A federal immigration judge ruled Wednesday that Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, can be deported. Judge Jayme Salinardi rejected accusations made by the Department of Homeland Security that Sarsour lied on his green card application over 30 years ago, and that he registered to vote despite not being a citizen. Salindari did, however, give what Sarsour’s attorneys called “extreme deference” to a 2025 memo by Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating that Sarsour — a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights  — is deportable “because his actions undermine” U.S. foreign policy.

The same morning Salindari ruled on Sarsour’s case, he announced his retirement. A different immigration judge will preside over further proceedings in Sarsour’s case. During a press conference Wednesday, attorneys representing Sarsour called the decision “unjust,” and said the timing of  Salindari’s retirement announcement was “odd.” 

Immigration attorney Patrick Taurel said that Sarsour — who is not taking interviews at this time — was “disappointed but not shocked” by the judge’s ruling, and that he understands that immigration judges are under pressure from the Trump administration. Last year, nearly 100 immigration judges were fired by the Trump administration, shrinking the number of judges by about a quarter, NPR reported. 

“It does feel odd,” said attorney Luna Droubi, who is representing Sarsour in a separate federal case arguing First Amendment retaliation by the government. 

Taurel said he plans to appeal Salindari’s ruling down the road. Now that Sarsour has been found deportable, the next question is whether he is eligible for any kind of relief, such as asylum. Taurel said that Sarsour will eventually be able to appeal his case to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which he described as more neutral than the immigration courts. Proceedings are expected to continue into next year and under a different judge, Taurel said. 

Sarsour was in Milwaukee when immigration agents arrested him in late March. They then transported him out of Wisconsin and to a detention center in Indiana. DHS accused Sarsour of lying on his green card application in the 1990s, and claimed that he had been convicted as a teenager in Israeli military courts of throwing Molotov cocktails in 1988, during the First Intifada uprising. Sarsour grew up in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation. DHS also said that Sarsour had been charged in Israel with illegally attempting to possess weapons and ammunition in 1995. Prosecutors also accused Sarsour of registering to vote in 2004 despite not having full citizenship.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, reached for comment on the ruling, reiterated the department’s assertion that Sarsour “is a terrorist who was convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli armed forces.” The spokesperson wrote in an email to the Examiner that “due to a previous court order, this public safety threat was loose on our streets,” and said that the judge in Sarsour’s case sustained the government’s case that there were grounds to deport Sarsour. “All illegal aliens receive due process,” the spokesperson wrote. “If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”

Sarsour is a legal permanent resident and has lived in the United States for over 30 years, during which time he has not been arrested or convicted of any crime prior to his immigration arrest. 

Sarsour’s attorneys dispute the accusations, saying that their client was  convicted of throwing stones, not explosives. They also introduced evidence that Israeli authorities tortured Sarsour to get his confessions which were signed in Hebrew, a language Sarsour can neither speak nor read. Experts and witnesses called to the stand by Taruel testified to the use of torture by Israeli authorities, a lack of due process rights afforded to Palestinians like Sarsour, and that Sarsour continues to suffer from PTSD due to his time in Israeli detention. Another expert said that Sarsour passed a polygraph test in which he denied having registered to vote. Prosecutors did not call any witnesses or experts for their side during the proceedings. 

Although Salindari rejected the accusations that Sarsour lied on his green card application and that he registered to vote, Taurel said that the judge did give “extreme deference” to Israeli documents concerning Sarsour’s convictions. Despite the testimony involving the nature of the Israeli military court system, Salindari found the convictions against Sarsour to be valid. 

Droubi said that Sarsour’s immigration case has no bearing on his federal First Amendment retaliation case, which she and Taurel believe is the reason the Trump administration targeted Sarsour for deportation and is supported by Salinardi’s ruling that he could be deported on foreign policy grounds. After Rubio said Sarsour’s “actions undermine U.S. foreign policy,” the Justice Department announced it would begin targeting the group American Muslims for Palestine, for which Sarsour is a board member.

Sarsour’s First Amendment claims, his lack of any criminal record in the U.S. and  his deteriorating health, contributed to a federal judge’s ruling that he should be released due to having a “substantial” claim of First Amendment retaliation.

“You have to ask yourself,” Droubi told  the Examiner, “if you are an immigrant, ‘Do I have the right to speak out about issues that matter to me? What if I draw a political cartoon? Am I going to be arrested and detained because of that? Is the government going to bring charges against me and potentially remove me from this country?’” Droubi added, “That is significant, and I think it does chill the speech of immigrants and non-citizens in this country, and it should really terrify all of us.”

Taurel said that the cases of Sarsour, Mahmoud Khalil, and other Palestinian activists targeted for deportation underscore “the need for Congress to repeal the foreign policy ground of deportability.” Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont); Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) introduced a bill titled  the Land of the Free Act to repeal the rarely-used Cold War provision of immigration law last year, saying the Trump administration had “weaponized” it to punish political speech.

Like many Palestinians born before or around the Six Day War between Israel and a group of Arab nations, Sarsour has travel documentation issued by Jordan but is not a citizen of that country. If he were deported, he would likely ultimately end up back in Israeli territory.

“We feared this outcome,” Taurel said of the judge’s decision. “But Salah is determined to keep speaking out.”

A federal grand jury indicted 10 noncitizens for unlawfully voting in Minnesota, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday, highlighting the administration’s effort to keep election security a top issue, in line with President Donald Trump’s longstanding unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.

The indictments, which include nine counts of unlawful voting and nine counts of falsely claiming citizenship to register to vote, bring the number of noncitizens charged nationwide with election-related crimes since Trump re-took office last year to 90. The census reports 154 million people voted in the 2024 election.

Blanche said at a news conference at Justice Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., that the indictments show how seriously the administration takes election security.

“We have talked repeatedly about the importance of election integrity, and we’re certainly not going to stop talking about that now,” he said. “Voter fraud erodes the public’s trust in our electoral system, and it’s vital to our democratic process that we do everything that we can to restore that trust.”

Blanche’s participation in a press conference, alongside fellow Cabinet member Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, underlined the administration’s continuing focus on noncitizen voting, though numerous studies have shown it to be rare. Trump has for years amplified debunked conspiracy theories centered on election fraud.

Mullin made that connection explicit Wednesday, saying the indictments confirmed Trump’s accusations.

“The president said it for a long time, and the Democrats were sitting there denying it and saying, ‘There’s no fraud. That wasn’t taking place. There’s no fraud. There’s nothing, nothing here. Don’t look over here,’” he said. “We’re realizing there’s actually a lot. And we believe that some of these states probably even knew about it, chose not to look into it. Well, we are.”

But the allegations of illegal voting in Minnesota in the 2022 and 2024 general elections and 2026 primaries made virtually no difference to election results. 

The seven alleged illegal votes in the 2024 presidential election, for example, would account for only .0002% of votes cast in that election in Minnesota.

President Donald Trump is tapping $20 million in Homeland Security funding to pay for TV ads that heavily feature him ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats said Tuesday as the promos critics call propaganda come under bipartisan attack.

The Trump administration recently moved the funds into a U.S. Customs and Border Protection budget line intended for “commemorative events” related to border security, according to federal records. Congressional Democrats said the dollars appear to be funding the ad campaign.

The ads face mounting criticism as Republicans confront an angry electorate that, according to polling, appears likely to place Democrats in control of the House and possibly the Senate. Yet the messaging reflects Trump’s strategy of centering the election on himself and telling supporters to vote as if he was on the ballot, as he urged during the GOP midterm convention.

The three ads released so far feature stylized imagery of Trump and include “Paid for by the U.S. Government” disclosures. One is nearly identical to a 2024 Trump campaign ad. Some $2 million in ads have aired on cable and broadcast stations over the past week. 

“This is the final battle,” Trump says in a voiceover in one black-and-white ad that shows him walking silently toward the camera. Another ad uses the song “Love Me” by the artist JMSN. Attorneys for the performer have sent a cease-and-desist letter to the administration demanding the ad be taken down.

Both Dems and Republicans object

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, slammed the ads as indistinguishable from Trump’s 2024 campaign ads, yet funded by taxpayers. “It’s an absolute violation of what democracy is supposed to look like. Americans sat down to watch football, not to be force fed Trump’s propaganda on their own dime,” Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor.

Some GOP senators have also split with the Trump administration over the ads. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, told reporters that while he liked the ads’ message, tax dollars shouldn’t pay for them. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas have also pushed back, among others.

“I don’t think any public official, including President Trump or (former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi) Noem or John Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves,” Kennedy told “Face the Nation” on CBS.

$20 million materializes

On Tuesday, Sens. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said his department appeared to have dedicated $20 million to the ads that had been provided to Customs and Border Protection, a sub-agency of DHS, in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act last year.

House Democratic Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Henry Cuellar of Texas in their own statement also cited federal apportionment changes by the Office of Management and Budget recorded by OpenOMB, a non-governmental database that tracks apportionments. 

OpenOMB shows that on Sept. 19, $20 million was moved into a fund that pays for border security commemorative events and that previously held just $500,000.

The following day, Homeland Security awarded a $20 million contract to LMD Agency, Inc., a Maryland-based marketing firm, for a “national media campaign,” according to federal contract data.

Republican blocks resolution on ads

Sen. Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat, sought unanimous consent in the Senate on Tuesday to pass a resolution stating that the federal government shouldn’t pay for the ads. 

“The Department of Homeland Security should be working to tackle the enormous national security threats we face like stopping fentanyl, not bankrolling a vanity project for the president,” Hassan said.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, objected, saying the heart of the ads is about defending American values from communism and socialism. Lummis said if that message has Hassan concerned, it says “more about her side of the aisle than it does about” the ads. The action by Lummis halted action on the resolution.

Administration defends ads

The White House and Homeland Security didn’t deny that the government fund was being used to pay for the ads, in response to questions from States Newsroom.

The White House said in an unsigned statement that the ads — which it calls public service announcements — are educational and intended to remind Americans “to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.” 

Homeland Security referred States Newsroom to a White House webpage that also defends the ads. The page says they aren’t campaign ads, noting that Trump isn’t on the ballot and that the messages include no call to action.

Government ethics and legal experts say that explanation misses the point.

“There’s a distinction between providing people with information about government programs and engaging in communication that merely aggrandizes government officials. And what we have here is purely aggrandizing Donald Trump,” Samuel Bagenstos, who served as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget during the first year and a half of President Joe Biden’s administration, said in an interview.

Bagenstos, who is now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, said that if the issue was simply whether the ads violate the Hatch Act, a federal law that limits federal employees — but not the president – from engaging in partisan politics on the job, the question of the ads’ legality could be more complicated. 

But the most important legal issue with the ads, he said, isn’t the Hatch Act but whether the messages violate prohibitions on using government funds for propaganda. 

During his time in government service, which also included a stint as general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration, Bagenstos said agencies were constantly communicating with the public, and there’s always a question of how far officials can go. But he said these kind of issues were reviewed carefully, often in ways that annoyed communications staff who wanted to put out messages immediately.

“But if something like this had crossed my desk, I would have said, ‘You can’t pay for this ad. It is clearly illegal,’” Bagenstos said, adding that the ads are the kind of thing he would have considered resigning over. “It’s that clear a violation of law and it’s really corrosive to democracy,” he said.

Similarity to franking?

Members of Congress and state-level officials regularly release slick official communications that sometimes echo campaign messaging. But that practice, known as “franking,” comes with clear restrictions, including a U.S. House prohibition on mass mailings 60 days before an election.

In sending franked mail, members of Congress are barred from sending mail that “solicits political support” for the lawmaker or any person or political party, Margaret Dylus-Yukins, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, wrote in an email.

The Trump ads, by contrast, don’t pertain to any policymaking process or function of government, and while the White House has said the messages remind Americans to love their country, there’s no apparent connection to any federal program or service, Dylus-Yukins wrote. 

Instead, she wrote that their inflammatory language, widespread distribution and touting of Trump’s term in office, as well as their close proximity to the midterms, “all suggest that these advertisements were produced with the intent to solicit political support for President Trump’s political allies ahead of the midterm election.”

“These advertisements therefore appear to be in violation of the Hatch Act and raise serious concerns about the use of taxpayer funds to possibly sway the upcoming election’s outcome,” Dylus-Yukins wrote.

No lawsuit yet

As of Tuesday afternoon the ads didn’t appear to face a legal challenge. 

The watchdog group Democracy Forward said Monday it was launching an investigation into the ads and had filed records requests for communications regarding the ads and financial paperwork related to them.

Bagenstos suggested the courts may not be the best avenue to fight the ads. Instead, he said, Congress needs to assert itself and retaliate against inappropriate spending.

“In our separation of powers system, what our framers expected was that Congress would stand up for its power first,” Bagenstos said.

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 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 — Latino advocacy groups and voting rights organizations Thursday filed a suit in federal court challenging the Trump administration’s policy of allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to enter polling locations in certain circumstances to conduct immigration enforcement during the 2026 midterm elections. 

The suit in the District Court for the District of Columbia argues that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s recent comments that ICE agents would be at polling locations for the purpose of immigration enforcement violates federal law that prohibits federal “armed men” at election sites. 

The statute allows for “troops” or “armed men” at polling locations only if “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” 

“The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election,” according to the lawsuit. “It places voters in fear that they will be confronted by armed federal immigration enforcement officers if they choose to cast a ballot.”

In a statement to States Newsroom, a DHS spokesperson said that “ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations.” 

“ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action,” the spokesperson said. 

Earlier this month, Mullin said that ICE officers at polling locations would be there “to enforce specific threats.” 

“The only reason why we would be at polling places, if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down,” he said. “ICE’s job is immigration (and) custom enforcement. That’s their job and so if we’re doing something, we’re doing that specifically.”

The suit asks the federal court to prevent the Trump administration from following that polling place policy and declaring it unlawful, as well as barring “officers from operating or carrying weapons in the vicinity of open polling places, including dropboxes, curbside voting locations, and similar places where votes are taken, collected, received, counted, or certified during early voting periods and on Election Day itself, for any reason other than repelling armed enemies of the United States.”

The civil rights groups that joined the suit said the tactic would lead to voter suppression.

“Sending armed ICE officers to polling places is not immigration enforcement — it is voter suppression, plain and simple,” UnidosUS President Janet Murguía said in a statement. “All Americans — including Latino voters  — have a constitutional right to cast their ballot without fear of interrogation, detention, or family separation.”

The suit was filed by the oldest U.S. Latino civil rights organization, League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC; the largest Hispanic civil rights organization, UnidosUS; the voter mobilization group Common Cause; and the city and county of Denver, Colorado, which has a large immigrant population and has been targeted by ICE multiple times for immigration enforcement. 

“The right to vote, and to do so without fear of intimidation, is fundamental to our democracy and to being an American,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said in a statement. “Stationing ICE agents near polling places is only meant to scare people and suppress votes. We’ll fight tooth and nail to prevent it.”

WASHINGTON — For years, Jose Palma has advocated for immigrants with Temporary Protected Status who hail from countries deemed too unstable for return.

But as the Trump administration has stripped those humanitarian protections for nearly a million people, the Salvadoran national is uncertain if his own legal status will remain in place next week. 

“I’m going day by day,” Palma, who lives in Texas, told States Newsroom in an interview. 

Within two years under the Trump administration, the bipartisan humanitarian Temporary Protected Status program created by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by former Republican President George H.W. Bush has been nearly obliterated.

Palma first obtained TPS in 2001, along with roughly 170,000 recipients from El Salvador, due to several earthquakes that displaced more than one-sixth of the population and left thousands dead. The United States renewed protections over the years, citing continued displacement and ongoing violence.

But the TPS designation for El Salvador is set to expire Sept. 9, and the Department of Homeland Security has made no indication if protections will be renewed. 

Under DHS policy, an announcement typically is made 60 days in advance of the date of a TPS expiration if a renewal is planned. 

Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who helped write the statute for TPS when he was a congressional staffer, said he’s asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to renew protections for El Salvador.

“I still haven’t received a response back,” McGovern said during a Thursday press conference at the U.S. Capitol. He was joined by Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who said many Salvadoran TPS recipients work and live in his Omaha district. 

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

The Trump administration’s position on the program is that it’s “temporary,” and that country conditions have improved, despite warnings from the State Department to not travel to some of those countries where TPS designation has ended, such as Haiti.

If TPS for El Salvador ends, only 103,000 out of initially 1.3 million recipients from around the globe will have protections: 150 from Lebanon, 1,790 from Sudan and 101,150 from Ukraine.

Supreme Court decision

TPS is granted to nationals who hail from a country experiencing a natural disaster, violence, or other extreme circumstances, allowing them to remain in the U.S. and obtain work permits. 

Some protections can last through six-to-18-month cycles, and each renewal process requires a TPS holder to go through a background check and other vetting.  

Before the second Trump administration, 17 countries were in the program. Only four, including El Salvador, remain as the White House has forged ahead aggressively on its mass deportation campaign. 

The Supreme Court made the move easier after it ruled this summer that decisions from the executive branch to end TPS were not subject to judicial review. The order meant that lower courts that initially blocked the Trump administration from ending the designations had to reverse their decisions.

Now recipients face the end of TPS with just 60 days’ notice.

“It’s one of those things that is kind of cruel, to have families who are stable and have been stable for decades, to have people who have been doing everything the government asked them to do for 25 years, and suddenly, if the decision is to end TPS, provided only 60 days protection before forcing people to go back to a country they haven’t been for decades,” Palma said. 

One of the first countries after TPS was written into law to receive the designation was El Salvador. 

Stripping TPS from Salvadorans would not only harm the U.S. economy, but it would also negatively impact El Salvador’s fragile economy, advocates predict. More than one quarter of El Salvador’s Gross Domestic Product comes from family members sending money back to relatives in their country of origin, known as remittances. 

“El Salvador’s economy has been built thanks to all the remittances,” said Ana María Méndez-Dardón, the director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA.  “So if people are returning, that would have a huge impact because the economy depends on the money that people from El Salvador living in the U.S. send to El Salvador.”

The spending also has an impact in the United States. Salvadoran TPS recipients contribute $5.4 billion to the U.S. economy and pay $1.5 billion in federal, state and local taxes, according to the immigration advocacy research group FWD.us. 

About 152,000 TPS recipients from El Salvador are in the workforce, mainly in construction, manufacturing, building and transportation.

Attempts in Congress

TPS does not create a pathway to citizenship and a recipient can only apply for it when the country receives its designation. 

Some TPS recipients can apply for asylum if they qualify, or others could apply to adjust their status to that of a lawful permanent resident, or green-card holder, through a family-based or employer-based petition. 

Congress has made some effort to extend TPS for some recipients. Earlier this year, the House passed a bill to extend TPS for up to 350,000 Haitians on a bipartisan basis, but it’s stalled in the upper chamber. 

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen attempted to advance a bill in the Senate to create a legal pathway to citizenship for immigrants with TPS, but was blocked by Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt. 

McGovern said Thursday that there is a bipartisan push to extend protections for TPS recipients. Proof of that was Bacon’s presence at the press conference.

“What good is it to force out folks who’ve been here legally, who are working, who are part of our community?” Bacon said. “It does no one any good.”

Human rights in El Salvador

Many Salvadorian TPS recipients are worried about being forced back to El Salvador, where human rights groups have raised concerns about the authoritarian government of President Nayib Bukele, said WOLA’s Méndez-Dardón.

WOLA is a research and advocacy group that aims to advance human rights in North and South America. It has documented how Bukele’s political party has suspended due process rights and has carried out a mass incarceration of suspected gang members in an effort to reduce crime and murders. 

More than 90,000 Salvadorans have been jailed without due process and hundreds have died in prisons and altogether disappeared, human rights groups have reported.

“So for Salvadorians who might be returned, the risk no longer are the criminal groups or the gangs because many of them fled the country because of the security situation,” Méndez-Dardón said. “But although the gangs are no longer the threat, now the threat is the state.” 

Bukele has met with President Donald Trump several times at the White House and has a years-long working relationship with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who last year granted El Salvador the highest possible safety rating for travel, a level 1. 

In 2024, the State Department gave El Salvador a level 3 advisory, warning people to reconsider travel because of security and safety concerns.

The Trump administration also last year made a deal with the Salvadoran government to pay up to $6 million to detain hundreds of Venezuelans at a brutal mega-prison. In the high-profile case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland Salvadoran who was mistakenly deported to the mega prison, lawyers documented mental and physical torture he experienced while there. 

“People are basically under a constant fear of being detained by the security forces,” Méndez-Dardón said. 

U.S. citizen children

Palma, who also attended the press conference, said he, along with other Salvadoran TPS recipients, are concerned about El Salvador’s government.

“So crime has gone down, but now abuses to human rights have increased,” he said. “That is concerning, because it’s also the government is becoming more aggressive against opposition, public media.”

Palma questioned if El Salvador would have the infrastructure to accept as many as 200,000 Salvadorans, made up of the TPS recipients and their families. Many have U.S. citizen children. 

Palma, who has four U.S. citizen children, said two of his kids are still in primary school. One is 11 and another is 8 years old. 

“This is their country,” he said of his four children. “They are from here. But if I were to lose the TPS protection and I were to be forced to go back to El Salvador, it’s not just affecting me. It’s affecting the whole family. That’s kind of like the situation that so many people across the country are going through right now.”

Supporting her mom

There are roughly 150,000 U.S. citizen children who have a parent who is a Salvadoran TPS recipient, according to the National TPS alliance. 

Cristel Argueta is one of those children. At 20 years old, she’s a college student at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. But on Thursday, she missed four classes relating to her criminology and criminal justice degree to travel to the nation’s capital and advocate for an extension to TPS for El Salvador. 

“I’m missing class to be here, but it’s worth it because it’s for my family,” she said.

Her mother, a TPS holder from El Salvador, came to the U.S. when she was 19, fleeing the civil war that lasted from 1979 until 1992. Her mother was able to get TPS in 2001.

“She has been in this country longer than she has been in El Salvador,” Argueta said. “TPS was started by Salvadorans, and I don’t want to lose my mother.” 

She’s hoping her mother’s TPS is extended until at least Argueta’s 21st birthday, when Argueta will be able to become a sponsor and apply to change her mother’s status to that of a lawful permanent resident. 

“No one should be going through this at any age,” she said. “Seeing the difference in my peers at school who are 20 years old, waiting to turn 21, to get that first legal drink or go party, but I want to turn 21 just to give my mom a legal status. A permanent legal status.”

WASHINGTON — Fentanyl seizures decreased by 39% during the first year of the second Trump administration after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shifted the Department of Homeland Security’s criminal investigations arm to conducting immigration enforcement, according to a report government investigators published Friday. 

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations, a subagency of DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reported an “all hands-on deck” environment toward immigration enforcement began in January 2025, according to the DHS Office of Inspector General report.

“With ICE dedicating more staff hours to immigration investigations, staffing hours for fentanyl investigations declined,” the report said.

The report found that the hours dedicated to fentanyl investigations for fiscal 2025 declined by more than 250,000 hours, or 31%, compared to fiscal 2024.

“At the same time, immigration enforcement saw the largest increase across all investigative categories, rising more than 1.7 million hours (over 800 percent),” according to the report.

Inspectors interviewed more than 100 agents from 11 HSI field offices for the report.

At one HSI office, approximately 99% of work was dedicated to immigration, leaving almost no capacity for fentanyl investigations, the watchdog found. A drug investigation team of seven agents was reduced to about three and the rest of the personnel was reassigned to work on immigration cases, according to the report.  

Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that is the main driver of overdose deaths in the United States. HSI plays a key role in countering fentanyl smuggling in the U.S. by targeting routes, laboratories and collaborating with law enforcement to investigate smuggling operations.    

ICE agrees

The inspector general recommended that HSI review staffing levels “to ensure an appropriate level of coverage commensurate with the relative priority of fentanyl investigations.”

Inspector general reports are presented to the affected agency for comment ahead of publication. ICE agreed with the recommendations in the DHS OIG report.

“Homeland Security Investigations will review staffing levels, and determine and implement next steps, as needed, to ensure an appropriate level of coverage commensurate with the relative priority of fentanyl investigations,” ICE’s comments in the report read.

ICE estimated that recommendation would be completed by June 2027.

The report also found that the technology HSI agents and analysts used had limitations during fentanyl investigations and their missions were “hindered by delays in agents obtaining funds to purchase information and evidence (i.e., drugs) during an investigation; a lack of independent authority to investigate fentanyl-related offenses; and low, inconsistent referral of fentanyl cases from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to HSI.”

On June 11,  ICE agents trailed a car into the parking lot of Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore. For the family riding in that car, an everyday school drop off quickly devolved into chaos.

ICE agents pulled Jesus Acevedo Sanchez from the vehicle, pinned him to the ground and arrested him for being in the country illegally. They also handcuffed and detained his wife, Adriana Gavilan Sanchez, as the couple’s two daughters watched from the back seat and school staff whisked other students away from the scene.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson later told CNN that Acevedo Sanchez “refused lawful commands, violently resisted arrest, and used his vehicle to evade law enforcement, dragging an ICE offer in the process.”

But two weeks ago, a federal judge ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release him, ruling that agents did not have probable cause to make the arrest. In the courtroom, Judge Julie Rubin rebuked the ICE officers for failing to follow due process and described the incident outside the school as a “stomach churner.”

Since President Donald Trump began his second term with a vow to crack down on illegal immigration, more than a dozen states have enacted laws designed to keep ICE away from schools. But the incident in Baltimore was a stark illustration of the limits of state and local authority when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Both Maryland and the city of Baltimore have enacted such measures, but neither one prevented ICE agents from making arrests in full view of arriving students at the Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School.

“Schools are places where children should feel safe, where parents should be able to drop off their kids without fear, and where educators should be able to focus on teaching — not where federal agents carry out immigration enforcement actions in front of children,” Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement he released on the day of the incident.

In a phone interview, Zeke Cohen, the Democratic president of the Baltimore City Council, said “the behavior of ICE has been tragic, traumatic, and in violation of all of the principles that we hold dear in Baltimore.”

“They are reckless, they are lawless, and they do whatever they please,” Cohen said. “It’s a challenging situation for cities like Baltimore that prize diversity and inclusion when you have a government that does the opposite.”

The day after its inauguration, the Trump administration announced that it would reverse guidance in place since 2011 that restricted migrant arrests at “sensitive locations,” including schools, hospitals and places of worship. Since then, there have been at least 17 ICE encounters on school grounds, according to a tracker maintained by K-12 Dive, an education news website.

Katherine Currie, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said that ICE is not targeting schools, but that immigration enforcement “is a clear federal responsibility” under the U.S. Constitution.

“ICE is not going to schools to arrest children — we are protecting children. Criminals are no longer able to hide in America’s schools to avoid arrest,” Currie wrote in an email.

“If a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee, there may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect public safety.”

Warrant required

The state and city restrictions on ICE activity in schools don’t challenge the supremacy of the federal government under the Constitution. Instead, they mostly limit what state, local and school officials can do to assist ICE, often specifying that federal agents should not be granted access to school property without a judicial warrant.

Matthew Lopas, director of state advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrants, said blocking ICE agents from entering school premises without a warrant “is not in conflict with federal law.”

“It is merely saying that this is not a place where immigration enforcement should be coming on fishing expeditions,” Lopas said.

Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs, executive director and CEO of the National School Boards Association, said there are very few situations in which ICE would be justified in showing up at a school.

“We don’t see a need for law enforcement to be executing any activities on school grounds, unless it’s in response to an emergency situation,” McCotter-Jacobs said. ,“It causes stress and distractions to learning, which impacts every single child and every child in the building as well as staff.”

She added that when it does happen, it’s crucial for school officials to be on the same page with state and local law enforcement.

“Some states are unfortunately aligned with the feds in executing arrests on school grounds, and so that leaves the local school district kind of perplexed as to what they’re supposed to do,” she said.

Indiana, for example, enacted a sweeping law this year that bars school districts and universities from implementing any measure that prohibits or restricts public employees from cooperating with ICE. In November, Republican state Attorney General Todd Rokita sued the Indianapolis Public Schools for violating the law.

Ohio is another Republican-led state where political leaders are largely supportive of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, and it has not enacted a law restricting ICE activities on school grounds. But Chad Springer, superintendent of the Athens City School District in Chauncey, said his district’s immigration enforcement policy does focus on whether agents have a warrant.

As soon the Trump administration reversed the “sensitive location” policy last year, Springer said, he visited each of his campuses to explain how the district wanted them to respond in case of an ICE enforcement action.

“At any given time, there’s always a central office staff that’s going to respond if immigration did show up to a campus, and then we would be the ones to deal directly with immigration officials,” Springer explained. “And our board policy dictates we ask them, unless a judicial warrant is involved, to conduct business outside of the school day, not on school grounds.”

Springer said that every school board across the country should be crystal clear about how it would handle any law enforcement activity on campus. He said he understands his own district’s policy, but he’d welcome more direction from the state.

“In the absence of clarity, you have unclear measures, and that leads to confusion,” Springer said. “I would appreciate clear, explicit guidelines from lawmakers as to when we allow or don’t allow [officers] to be there…right now, all I can lean on is board policy.”

The coming school year

In Ohio and elsewhere, the Trump administration’s announcement late last month that it will terminate Temporary Protected Status for more than 330,000 Haitians living in the U.S. will heighten the potential for ICE enforcement at schools.  In Ohio alone, there are about 30,000 Haitians who formerly had that status, which allows people from certain countries to live and work in the U.S. if returning to their home country would be dangerous.

Jeff Wensing, president of the Ohio Education Association, said educators, particularly in cities such as Springfield with large Haitian populations, are concerned about what the new year might bring.

“So we gave guidance to our members in Springfield: ‘Here are your rights,’” Wensing said. “I don’t care who you are — if you are a stranger, including ICE agents, we have a policy, we’re not letting strangers into the school.”

As far as he’s concerned the law is clear.

“They have a legal right to attend a public school, regardless of their immigration status,” Wensing said. “When you make children pawns in a bigger game, that’s never a good thing.”

This story has been updated to correct the title of Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs. Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.