy is a transparent attempt by DHS to again subvert Congress’s will … and this Court’s stay of DHS’s oversight visit policy,” according to the new filing by lawyers representing the 12 Democrats.

DHS cites reconciliation bill

Noem in filings argued the funds for immigration enforcement are not subject to a 2019 appropriations law, referred to as Section 527, that allows for unannounced oversight visits at facilities that hold immigrants.

She said that because the facilities are funded through the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act” passed and signed into law last year, the department does not need to comply with Section 527.

The OBBBA, passed through a congressional process called reconciliation, is allowed to adjust federal spending even though it is not an appropriations law.

“This policy is consistent with and effectuates the clear intent of Congress to not subject OBBBA funding to Section 527’s limitations,” according to the Noem memo.  

Congress is currently working on the next funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. The lawmakers in their filing argue “members of Congress must be able to conduct oversight at ICE detention facilities, without notice, to obtain urgent and essential information for ongoing funding negotiations.”

“Members of Congress are actively negotiating over the funding of DHS and ICE, including consideration of the scope of and limitations on DHS’s funding for the next fiscal year,” according to the filing.

The 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.

Neguse, the lead plaintiff in the case, said in a statement that the “law is crystal clear.”

“Instead of complying with the law, DHS is abrogating the court’s order by re-imposing the same unlawful policy,” he said. “Their actions are outrageous and subverting the law, which is why we are going back to court to challenge it — immediately.”

A screenshot from a video released by the Wisconsin State Public Defender that shows a youth in detention being restrained and beaten by staff at the Jonathan Delagrave Youth Development and Care Center in Caledonia on May 27, 2025.

The Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office released a video Tuesday of an incident involving a staff member repeatedly punching a then-15-year-old at a juvenile detention center.

The incident took place on May 27 and involved a youth at the Jonathan Delagrave Youth Development and Care Center in Caledonia.

 The video appears to show four staff members directing him to move from a spot by a wall in a hallway, possibly to a nearby room, and Elliott not moving. After a staff member swung at him, the situation devolved into a struggle. Elliott was struck repeatedly by staff before and after he was on the ground.

The incident occurred less than a month after the 48-bed facility opened on May 1, the State Public Defenders Office (SPD) said. According to the SPD, the teen had bruises, swelling on his right eye, blurred vision and headaches, scrapes and cuts and dried blood in his ear, based on records from evaluations arranged by the facility. 

“To the parents who have kids in a detention center, check on your babies,” said Kianna Reed, his mother.

The SPD wants its client immediately transferred from the facility and placed in a group home “where he can receive specialized therapy and support.”

“The people in this video should have never been entrusted with caring for children. This is a sickening act of violence,” State Public Defender Jennifer Bias said in a statement. 

The family is looking for an attorney for a civil lawsuit against Racine County, the SPD said. 

In the SPD release, Reed said that “seeing that video and knowing my son is still in that facility is terrifying,” and that “the staff need proper training and accountability.”

In a statement emailed to the Examiner, a Racine County spokesperson described the publicly released video as a partial record of a longer incident  and said that staff’s interaction with the youth took place over several minutes. It said the youth clenched his fists and made multiple threats of physical violence to other juveniles and staff.

“Maintaining the safety of youth and staff in our facilities is our highest priority,” Amberlyn Yohn, administrator of youth rehabilitation services, said in the county’s statement. “Situations like this are complex and unfold quickly. While one employee’s actions became the focus of this incident, our broader team followed established protocols and cooperated fully with the review process.”

The county commits to making sure staff have the training, oversight and support needed for managing difficult situations, Yohn said.

The “primarily involved staff member” was immediately placed on administrative leave after the incident and resigned within three days, Racine County said in a statement emailed to the Examiner. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, his name is Robert Knight, and he told the Journal Sentinel his actions were justified based on Elliott’s history at the center. He disputed that he resigned because of the investigation.

A different worker seen repeatedly striking the teen was ordered to complete eight hours of remedial training and appears to still be employed at the facility, according to the public defender’s office. Three of the four staff members involved are still employed at the center, according to the public defender’s office, which obtained records showing the staff’s employment status.

Knight said her son was displaying signs of aggression at the time of the incident, according to the Journal Sentinel. He said he intended to force the boy back rather than strike him.

The teen had been found guilty of charges of retail theft and obstructing an officer.

A new alternative

Efforts to close the Lincoln Hills facility have not yet proven successful, and its location makes it difficult for youth there to maintain contact with their community and families.

Years after a 2017 lawsuit filed over abuses, Gov. Tony Evers announced in October that the state had reached full compliance with all of the court-ordered reforms. The Department of Corrections’ website describes plans to build smaller facilities and keep youth closer to home.

In addition, the state has awarded money to counties to establish Secure Residential Care Centers for Children and Youth (SRCCCY). Milwaukee’s is expected to open in 2026; Racine’s is the only one that is currently open. The county website says it provides a “structured and rehabilitative environment for male youth.”

The facility was built as an alternative to the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons, the SPD said in its release. Some juvenile offenders can now go to the facility instead of Lincoln Hills, Eileen Fredericks, the SPD’s youth defense practice coordinator, told the Examiner.

Fredericks said that “we only have one, and then shortly after it opens, we have this really serious incident.”

The county’s website says that youth are placed in the SRCCCY under a statute that requires that the youth committed an act that would carry a sentence of six months or more if the youth were an adult. The youth also must have been found to be a danger to the public and in need of restrictive custodial treatment.

In the weeks before the facility opened in May, the Racine County Eye reported that officials said the center is a more cost-effective and compassionate alternative to state-run youth correctional facilities such as Lincoln Hills.

According to the public defender’s office, at the time of the incident, the teen was a few weeks into a five and a half-month period of participation in the SRCCCY’s RISE-UP program. He has been in detention consistently since December 2024, the SPD office said.

In the SPD’s release, Bias argued that building “shiny new prisons” won’t prevent situations like what happened to the teen. 

“We need meaningful reforms to the way our children are treated in the juvenile justice system,” Bias said. “We need judges who will prioritize alternatives to incarceration and detention workers who value care over punishment.”

Fredericks said she wants “these kids to be seen as kids” and that “there’s kind of this mindset that they’re less than kids, because they’ve done something wrong.”

Transparency concern

Bias accused the county of seeking to “sweep this incident under the rug.” The public defender’s office called for a “full-scale” investigation into conditions at the facility and the qualifications of staff members who interact with children. 

Reed told the Examiner she did not see any of the video released Tuesday by the SPD until October. 

In its statement, the county said that immediately after the May 27 incident, the mother of the youth and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections were notified. The Examiner reached out to the DOC and was told that the Jonathan Delagrave facility is county-run, and questions regarding personnel or those housed there are best directed to Racine County. 

The county said important privacy protections for juveniles must be respected, but that the county has been and remains transparent in its response to the incident. 

Law enforcement and independent human services agencies fully investigated and reviewed the incident, the county said. The details of the investigation and relevant video were provided to the Racine County District Attorney’s Office, which declined to pursue prosecution, the county said.

Warning: the video released by the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office contains graphic footage of violence against a child.

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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.

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

WASHINGTON — The wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia is no longer in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after a federal judge ordered his release earlier Thursday, according to his attorneys and an immigrant rights group that has advocated his case.

CASA, the immigrant rights group that has supported Abrego Garcia and his family since he was erroneously deported to a brutal Salvadoran prison, told States Newsroom he was released from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania before a 5 p.m. Eastern deadline set by the judge. He has remained there since September. 

 However, it remained unclear Thursday night if the Department of Homeland Security will follow the judicial order, and the White House press secretary said the Department of Justice would swiftly appeal the decision.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to States Newsroom the “order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”

She did not respond to a follow-up question if ICE would follow the order from U.S. District Court of Maryland Judge Paula Xinis to release Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant and longtime Maryland resident who cast a spotlight on the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown after he was wrongly deported.

Abrego Garcia was imprisoned in a brutal prison in El Salvador and returned to the United States to face criminal charges in Tennessee. After he was ordered released from U.S. marshals custody by a federal judge, ICE detained him again at an appointment at the Baltimore, Maryland, ICE field office.

‘Without lawful authority’

Xinis, in a ruling highly critical of the administration’s actions in the case, found that since Abrego Garcia was brought back to the United States, he was detained “again without lawful authority,” because the Trump administration has not made an effort to remove him to a third country, due to his deportation protections from his home country of El Salvador. 

The order comes after Abrego Garcia challenged his ICE detention in a habeas corpus petition. Xinis was mulling a Supreme Court precedent that deemed immigrants cannot be held longer than six months in detention if the federal government is not actively making efforts to remove them.

“Separately, Respondents’ conduct over the past months belie that his detention has been for the basic purpose of effectuating removal, lending further support that Abrego Garcia should be held no longer,” Xinis wrote in her opinion.

Costa Rica has agreed to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee, but in court, Department of Justice lawyers did not give Xinis a clear explanation of why the Trump administration would not remove him to Costa Rica. Instead, the Trump administration has tried to deport Abrego Garcia to several countries in Africa. 

Prolonged detention found

In her opinion, Xinis said that Abrego Garcia’s release is required under the Supreme Court’s precedent, referred to as the Zadvydas v. Davis case, because his nearly four-month detention at an ICE facility in Pennsylvania had been prolonged. 

“Respondents’ persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” Xinis said.

She also noted witness testimony from several ICE officials who were unable to provide any information on efforts to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country where he would not face torture, persecution or deportation to El Salvador.  

“They simply refused to prepare and produce a witness with knowledge to testify in any meaningful way,” she said of the Department of Justice.

While the Trump administration has floated removing Abrego Garcia to Eswatini, Ghana, Liberia and Uganda, the Department of Justice is moving forward with criminal charges lodged against Abrego Garcia that stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. 

The judge in that Nashville case is trying to determine if the human smuggling of immigrants charges against Abrego Garcia – to which he has pleaded not guilty – are vindictive. 

Missing order of removal

Another issue Xinis pointed out was the Department of Justice’s inability to produce a final order of removal for Abrego Garica.  

“No such order of removal exists for Abrego Garcia,” she said. “When Abrego Garcia was first wrongly expelled to El Salvador, the Court struggled to understand the legal authority for even seizing him in the first place.”

She also cited the ICE officials’ testimony, which did answer whether a removal order existed. 

“Respondents twice sponsored the testimony of ICE officials whose job it is to effectuate removal orders, and who candidly admitted to having never seen one for Abrego Garcia,” she said. “Respondents have never produced an order of removal despite Abrego Garcia hinging much of his jurisdictional and legal arguments on its non-existence.”

Attorneys for Abrego Garcia have argued if there is no order of removal, there is no basis for his ICE detention.

Abrego Garcia is not challenging his deportation, and has agreed to be removed to Costa Rica, but has remained in ICE detention since August.

William J. Ford contributed to this report.