WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s emergency request to implement a rule that would terminate gender-affirming care for transgender people incarcerated in federal prisons. 

It means a lower court order that blocked the policy from going into effect will remain in place for now, and gender-affirming healthcare for transgender inmates will continue. 

“This is a critical ruling for our clients and all transgender people in Bureau of Prisons custody,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement. “The denial of medically necessary health care, including gender-affirming health care, to people in prison is a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights.”  

The order did not give an explanation. But conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas noted that they would have sided with the Trump administration’s request to stop treatments by lifting a lower court’s injunction. 

The block has been in place since June 2025 by the District Court for the District of Columbia.

The suit stems from President Donald Trump’s executive order that prevented the Bureau of Prisons from providing gender-affirming care to transgender inmates.

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union sued, representing roughly 1,000 transgender inmates who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which is treated with gender-affirming care such as hormone therapy and other care. 

The class action lawsuit was filed first by two transgender men and one transgender woman at federal prisons in Florida, Minnesota and New Jersey.

The suit argued that the policy violated the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 

In a brief to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration argued that it rejects recommendations from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, previously followed by the Bureau of Prisons. The Department of Justice contended the recommendations “did not reflect the latest scientific information,” and that the prior policy “raised security and prison-administration concerns that outweighed whatever limited benefits they had.”

WASHINGTON — Immigrants living in the United States with humanitarian status from Ukraine and Sudan will retain their deportation protections and work authorizations for now, the Department of Homeland Security said over the weekend. 

More than 100,000 Ukrainians and roughly 2,000 Sudanese with Temporary Protected Status will keep their protections until “such an announcement is made,” the agency said.

It’s the same move the Trump administration made as the deadline for TPS renewal for more than 200,000 Salvadorans approached last month. 

While immigrants with TPS from El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine will have deportation protections, it places more than 300,000 people in limbo because it’s not clear how long the protections will last.

“Families who depend on this status to stay safe and keep working deserve a formal decision in writing, not a weekend statement to press,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, which helps resettle refugees and advocates for immigrants, said in a statement. “Keeping protections in place is the right call, but a promise to a reporter is not a policy.” 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated if DHS will renew protections for those TPS recipients who were granted the designation because they hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return.

Ukrainians received TPS in 2022 after Russia invaded their country and Sudanese were granted the designation several times, most recently in 2022, because of an ongoing civil war. The State Department currently has a do-not-travel advisory, its highest advisory level, for Ukraine and Sudan.

If no decision is made, an automatic six-month extension kicks in, based on the TPS statute. But DHS has not confirmed whether any such extension is in place for Salvadorians, Sudanese or Ukrainians. 

After Monday, the last remaining country with TPS will be Lebanon, which is set to expire Nov. 27.

The second Trump administration has moved to wind down the TPS program established by Congress in the 1990s. The Supreme Court cleared the way for that initiative after it ruled this summer that decisions from the executive branch regarding a TPS designation are not subject to judicial review. 

So far, more than 1 million immigrants who have TPS have been stripped of their legal protections from the 17 countries that initially had the designation at the start of the second Trump administration.

WASHINGTON — More than 100,000 Ukrainians and roughly 2,000 Sudanese immigrants are bracing for the possibility they’ll lose their humanitarian protections by Monday.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated if he will renew protections for Ukrainians, who first received Temporary Protected Status after Russia invaded their country in 2022, and for Sudanese nationals, who were granted the designation several times, most recently in 2022, because of an ongoing civil war.

The Trump administration has moved to eliminate legal protections for more than 1 million immigrants that have TPS. Of the 17 countries with the designation at the start of the second Trump administration, the only remaining protections are for Ukraine and Sudan, which are set to end on Monday, and Lebanon, which is set to expire Nov. 27. 

Mullin is supposed to declare his decision at least 60 days before a TPS designation expires, but he’s made no announcement. 

The lack of an announcement would put Ukrainian and Sudanese TPS holders in the same situation as 200,000 Salvadorians, who are still in limbo after DHS did not renew protections set to expire on Sept. 9. 

If no decision is made, an automatic six-month extension kicks in. DHS has not confirmed whether the extension is in place, only that Salvadorians have deportation protections and work authorization, for now. 

DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment about TPS extension for Ukraine or Sudan.

Situation unchanged

TPS is granted when a person hails from a country deemed too dangerous to return to because of conflict, natural disaster or another destabilizing event. The Trump administration has sought to wind the program down, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court this summer determined that decisions by the executive branch regarding TPS designations could not be challenged in court. 

Immigration advocates say the rationale for providing TPS to Ukrainians has not changed.

“With the war in Ukraine still ongoing and conditions remaining unsafe, the administration should extend TPS for Ukrainians,” Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said in a statement. “Forcing people to return to Ukraine in these circumstances is dangerous and a departure from longstanding U.S. policy.”

If Mullin ends TPS for Ukraine, it wouldn’t be the first time Ukrainians have lost humanitarian protections under the second Trump administration. 

Last year, the Trump administration moved to end new applicants for a humanitarian program created by the Biden administration that allowed more than 220,000 Ukrainians to enter the U.S.

The State Department has a do-not-travel advisory, its highest advisory level, for Ukraine and Sudan.

Trump-Zelenskyy tensions

Fraught relations between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy further complicate the issue as Monday’s deadline approaches.

Trump has grown frustrated with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, and has blamed Ukraine for a spike in oil prices, ignoring the effect of his war in Iran. 

On Oct. 9, Trump moved to ease sanctions on Russian diesel exports. Zelenskyy called the decision “a weak decision by strong partners,” according to The Associated Press.

On Oct. 10, Trump told reporters that Ukraine should “get a new leader.” 

In an interview with NPR, Zelenskyy said the Trump administration said unless Ukraine stops long-range drone strikes on oil refineries in Russia, it could cut off U.S. intelligence-sharing with Ukraine. 

The two leaders have clashed in the past.

In February 2025, during a visit to the White House, the president got into a heated exchange with Zelenskyy, appearing to break with Ukraine and its resistance to Russia’s invasion. 

Trump’s relationship with Ukraine was also the center of his first impeachment, after a U.S. House inquiry found the president threatened to withhold military aid unless Ukraine investigated his political opponent at the time, Joe Biden.

The U.S. Senate acquitted Trump in an impeachment trial. 

Lawmakers push for extensions

There is a bipartisan congressional push to extend protections for Ukrainians at least until the end of 2029. 

In a letter to Mullin and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 31 senators urged for Ukrainians to be granted an 18-month extension, the longest renewal for TPS holders.

“The ongoing war has caused a humanitarian crisis and damage to critical civilian infrastructure that has left many with limited or no access to heat, electricity or medical services,” the senators wrote. “Ukrainian nationals cannot safely return at this time, and allowing TPS to terminate on October 19, 2026, would risk sending more than one hundred thousand individuals back to an active war zone.”

The Republicans who signed the letter were Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

The Democratic senators who signed the letter were Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Chris Coons of Delaware, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Andy Kim of New Jersey, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Patty Murray of Washington, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Adam Schiff of California, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Mark Warner of Virginia, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Peter Welch of Vermont, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, also signed the letter. 

A handful of Democratic senators also urged Mullin to extend TPS protections for Sudanese in an Aug. 17 letter. 

“The ongoing armed conflict, catastrophic humanitarian crisis, and widespread human rights abuses make the safe return of Sudanese nationals impossible at this time,” they wrote. “TPS for Sudanese nationals in the United States remains both a humanitarian necessity and a prudent policy to ensure that individuals are not forced to return to conditions that continue to threaten their safety and well-being.”

Those senators were Warner, Kaine, Schiff, Van Hollen, Warnock, Booker, Bennet and Duckworth.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump Thursday announced that the execution of a man convicted of the Fort Hood shooting will not be livestreamed, a reversal after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that Nidal Hasan’s death by firing squad would be public. 

“I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social. “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”

Last week, Hegseth’s decision to make Hasan’s execution public garnered bipartisan backlash, and members of Congress urged the Trump administration to reconsider. 

On Friday, Trump “absolutely” said he had approved the livestreaming but also said he would make a determination about whether it should occur.

Vice President JD Vance appeared skeptical that a public execution would be approved, and already stated he would not watch it. 

Earlier this month, Trump approved of Hasan’s execution by firing squad on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, Texas, the military installation where Hasan carried out a mass shooting on Nov. 5, 2009. 

He was an Army Medical Corps psychiatrist from Virginia who was convicted and admitted to killing 13 people and injuring 32 others at Fort Hood, making it the deadliest non-combative attack on a U.S. military base. 

Hasan was also shot during the mass shooting and is paralyzed from the waist down. 

Trump added in his announcement that the only people who will be viewing the execution in person are “the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose.” 

WASHINGTON — Democrats are touting an ambitious legislative agenda centered on affordability and accountability if they take back the U.S. House or Senate — or both — in November. 

A slew of pressing policy debates are on tap for Democrats, including healthcare, immigration, voting rights, the war in Iran, oversight, education and beyond, as they aim to reverse many of President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ actions since January 2025. 

Some issues, while surging to the forefront, likely will provoke internal divisions, such as “Medicare for All,” a movement popular among progressives to extend single-payer national health care to all Americans. 

“Healthcare costs have consistently been at or above other concerns on the public’s affordability worries,” said Liz Hamel, a senior vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at KFF who oversees the nonpartisan health organization’s polling program.

Democrats also are poised to conduct tougher oversight of the Trump administration.

Any legislation from Democrats faces the threat of Trump’s veto, making any legislation without broad bipartisan support almost certain to fail. In addition, Democrats would need a filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes to advance most measures in the Senate.

Democrats remain heavily favored to regain the majority in the House, while Senate races continue to move in the party’s favor, amid Trump’s plummeting popularity, according to the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, an elections forecaster. Democrats currently hold 47 Senate seats, including two independents who generally vote with the party.

“House Democrats are committed to fighting for an affordable America, lowering the high cost of living, lowering the cost of groceries, lowering the cost of gas, lowering the cost of housing and fighting to make healthcare affordable for every single American,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters in September. 

The New York Democrat is in line to become the next speaker — the first Black person to hold that office — if the party clinches control of the lower chamber. 

Jeffries announced five working groups on affordability — housing, healthcare, gas and utilities, groceries and goods, and caregiving — which House Democrats will concentrate on at the beginning of the new Congress. 

The Democratic Party’s campaign apparatus for House races echoed an agenda centered on affordability. 

“House Democrats are going to win the majority because voters know we’re focused on lowering costs, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do when we’re in charge,” Nebeyatt Betre, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson, said in a statement shared with States Newsroom.

“From ending the war in Iran to lower gas prices, restoring (Affordable Care Act) tax credits to lower health care prices, to rolling back reckless tariffs to lower prices on everything in between, House Democrats’ number one priority will be making life more affordable for working families,” Betre said. 

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, chair of the corresponding campaign arm for Senate races, cited healthcare access and affordability as a top priority in a Democratic-led upper chamber. 

“I think the most important issues that I’ve heard from voters is restoring their healthcare, making sure that those cuts to Medicaid get restored, making sure that people can afford healthcare and get access to good, high-quality healthcare,” Gillibrand said in a September interview with States Newsroom and other members of the Regional Reporters Association. 

The New York Democrat, who leads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said other major priorities include “trying to fix the problems Trump has created, end the war in Iran” as well as getting “costs of groceries, housing, and healthcare and other everyday costs down.” 

While not a major part of the party’s messaging in the general election, House Democrats are poised to take a harder line with Israel amid the country’s war in Gaza. Jeffries said a measure meant to discourage violence in the West Bank, where Israeli settlements have inflamed tensions, “should be considered” next year, according to The Hill. 

With less than three weeks to go until Election Day on Nov. 3, here’s a closer look at what Democrats want to accomplish in both chambers: 

Anti-corruption, impeachments 

Democrats are all but certain to open investigations into the Trump administration if they gain power over congressional subpoena decisions.

“Our promise to the country in the new Congress is that beginning on Day One, we’re going to hold the crooks accountable,” Jeffries vowed at an Oct. 8 press conference. 

High-ranking Democratic House members say multiple probes are on the table, including Trump’s IRS settlement, brokered by his administration’s Justice Department, which delivered retroactive tax audit immunity for him and two of his sons as well as the creation of an “anti-weaponization” fund.

A federal judge slammed the settlement in a July order prohibiting Trump, his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization from claiming they reached a “settlement,” and referred Trump’s personal attorneys to the bar for investigations. 

Democrats are also weighing whether the party would attempt to impeach Trump if they take back control of the House. 

The president was impeached twice in the House and acquitted twice in the Senate during prior sessions of Congress. 

Jeffries told PBS Newshour in September “we certainly haven’t ruled anything in, and we haven’t ruled anything out,” when asked about any impeachment proceedings against the president if Democrats regain the majority in the lower chamber. 

Democrats could also try to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if they clinch control of the House. 

Outgoing GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth in September for the secretary’s handling of the war in Iran.

But House GOP leadership sent the lower chamber home early for its weeks-long campaign break, punting any vote until after the midterms. 

House Democrats will also likely dog the administration’s legally mandated release of files related to the 2019 federal sex trafficking investigation of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who kept the company of powerful and wealthy individuals, including Trump.

Trump denies any knowledge of Epstein’s involvement in trafficking girls and young women for sex.

Democrats and Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform opened a months-long probe, subpoenaing documents from the Epstein estate and compelling closed-door testimony from Epstein associates and former Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

Healthcare 

On the healthcare front, House Democrats want to undo the healthcare provisions tucked into a mega tax and spending cut law signed by Trump in July 2025, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”  

“Undoing (that law) is the floor, but not the ceiling,” according to a September memo obtained by Politico from Democrats’ affordability working group on healthcare. 

The 84-page memo proposes myriad healthcare policy priorities in the first 100 hours, first 100 days and first year of the next session of Congress, broken down into eight wide-ranging categories. 

“There is broad consensus in the Democratic caucus that the Democratic agenda must both reverse the immediate harms of the administration while also taking bold action to rein in corporate monopolies, invest in a durable healthcare system, and pursue an ambitious path towards universal coverage,” per the memo.  

Part of Democrats’ healthcare agenda includes reversing the GOP’s mega tax and spending cut law’s sweeping Medicaid cuts, which axe roughly $1 trillion in program spending over 10 years and impose new work requirements.

The party is also looking to “permanently restore” the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, which expired in December 2025 and were used by individuals who buy their own health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. 

The expiration of those credits has “sharply increased” individuals’ out-of-pocket costs toward premiums, according to KFF. 

The memo also underscores a commitment to “achieving universal coverage” in the first year of the next session of Congress, and mentions the “Medicare for All Act” as one avenue to examine in achieving this ambition. 

The bill would establish a national health insurance program administered under the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Iran war

The costly war in Iran that has caused prices at the gas pump to soar for Americans is a major reason for Trump’s sagging poll numbers, and Democrats, if the House and Senate flip, would likely pass a measure to try to end any further conflict without congressional approval.

The war has cost $40 billion and counting, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and will continue to cost American taxpayers $2 billion to $3 billion per month as the conflict drags on.

The national average price of diesel remains above $6 per gallon in the U.S., according to AAA, as Iranian officials continue to block petroleum products from reaching the global market. 

The national motor club, which monitors daily fuel prices, reported that Americans were paying a national average of $4.33 for a gallon of gasoline as of Oct. 14.

Meanwhile, Democrats’ attempts to rein in Trump’s military campaign in Iran have slowly picked up some Republican support over multiple votes in both chambers.

Senate Democrats have forced 14 War Powers Resolution votes to curb Trump’s unilateral military decisions without input from Congress. The votes are privileged, meaning they can be brought to the floor without the blessing of majority leadership.

The measure has advanced twice in the upper chamber, but the latest attempt to advance a House-passed War Powers Resolution narrowly failed, 49-50. 

House Democrats picked up seven Republicans on Sept. 15 to approve the War Powers Resolution. 

Administration officials contend the War Powers Resolution, established by Congress during the Vietnam War era, is unconstitutional, so it’s unclear what might happen if a resolution were approved. 

Immigration 

To help the president carry out his mass deportation campaign, congressional Republicans used a legislative tool to skirt Democratic support and allocate more than $200 billion for immigration enforcement through two measures. 

With the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” more than $170 billion was given to the Department of Homeland Security to hire more immigration agents, expand detention centers and carry out deportations. 

The “Secure America Act” funded Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement until late September 2029, at nearly $70 billion, after Democrats refused to approve funding for DHS following two deadly shootings of American citizens by immigration officials in Minneapolis. 

Though it’s unlikely Democrats will be able to claw any of that funding back even if they take both chambers, there are several avenues they are likely to pursue amid the president’s immigration crackdown. 

The first avenue is oversight and the ability to subpoena Trump officials. Democrats are likely to hold oversight hearings into the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot and killed by federal immigration officials in Minneapolis in January. 

Members of both parties on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee reached rare bipartisan agreement at a grilling of top Trump immigration officials after the killings. 

Democrats will also likely hold hearings on the scores of U.S. citizens detained by ICE and also shot by federal immigration officers, such as Marimar Martinez, who has already appeared several times before lawmakers as the minority witness for Democrats. 

She was shot in her car five times by Border Patrol agents during the aggressive immigration deportation campaign in Chicago in October 2025 and was labeled a domestic terrorist by DHS. The DOJ dropped charges against Martinez after the Trump administration accused her of using her car as a weapon.

Democrats are also likely to continue with oversight at federal facilities that detain immigrants, including the high death toll of immigrants at those detention centers. So far, 61 immigrants have died in ICE detention, which has doubled under the second Trump administration. Democrats have demanded answers from the administration about the deaths, along with concerns about medical neglect at the facilities. 

And even though former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stepped down earlier this year, Democrats still plan to question some of her decisions while leading DHS, such as a $220 million ad campaign that prominently featured her and the practice of no-bid contracts awarded to her close allies. 

Apart from oversight, Democrats are likely to introduce and pass legislation related to immigration reform, such as creating a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who were stripped of their Temporary Protected Status and for children brought into the country without legal authorization under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. 

The Trump administration has stripped more than 1 million immigrants of their legal status, and House Democrats, with a handful of Republicans, in April moved to extend TPS for more than 500,000 immigrants hailing from Haiti. 

TPS is granted to nationals who hail from a country deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, disasters or other destabilizing forces.

In the Senate, Democrats have tried to pass legislation through unanimous consent to grant a pathway to citizenship for TPS recipients, but were blocked by Republicans. If Democrats regain the Senate, they will need a 60-vote majority for that legislation to move ahead. 

Some Democrats in Congress also likely will advocate an end to funding for ICE, but it’s unclear whether that would have enough support to advance.

Voting rights and democracy

Voting rights and democracy are likely to be high priorities for Democrats if they retake one or both chambers of Congress. 

A gerrymandering war egged on by Trump and a U.S. Supreme Court decision this spring that severely weakened the federal Voting Rights Act left Democrats and their base deeply angry and eager for action.

Democrats are likely to again turn to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named after the late civil rights activist and Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis. 

Though the U.S. House last passed the measure in 2021, the bill did not advance through the Senate. 

The legislation would seek to restore preclearance, a major provision of the Voting Rights Act that was previously blocked by the Supreme Court in 2013. Preclearance required states and local governments with a history of discrimination to obtain federal permission before making voting changes, and it applied to most Southern states and a handful of others.

“We fight to pass the John Robert Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act so we can end the era of voter suppression in the United States of America once and for all,” Jeffries said in an August speech.

The renewed focus on the voting rights legislation comes after the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision in April sharply weakened Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The section prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race and other characteristics. 

In 1982, Congress expanded Section 2 to ban voting practices that have a discriminatory effect, whether or not the law was intended to discriminate.

Louisiana had redrawn its congressional map in response to a court order to include a second majority-minority district where a majority of residents are Black. The Supreme Court ruled the new map was an unconstitutional gerrymander.

In response, several Southern states quickly redrew their congressional maps to eliminate majority-minority districts — part of a larger wave of gerrymandering that swept the country over the past two years after Trump initially urged Texas to enact a more GOP-friendly map.

In response, some Democrats are also pushing for gerrymandering reform. At a minimum, some lawmakers want to require states to return to a once-a-decade redrawing process. That was the norm before 2025, and followed the census every 10 years.

Over the summer, the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus unveiled a framework for changes to the redistricting process. The proposal calls for restricting new maps to once a decade, requiring “clear, objective” criteria to draw lines and supporting steps to reduce partisan influence, such as turning to independent commissions to develop district lines.

Education 

Congressional Democrats also want to halt and undo the administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and repeal major education provisions in the GOP’s mega tax and spending cut law.

The department has entered into a series of interagency agreements with other departments that transfer several of its responsibilities to those agencies, including Health and Human Services, Labor, Interior, State, Justice and Treasury. 

If Democrats take back the Senate, Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine told States Newsroom his first goal in education is to “stop the handoff of critical components of (the Education Department) to other agencies that don’t want them.”

In the most-far reaching of the interagency agreements yet, the department said in June that HHS would administer programs under Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, while civil rights enforcement under Education’s Office for Civil Rights would be transferred to the DOJ. 

Kaine sponsored a bill, with GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska as original co-sponsors, that would block interagency agreements that transfer programs regarding special education, elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education and Native American education. 

That measure advanced out of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in July. 

Sen. Mazie Hirono told States Newsroom “we need to restore federal support for education and how it’s going to look, I mean, clearly we need to support IDEA and support it to a greater extent than we have normally,” pointing to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees a free public education for students with disabilities.

The Hawaii Democrat is also looking to repeal a national school voucher program baked into the GOP’s mega tax and spending cut law that’s set to launch in early 2027. 

The program allocates up to $1,700 in federal tax credits for people donating to organizations that provide K-12 scholarships, with 31 states having opted in so far. 

Hirono and Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, joined by more than two dozen of their colleagues, introduced legislation in April to repeal the program. 

Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore introduced a companion bill in June with Reps. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and dozens more original cosponsors.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection need to improve oversight and guidance for federal immigration officers’ use of body-worn cameras, according to a Wednesday report from independent federal investigators.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security, however, resisted a recommendation in the report from the Government Accountability Office that ICE change its current policy, in which agents choose when to manually turn on body cameras, as opposed to automatic activation. 

In a response to GAO, the department — which oversees both agencies — argued that automatic activation on a body camera presents a risk to ongoing operations, such as recording sensitive interactions with informants or victims or inadvertently filming bystanders.  

GAO said that statement was insufficient. “However, DHS’s response did not include information on environments where automated activation could be effective, or other controls that could help ensure compliance with activating cameras when required by policy,” according to GAO. 

Multiple shootings

The report came after multiple high-profile cases of federal immigration officers shooting and killing people during interactions and enforcement actions, prompting calls for wider body camera use.

GAO made seven recommendations to the Department of Homeland Security to update its guidance for body cameras. 

The department agreed with six, but disagreed with implementing automated camera activation controls, arguing that ICE’s current policy  is sufficient. CBP does have automatic camera activation, which means the body camera turns on and starts recording when a weapon is drawn or emergency lights are turned on.

“Without reliable control activities, ICE risks gaps in documentation and video evidence that can make reviews of incidents more challenging,” according to GAO. 

After federal immigration officers killed two U.S. citizens in January during an aggressive deportation drive in Minneapolis, the Trump administration directed body cameras to immigration agents. 

In June, there were two back-to-back killings of immigrants in Texas and Maine that prompted border czar Tom Homan to announce that during traffic stops at least one ICE officer will wear a body camera. 

Democrats have also pushed for all federal immigration officers to wear body cameras in the wake of the killings and violent interactions from agents that were recorded by bystanders. 

Thousands of body cameras distributed

GAO investigators found that as of April, ICE issued 4,800 body cameras, splitting them evenly between its deportation wing of Enforcement and Removal Operations and the investigative law enforcement arm of ICE, Homeland Security Investigations. 

And in June, CBP issued approximately 11,500 cameras, mostly to Border Patrol.  

But GAO found problems in the cameras’ deployment.

“Most CBP and ICE offices have not developed specific operational guidance that explains how personnel should use, or not use, cameras under their unique operational circumstances,” according to the report. “The lack of guidance at this operational level increases the risk that CBP and ICE personnel will fail to use the cameras as required under policy.”

DHS agreed to the recommendations from GAO that the leaders of ICE and CBP should update their body camera program to include changes in requirements and costs and plan for any contingencies based on current risk. 

The department also agreed that CBP and ICE should implement goals to ensure effectiveness for the body-worn camera program and that both agencies should ensure their sub-agencies are also given proper guidance on the expectations and appropriate uses of the body cameras. 

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump this week will journey out West in an effort to galvanize support for Republican candidates three weeks before the midterm elections and convince voters to support his party amid low presidential approval ratings.

As the deeply unpopular war in Iran enters month eight, resulting in spiking prices at the gas pump and skyrocketing fertilizer prices for the agriculture industry, Trump is scheduled to rally in Alaska on Tuesday and Arizona and Montana on Wednesday, following stops earlier this month in GOP-friendly states that kicked off the last weeks before the election. On Friday, Trump is expected to campaign in Georgia.

Presidents typically sustain electoral losses in midterm election years and in addition, Trump’s approval rating is currently hovering around 37% percent, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

Those low approval rates, and polls, have shifted several Senate races to toss-ups. 

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas as toss-up Senate races. Republicans are not only trying to maintain the House, but their 53-seat majority in the Senate as well. 

The president’s travel also follows a federal judge’s ruling over the weekend that ordered the Trump administration to stop airing ads funded by taxpayer dollars that portrayed Trump in a favorable manner. Trump used about $20 million in Department of Homeland Security funds to pay for the ads. 

Trump’s comes after a campaign rally in Tennessee over the weekend. During his remarks in Clarksville, he focused on accusing Democrats of being communists and socialists. 

On Monday, Trump is heading to Youngstown, Ohio to deliver remarks. GOP Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to fill out the term of Vice President JD Vance, is in a tight race against former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. 

Trump is not only in Ohio to support Husted, but also to throw his support behind gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who is up against Democrat Amy Acton.

Vance is also hitting the campaign trail this week. On Wednesday, he’ll visit Georgia and on Thursday will make another stop in Michigan. 

Trump is also likely to bring up in his campaign rallies Monday’s joint Department of Justice and Homeland Security Investigations raid of Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s house in Washington, D.C. It’s a rare move from the Justice Department only several weeks out from the election, given the department generally doesn’t conduct such raids unless in extreme circumstances. 

She, along with the broader Somali community in Minnesota, are regularly targeted by the president and disproportionately accused of widespread fraud. Recently, the president used violent rhetoric in a social media post that called on Minnesotans to “fight back” against Somali immigrants.

The president directed DHS to Minneapolis, where there is a large Latino and Somali refugee population. A months-long aggressive deportation drive there resulted in then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stepping down from her position after federal immigration officials shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

WASHINGTON — This summer, arrests of immigrants in the United States soared to the highest levels since President Donald Trump returned to office.

An unprecedented increase in cooperation between local and state law enforcement and federal immigration officers through collaborations known as 287(g) agreements helped drive numbers up. 

The agreements allow state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce parts of federal immigration law and have become an arm of Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Republicans in Congress have provided billions in federal funding for local departments that accept the agreements, creating a deluge of new partners.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a senior Department of Homeland Security official during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, said the billions in new funding has helped the program grow. 

“Mostly, 287(g) agreements were voluntary, and the costs were borne by the state and local government to train their own people,” she said. “Now, the federal government has money to pay them, and so that’s encouraging more states and localities to do it because it’s a budget plus-up.”

In June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recorded roughly 43,000 immigration arrests, followed by 49,000 in July and nearly 51,000 in August. ICE does not distinguish between arrests initially made by local law enforcement or federal officials.

Those three months also saw the most new 287(g) agreements signed since Trump took office, according to a States Newsroom analysis of government data.

“ICE has increased efforts with state and local law enforcement to assist federal immigration officers in our efforts to make America safe again,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement to States Newsroom.

But those efforts have generated protests in some of the communities where they’ve appeared.

Democrats in Maryland and Maine passed laws restricting cooperation between local police and ICE. The Maryland measure’s supporters said it would reduce distrust of police.

Skyrocketing growth

The president’s signature 2025 domestic policy bill, the “One, Big Beautiful” Act, set aside about $4 billion for state and local governments to conduct immigration enforcement, including 287(g) programs. The Secure America Act passed in June allocated more than $31 billion to implement those agreements as well. 

Both packages were passed by Republicans through a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation that did not need Democratic votes. 

The funds incentivized massive growth. 

Before Trump took office in January 2025, the federal government had agreements with 135 state and local police departments. As of Oct. 1, those agreements skyrocketed to 2,608, according to DHS data. 

Local departments or state agencies in 38 states have 287(g) agreements, with the highest numbers in Texas and Florida, where there are state laws requiring local law enforcement to partake in the program. 

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday the Florida Highway Patrol was eligible for $26 million in reimbursements from the federal government for arrests from April through June.

“My educated guess would be that a large number of the arrests and detentions that we’ve seen increasing in recent months in the summer were because there was an increase in 287(g) agreements in Texas and Florida, but other parts of the country as well,” said Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that studies global migration.

ICE does not always specify when an immigration arrest is made through the partnership program, but the Deportation Data Project, a project of the University of California schools in Berkeley and Los Angeles that analyzes government immigration enforcement data, has attributed at least 6,150 arrests in July, about 12.5% of all arrests for that month.

Only 12 states have no such agreements. They are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state.

Three models

The partnership program was created in a 1996 law, but not actively used until the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It first received federal appropriations in 2006.

Three types of partnerships operate within the program.

The loosest type of agreement is the jail enforcement model, where deputized officers can inquire about the immigration status of people arrested on state or local charges, as well as hold a noncitizen for ICE to pick up for up to 48 hours. 

In another model, the warrants service officer model, ICE trains, certifies and allows state and local law enforcement to issue administrative warrants, which are not signed by a judge, but by an ICE official requesting the arrest of a noncitizen. Local law enforcement officers under this model do not inquire about immigration status. 

The task force model, which involves the greatest immigration enforcement by local officers, allows for immigration officials to deputize local officers to partake in immigration duties such as asking about immigration status or even detaining people and transferring them to ICE.

As part of its immigration crackdown, the second Trump administration revived the task force model after the Obama administration discontinued it in 2012 over concerns of racial profiling. 

It has seen the largest increase under Trump, Ruiz Soto said.

More than 71% of 287(g) agreements now use the task force model, according to Titus Consulting, a firm that tracks the agreements. About 7% use the jail enforcement model and more than 21% use the warrant model. 

The task force model is “hands down,” the most effective method in arresting noncitizens, said Todd Bensmen, a senior research fellow for the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. 

“If they’re not deputized under that, they just come into contact with people that are fully … deportable, and then just leave them be,” he said of local law enforcement. “They can just arrest them on the spot and call ICE, and that way you have a really dramatic force multiplier and ICE doesn’t have to do anything but come and pick them up.” 

Program changes

In 2006, the Bush administration took an interest in exploring 287(g) programs, specifically the jail enforcement model because it was easy for ICE to identify people who are subject to an immigration arrest, said Brown.

“If your job is to find people, wow, that’s the easiest thing to do,” she said of the jail model. 

Brown said that spurred the idea for the Secure Communities program. Under the program, the FBI automatically sent fingerprints of a person booked in custody to DHS to check against its immigration database. If the person was a noncitizen who was unauthorized in the U.S., then ICE was notified.

The program was voluntary, but there was pushback from immigration advocates during the Obama administration, Brown said. 

“There was a concern that this was mixing criminal enforcement and immigration enforcement in ways they weren’t meant to, (and) it was creating fear among immigration communities of reporting crimes for fear that they would be arrested,” she said. 

The Obama administration pulled back and redirected the Secure Communities program to a federal government model.  

“They turned it from like a community-by-community rollout to just a federal-to-federal information sharing agreement that remains in place today,” she said. 

Brown said the difference now is that some communities have decided when ICE is notified, if at all, and whether or not to honor detainers, which are requests from ICE to hold an immigrant until federal immigration officers arrive. 

Local governments that have not wanted to participate in federal immigration enforcement have been dubbed sanctuary cities. 

The Trump administration has threatened to pull federal funding from those cities that don’t want to aid in immigration enforcement and has offered an influx of cash to states and local governments that have agreed to participate. 

The Republican Congress has funded the program for the next three years, Ruiz Soto noted.

“It would then come to … what a future administration or a future Congress would do to continue expanding this or not fulfill them anymore,” he said. “But clearly right now ICE has significant funding to last for 287(g) and much more other enforcement in the near future.”

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday granted, for now, the Trump administration’s request to continue rapid third-country deportation of immigrants to countries not their own. 

The decision will allow the Trump administration to carry out its aggressive deportation method of quickly removing immigrants to one of the countries — some with human rights concerns — the administration has agreements with to take third-country removals from the United States. 

The high court will hear oral arguments in December, and directed the parties to answer several questions including if the district court has jurisdiction over the issue, if the lower court can deliver classwide relief and whether the Trump administration’s rapid third-country removal policy is lawful. Tuesday’s order will remain in effect until the justices reach a decision in the case.

The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, noted they would have denied the emergency request.

The lower court’s order did not bar third-country removals, but prevented the deportation from occurring unless adequate time was given for a noncitizen to verify that they would not face harm in the third country.

Third-country removals are when a noncitizen is deported from the U.S. to a nation other than that person’s home country. It occurs when the home country of a person with a removal order from the U.S. does not accept the person’s repatriation. 

A district court and appeals court found that immigrants must have an opportunity to challenge their removal to a country where they do not have citizenship if they fear for their safety or if they might be returned to their home country where they could experience harm.

WASHINGTON — Most judges on a federal appeals court seemed inclined during oral arguments Tuesday to allow a federal judge to continue investigating Trump officials for possible criminal contempt-of-court charges for defying a judicial order by sending more than 100 Venezuelan men to a brutal Salvadoran prison last year.  

The administration is challenging if U.S. District Judge James Boasberg can continue a contempt investigation after the Justice Department said former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the sole official responsible for violating Boasberg’s oral and written orders.

Ending an inquiry would be “unfair” to Noem, “who might be a sacrificial lamb because you have picked who you want to go forward,” Judge J. Michelle Childs said. 

The case stems from a proclamation that President Donald Trump signed in March 2025 that invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rapidly deport Venezuelan males 14 years and older who were suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. 

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to stop several deportation flights of 137 Venezuelans, and Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order to stop the removals. But the flights landed in El Salvador and the men were detained at a brutal mega-prison known as CECOT for four months before being released in a prison exchange with Venezuela. 

The Department of Justice has only identified Noem as the official who decided to allow the planes to land in El Salvador despite the restraining order.

Boasberg is trying to identify other government officials who may also bear responsibility. The ACLU has argued the officials who provided legal advice, including now-Attorney General Todd Blanche, should be included.

All judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit participated in the rare full-court review. 

They are: Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Patricia A. Millett, Cornelia T.L. Pillard, Robert L. Wilkins, Gregory G. Katsas, Neomi Rao, Justin R. Walker, Childs, Florence Y. Pan, Bradley N. Garcia, Harry T. Edwards, Douglas H. Ginsburg, A. Raymond Randolph and Judith W. Rogers.

Former President Jimmy Carter nominated Edwards; former President Ronald Regan nominated Henderson and Ginsburg; former President George H.W. Bush nominated Randolph; former President Bill Clinton nominated Rogers; former President Barack Obama nominated Srinivasan, Millett, Pillard and Wilkins; Trump nominated Katsas, Rao and Walker in his first term and former President Joe Biden nominated Childs, Pan and Garcia.

Judge not a prosecutor, DOJ says

Representing the Trump administration, Brett A. Shumate, the assistant attorney general leading the DOJ’s Civil Division, argued that Boasberg does not have the authority to investigate possible criminal contempt charges and that role is only for a prosecutor. 

“District judges do not investigate or prosecute crimes,” Shumate said. “That’s a role for a prosecutor, and so the purpose of the investigation at this point is no longer, let’s figure out who the decisionmaker was. It is now, let’s probe the mental state of senior government officials.”

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the March 2025 order from Boasberg clearly prohibited the Trump administration from transferring the Venezuelan men to CECOT, and that Boasberg should be allowed to conduct his preliminary inquiry to identify any other potential official who violated his ruling.  

“The oral order was crystal clear,” Gelernt said. 

Blance, Bove provided legal advice

Boasberg’s inquiry involves Blanche and Emil Bove, who were both high-ranking DOJ officials at the time. Bove is a judge in the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Blanche and Bove gave legal advice to Joseph Mazzara, then the acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, who informed Noem of Boasberg’s oral and written temporary restraining order that blocked the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. 

“After receiving that legal advice, Secretary Noem directed that the (Alien Enemies Act) detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court’s order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador,” according to a filing by DOJ.

According to a June 2025 whistleblower account, Bove told a group of attorneys at the department before the Venezuelan men were removed, that the deportations would still occur and “we may have to say f— you to the courts,” if an order blocking the removals was issued by a judge. 

Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing to become a judge, Bove denied the June 2025 whistleblower account.

Boasberg also wants to hear testimony from the whistleblower, then-DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni, and Drew Ensign, a DOJ attorney who appeared before him in March 2025.

More facts needed

Shumate argued Tuesday that Boasberg already had the information he needed, and that the DOJ already noted that Noem was the government official who ordered the planes to continue to El Salvador.

Childs disagreed and said that there could be officials in that decisionmaking process other than Noem.

Shumate said that all Boasberg had asked the federal government was who made the decision.

“We’ve provided that information, but somehow that’s no longer good enough,” he said. 

Millett agreed with Childs that there seemed to be multiple people involved in the decision that Noem made. 

“It’s clear from the declarations that she was receiving legal advice from a number of people within the Justice Department,” Millett said. “Now, if an attorney providing legal advice to the secretary were to tell the secretary, ‘you have the legal authority to f-expletive the court order on this and go ahead and disembark people,’ might it be accurate that that attorney would just as well be in contempt of court as the secretary, potentially?” 

Shumate said that would “depend on the facts.”

“Well, then the district court has to ask some more questions,” she said.

WASHINGTON — An appeals panel Friday seemed inclined to agree that more than 100 Venezuelan men the Trump administration sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador are entitled to due process hearings to challenge their removal, which was made under an archaic 18th-century wartime law. 

Arguing on behalf of the class of men who were removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union told the three-judge panel that the men, who were accused of being suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, were entitled to hearings to challenge those accusations. 

But instead, Gelernt said, the men were denied their due process rights and spent four months in a brutal Salvadoran prison. 

The men were eventually returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap exchange, but many who had pending asylum cases want to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act and continue their immigration proceedings.

He said the Trump administration is asking for the ability to “essentially whisk people away to a foreign prison, give them no opportunity to contest the removal, even whether they’re part of this gang that this proclamation applies to… and then say, ‘Because we got them out of the country into a foreign prison, that’s the end of the matter.’” 

DOJ argues against due process

The Trump administration argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the Venezuelan men are not entitled to due process hearings.

Department of Justice attorney Tiberius Davis said that the United States had no custody over the 137 Venezuelan men removed to the Salvadoran mega-prison known as CECOT, and therefore the immigrants are not entitled to hearings in the U.S. 

He added that it would be impractical for the Trump administration to conduct more than 100 online hearings abroad. 

“It’s a real problem with foreign sovereignty to hold hearings, and take evidentiary hearings, in foreign countries, even at our own embassies,” Davis said. “That can be a real problem. So we would have to engage in diplomacy and foreign affairs in order to even do that much.”

March 2025 origins

The case began when President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March 2025 to rapidly deport Venezuelan immigrants. 

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued the Trump administration an order to return several deportation planes to the U.S., but instead they landed at CECOT. The U.S. paid El Salvador up to $6 million to detain the men.

On Monday, there is a separate hearing where Boasberg will hear arguments as to whether several Trump officials should be held in contempt for violating his order by not returning the planes carrying men removed under the Alien Enemies Act, including possible criminal contempt charges against Attorney General Todd Blanche and an appellate judge, Emil Bove. 

Judge expresses doubt

Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s arguments that the U.S. had no custody over the men while at CECOT. Edwards was appointed by former President Jimmy Carter. 

“It seems pretty clear … that the U.S. was fully engaged and kept itself in a position of control throughout,” Edwards said.

Davis disagreed and said that diplomacy was involved and pointed to how Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to engage with El Salvador’s president to bring back one of the men sent to CECOT, Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was unlawfully removed to his home country.

“I think the district court sort of swept away those foreign affairs concerns,” Davis said.  

Gelernt said it was harder to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia because he was a citizen of El Salvador. 

“He’s not part of our class. El Salvador clearly had an interest in their own nationals,” Gelernt said. “They have no interest in these Venezuelans, other than collecting a paycheck.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Thursday made an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow for rapid third-country deportations of noncitizens to continue, after an appeals court blocked the policy last week.

In a brief, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the high court to temporarily halt the appeals court’s order. The court panel struck down an administration policy that quickly removed noncitizens to countries where they do not have citizenship.

The appeals decision found that immigrants must have an opportunity to challenge their removal if they fear for their safety.

Sauer argued that a stay, or pause, is needed because the lower court’s decision to block the policy interferes in diplomatic relations with countries that have agreed to accept citizens that are not their own. 

“Third-country removals require careful negotiation with foreign governments, which are rarely enthusiastic about accepting foreign citizens (especially criminals), and often requires obtaining travel documents and devoting significant manpower to the staging of flights to protect government officers and flight crews,” he wrote. 

“Disruption of those plans thus imposes massive costs on the government and invariably requires new rounds of diplomatic engagement with countries who may be all the more skeptical of our removal efforts given the disruption,” Sauer said.

Third-country removals, deportations from the United States to a nation other than an immigrant’s home country, occur when the home country does not accept the person’s repatriation. 

This is the second time the Trump administration has taken an emergency request to the high court regarding third-country removals. The Supreme Court in June 2025 temporarily allowed for the removals to continue, before sending the case back to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 

Last week’s decision from the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit did not bar the Trump administration from carrying out removals to third countries but it provided for a longer process. 

It allowed immigration officers to still conduct third-country removals if they follow the proper procedures, such as adequate notice and an opportunity for an immigrant to raise a fear-based claim about being taken to that country of removal.

The Supreme Court ordered the parties to submit briefs by Monday. 

WASHINGTON — Government investigators Thursday released a report that found the Department of Homeland Security wasted more than $20 million in federal funding in its rapid expansion of immigration detention, including warehouse purchases strongly opposed in numerous U.S. communities.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that millions were wasted because DHS began expanding detention operations without putting a plan in place to meet U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s goal of detaining up to 100,000 immigrants. 

As the second Trump administration aims to deport 1 million immigrants a year, DHS has rapidly increased the numbers of people in immigration detention after congressional Republicans last year approved roughly $175 billion for immigration enforcement.

“As ICE spends the unprecedented multi-year detention funding provided by (the One Big Beautiful Act) and the Secure America Act, it is critical that the agency uses these taxpayer dollars efficiently and effectively,” according to the report by the watchdog agency. “In the absence of a comprehensive strategic plan to guide detention expansion, ICE has wasted funds on unsuccessful detention initiatives and lacks important information about the long-term affordability of its investments.” 

Tents assembled, never used

In the report, GAO found those detention expansion efforts wasted millions by using facilities that were high in cost or impractical, such as Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, which is so remote that water needs to be imported to the base, making it a costly operation. 

Inspectors with the Department of Defense and Department of State estimated that DOD spent $2.85 million to assemble tents that were never used and that ICE obligated $43 million from the start of fiscal year 2025 to June 30, 2026 for a small population at the base. GAO found that 16 noncitizens were held on average daily at Guantanamo in fiscal year 2026. 

Other efforts that lacked proper planning also included domestic military operations, such as the soft-sided facility, Camp East Montana, built on a military base in El Paso, Texas.

GAO previously reported that ICE wasted more than $11 million in taxpayer funds in operating Camp East Montana, such as paying for meals when detainees had not yet arrived at the facility. Investigators noted that ICE had awarded another contract in March for Camp East Montana and “as of August 2026 had not yet incorporated these cost saving measures into the contract and continued to pay for services that it did not need.”

Warehouses cost more than $1B

Investigators also examined the purchase of 11 warehouses at $1.07 billion for the purpose of immigration detention. 

The initiative was initially undertaken by former Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, but she stepped down following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis who were shot by immigration officials. Her replacement, former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, paused the warehouse effort. 

DHS now plans to sell seven of the sites that were purchased. Investigators said the department’s change of course has led to nonrecoverable costs, such as $7.7 million spent in zoning assessments and title insurance. 

Additionally, ICE is still paying for utilities, security and other services at the warehouses it intends to sell, costing approximately $12.8 million as of last month.

Investigators also warned that ICE’s separate move to purchase $1.5 billion in existing detention facilities has the potential to waste money because the agency has not assessed any long-term costs of operating the facilities. 

And GAO notes that while ICE did not have an agreement with the state of Florida to reimburse funds for its soft-sided facility, the now shuttered “Alligator Alcatraz,” DHS used funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to award $608.4 million to the state. 

No idea of long-term cost

Investigators also raised concerns that ICE has not made an assessment for the long-term cost of operating the expanded detention facilities. 

“ICE has not projected the costs of these facilities beyond the first 3 years of operation, after which ICE will no longer have OBBBA and Secure America Act funds available for obligation because these funds are only available through fiscal year 2029,” according to the report. 

Investigators made a recommendation that the Director of ICE “should develop a comprehensive strategic plan to guide its detention expansion efforts that includes goals, activities, and resource needs.”

GAO reported that the department agreed and that ICE would develop a strategic plan for its detention expansion, but that plan will not be completed until Aug. 31, 2027. 

“Given ICE’s unprecedented multi-year detention funding and the potential for continued waste of taxpayer dollars, more timely completion may be warranted,” according to the report. 

Congressional Democrats requested that GAO do the study. 

Those lawmakers include Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, ranking member on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Dick Durbin of Illinois, ranking member on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Mississippi Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, ranking member on the House Committee on Homeland Security.

WASHINGTON — A vast and growing network of artificial intelligence-driven Flock cameras could violate constitutional privacy rights, U.S. senators on a Judiciary Committee subcommittee said during a Wednesday hearing.

GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, the chair of the Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said the point of the hearing was to find out “what is going on with the expanding surveillance network that appears to be going coast to coast in this country.”

Hawley said he invited the CEO of Flock Safety to testify, but he did not appear. 

Senators heard from a woman wrongly arrested over a fatal car crash after a Flock camera captured a photo of her vehicle three miles from the crash site.

They speculated that more people could be falsely accused based on inaccurate information gathered by the devices. They also said Fourth Amendment violations were likely because the law enforcement agencies that use the service are able to use the data to track movements without a warrant.  

“If you haven’t heard of Flock, all I have to say is Flock’s probably heard of you,” Hawley said. “I’m sure we’re all in the database.”

Flock did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

What is Flock?

Flock cameras track and record every motor vehicle that comes into view, including its license plate number, make, model, bumper stickers and color. They can also capture images of people.  

The information is then uploaded to a database that any law enforcement agency that contracts with the company can access without a warrant. 

There are more than 120,000 Flock cameras installed across the country from highways to outside grocery stores, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The only U.S. state that does not have a Flock camera is Hawaii.

Media outlets such as The Washington Post have documented abuses of the service, including law enforcement officers using the devices to stalk ex-girlfriends.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also tapped into Flock data through local law enforcement officials to read license plates for immigration-related searches, even though Flock denies having a contract with ICE. 

The backlash to the possibility of mass surveillance has been strong, with NPR reporting vandalization of Flock cameras.

Arizona sheriff brushed off, he says

One of the witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing, Ross Teeple, the sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, said he ultimately decided to end a contract with Flock because he had raised privacy concerns the company did not adequately address. 

Some of his constituents said they were worried that people could be identified in images taken by Flock cameras. He said when he asked the company about how people could be clearly seen in the images, he felt the company brushed aside his concerns and told him the image resolution was not good enough to recognize a person.

“I’m looking at camera pictures where I could recognize the person on the camera, but that was their claim …, and there was just too much disinformation from them and dishonesty,” he said. “I was trying to get answers from them, and they would not give me answers… and there were too many concerns. So we just decided not to continue our contract.”

False accusation

Hawley said his main worries were personal privacy and that people have the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

He pointed to one of the witnesses, Lindsey Isaacs of Florida, who was wrongly accused of being involved in a car accident that killed three people because a Flock automated license plate recognition camera saw her vehicle about three miles west of the crash scene. 

The car involved in the crash was a Dodge Durango, the same make and model as Isaacs’. But hers was black, while the car in the crash was maroon, as described by a witness. 

Law enforcement still arrested her at her home. 

She spent three days in solitary confinement and then moved to another maximum-security unit for 10 days before she was released and state prosecutors dropped charges, she told the panel.

“In my case, a Flock camera captured my vehicle a few miles from the scene of a terrible crash,” she said. “That piece of information became part of an investigation that ultimately led to my arrest on three counts of vehicular homicide and 13 days in jail for a crash I had nothing to do with.”

Hawley said what he finds “so troubling” is that many drivers or people walking by are being surveilled and they’ve done nothing wrong. 

“It sounds as if, based on the reports we’ve heard, it’s treating every citizen in America, I mean, by now, surely almost all of us have been scanned and logged as if we are criminals, yet without any due process, without any reasonable suspicion, without any articulable suspicion whatsoever,” he said. “This just seems very, very strange, to put it mildly, and something I think this committee really needs to hear about.”

Abortion tracking

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker asked if Flock cameras could be used to track women in states with strict abortion laws.

ACLU’s Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel, said that it would be easy to track people searching for those services. 

Hawley agreed with Booker and also questioned how easy it would be to create a database of certain people, such as those who attend gun shows.

“When you have this amount of data available, the temptations to use it are going to be absolutely incredible, if not irresistible,” he said. 

Marlow said the scenarios that Booker and Hawley cited are closer than they think. 

“If you build it, they will come,” he said. “I so much appreciate that you’re bringing (up) abortion care seekers and gun owners because they are part of the same community when it comes to the threat of mass surveillance. This is something we need to be worried about because when you create the temptation, when you create the option for population control, at some point someone’s going to use it.”

WASHINGTON — A New Hampshire federal judge seemed skeptical during a Tuesday hearing that a civil rights group could continue with a challenge to block President Donald Trump’s second attempt to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, suggesting that a new lawsuit might be needed.

The American Civil Liberties Union last month asked federal Judge Joseph Normand Laplante to clarify a preliminary injunction he issued  that blocked Trump’s first executive order that tried to deny citizenship to certain babies. The ACLU wanted to know if the preliminary injunction also applied to Trump’s two new executive orders that would redefine birthright citizenship.

“I view the Barbara case as essentially over,” Laplante said, referring to the case initially filed in New Hampshire last year that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court affirmed the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. 

Laplante said because the new executive orders apply to a different class than the original case, it seems like a new lawsuit. 

Trump’s most recent executive orders would deny citizenship to babies born in the United States to parents deemed part of a designated terrorist organization and to parents who purposefully came to the United States to gain citizenship in what critics call “birth tourism.” 

The executive order also aimed to deny citizenship to children born to foreign diplomatic staff and children born in U.S. territories where Congress has not passed a law granting citizenship, which is only American Samoa.

Maryland action

Earlier this month, Maryland federal Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction that barred the executive orders from taking place. Boardman handled the birthright citizenship lawsuit that stemmed from Trump’s 2025 executive order. 

After the August executive orders, immigration advocacy groups asked her for another preliminary injunction through the initial lawsuit from 2025. That case, also on the first executive order, was separate from the New Hampshire case but the Supreme Court decision affected both. 

Arguing Tuesday in New Hampshire on behalf of the ACLU, Cody Wofsy said he understands if the court views it as a separate suit, but that the organization views the two executive orders as somewhat identical to the first executive order that the Supreme Court struck down.

“This is one kit and caboodle, really,” he said. “It’s a continuing effort to strip birthright citizenship.”

Wofsy, who is deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said if Laplante wants a new lawsuit, the ACLU would like to know as soon as possible. 

“Our fundamental interest here is just in getting to the place where we can get some relief for this class, whether that’s before this court, in this district, another, it doesn’t really matter to us,” he said. 

Special Counsel for the Justice Department Brad Rosenberg said the Trump administration’s primary concern is efficiency.

“We don’t want to have to expend resources responding to motions that may very shortly become moot,” he said. 

Perceptions

Laplante, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush, also expressed concern about the perception created by the ACLU asking the same judge for another preliminary injunction. 

“I’m concerned about the impression created by the very same judicial officer that handled the Barbara case, now handling new issues involving, not the same issue, but very similar, closely related issues involving birthright citizenship, and that’s of concern to me,” he said.

“If this case were brought, and I think the proper way, it might be that … I receive it again by random assignment,” he continued. “If that’s the case, we’ll be off to the races and we’ll litigate the case in the normal way I would approach preliminary injunctive relief.” 

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Friday struck down the Trump administration’s policy to quickly send noncitizens to countries they are not from, finding that immigrants must have an opportunity to challenge their removal if they fear for their safety.

The decision largely upheld a Boston federal judge’s February ruling that found the Department of Homeland Security’s policy unlawful. But the immigration officers can still conduct third-country removals if they follow the proper procedures, such as adequate notice and an opportunity for an immigrant to raise a fear-based claim to that country of removal.

Third-country removals, deportations from the United States to a nation other than an immigrant’s home country, occur when the immigrant’s home country does not accept the person’s repatriation. 

Once rare, the procedure has spiked under the second Trump administration that has entered into partnerships with several countries, some with human rights concerns, to take third-country removals from the U.S.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit also raised doubts that a country that accepts a person that is not their own citizen could “credibly provide blanket assurances that all removed noncitizens will not be persecuted or tortured there unless it intends to provide them with some sort of affirmative protection against rogue agents and non-state actors.” 

The panel also upheld the lower court’s finding that the notice to a third country was inadequate – about 24 hours – and that the policy was unlawful.

It gives “no notice at all of an impending third-country removal when the country to which the noncitizen is to be removed has provided credible (in the State Department’s judgment) diplomatic assurances that noncitizens removed there from the United States will not be persecuted or tortured,” the panel wrote.

The panel included circuit judges Lara E. Montecalvo, Jeffrey R. Howard and Seth R. Aframe. Former President Joe Biden nominated Montecalvo and Aframe. Former President George W. Bush nominated Howard.

The Trump administration in May 2025 made an emergency request to the Supreme Court after U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocked the policy. The Supreme Court in June 2025 temporarily allowed for the removals, before sending it back to the lower court. 

Murphy again in February issued an order that blocked the policy and required DHS to carry out the statutory obligations of proper notice of removal to a third country and to give a noncitizen enough time to raise any concerns for their safety to their removal to a third country. 

The Trump administration later appealed to the First Circuit, and could appeal again to the Supreme Court. 

DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment Friday. 

WASHINGTON — A coalition of civil rights groups and union organizations Friday sued the Trump administration to prevent the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling locations during November’s midterm elections.

The suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is the second this month, following comments from top Trump officials citing a federal policy to allow ICE officers to enter polling locations in certain circumstances to conduct immigration enforcement.

The groups argue the policy violates the federal law that prohibits “armed men” at election sites, and also causes voter intimidation, which is barred under the Voting Rights Act.

Under federal law, “troops” or “armed men” are allowed at polling locations only if “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” And the section of the Voting Rights Act the groups cite prohibits “intimidation,” “threats,” or “coercion” against a person for voting or attempting to vote.

“The result is predictable: voters across the country—particularly Black, Latino, and Asian voters, naturalized citizens, and members of mixed-status families—are afraid to vote, help others vote, and participate in civic life,” according to the suit. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin earlier this month noted that agents could conduct immigration enforcement at polling places. And before U.S. senators this week, FBI Director Kash Patel did not rule out sending FBI agents to polling locations, but said officers would “follow the law.”

The Department of Justice dismissed the idea that officers would be sent to polling locations. 

“The DOJ has never said it would send federal law enforcement to polling locations,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement to States Newsroom. “Any suggestion otherwise is fearmongering.”

In a statement to States Newsroom, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said those “who are here legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.”

“Allegations that DHS law enforcement engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” the spokesperson said. “What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.—NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity.”

The DHS spokesperson added that ICE was not planning any operations that targeted polling locations. 

NAACP among groups suing

“We reject this administration’s attempt to desecrate our polling sites by converting them into militarized zones through the unlawful deployment of ICE or any other federal agent,” Kristen Clarke, the NAACP’s general counsel, said in a statement. 

NAACP is one of nine groups that filed suit. The rest are Mi Familia en Accion, Asian Pacific American Advocates, the National Urban League, Minnesota 8, the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the International Union of Painters and the United Food and Commercial Workers International.

“Turning the fundamental right of exercising our vote into a high-stakes encounter with the militarized strong arm of the current administration isn’t protection and it isn’t oversight; it’s disenfranchisement, period,” Clarke said. “The NAACP calls on the court to reject this blatant attempt by federal officials to obstruct our elections through tactics pulled straight from the Jim Crow playbook.” 

The nine groups are represented by the Legal Defense Fund, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the National Immigration Law Center, Protect Democracy and the Democracy Defenders Fund. 

WASHINGTON — The White House Thursday withdrew the nomination of Richard “Lance” Schroyer to lead the agency the president tasked with carrying out his mass deportation campaign, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, had yet to have his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. 

The chair of the committee, GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, had no objections to Schroyer’s nomination, his office said in an email to States Newsroom. 

The White House did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. The withdrawal was announced in a brief statement on the White House website along with those of several other nominees.

The Trump administration nominated Schroyer on June 27. He worked to establish Oklahoma’s law enforcement partnership with the federal government to assist with immigration enforcement in the 287g program, and is a close ally of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who previously served as Oklahoma’s U.S. senator. 

Schroyer also worked in law enforcement for nearly 30 years.

The current acting director of ICE is David Venturella, a longtime federal immigration official and former vice president of the private prison company GEO that rakes in billions through federal contracts by detaining immigrants at its facilities across the country. 

He took over in May after former acting ICE director Todd Lyons stepped down, following the shooting of two U.S. citizens by immigration officials in Minneapolis earlier this year.

The White House has not announced a replacement for Schroyer. The last time the Senate confirmed someone to lead ICE was 11 years ago. 

WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security officers may have broken state laws carrying out the Trump administration’s orders to find noncitizens voting illegally in federal elections, Democratic senators alleged Monday following a whistleblower complaint.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the whistleblower detailed the department’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” in which U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services immigration officers combed through state voter rolls, sometimes pretending to be the voter to access records. 

U.S. citizens were also swept up in the efforts due to faulty data and pressure from top officials to meet a quota of five investigations per hour, or 12 minutes per inquiry, according to the whistleblower’s account. 

“We just got more proof of (President Donald) Trump’s vile schemes to rig our elections,” said Schumer, a New York Democrat. “A DHS whistleblower warns that the department is pulling hundreds, hundreds of federal agents from national security roles, and sending them on a wild goose chase. The goal: to try and prove Trump’s sad, tired and long debunked election conspiracy theories.”

The New York Times was the first to report the existence of the DHS operation.

California Sen. Alex Padilla, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration that oversees federal elections, said the president “will go to extraordinary lengths to try to interfere with the midterm elections.”

Padilla said the whistleblower came forward last week.  

Padilla and Schumer called for DHS to shut down the operation. The department did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

“Donald Trump knows his record has been so bad,” Padilla said. “His only chance at keeping Republican majorities in Congress is to interfere with the elections.”

Noncitizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections, and cases are extremely rare. Some localities have passed laws to allow for noncitizen voting in local elections. 

But the topic is a priority for the president, who has directed DHS to investigate voter rolls for illegal voting by noncitizens. On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced two noncitizens from Kansas and Louisiana illegally voted in federal elections.

“Voter fraud is already a serious problem, but non-citizens voting is even worse,” Mullin said. “Every time a non-citizen casts a ballot, it steals a vote from an American citizen.”

Powerful U.S. officials past and present faced families, survivors and first responders Friday at ceremonies to honor the 25th anniversary of the day 2,977 Americans died in terrorist attacks in Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania.

At the Pentagon, Condoleezza Rice, who was serving at the time under President George W. Bush as national security advisor, told the crowd she wanted to share something “deeply personal.”

“Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11. We did what we knew to do, but by definition, it was not enough. … I will always carry deep personal remorse for the pain that you, the families of the fallen, still feel, and for the trauma that our country endured,” she said.

Speakers at all three Sept. 11 milestone anniversary events recounted stories of courage and loss as people found themselves in an unimaginable circumstance. 

Some also flared with frustration at what they say is a lack of justice for those who planned the attacks.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking at the memorial service for the 184 people who died when the hijacked United Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, highlighted the anniversary as a justification for their stagnant war with Iran. 

That nearly seven-month-old conflict has killed 18 U.S. service members, injured over 700 more and taken the lives of thousands of civilians across the Middle East.

“We will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today. We don’t have a choice,” Trump said. “There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win. We will always remember the victims and the families of September 11, 2001, very famous date, unfortunately.”

Hegseth told the crowd, which was only open to victims’ families, survivors and their families, that Americans were “ignorant of the Islamist threat” 25 years ago.

“Every day, enemies plot to curb our power and kill our citizens, including from Islamic terrorists abroad and at home, but we are ever vigilant,” he said, adding that the U.S. has killed Iran’s leaders and put their Navy “at the bottom of the sea.”

The deeply unpopular war has continued, despite early promises from Hegseth and Trump that it would not morph into the prolonged Middle East conflicts that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

‘No justice’

At the site in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood, families read names of the 2,753 victims who died inside the towers, on the ground and on the two hijacked airliners, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175.

Terry Strada, widow of the late Tom Strada, who died in the north tower, slammed recent presidential administrations of both parties for not holding Saudi Arabia accountable for allegations that the kingdom’s officials knew about the attacks.

“My husband Tom Strada, you are missed more with each year that passes. But how can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?” she said to loud cheers from the crowd.

“For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she said. 

 

“President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have all been suffering through. Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today. Please carry that message back,” she said, again receiving loud cheers.

Vice President JD Vance sat in a front row at the ceremony alongside former presidents Bush, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. 

Former first ladies Michelle Obama, Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton, also a former secretary of state, were seated in the row, as was former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Neither the Embassy of Saudi Arabia nor the White House immediately responded to States Newsroom’s requests for a response.

Painful memories

Families at the site in Lower Manhattan shared memories seared in their minds.

Bob Lee, 67, was a firefighter in the Bronx that day. He remembers how many first responders had to gather together to clean up the dust and debris that had settled around the city.

“When you see the people that were down here, everybody’s eyes was … full of soot and dust, and their eyes were glowing like bright red because all the stuff that was in their eyes,” Lee said. “It was just a crazy scene.”

Lee moved to Kansas City, Missouri, shortly after 9/11. He was 42 at the time and realized he had been exposed to a lot of toxic air.

“I told them I was retiring,” Lee said recalling that he knew a lot of his colleagues would get sick. He was a union representative for his unit in the Bronx. 

“I lost hundreds of those guys. You know, it’s crazy … Quite a few friends have died of cancer.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week announced that his office had released around 170,000 pages of records that had been closed off over the last 25 years on the level of toxic air pollution people were exposed to in the aftermath of 9/11.

The records suggest that New Yorkers were misled about the air quality and that officials downplayed how dangerous it was to breathe the air. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, close to 50,000 people, including first responders and survivors, developed cancer in relation to the event. 

Christopher Santora, then 23, was a firefighter who responded to the attacks and was enveloped in debris as the towers fell. He lost his life trying to save people that day. His cousin Jason Roettger, 56, was chosen to read the names of people who had died during 9/11 at Friday’s ceremony.

Roettger said it was an honor to be a part of the event and to represent his cousin. He said he’s glad the air quality records were released.

“I think everyone that was here in the city, or even in New Jersey, everyone in this area knew the air wasn’t good,” Roettger said. “Even though the government said ‘No, the air is fine.’ I think everyone knew that that was a lie.”

Wanda Hernandez, 72, lost her daughter Monique de Jesus, who was 28 at the time. She was working at the World Trade Center. 

Hernandez said Friday she was focusing on all the beautiful moments she had with her daughter before that day.

“We went on vacation for my birthday before it happened, like a month before. Yeah. Yeah, we had a good time, you know, and we went to a wedding like a week before it happened,” Hernandez said. “Two weeks, so that was nice. Had a good time. I was a good mother. She was a good daughter.”

‘A vast empty space in the side of the Pentagon’

Over a 13-minute speech Friday morning at the Pentagon, Rice, who also served as secretary of state later in the Bush administration, painted a picture of administration officials caught completely off guard by the attacks, orchestrated by the well-known anti-American extremist terror network al-Qaeda.

“I was at my desk at the White House that day when my executive assistant, a young Army officer, told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. ‘What a strange accident,’ I thought,” Rice said.

“I called President Bush, who was reading to children at an education event in Florida. He too thought that it must have just been an accident. But within 17 minutes, a second plane hit the World Trade Center,” she continued.

What followed, according to Rice, was a whirlwind as officials rushed to secure locations — Bush to Air Force One, Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney to a White House bunker and CIA Director George Tenet to an undisclosed location. 

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Peru “and trying to get home.” Those in the White House “Situation Room,” Rice recalled, just heard the “ringing and ringing and ringing” of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s phone at the Pentagon, where he had been hosting a congressional breakfast. 

The late Rumsfeld would end up outside assisting in rescue efforts “as his security detail begged him to flee,” she said.

“I remember turning to a television screen, and the horror and the shock that I felt. There was a smoking crater, a vast empty space, in the side of the Pentagon.”

Fight with hijackers

A morning observance program was also held at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to mark 25 years since 40 passengers and crew members died when the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a rural field. 

Families read aloud the names of the victims during the ceremony.

Members of Flight 93 fought with hijackers over Western Pennsylvania and forced the flight to crash, which prevented the hijacked aircraft from hitting the intended destination of the U.S. Capitol.

Others expected to speak Friday afternoon included Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Gordon Felt, brother of Edward Porter Felt, one of the 40 people who died on Flight 93, was set to speak, along with retired United Airlines Capt. Morrie Wiener, who piloted Flight 93 prior to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and Jessica Bowron, acting director of the National Park Service.

Mullin ties mass deportation to Sept. 11

Outside of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C., Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin used the anniversary to promote the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, and said that lack of cooperation from so-called sanctuary cities is what could lead to another 9/11.

“It’s a safe haven that incubates terrorist activity and it doesn’t just stay local,” he said.

He specifically called out Democratic-led cities of Seattle, Boston and New York City.

“It shouldn’t be political,” he said. “When we start looking at the 25th anniversary, if there’s anything we should agree on, it should be that. Why should the Department of Homeland Security be controversial? We’re taking care of your backyard.”

Immigration enforcement agencies under the department have been roiled in scandal and carried out alleged illegal orders since Trump’s second term began. 

The events have included allowing deportation flights to take off against a judge’s order, erroneous deportations of individuals with legal protections, and the killing by immigration agents of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, of Minneapolis. 

The latest scrutiny of the department comes after a $20 million no-bid contract was extended in Kentucky to outfit agents with electric shock gloves.

Courage and ‘selfless service’

Despite the lasting pain, speakers Friday noted that relatives of those killed in the attacks found ways to move forward and persevere.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine at the Pentagon said the milestone anniversary was not only about remembering those lost, but “it is also a story of great American courage, selfless service, and those who’ve made the choice to carry those memories forward.” 

“The courage of those extraordinary Americans in Pennsylvania, in New York, and right here on these hallowed grounds, did not end when the smoke cleared and the fires went out, because survivors and families have carried it forward through service, through sacrifice, and through remembrance,” Caine told the crowd.