Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025. Amid several legal disputes, the Trump administration has continued its controversial deportation policy to El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland slammed the Trump administration Friday for its “blatant lack of effort to comply” with her order earlier this month to report steps taken to facilitate the return of a second wrongly deported man to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

“Defendants’ untimely response is the functional equivalent of, ‘We haven’t done anything and don’t intend to,’” U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, whom President Donald Trump appointed in 2018, wrote in her order blasting a nonresponse from the Department of Homeland Security.

“Telling this Court that ‘[i]t is DHS’s understanding that Cristian is in the custody of El Salvador,’ adds nothing to the underlying record and simply reflects a lack of any effort to obtain or provide information regarding Cristian’s ‘current physical location and custodial status,’” she wrote.

Friday’s order from Gallagher is the latest scathing remark from federal judges who have found the Trump administration either violated their preliminary injunctions or restraining orders, or have broadly invoked executive privileges to stonewall information in immigration cases.

Gallagher, like other federal judges who have found themselves in the spotlight for blocking immigration-related policies, raised concerns about the Trump administration skirting due process rights and slow-walking rectifying deportation mistakes as the government continues its aggressive campaign of mass deportations.

Officials at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and President Donald Trump himself have continued to claim broad authority to conduct immigration removals. They have lashed out against the judges, labeling them as “activists” and accusing them of blocking the Trump administration’s agenda.

“Its very important that we’re able to get these people out fast,” Trump said during a press availability in the Oval Office Friday. “We have judges that don’t want that to happen. It’s a terrible thing.” 

Violating removal protections

Two cases of men whom the administration sent to El Salvador despite court orders blocking their removals stemmed from the first major case of the administration apparently disregarding a judicial order: a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg not to remove migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

Despite the mid-March temporary restraining order from Boasberg, three planes landed in El Salvador hours later and roughly 300 men were sent to the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. 

Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and a 20-year-old referred to in court documents only by the pseudonym Cristian, whose case Gallagher is handling, were among them.

Abrego Garcia had, since 2019, a court order protecting him from deportation to his home country of El Salvador because an immigration judge was concerned he would face gang violence if returned.

Cristian, who arrived in the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, was part of a class action that barred removal from the U.S. while his asylum case was pending in immigration court.

In both cases, the administration has said it is powerless to compel the Salvadoran government to release them, an argument Gallagher expressed frustration with Friday.

“Defendants simply reiterated their well-worn talking points on their reasons for removing Cristian and failed to provide any of the information the Court required,” Gallagher wrote.

The U.S. is paying El Salvador up to $15 million to detain removed immigrants.

“As a Venezuelan native, he is in El Salvador only because the United States sent him there pursuant to an agreement apparently reached with the government of El Salvador,” Gallagher wrote.

Judges see pattern of defiance

In Abrego Garcia’s high-profile case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, also in Maryland, said “nothing has been done” by the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Administration officials have admitted he was mistakenly deported to CECOT.

Xinis recently denied the Department of Justice’s request for an extra 30 days to submit documents on its efforts to return Abrego Garcia.

He remains in a lower-level prison in El Salvador, despite a Supreme Court order from April that directed the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S.

A judge in Massachusetts found the Trump administration violated his preliminary injunction barring third-country removals of migrants without due process after eight men were deported to South Sudan and given less than 24 hours to challenge their removal to a county on the cusp of another civil war.

Boasberg, who sits in a federal court in the District of Columbia, found probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt for violating his temporary restraining order that ordered deportation planes carrying men removed under the Alien Enemies Act to be returned to the U.S. over concerns they did not receive due process.

The Trump administration has challenged all those decisions on an emergency basis to the U.S. Supreme Court.

‘A judge in Boston running foreign policy’

Top administration figures have argued it is the judges who have overstepped, trespassing on the executive branch’s role in setting foreign policy.

In the Oval Office Friday, Trump singled out U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy, who is overseeing the case in Massachusetts.

“You can’t have a judge in Boston running foreign policy in places all over the country because he has a liberal bent or he’s a radical left person,” Trump said.

Murphy was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

That case, which centers on removing migrants to a country they are not citizens of, could play an outsized role in the legal battle over the administration’s approach to immigration after Supreme Court decisions this month have allowed the Trump administration to end two temporary legal programs and exposed more than 800,000 immigrants to potential deportation.

Many of those who lost protections hail from countries that are deemed too dangerous for return.

‘Get them out rapidly’

The Trump administration has publicly stated Abrego Garcia will not return and accused him, without producing evidence, that he is a leader of the MS-13 gang.

The president has also acknowledged that if he wanted to, he could secure the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. But Trump said he would not, alleging that Abrego Garcia has gang ties.

The president posted pictures on social media of Boasberg, who was pressing Department of Justice attorneys for answers on if his order was deliberately violated. It prompted a rare response from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who stressed the importance of an independent judiciary.

While the Supreme Court eventually lifted Boasberg’s nationwide injunction on the use of the Alien Enemies Act, federal judges in Colorado and parts of New York and Texas have blocked use of the wartime law within their districts, citing concerns about due process.

Top Trump officials, such as Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have floated suspending habeas corpus, which allows people who believe they are being unlawfully detained to petition for their release in court.

Habeas corpus claims are currently the only avenue that Venezuelans subject to the Alien Enemies Act have to challenge their deportation under the wartime law.

“We can’t keep them for years here as they go through trial,” Trump said Friday of swift deportations. “We have to get them out rapidly.” 

Abrego Garcia and Cristian

In an April order, Gallagher wrote that Cristian’s case is similar to Abrego Garcia’s and that “like Judge Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”

In that order, Gallagher said the federal government must show “a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).”

On May 6, she affirmed her decision that the Trump administration must facilitate Cristian’s return, but put her own order on pause to allow for Department of Justice attorneys to appeal to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

The appeals court declined the Trump administration’s request to pause her order.

Gallagher said Friday she would give the Trump administration officials until Monday to “remedy their noncompliance.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday said it will allow the Trump administration to remove deportation protections for more than 500,000 nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who were given permission to temporarily remain and work in the United States by the Biden administration.

The move by the high court — which permits the deportations while a lawsuit continues to work its way through the courts — came after a district court in Massachusetts in April blocked the Trump administration from ending the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, or CHNV, program for 532,000 people.

It’s the second decision by the Supreme Court this month stripping immigrants of some form of temporary legal protections, affecting more than 800,000 people in the country without permanent legal status who are now subject to swift deportation.

On May 19, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Venezuelans who were granted the protection from deportation because their home country was deemed too unstable to return to due to the political regime.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin welcomed the ruling.

“Ending the CHNV parole programs, as well as the paroles of those who exploited it, will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First,” she said in a statement.

Todd Schulte, the president of the immigration advocacy group FWD.us, said in a statement that the high court’s decision “penalizes half a million people for complying with our immigration laws.”

“This decision will have devastating and immediate consequences, and is part of a broader attempt by the executive branch to justify further immigration enforcement crackdowns against families across the country,” Schulte said. “The government failed to show any harm remotely comparable to that which will come from a half million people losing their jobs and becoming subject to deportation.” 

Friday’s case is one of several immigration-related emergency requests the Department of Justice has brought to the high court, as the Trump administration aims to carry out mass deportations, wind down temporary legal pathways for immigrants and redefine the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.

No judicial review for parole, DOJ argues

In the emergency filing to the high court in Friday’s case, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the Immigration Nationality Act bars judicial review of discretionary decisions, such as what is called humanitarian parole, for the CHNV program.

He added that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated the program because it does not align with the interests of the Trump administration.

Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

“The Court has plainly botched this assessment today,” Jackson wrote in her dissent. “It undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”

She argued that the Trump administration did not prove it would be harmed by the preliminary injunction. An appeals court previously rejected the government’s request to put the lower court’s order on hold.

“While it is apparent that the Government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum predecision damage, court-ordered stays exist to minimize—not maximize—harm to litigating parties,” Jackson wrote.

President Joe Biden created the CHNV program in 2023. It temporarily granted work permits and allowed thousands of nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to remain in the country if they were sponsored by someone in the United States and passed a background check.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)

A federal judge in California said Thursday he is considering issuing an order to preserve work permits for a small group of Venezuelans with temporary protected status, which allows migrants to live in the United States for a set period without fear of deportation.

They were granted these extended protections by immigration officials before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that allowed the Trump administration to revoke those protections.

A hearing before U.S. District Judge Edward Chen was the first in the case since the Supreme Court on May 19 allowed the Trump administration to end temporary protections for a group of 350,000 Venezuelans and vacated Chen’s order blocking the administration’s move.

Chen, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to a seat in the Northern District of California, acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s decision has left an “island” of about 5,000 Venezuelans who have gotten work permits approved until October of 2026 — before the high court’s order moved up the date their TPS status expired.

“It’s a small exception,” he said.

Attorneys for those TPS holders filed an emergency motion to protect that subgroup to keep those work and deportation protections through October 2026. They are also pushing for an expedited hearing schedule to challenge the administration’s revocation of protections because the group of Venezuelans lost protections in April, meaning they are subject to deportation.

“Every day that there’s not a final decision in this case, our plaintiffs are now subject to deportation, are now losing their jobs, and we need to move urgently towards a final resolution in this case,” Jessica Karp Bansal, who is representing the National TPS Alliance, said at a Thursday hearing.

Back and forth

In March, Chen found that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to revoke extended protections for Venezuelans previously granted under the Biden administration until October of 2026 was arbitrary and capricious. His order overturned Noem’s revocation of protections for one group of Venezuelans who were placed on TPS in 2023.

The group of Venezuelans given protections in 2023 were initially scheduled to lose that status on April 7, meaning the Supreme Court’s May decision allowed Noem to immediately revoke the extended protections. The second group’s protections will end in September.

The groups who brought the suit against Noem represent TPS holders from Venezuela. The immigration groups have amended their complaint to include TPS holders from Haiti, whose protections will expire in August after Noem revoked an extension.

A federal district court in New York this week held oral arguments on the termination of TPS for more than 300,000 Haitians.

The California case is also before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear oral arguments in July.

Noem cited gang activity as her reason for not extending TPS for the 2023 group of Venezuelans.

The attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of the TPS holders, are also pressing for discovery to obtain records and documents to show the decision process for ending TPS for nationals from Venezuela and Haiti.

Chen set a status conference for June 24 at 1 p.m. Pacific Time. 

Migrants from Mexico and Guatemala are apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers after crossing a section of border wall into the U.S. on Jan. 04, 2025 in Ruby, Arizona.  (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Center for Migration Studies Thursday released a report finding the population of people in the United States without permanent legal status increased to 12.2 million in 2023, using the most recent Census Bureau American Community Survey data.

It’s a number that grew by 2 million from 2020 to 2023, according to the study by the nonpartisan New York think tank that studies domestic and international migration. 

Six states that have the largest population of people without permanent legal status also saw some of the biggest increases. They are California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas. Of those states, the fastest-growing were Florida, New York and New Jersey.

That population estimate includes not only people in the U.S. without legal authorization, but immigrants in programs that provide temporary legal status. That would include programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Temporary Protected Status, as well as people with pending asylum cases or who received humanitarian parole status since 2021.

The study noted that estimating the size of the population without permanent legal status could “become even more challenging in the next few years” because the census data collection could be affected by mass firings of federal workers as the Trump administration aims to cull the federal workforce.

Authors of the study also took into consideration the Trump administration’s efforts to enact mass deportations and how the population could decline, not due to removals but rather a decrease in the number of immigrants responding to survey data.

“The salient questions would be: Did the decline occur because deportations increased, including of populations stripped of temporary legal status, because fear led to an increase in emigration, because fear reduced the response rates in the surveys, or because of a combination of these or other factors?,” according to the study.

The annual report from the think tank runs counter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s congressional testimony in May to Senate appropriators that there are more than 20 million people in the country without legal authorization.

Other think tanks that study migration, such as the Migration Policy Institute, have estimated as of 2021, there were 11.2 million immigrants in the U.S. without legal authorization.

Venezuelan migrants

One major finding in the study by the Center for Migration Studies was that the population of Venezuelan immigrants increased from 55,000 in 2013 to 220,000 in 2020.

According to the study, that population then doubled in 2023 to 445,000, which is around the time the Biden administration granted TPS protections for a second group of Venezuelans after granting TPS for a first group of Venezuelans in 2021. Roughly half a million Venezuelans are under the TPS program and are at risk of losing protections from deportation.

That program allows nationals from countries deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, political instability or other unstable conditions to remain in the U.S. for up to 18 months unless their protections are renewed by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary.

The Trump administration is moving to end TPS for Venezuelans and invoked an 18th-century wartime law to rapidly deport any Venezuelan national 14 and older who is suspected of gang ties.

The Supreme Court has blocked the use of the wartime law over concerns of due process, and has not ruled on the constitutionality of using the law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But the high court is allowing the Trump administration to continue its efforts to end TPS for Venezuelans who were granted protections in 2023.

Central American migrants

The study also found the population of Central American immigrants grew by 1.2 million from 2013 to 2023. With the highest levels of migration at the southern border in 20 years, the Biden administration in January 2023 created a program to allow nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – nearly all from Central America – to be sponsored with work visas and have deportation protections.

Roughly 532,000 people are in that program. The Trump administration has made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to end it, potentially opening those immigrants up to rapid deportation. 

A crowd gathered outside U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Tuesday, April 10, 2025, to protest the government's erroneous deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran national, to a mega-prison in the Central American country. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is arguing that a Maryland federal court lacks the authority to require the return of wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia because he’s in prison in El Salvador — even though the U.S. Supreme Court has directed administration officials to “facilitate” his return.

In addition, the judge in the highly publicized case has denied the Department of Justice’s request for another 30 days to extend its time to submit briefs. Abrego Garcia has remained in prison since March.

DOJ lawyers said in a brief filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, in Greenbelt, that because the administration has not brought back Abrego Garcia, the court cannot act on his case. “This Court lacks jurisdiction because Abrego Garcia is not in United States custody, his injury is not redressable by this Court…,” according to the DOJ brief.

It’s the same argument DOJ attorneys made before another federal judge in the District of Columbia. That judge is deciding whether hundreds of men deported to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law — the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — are in U.S. custody, rather than El Salvador’s custody, and therefore can be required to be returned.

The United States is paying the Salvadoran government up to $15 million to detain the men at a brutal mega-prison, CECOT.

Abrego Garcia was among the nearly 300 men on the deportation flights to CECOT, but was not removed under the Alien Enemies Act. The Trump administration has admitted his removal to El Salvador was an “administrative error,” because Abrego Garcia has had deportation protections from El Salvador since 2019 due to concerns he would face violence if returned to his home country.

Need for additional time ‘rings hollow,’ judge says

The DOJ motion to dismiss the case being heard by District Court Judge Paula Xinis came after Xinis on Monday denied the Trump administration’s request for additional time.

In that request, the Department of Justice asked for 30 days to submit documents as part of an expedited briefing schedule to determine actions the government has taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

“The Court ordered expedited discovery because of Defendants’ refusal to follow the orders of this Court as affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court,” she wrote in her order denying the request for more time.

“The Court has conducted no fewer than five hearings in this case and at no point had Defendants even intimated they needed more time to answer or otherwise respond,” she continued. “Thus, to say now that additional time is needed to do that which the law requires rings hollow.”

In the DOJ brief, the Trump administration argues that even though the Supreme Court in April ruled that the government must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, the high court did not rule on the issue of the lower court having jurisdiction over the case.

“Those decisions do not ‘squarely address’ these jurisdictional issues and therefore are not binding as to whether Abrego Garcia’s claims are proper, his injury is redressable by this Court,” according to the DOJ filing.

The Trump administration also argues that the suit Abrego Garcia’s family and attorneys must bring is a habeas corpus claim, which allows people in the U.S. who believe they are being unlawfully detained to petition for their release in court. It can be used to challenge immigration detention.

“Because Plaintiffs seek Abrego Garcia’s release from allegedly unlawful detention on the grounds that it was effected illegally, they make a core habeas claim and must bring it exclusively in habeas,” according to the DOJ brief. “But there is no jurisdiction in habeas.”

Travels to El Salvador

Two Maryland Democratic members of Congress – Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Glenn Ivey – traveled to El Salvador to meet and advocate for Abrego Garcia’s return.

Van Hollen said that Abrego Garcia had been moved from CECOT to a lower-security prison. He added that Salvadoran officials told him that Abrego Garcia was being held because of the financial agreement between the United States and El Salvador.

While Van Hollen was able to meet and speak with Abrego Garcia last month, Ivey was not.

Ivey returned from El Salvador last weekend, and said Salvadoran officials would not permit him to see Abrego Garcia, who is a resident of his congressional district.

According to Maryland Matters, Ivey said that Abrego Garica remaining in El Salvador despite the Supreme Court’s April order is inching the U.S. toward a “constitutional crisis,” because it seems like the Trump administration is “refusing to comply with court orders. That’s scary.”

At the last hearing before Xinis, DOJ attorney Jonathan D. Guynn said the Trump administration was complying with all court orders and defended statements from Trump officials, including President Donald Trump, who have stated Abrego Garcia would not return to the U.S.

Guynn said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s comment that Abrego Garcia “will not return” to the U.S. meant that if Abrego Garcia was back in U.S. custody he would be removed either to another third country or back again to El Salvador.

“He’ll never walk free in the United States,” Guynn said.

Detainees board a plane chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at King County International Airport on April 15, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Boston Wednesday found the Trump administration violated his preliminary injunction barring third-country removals of migrants without due process, after immigration lawyers say their clients were placed on deportation flights to South Sudan.

“It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan,” U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy said. “The government’s actions in this case are unquestionably violative of this court’s order.”

Murphy said he will narrowly tailor a remedy to the violation of his April order. He said the Trump administration must give proper due process to the eight men who were placed on deportation flights on Tuesday and given less than 24 hours to challenge their removal to South Sudan.

South Sudan, in East Africa, is violence-ridden and the U.S. State Department advises against travel there.

Department of Justice attorneys would not confirm where the plane landed, but according to flight tracking data reviewed by the New York Times, there is a chartered plane owned by a company used in the past for deportations that has landed in the East African nation of Djibouti.

Murphy did not detail what contempt charges would look like, but asked Department of Justice attorneys for a list of names of people involved in the flights for potential consequences.

The hearing in Massachusetts is one of several clashes between the Trump administration and the judiciary branch over the issue of due process in immigration enforcement, as the Trump administration aims to enact mass deportations.

The White House in a statement attacked Murphy as a “far-left activist judge” trying to protect migrants with criminal convictions. The list of individuals the White House said were on the flight were from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, South Sudan, Burma and Vietnam.

Flight originated in Texas

An hour before Wednesday’s hearing, top Department of Homeland Security officials at a press conference defended the decision, but declined to confirm if the migrants were sent to South Sudan and argued the country was not their “final destination.”

However, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons said that South Sudan had agreed to take the men.

“We conducted a deportation flight from Texas to remove some of the most barbaric violent individuals illegally in the United States,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said at the press event.

McLaughlin said that the men were still in DHS custody.

Murphy, appointed by former President Joe Biden, has not ordered the Trump administration to return any of the men. At the hearing, he did question a top ICE official in Texas, Marcos Charles, and directed him to find out if it were possible to hold credible fear interviews for the men instead of requiring they be returned to the U.S.

Immigration attorneys who last night had asked for the emergency hearing pushed for the immigrants to be brought back to the U.S.

DOJ attorney Drew Ensign disagreed and said that any remedy from Murphy should be narrowly tailored and that ordering the men to be returned would be “too broad.”

Ensign also said the Trump administration’s position is that 24 hours is enough time for an immigrant to challenge their removal to a country that is not their home.

Trina Realmuto, of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, argued 30 days is preferable, because many of those removed do not have legal representation and need time to find an attorney and determine if they could face possible harm in another country.

Murphy said that he would clarify how much time is appropriate. He directed DOJ attorneys to make sure that everyone involved in third-country removals, from pilots to immigration officers, to be aware of his order and the possible criminal contempt charges if it’s not followed.

On late Tuesday, in an emergency hearing, Murphy ordered the government to keep the eight migrants in DHS custody until more details could be revealed in Wednesday’s hearing to determine if his April order was violated.

In that earlier order, Murphy barred the Trump administration from removing individuals from a country that is not their home country without giving them time to raise any concerns that they might face harm in the country they would be removed to.

Repeated conflicts between administration and judges

Sending migrants to South Sudan would bring the same concerns as sending them to Libya, another third country with a history of clashes.

The Trump administration extended Temporary Protection Status to nationals of South Sudan for six months to remain in the U.S., meaning those immigrants were granted work permits and deportation protections because their home country was deemed too dangerous to return to. 

In early May, Murphy warned Trump officials that any deportations to a third country such as Libya and Saudi Arabia — countries with human rights violations that the Trump administration was considering for deportations — would have clearly violated his April preliminary injunction. 

It’s not the first conflict between federal judges and the Trump administration.

A federal judge in Maryland grilled Department of Justice lawyers and accused the administration of stonewalling information on its efforts to return a wrongly deported man from El Salvador. Another federal judge in Maryland ordered the return of a separate wrongly deported man to an El Salvador prison, an order that the DOJ is currently appealing.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia ordered the administration to return deportation planes to the U.S. carrying men removed under the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798, but the planes landed in El Salvador to take the migrants to the notorious prison CECOT. The judge threatened possible contempt against the Trump administration.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday again rejected a request from the Trump administration to remove its block on using the Alien Enemies Act over concerns about due process.

The Trump administration in March invoked the Alien Enemies Act to apply to Venezuelans 14 and older with suspected gang ties to rapidly deport them, raising concerns about a lack of due process. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Tuesday was grilled by senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about funding estimates for a barrier along the southern border, as well as concerns about the Trump administration’s adherence to due process in immigration enforcement.

Noem was sharply criticized by Democrats for her answers to questions about habeas corpus, which they said she did not define correctly. “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” Noem said before she was cut off by Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, who had asked her for a definition.

“That’s incorrect,” Hassan said. “Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason.”

As for the cost of President Donald Trump’s border plans, even Republicans expressed doubts.

“I know the wall is (of) great symbolic value, but I think we should reassess the cost,” Republican Chair Rand Paul of Kentucky said about the House’s reconciliation package, which calls for $46 billion in border wall funding.

Noem appeared before the committee to discuss President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request for Congress along with the border security provisions in the reconciliation package. Congressional Republicans are using reconciliation — a special procedure that skirts the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster — to put together one bill to fulfill Trump’s priorities on border security, tax cuts, energy policy and defense.

“The border crisis is the biggest problem that was facing our country, and it was one that was imperative to fixing for our nation’s future,” Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, said. “We’re solving this crisis at a record pace, and we have delivered the most secure border in American history.”

Senate Democrats pressed Noem about DHS spending, noting that she is on track to run out of funding by mid-July, and her agency’s immigration crackdown that has led to expensive immigration enforcement.

The top Democrat on the panel, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, noted that detaining migrants at the Guantanamo naval base costs as much as $100,000 a day, compared to $160 a day at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. 

“I think that’s kind of outrageous,” Peters said. “I’m concerned by the staggering cost of this, and I would hope, Secretary (Noem), you could commit to providing this committee a detailed breakdown of the total cost of that operation there.”

Noem said she would get the cost breakdown for him. 

Questions about habeas corpus

Several Senate Democrats, including Hassan, Andy Kim of New Jersey and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, questioned comments from senior White House officials such as Stephen Miller, who has said discussions about suspending habeas corpus were underway.

Habeas corpus allows people in the U.S. who believe they are being unlawfully detained to petition for their release in court, and it can be used to challenge immigration detention.

The U.S. Constitution in allowing for habeas corpus to be suspended says “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” That provision is within Article I of the Constitution, which covers the functions of the legislative branch, or Congress.

Habeas corpus has only been suspended four times in U.S. history, during the Civil War; in almost a dozen South Carolina counties that were overrun by the Ku Klux Klan during reconstruction; in a 1905 insurrection in U.S. territories in the Philippines; and after the Pearl Harbor bombing in Hawaii.

Slotkin told Noem she was concerned by her response that she believes the president has the right to suspend habeas corpus.

“You sat here in front of all of us and swore an oath to the Constitution,” Slotkin said to Noem, adding that if the president were to suspend habeas corpus, it would be a “complete overreach.”

“It is a right that we all get, that American citizens get, that people who are in the United States legally have,” Slotkin said.

Kim asked Noem, a former member of the U.S. House, if she knew what section of the Constitution allows for the suspension of habeas corpus and which article it’s under.

Noem did not know the answer to either question.

“It’s in Article I,” Kim said. “Do you know which branch of government Article I outlines the tasks and the responsibilities for?”

Noem said Congress. She then argued former President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.

Lincoln suspended habeas corpus between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia because of the Civil War and initially did so without congressional approval. He later called Congress back into session to get congressional approval for it.

Reality show with competing immigrants

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut asked Noem if DHS was considering hosting a reality show that would make immigrants compete for citizenship, according to multiple media reports.

Noem vehemently denied that DHS was looking at it.

“There may have been something submitted somewhere along the line, because there are proposals pitched to the department, but me and my executive team have no knowledge of a reality show, and it’s not under consideration,” she said.

Kim pressed Noem about the recent confrontation between House lawmakers and immigration officials at Delaney Hall in his home state of New Jersey.

Three New Jersey Democratic members – Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez — were in Newark protesting the reopening of Delaney Hall, an immigrant detention center.

The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, who was also protesting, was arrested.

The Trump administration Monday levied two felony charges against one of those members, McIver, accusing her of assaulting officers during Baraka’s arrest.

Kim said he was concerned about the incident and asked Noem if she was aware that members of Congress do not need prior notice to conduct oversight at DHS facilities.

Members of Congress are allowed to conduct oversight visits at any DHS facility that detains immigrants, without prior notice, under provisions in an appropriations law.

Noem accused the three House members of “storming” the facility.

“We give tours when members of Congress ask for it, we just ask that they not be politicized,” she said.

Prep for big sporting events

Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott and Rand Paul asked Noem about how prepared DHS is for providing security to big sporting events such as the Super Bowl and soccer’s World Cup.

Scott wanted to know how security preparations for the 2026 World Cup, which includes games in Miami, are going.

Miami is one of 11 U.S. cities hosting the World Cup. The others are Atlanta; Boston; Dallas; Houston; Kansas City, Missouri; Los Angeles; the San Francisco Bay area; the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area; Philadelphia; and Seattle.

“We are working diligently with FIFA and other entities to ensure that cities and states have the assets that they need. This will be an unprecedented world event,” Noem said. “It will be taking place in three different countries and many cities across our country, but also Mexico and Canada, and it will take place over a month.”

The World Cup, which first began in the 1930s, is typically held in one country every four years. The last time two countries hosted the month-long event was in 2002, with Japan and South Korea.

Paul asked Noem if the NFL or FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, ever paid DHS for its security measures.

Noem said no.

“Here’s my point,” Paul said. “The NFL makes billions of dollars. These people ought to pay. I mean, it’s ridiculous that the average taxpayer could never afford to go to an NFL Super Bowl, (and) has got to pay for their security.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will allow, for now, the Trump administration to terminate temporary protections for a group of 350,000 Venezuelans, striking down a lower court’s order that blocked the process.

The order still means the group of Venezuelans on Temporary Protected Status — a designation given to nationals from countries deemed too dangerous to return to remain in the U.S. — will be able to continue to challenge in court the end of their work permits and the possibility of removal. But they no longer have protections from deportation. 

No justices signed onto the ruling, which is typical in cases brought before the high court on an emergency basis, but liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted she would have denied the request.

TPS status for that group of Venezuelans — a portion of Venezuelans living in the United States, not all of them — was set to end on April 7 under a move by the Trump administration.

But U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of the Northern District of California in March blocked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to vacate an extension of TPS protections that had been put in place by the Biden administration until October 2026.

The case is now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Chen, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, blocked the Trump administration from removing protections for that group of Venezuelans on the basis that Noem’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious,” and potentially motivated by racism.

“Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” Chen wrote in his order.

Noem cited gang activity as her reason for not extending TPS for the group of 350,000 Venezuelans, who came to the United States in 2023.

A second group of 250,000 Venezuelans who were granted TPS in 2021 will have their work and deportation protections expire in September. Chen’s order did not apply to the second group of Venezuelans.

Those with TPS have deportation protections and are allowed to work and live in the United States for 18 months, unless extended by the DHS secretary.

Democrats criticized Monday’s decision, including Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.

“Ending protections for Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s regime is cruel, short-sighted, and destabilizing,” he wrote on social media.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington state, wrote on social media that Venezuelans “face extreme oppression, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, and torture — the exact type of situation that requires our government to provide TPS.”

Monday’s order is one of several immigration-related emergency requests from the Trump administration before the Supreme Court.

Last week, the high court heard oral arguments that stemmed from an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.

And justices in a separate case, again, denied the Trump administration from resuming the deportations of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday, May 16, 2025, that the Trump administration's attempt to deport a group of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law "does not pass muster." (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday kept in place a block on the Trump administration’s efforts to deport 176 Venezuelans in Northern Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

A majority of the justices found that President Donald Trump’s administration violated the due process rights of Venezuelans when the administration tried to deport them from North Texas last month by invoking the 18th-century wartime law. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” according to the decision.

The justices did not determine the legality of the Trump administration using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans 14 and older with suspected ties to the gang Tren de Aragua.

On his social media platform, Trump expressed his disapproval of the ruling.

“THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” he wrote on Truth Social.

The justices found that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals “erred in dismissing the detainees’ appeal for lack of jurisdiction,” and vacated that order, sending the case back.

The Trump administration on Monday asked the high court to remove the injunction, arguing that detaining suspected members of Tren de Aragua poses a threat to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and staff.

In a Wednesday response, the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit, warned that if the Supreme Court lifts its injunction, “most of the putative class members will be removed with little chance to seek judicial review.”

In Friday’s order, the justices noted that because the Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act to send migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, careful due process is needed.

“The Government has represented elsewhere that it is unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador…where it is alleged that detainees face indefinite detention,” according to the order, noting the wrongful deportation of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.

“The detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty,” the court continued.

Other rulings

On April 18, the ACLU made an emergency application to the high court, asking to bar any removals under the Alien Enemies Act in the Northern District of Texas over concerns that the Trump administration was not following due process.

Several federal judges elsewhere have blocked the use of the wartime law in their districts that cover Colorado, Southern Texas and Southern New York.

A federal judge in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday was the first to uphold the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those accused must have at least three weeks to challenge their removal.

Maryland Democratic U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents the district where Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife live, led the chant “bring him home” outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland shortly before a hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

GREENBELT, MARYLAND — A federal judge said Friday the Trump administration has “pretty broadly” invoked the state secrets privilege to withhold information on its efforts — or, the judge indicated, a possible lack of effort — to return a wrongly deported Maryland man from a prison in El Salvador.

President Donald Trump’s administration moved last month to invoke the so-called state secrets privilege to shield information about its process to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States after a top immigration official admitted his removal to a prison in El Salvador was an “administrative error.”

The judge handling the case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, granted an expedited discovery process after she found last month that “nothing has been done” by the administration to return Abrego Garcia.

She did not make a public order regarding the state secrets privilege Friday afternoon before closing her courtroom to the public to discuss sensitive matters with attorneys for Abrego Garcia and the Department of Justice.

The state secrets privilege is a common-law doctrine that protects sensitive national security information from being released. The Trump administration has argued the need to invoke it in this case to protect diplomatic relationships.

‘He’ll never walk free in the United States’

During the public portion of Friday’s hearing, Xinis pressed the Department of Justice attorneys about Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s comment that Abrego Garcia “will not return” to the U.S.

“That sounds to me like an admission that your client will not take steps to facilitate the return,” Xinis said. “That’s about as clear as it can get.”

DOJ attorney Jonathan D. Guynn disagreed and said the Trump administration is complying with court orders. He said Noem’s comment meant that if Abrego Garcia was back in U.S. custody he would be removed either to another third country or back to El Salvador.

“He’ll never walk free in the United States,” Guynn said.

He added that the Trump administration is “currently complying and we plan to comply.”

Xinis said she disagreed, and then she clashed with Guynn over the legality of Abrego Garcia’s removal.

Guynn said that he was lawfully deported.

Xinis answered that she found months ago that Abrego Garcia was unlawfully detained and removed from the U.S.

Few documents produced

One of the attorneys for Abrego Garcia, Andrew J. Rossman, said the Trump administration has invoked the state secrets privilege for 1,140 documents relating to the case. From that request, Rossman said his team received 168 documents, but 132 were copies of court filings and requests made by him and his team.

Xinis seemed visibly stunned by Rossman’s report and had to clarify that his team had only received 36 new documents, which Rossman confirmed.

Rossman said that none of the documents for which the government is invoking the state secrets privilege are classified.

“There’s ways to do this right, and they haven’t done it,” he said, noting that he has attorneys on his team who have security clearances and can review classified and sensitive information.

Rossman said that he and his team are seeking answers to three questions: the status of Abrego Garcia, what steps the Trump administration has taken, if any, to facilitate his return, and the steps the federal government will take, if any, to comply with court orders.

Guynn said the Trump administration received an update from El Salvador on Thursday that Abrego Garcia was in “good health” and had “even gained weight.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

Rossman, said that it’s “deeply disturbing” that administration officials, including the president, have made public statements that contradict court orders directing the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

President Donald Trump has said he could easily pick up the phone and order El Salvador to return him but won’t because he believes Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang.

Noem was pressed at a May 14 congressional hearing about a photo that appears altered to add letters across Abrego Garcia’s knuckles to indicate his inclusion in the gang. She said she was unaware of it.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia, in a separate case regarding Trump’s use of an archaic wartime law for deportations, questioned Department of Justice attorneys on the president’s claim that he could order Abrego Garcia to be returned. The attorney admitted that the president sometimes overstates his influence abroad.

El Salvador prison

Abrego Garcia has had protections from deportation since 2019, but he was one of nearly 300 men on three mid-March removal flights to a notorious prison in El Salvador known as CECOT.

Abrego Garcia has been moved to a lower security prison, according to Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who traveled to the country last month to meet with Abrego Garcia and inquire with Salvadoran officials about why he is being held there.

Those officials said Abrego Garcia was being held because of the agreement between the United States and El Salvador.

The U.S. has a $15 million agreement with El Salvador’s government to house immigrants removed from the U.S., mostly Venezuelans removed under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The Trump administration has argued that Abrego Garcia is a national of El Salvador and in that country’s custody and the U.S. cannot force another government to return him. 

Hours before Friday’s hearing, dozens of protestors gathered outside the court, calling for Abrego Garcia to be returned to the U.S., as well as criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. 

U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents the area in Maryland where Abrego Garcia and his family live, appeared outside the court and led chants calling for the release of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador.

“The president has to obey the orders of the Supreme Court,” Ivey said. “The Supreme Court has spoken here, and it’s time for him to follow it and bring him home.”

Hundreds gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, May 15, 2025, to protest the Trump administration's effort to strip birthright citizenship from the Constitution. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared split Thursday hearing a major case in which the Trump administration defended not only the president’s order to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship but also its efforts to limit nationwide injunctions.

Though the dispute before the justices relates to the executive order on birthright citizenship that President Donald Trump signed on his Inauguration Day, the Trump administration is asking the high court to focus on the issue of preliminary injunctions granted by lower courts, rather than the constitutionality of the order.

It means that the Supreme Court could potentially limit the power of federal judges in district courts who curtail the president’s authority.

The Trump administration argues that a federal judge granting a nationwide injunction that blocks the federal government from carrying out its policy anywhere in the country is unconstitutional.

The justices had before them three cases with injunctions levied by judges on Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, from courts in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state. Under the 14th Amendment, all children born in the United States are considered citizens, regardless of their parents’ legal status.

Trump’s order, originally planned to go into effect Feb. 19, said that children born in the United States would not be automatically guaranteed citizenship if their parents were in the country without legal authorization or if they were on a temporary legal basis such as a work or student visa.

The justices questioned the practicality of a system in which judges can no longer issue nationwide injunctions and the logistics of instead having individuals file their own cases.

Liberal justice Elena Kagan said that would create a chaotic system, and conservative justice Neil Gorsuch said it would produce a “patchwork” of suits and noted how long it takes for a class — a group of affected people — to be put together for a court case.

Nationwide injunctions have stymied Trump’s agenda, but were also frequent during the Joe Biden administration. However, Trump has lashed out at judges who have blocked his actions, which in March prompted a rare response from conservative Chief Justice John Roberts on the importance of an independent judiciary.

‘Stateless’ children

If the Supreme Court, dominated 6-3 by conservatives, decides that nationwide injunctions are not allowed in the birthright citizenship cases, it would temporarily create a patchwork of citizenship rules varying from state to state while the cases are litigated. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it would create a class of stateless people.

“Thousands of children who are going to be born without citizenship papers that could render them stateless in some places because some of their parents’ homes don’t recognize children of their nationals unless those children are born in their countries,” she said.

If birthright citizenship were to be eliminated, 255,000 children born each year would not be granted U.S. citizenship, according to a study by the think tank Migration Policy Institute.

40 injunctions since Jan. 20

Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, in his opening remarks, noted that since Trump took office in January, there have been 40 nationwide injunctions.

“Universal injunctions exceed the judicial power granted in Article III, which exists only to address the injury to the complaining party,” he said, referring to the Constitution. “They transgress the traditional balance of equitable authority, and it creates a host of practical problems.”

Sauer touched on the merits of birthright citizenship, arguing that the 14th Amendment was only meant to grant citizenship to newly freed Black people, and not for immigrants in the country without legal authorization.

“The suggestion that our position on the merits is weak is profoundly mistaken,” Sauer said. “That kind of snap judgment on the merits that was presented in the lower courts is exactly the problem with the issue of racing to issue these nationwide injunctions.”

He said that the Trump administration would follow the high court’s ruling on birthright citizenship.

Sotomayor said that the Supreme Court has ruled four times to uphold birthright citizenship, starting in 1898, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the court ruled children born in the U.S. are citizens.

The justice that seemed most inclined to agree with Sauer’s argument was conservative Clarence Thomas, who noted the use of nationwide injunctions began in the 1960s and the U.S. has survived without them.

However, conservative Justice Samuel Alito criticized that district court judges “are vulnerable to an occupational disease, which is the disease of thinking that ‘I am right and I can do whatever I want.’”

Citizenship ‘turned on and off’

New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum, who represented the states that sought an injunction against the birthright citizenship order, laid out how the patchwork of citizenship means that citizenship would be “turned on” and off depending on state lines.

“Since the 14th Amendment, our country has never allowed American citizenship to vary based on the state in which someone resides, because the post-Civil War nation wrote into our Constitution that citizens of the United States and of the states would be one and the same without variation across state lines,” he said.

Immigrant rights’ groups and several pregnant women in Maryland who are not U.S. citizens filed the case in Maryland; four states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon — filed the case in Washington state; and 18 Democratic state attorneys general filed the challenge in Massachusetts.

Those 18 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia and the county and city of San Francisco also joined.

Feigenbaum argued that the birthright citizenship case before the justices is the rare instance in which nationwide injunctions are needed because under a patchwork system, a burden would be created for states and local facilities such as hospitals where births occur.

“We genuinely don’t know how this could possibly work on the ground,” he said.

Kelsi Corkran, who argued on behalf of immigrant rights groups, said that the Trump order is “blatantly unlawful,” and that a nationwide injunction against the executive order was warranted.

“It is well settled that preliminary injunctions may benefit non-parties when necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs or when warranted by extraordinary circumstances, both of which are true here,” she said.

Corkran is the Supreme Court director at Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

Lots of injunctions

The justices seemed frustrated with the frequent use of preliminary injunctions from the lower courts not only in the Trump administration, but others that occurred during the Biden administration.

Kagan noted that during the first Trump administration, suits were filed in the more liberal courts of California, and that during the Biden administration suits were filed in the more conservative courts in Texas.

“There is a big problem that is created by that mechanism,” Kagan said.

She added that it’s led to frequent emergency requests to the high court.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed, and called it a “bipartisan” issue that has occurred during Republican and Democratic presidencies.

While the justices seemed concerned about the frequent use of nationwide injunctions, they also seemed eager to address the merits of the constitutionality of the birthright citizenship executive order that could potentially impact newborns.

Kavanaugh returned to the question of the logistics of birthright citizenship and how it would even be enforced.    

He pressed Sauer on how hospitals and local governments would implement the policy and if they would be burdened.

“What would states do with a newborn?” Kavanaugh asked, adding that the executive order requires a quick implementation within 30 days.

Sauer said that hospitals wouldn’t have to do anything differently because the executive order directs the federal government to “not accept documents that have the wrong designation of citizenship from people who are subject to the (executive) order.”

Kavanaugh asked how the federal government would know who is subject to the order.

“The federal officials will have to figure that out,” Sauer said.

Any decision on the case will come before the Supreme Court’s July Fourth recess. 

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delivers remarks to staff at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters on Jan. 28, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Wednesday harshly criticized three Democrats who were accosted by federal immigration officials while protesting the opening of an immigrant detention center in New Jersey.

Democrats at the hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee in turn said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials physically assaulted the lawmakers.

Noem, who was appearing to discuss President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget for the agency, said the Democrats who went to Delaney Hall to oversee the conditions were not conducting proper oversight.

Members of Congress are allowed to conduct oversight visits at any DHS facility that detains immigrants, without prior notice, under provisions in an appropriations law.

“I believe that it was breaking into a federal facility and assaulting law enforcement officers,” Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, said.

Newark incident

Last Friday, the three New Jersey Democratic members – Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez — were in Newark protesting the reopening of an immigrant detention center.

The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, was arrested. It was a stark escalation of Democratic lawmakers’ opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

After the incident, Menendez detailed how ICE agents “pushed, physically assaulted two female members of Congress.” 

Several Republicans on the panel that oversees Homeland Security, including Chair Mark Green of Tennessee, said there should be consequences for the Democrats, such as criminal charges.

Green accused one of three Democrats of assaulting a law enforcement officer.

“This behavior demands a swift and firm response, and I assure you, action will be taken,” Green said.

Arizona GOP Rep. Eli Crane suggested there be criminal charges lodged against the Democratic members and Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee suggested to Noem that she “look into actions (to) be taken if a member assaulted” law enforcement.

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, slammed Noem for the incident.

“Instead of following the law, masked ICE personnel stopped and assaulted the members,” he said. “Then, to make matters worse, instead of launching an investigation into the incident, your department lied to the press about the situation and threatened to arrest members of Congress for doing their job.”

One of the Democrats who was at the detention center protest, McIver, sits on the committee, but she did not speak to Noem about the incident.

“This is not about me,” McIver said, and instead pressed Noem about international students who had their visas revoked.

Focus on Abrego Garcia

Democrats criticized Noem and the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement that has led to swift deportations and concerns about a lack of due process.

They especially focused on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador.

Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner called Noem’s leadership of DHS “sloppy,” and said it has led to immigrants and even U.S. citizen children being wrongly deported.

“Instead of enforcing the laws, you have repeatedly broken them,” Magaziner said. “You need to change course immediately before more innocent people are hurt on your watch.”

California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell asked Noem if Abrego Garcia was given proper due process.

Swalwell said he was defending due process and held up a poster that showed Trump holding a picture of Abrego Garcia’s hand that digitally added “MS-13” tattoos to his knuckles.

He asked her several times if the photo was doctored. Noem did not answer the question but said she was unaware of the image.

Instead she said that even if Abrego Garcia were returned to the United States, he would be immediately deported. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia but he remains in El Salvador.

Crane asked Noem if she supported suspending habeas corpus, something that top Trump officials such as Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have floated.

Habeas corpus allows people who believe they are being unlawfully detained to petition for their release in court, and it’s used to challenge immigration detention. It’s currently the only avenue that Venezuelans subject to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 have to challenge their deportation under the wartime law.

“That’s not in my purview to weigh in on,” Noem said. “This is the president’s prerogative to pursue, and he has not indicated to me that he will or will not be taking that action.”

The U.S. Constitution allows for habeas corpus to be suspended “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

Crane argued that unauthorized immigration counted as an “invasion,” and therefore could be used to suspend habeas corpus.

Habeas corpus has been suspended four times in U.S. history, during the Civil War; in almost a dozen South Carolina counties that were overrun by the Ku Klux Klan during reconstruction; in a 1905 insurrection in U.S. territories in the Philippines; and after the Pearl Harbor bombing in Hawaii.

FEMA dismantling

Thompson grilled Noem about the president’s comments wanting to dismantle FEMA.

Noem said that she is supportive of Trump’s policy.

“The president has been clear that he wants to empower states to give them the opportunity to build out their response,” she said.

She said that while the federal government will be there for support, that local and state governments “know what they need.”

Thompson asked Noem if she had a plan for the federal government responding to natural disasters.

Noem said while there is nothing in writing, “the White House is coming forward with a plan…that will be making recommendations.”

GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, said that while he supports efforts to “reform FEMA,” he stressed to Noem that “we can’t leave those who can’t fend for themselves.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, May 15, 2025, will hear cases related to President Donald Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices on Thursday are set to hear oral arguments in three cases stemming from the Trump administration’s attempt to end the constitutional right of birthright citizenship — though the focus may be on the power of district court judges to issue orders with national effects.

It’s one of the first major legal fights of the Trump administration’s second term to reach the high court, and one of several immigration-related emergency requests to be considered.

The justices have before them three challenges to President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, from courts in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state. Under birthright citizenship, all children born in the United States are considered citizens, regardless of their parents’ legal status.

But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to focus instead on whether lower court judges can issue nationwide injunctions, rather than the constitutionality of the executive order. Such injunctions affect everyone in the country and not just those involved in the case or living in the court’s district.

It is up to the court alone to decide, though, what it wants to consider, and justices could also wade into the birthright citizenship question.

If birthright citizenship were to be eliminated, more than a quarter of a million children born each year would not be granted U.S. citizenship, according to a new study by the think tank Migration Policy Institute.

It would effectively create a class of 2.7 million stateless people by 2045, according to the study.

The lawyers who will be making oral arguments in court are New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum and Kelsi Corkran, Supreme Court director at Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

In briefs, they argue that the Trump administration has not shown it will be harmed by the multiple district courts placing the executive order on hold.

On the core issue of birthright citizenship, in their briefs, they argue that the 14th Amendment “guarantees citizenship to all born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and cite Supreme Court cases that have upheld birthright citizenship to those born in the U.S.

Nine justices, three cases

The nine justices will hear arguments on whether lower courts erred in granting a nationwide pause on the policy that extended beyond the plaintiffs who initially filed the challenge.

Immigrant rights’ groups and several pregnant women in Maryland who are not U.S. citizens filed the case in Maryland; four states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon — filed the case in Washington state; and 18 Democratic state attorneys general filed the challenge in Massachusetts.

Those 18 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who will argue on behalf of the Trump administration, has criticized the nationwide injunctions as impeding the executive branch’s authority. 

The Trump administration has contended that it’s unconstitutional for federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions. Instead, the Trump administration said, the injunctions should be limited to those who brought the challenges.

Wong Kim Ark case

On Trump’s Inauguration Day, he signed an executive order, which was originally planned to go into effect Feb. 19, that children born in the United States would not be automatically guaranteed citizenship if their parents were in the country without legal authorization or if they were on a temporary legal basis such as a work or student visa.

Birthright citizenship was adopted in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1868, following the Civil War, to establish citizenship for newly freed Black people. In 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court initially denied citizenship to Black people, whether they were free or enslaved.

In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, when the justices ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that children born in the U.S. are citizens.

In that case, Ark was born in San Francisco, California, to parents who were citizens of the Republic of China, but had a temporary legal authority to be in the country, such as a visa.

When Ark left the U.S. for a trip to China, on his return his citizenship was not recognized and he was denied reentry due to the Chinese Exclusion Act— a racist law designed to restrict and limit nearly all immigration of Chinese nationals.

The high court eventually ruled that children born in the United States to parents who were not citizens automatically become citizens at birth.

In arguments in the lower courts on the current case, attorneys on behalf of the Trump administration argue that the Wong Kim Ark case was misinterpreted and pointed to a phrase in the 14th Amendment: “subject to the jurisdiction.”

The Trump administration contends that phrase means that birthright citizenship only applies to children born to parents who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. In their view, people in the U.S. without legal status or temporary legal status are “subject to the jurisdiction” of their country of origin.

Tribal sovereignty

Tribal law scholars have noted that the language pertaining to “jurisdiction of” stems from the idea of political alliance when it comes to tribal sovereignty.

It’s from another Supreme Court case involving the U.S. citizenship of American Indian citizens, which the Trump administration focuses on in its argument, citing Elk v. Wilkins in 1884.

In that case, the Supreme Court denied citizenship to John Elk, a Winnebago man living in Omaha, Nebraska, on the grounds that “Indian tribes, being within the territorial limits of the United States, were not, strictly speaking, foreign states; but they were alien nations, distinct political communities.”

Torey Dolan, an assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said the Trump administration’s reliance on Elk in its birthright citizenship executive order and the idea the political alliance of a parent would then transfer to a child is a misinterpretation.

“A lot of this reliance on Elk is really a distortion,” Dolan said. “I think the administration’s reliance is a stretch, at best, and a bastardization of the case, at worst.”

Dolan, an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said some Native Americans were excluded from citizenship in the 14th Amendment because during that time, Congress would specifically sign treaties with tribes and grant citizenship.

“That is consistent with a long history of Congress creating pathways to Indian citizenship,” she said.

After the justices hear arguments on Thursday, any decision is likely to come before the Supreme Court’s recess in early July. 

Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at maximum security penitentiary CECOT, or Center for the Compulsory Housing of Terrorism, on April 4, 2025, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador.. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to lift its own injunction placed last month in the Northern District of Texas to allow for the deportation of a group of Venezuelan nationals under an 18th-century wartime law.

In the Monday filing, the Trump administration stated that the 176 Venezuelans have alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, and are therefore subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that detaining suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang poses a threat to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and staff.

She said that 23 migrants barricaded themselves in the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas. and “threatened to take hostages, and endangered officers.” Reuters sent a drone over the facility, and captured images of the detained men spelling out SOS with their bodies, over fears that they would be sent to El Salvador. 

The Trump administration has removed those subject to the Alien Enemies Act to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

The administration request stems from an April 18 emergency application from the American Civil Liberties Union that asked the high court to bar any removals under the Alien Enemies Act in the Northern District of Texas over concerns that the Trump administration was not following due process.

The justices, in a 7-2 ruling, ordered that while the lower case is before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, “the Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”

Monday’s filing by Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that those Venezuelans subject to the proclamation must be deported because the migrants “have proven to be especially dangerous to maintain in prolonged detention.”

In a Wednesday response, the ACLU warned that if the Supreme Court lifts its injunction, “most of the putative class members will be removed with little chance to seek judicial review.”

“And under the government’s position, courts will lack authority to remedy unlawful removals to the CECOT Salvadoran prison, where individuals could be held incommunicado for the remainder of their lives,” according to the ACLU brief.

In a separate emergency filing that issued a nationwide injunction that barred the Trump administration from invoking the proclamation, the Supreme Court ruled that, for now, the Trump administration can continue to use the Alien Enemies Act.

But the justices unanimously ruled that those who are subject to the wartime law must be given proper due process as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Several federal judges have blocked the use of the wartime law in their districts that cover Colorado, Northern and Southern Texas and Southern New York.

A federal judge in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday was the first to uphold the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those accused must have at least three weeks to challenge their removal.

In court documents, the Trump administration has noted that adequate time for someone to challenge an Alien Enemies Act designation is roughly 12 hours. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holds a press conference May 13, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Democrats Tuesday criticized House Republicans for their efforts to pass “one big, beautiful” bill to extend Trump-era tax cuts that would require potential cuts to food assistance and Medicaid.

“The American people do not support this extreme and toxic bill, and we’re going to hold every single House Republican who votes for it accountable,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, during a press conference.

As House Republicans push forward with the last three bills of their reconciliation package in committee this week, Democrats slammed the proposed work requirements for Medicaid, extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted during President Donald Trump’s first term and overhaul of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in order to pay for the megabill.

The complex reconciliation process skirts the Senate filibuster and Republicans plan to pass the bill through a simple majority, meaning input from Democrats is not needed. 

Several House Democrats, such as Rep. Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada, called the legislation a “scam.”

Horsford, who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, said during a separate press conference with the advocacy group Popular Democracy that extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts would “gut Medicaid.”

Medicaid is the state-federal health care program for people with low incomes and certain people with disabilities, and has 71.3 million enrollees. 

“This would be the largest cut to health care in the history of our country,” Horsford said.

Rep. Judy Chu, Democrat of California, said only the ultra wealthy, such as billionaires, would benefit from reconciliation through tax cuts.

The cost of the tax proposal has not yet been released, but government deficit watchdogs estimated a wholesale extension would cost roughly $4 trillion over the next decade.

SNAP costs shifted in part to states

The House committees on Agriculture, Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means met Tuesday to debate and pass their bills.

The Agriculture panel seeks to hit as much as $290 billion in cuts by passing part of the costs of SNAP to states through a sliding pay scale, based on error rates.

States with the lowest error rates for SNAP benefits would only pay for 5%, while other states with higher rates could pay as much for 25% of food benefits. More than 42 million people rely on SNAP, which is currently completely funded by the federal government.

The Energy and Commerce bill would cut federal spending by $880 billion, such as by instituting work requirements for Medicaid for some able-bodied adults ages between 19 and 65.

House committees have already signed off on eight of the 11 bills that will make up the sweeping reconciliation legislation before the Budget Committee rolls the bills into one package. If all Republicans get on board, the House is on track to approve the entire package before the end of May.

Warnings of rising premiums, hospital closings

Senate Democrats slammed potential cuts and changes to Medicaid.

“Not only will millions of Americans lose coverage — for many others, their premiums will skyrocket,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a press conference Tuesday.

“Hospitals — rural, urban and in between — will close,” the New York Democrat said. “Many, many people will lose their jobs, and many more will lose their health coverage. States will scramble with their budgets, and American families will be left out to dry.”

Oregon Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden also blasted the proposed cuts.

“What the Republicans do in their health care provisions in the reconciliation package is walk back health security for millions and millions of Americans,” he said.

“We’re for a tax code that gives everybody in America the chance to get ahead, that’s something that we’re going to battle for in this process,” said Wyden, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

Senate GOP

Some Republicans have also raised concerns about cuts to Medicaid, such as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times that any cuts to Medicaid would be “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

But Senate Majority Leader, John Thune of South Dakota, said Tuesday that he feels “very good” about where House Republicans are on their bill and “where, ultimately, we are going to be on that bill as well.”

“We are coordinating very closely with our House counterparts at the committee level, at the leadership level, and we know they have to get 218 votes,” he said.

Thune said House Republicans will “do what it takes to get it done in the House, and when it comes over here, we will be prepared for various contingencies, obviously, one of which could be taking up the House bill and then offering a Senate substitute, but we’ll see what ultimately they’re able to get done.” 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walks past reporters after doing a TV interview with Fox News outside of the White House on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Monday announced about 9,000 Afghans living in the United States who had been protected from deportation will no longer be shielded as of mid-July.

After the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2022, the Biden administration designated Temporary Protected Status, along with other legal temporary status pathways, for thousands of Afghans who aided the U.S. against the Taliban terrorist group and fled their home country. Thirteen U.S. military members were killed in the chaotic withdrawal at the Kabul airport.

About 80,000 Afghans came to the U.S. and settled in various programs that offered legal protections and work authorization. Of that group, 9,000 were designated TPS.

TPS is granted to nationals whose home country is deemed too dangerous to return due to violence or disasters.

The TPS designation for Afghanistan will expire on May 20 and deportation protections will lift on July 12. The order is likely to face legal challenges, since Noem’s moves to curtail TPS for other nationals have faced lawsuits.

“This administration is returning TPS to its original temporary intent,” Noem said in a statement. “We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation. Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent(s) them from returning to their home country.”

The termination of the status comes as the Trump administration fast-tracked the classification of refugees for white South Africans who landed in the U.S. Monday at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February that noted Afrikaners — an ethnic group in South Africa made up of European descendants, predominantly Dutch — are “victims of unjust racial discrimination” after South Africa’s government passed a land ownership law in an effort to address land dispossession that occurred under apartheid.

The Trump administration suspended all refugee services in late January and has resisted a district court’s order to reinstate the program, along with contracts to organizations that facilitate refugee resettlement services.

Noem said that determination to end TPS for Afghanistan was based on a review from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Afghanistan’s conditions along with input from the State Department.

The Taliban currently control the government and the State Department’s travel advisory for the country is the highest level, a 4, which means it advises against traveling.

DHS added in a statement that Noem “further determined that permitting Afghan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”

Noem has also ended TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians.

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court in early May to lift a lower court’s order that reversed Noem’s decision to end TPS for one group of Venezuelans. 

A pharmacy manager retrieves a bottle of antibiotics. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday aimed at lowering drug prices by pressuring pharmaceutical companies to align their U.S. pricing models with those in similarly wealthy countries.

“We’ll slash the cost of prescription drugs and will bring fairness to America,” Trump said at a morning White House event. “We’re all gonna pay the same.”

The executive order, which the White House dubbed the “most-favored-nation” policy, gives pharmaceutical companies 30 days to negotiate lower drug prices with the government.

If no deal is reached in that time, Trump said a new rule will be set so that the United States will have a price model similar to the lower rates patients abroad pay. According to the executive order, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be responsible for the rulemaking  “to impose most-favored-nation pricing.”

“We are going to pay the lowest price there is in the world,” Trump said.

Prescription pricing for brand-name drugs in the U.S. is more than four times higher than in similar countries, according to a 2024 study by the nonpartisan research nonprofit RAND.

Clear price targets

A White House official previewing the policy in a background call with reporters Monday said the president will direct the Department of Commerce to “take all appropriate action” on countries that “suppress drug pricing abroad.”

The Food and Drug Administration will also consider expanding imports of pharmaceutical drugs from nations beyond Canada, the White House official said.

Former President Joe Biden issued an executive order to direct the FDA to work with states to import prescription drugs from Canada.

The White House official said Kennedy “will set clear targets for price reductions across all markets in the United States.”

Kennedy appeared at the White House alongside the president Monday morning.

“The United States will no longer subsidize the health care of foreign countries, which is what we were doing,” Kennedy said. “If the Europeans raise their price of their drugs by just 20%, that is tens of trillions that can be spent on innovation and the health of all people all across the globe.”

Trump said Monday the drug pricing policy would be included in the “one, big, beautiful,” reconciliation bill that is the top priority of congressional Republicans. The measure is also expected to provide tax cuts and a significant funding increase to border security.

Staff on the House Energy and Commerce Committee told reporters twice during a background briefing around the same time that most favored nation prescription drug pricing would not be in that reconciliation package.

First term

The order is similar to an effort the president made in his first term, which was struck down in federal court.

The White House official said Monday’s order is an expansion of those first-term efforts, which tried to apply the pricing model for those with Medicare – the health insurance program for those who are 65 or older and certain people under 65 who have disabilities – to 50 drugs.

“The expectation should not be that we will just be pursuing that same rulemaking,” a White House official said. “We have moved on from that for broader action.”

The pharmaceutical industry has long opposed such a move and is already bracing for the president’s planned tariffs on prescription drugs. 

More details on specific actions in Medicare will be announced later, according to a White House official.

“We will be taking action in the Medicare program if the pharmaceutical companies do not come to the table and lower their prices across markets,” the White House official said.

Effort unserious, leading Democrat says

U.S. Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, slammed Monday’s executive order.

“If Trump was serious about lowering drug prices, he would work with Congress to strengthen Medicare drug price negotiations, not just sign a piece of paper,” Wyden said.

The Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats passed along party lines in 2022 when they held unified control of Washington allowed for drug negotiating pricing that aims to lower drug costs for those with Medicare.

“Democrats took on Big Pharma and won by finally giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices on behalf of seniors and capping their out-of-pocket costs for expensive prescriptions,” Wyden said, referring to the law.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives for a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Thursday, May 8, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON  — The top Democrat on a U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee panel Thursday slammed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for her handling of her agency’s funding and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Sen. Chris Murphy warned Noem that DHS is at risk of running out of its $65 billion in funding by July – two months before the end of the fiscal year – and therefore close to triggering the Antideficiency Act, a federal law prohibiting government agencies from spending funds in excess of their appropriations. 

“Your department is out of control,” the Connecticut Democrat told Noem. “You are running out of money.”

Noem, who appeared before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, was also grilled by Democrats about the high-profile case of a wrongly deported Maryland man sent in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The White House’s “skinny” budget proposal suggests $107 billion for DHS starting Oct. 1, and assumes that Republicans pass the reconciliation package under consideration to allocate a massive $175 billion overall in border security.  

“If we now live in a world in which the administration spends down the accounts that were priorities for Republicans and does not spend down the priorities that were priorities for Democrats, I don’t know how we do a budget,” Murphy said.

Sen. Patty Murray, top Democrat on the full Senate Appropriations Committee, slammed Noem for not following “our appropriations laws.”

She was critical of how immigration enforcement has caught up U.S. citizens and immigrants with protected legal statuses.

“Your crackdown has roped in American citizens and people who are here legally with no criminal record,” the Washington Democrat said. 

She also criticized Noem for spending $100 million on TV ads that range from praising the president to warning migrants not to come to the United States or to self-deport.

Noem in addition launched this week an initiative to provide up to $1,000 in “travel assistance” to immigrants without legal authorization to self-deport, which would amount to $1 billion if President Donald Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million people is met. The source of those funds in the DHS budget is unclear. 

Murray asked Noem about more than $100 billion in DHS funds not being used or re-programmed elsewhere for immigration enforcement, and called it “an illegal freeze.”

She then asked Noem when DHS would unfreeze those funds.

Noem did not answer and instead blamed the Biden administration, and said the previous administration “perverted” how the funds were used.

Murray said she did not think it was “credible that $100 billion is used to break the law.”

“I am very concerned that DHS is now dramatically over-spending funding that Congress has not provided,” Murray said. “We take our responsibility seriously to fund your department and others. We need to have answers, we need to have accountability, and we need to make sure you’re not overspending money that you were not allocated.”

Abrego Garcia deportation

Noem got into a heated exchange with one of the Democrats on the panel, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who traveled to El Salvador to speak with wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Trump administration has admitted his deportation was an “administrative error.”

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, who was sent initially to brutal CECOT but is now housed in another prison.

Van Hollen asked Noem what DHS has done to bring back Abrego Garcia, who had a 2019 court order barring his return to his home country of El Salvador for fear he would be harmed by gang violence.

Noem did not answer what steps the Trump administration was taking and said that because Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, he is in that nation’s custody and cannot be brought back.

Trump has contradicted his own administration, stating that if he wanted to bring back Agrego Garcia he would, but won’t because he believes Abrego Garcia has gang ties.

While Trump officials like Noem have alleged that Abrego Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang, no evidence has been provided in court and federal Judge Paula Xinis, who is presiding over the case, called the accusations “hearsay.”

Noem then questioned why Van Hollen was advocating for Abrego Garcia in the first place.

“Your advocacy for a known terrorist is alarming to me,” she said.

Van Hollen said that he was advocating for due process, which the Trump administration has been accused of skirting in its deportations. A federal judge in Louisiana next week plans to hold a hearing to determine if the Trump administration violated due process in deporting a 2-year-old U.S. citizen and her mother to Honduras.

Murphy also pressed Noem on the issue and asked how she was coordinating with El Salvador for Abrego Garcia’s release.

“There is no scenario where Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States,” she said.

Noem then said that even if Abrego Garcia were returned to the U.S., “we would immediately deport him again.”

GOP worried about students, TPS holders

Some Republicans on the panel, including the committee chair, raised concerns with Noem about how the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is affecting students with visas.

“There are so many others who do deserve scrutiny,” said Chairwoman Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who said she was worried about students from Canada who attend school in her home state. “But these are dually enrolled Canadian students, and they’ve been crossing the border for years without trouble.” 

She said Canadian students are being stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and given intense screenings.

“They have student visas, but they’re being subjected to extensive searches and questioning,” she said to Noem. “I don’t want us to discourage Canadian students from studying at the northern Maine institutions that we have for education.”

Noem said she would look into it.

Alaskan Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski raised the issue of paperwork not being processed for those with Temporary Protected Status in her state. TPS is granted to those who come from a country that is considered too dangerous or unstable to return to due to war, natural disasters or other instability.

Murkowski said several groups of immigrants in her state with temporary protected status and humanitarian protection are at risk of losing their work protections, such as Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Ukrainians.  

“The majority of these folks are just truly valued members of their new community,” Murkowski said. “They’re helping us meet workforce needs and really contributing to the tax base here. They’ve expressed great concern about their status and work authorizations that may be revoked or allowed to expire.”

She said that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has not processed TPS or humanitarian protection renewals for up to five months.

Noem said that those with TPS are being looked at, and admitted that some Ukrainians got an erroneous email that notified them their status was revoked.

She said DHS has not made a decision on whether or not to renew TPS for Ukrainians, who were granted the status due to Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.

“Some of these TPS programs have been in place for many, many years, but the evaluation on why TPS should be utilized and when it can be utilized by a country is the process that the administration is going through,” Noem said. 

The U.S. Supreme Court, as seen on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Thursday made an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the deportation of more than half a million immigrants granted humanitarian protections under the Biden administration.

A federal judge in Massachusetts in April blocked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from ending the humanitarian parole program for 532,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. An appeals court rejected the request from the Trump administration to stay the lower court’s order.

In the filing to the high court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that the Immigration Nationality Act bars judicial review of discretionary decisions, such as humanitarian parole.

Sauer adds that Noem terminated the program because it does not align with the interests of the Trump administration.

“The district court’s order stymies the government’s ability to terminate parole grants that the Secretary has determined undermine U.S. interests, and thus it inhibits the government’s pursuit of its foreign policy goals,” according to the brief.

Presidents for decades have used their parole authority to allow for migrants to obtain protected status.

President Joe Biden created the program in 2023 that temporarily grants work permits and allows nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to remain in the country if they are sponsored by someone in the United States.

Thursday’s emergency request is one of several immigration related challenges the Trump administration is asking the high court to intervene in after district courts and appeals courts have ruled against the administration.

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on ending birthright citizenship, the use of the 1798 wartime Alien Enemies Act, revoking Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans and requirements to return a wrongly deported Maryland man from El Salvador.

Deported migrants queue to receive an essential items bag during the arrival of a group of deported Salvadorans at Gerencia de Atención al Migrante on Feb. 12, 2025 in San Salvador, El Salvador.  (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — Immigration attorneys are asking a Massachusetts federal judge for an emergency temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration from removing their clients to Libya and Saudi Arabia as soon as Wednesday, in a major new development in President Donald Trump’s drive for mass deportations.

“Multiple credible sources report that flight/s are preparing to immediately depart the United States carrying class members for removal to Libya,” according to the new filings, referring to a group of migrants.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy did not grant the groups request for a temporary restraining order.  But he did issue a late Wednesday order that clarified any deportations to Libya would violate his preliminary injunction barring such removals to a third country without proper notice.

“If there is any doubt—the Court sees none—the allegedly imminent removals, as reported by news agencies and as Plaintiffs seek to corroborate with class-member accounts and public information, would clearly violate this Court’s Order,” Murphy wrote.

Murphy is also considering whether the Department of Defense should be included in his preliminary injunction “[b]ased on DHS’s representations that DoD has been conducting third country removals, allegedly without any involvement of DHS.”

Sending migrants to the North African nation is striking, as it is the site of an ongoing conflict and the State Department has a travel advisory against traveling to Libya due to “crime, terrorism, unexploded land mines, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict.”

The class members the attorneys are concerned about include nationals from Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam. As the Trump administration seeks to carry out mass deportations, it’s sought partnerships with countries to take migrants, such as sending them to CECOT, a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The practice has spawned numerous ongoing lawsuits over use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and allegations the administration is ignoring due process for deportees.

In a complication, Libya’s prime minister in Tripoli, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, wrote on social media that his country would not accept migrants deported by the Trump administration.

“We refuse to be a destination for the deportation of migrants under any pretext, and any understandings made by illegal parties that do not represent the Libyan state, and do not bind us politically or morally, as human dignity and national sovereignty are not a negotiable card,” he wrote.

Injunction bars removals

Attorneys say such removals would violate Murphy’s preliminary injunction granted in April.

“Class members were being scheduled for removal despite not receiving the required notice and opportunity to apply for (United Nations Convention Against Torture) protection,” according to the filing. “This motion follows class counsel receiving multiple reports that class members and their immigration counsel have not received the required protections provided by this Court’s Preliminary Injunction.”

The attorneys are also asking that any class members removed to Libya be returned to U.S. soil.

Flights to Saudi Arabia

There are also concerns that those in the group could be removed to Saudi Arabia.

“Class Counsel has also received a report that Defendants and those working with them may be planning flights to Saudi Arabia. At least one detainee—a citizen of Laos—reported that he had been verbally informed he was to be removed imminently to Saudi Arabia on a military flight,” according to the brief.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

In April, Murphy certified the class to include all immigrants with final orders of removal who were facing deportations to a country that was not their home country.

Murphy, who was appointed by former president Joe Biden, issued a nationwide injunction to bar that group’s removal to a third country without first being provided written notice.

He also ruled that those who are being removed to such a country must “be given an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture, and/or death.”

The suit was brought by the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Human Rights First.

“Libya has a long record of extreme human rights violations,” according to the court filing. “Any Class Member who is removed to Libya faces a strong likelihood of imprisonment followed by torture and even disappearance or death. Indeed, given Libya’s human rights record, it is inconceivable that Class Members from other countries would ever agree to removal to Libya, but instead would uniformly seek protection from being removed to Libya.”

Torture and abuse among human rights violations

The State Department’s 2023 human rights report on the country found human rights violations experienced by migrants who were either being held by Libya’s government or armed groups.

“The criminal and nonstate armed groups controlling extralegal facilities routinely tortured and abused detainees, subjecting them to arbitrary killings, rape and sexual violence, beatings, electric shocks, burns, forced labor, and deprivation of food and water, according to dozens of testimonies shared with international aid agencies and human rights groups,” according to the report.

The State Department’s 2023 human rights report on Saudi Arabia said it was possible migrants were killed by Saudi Arabia forces.

“There were reports that Saudi security forces along the border with Yemen killed significant numbers of African and Yemeni migrants and asylum seekers using both explosive weapons and by shooting individuals at close range,” according to the report.