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Autocrats and authoritarians share certain traits.
They don’t recognize checks and balances nor the institutions tasked with imposing them.
They do not recognize the rule of law. Laws that do not suit simply do not apply.
So, a country’s governing documents such as a constitution are malleable. Truth is what they say it is, facts be damned.
Critics who challenge this – journalists and the organizations they work for, law firms, universities, disagreeable judges, artists, etc. – are in for punishment and derision. They are cast as unelected elites, liars and betrayers of the country’s ideals, the better to silence or mute their influence.
But perhaps most importantly, autocrats and authoritarians must identify enemies for the rest of us to hate. Anyone who’s not part of their tribe, ideologically, ethnically, racially, by gender or sexual orientation is a target. If they speak another language, all the better.
President Donald Trump has focused for years on targeting immigrants.
Trump himself is a descendant of white immigrants and is married to one, but that’s where he makes an exception.
He has accepted white South Africans as refugees while dismantling protections for people from countries he once described assh–holes. Which is to say, refugees who aren’t white.
Trump’s executive order to enshrine English as the country’s official language – America for English-speaking Americans only – is another example of whites-only tribalism.
Long ago, the languages of European immigrants like Trump’s forebears were thought to delay assimilation and demonstrate traitorous loyalty to other countries. But these days, the fear is rooted around Spanish of the Latin American variety and the languages of immigrants from Asia and Africa.
Around the globe, people in other countries think a populace fluent in many languages is an advantage, not a deficiency.
But Trump’s American is one of proud provincialism.
In any case, immigrants already recognize English as the indispensable language of commerce and success in this country.
Ask any child of immigrants. My parents desired that I master written and spoken English, though the price was less literacy in their native language – Spanish.
My proficiency in English brought my parents the most pride.
Now, for many people, speaking perfect English is a matter of safety. Trump is deporting immigrants of color under an assumption they are members of criminal gangs. But in many cases there is plenty of evidence that those charges are misplaced, and people are being deported without due process.
Trump is carelessly rounding people up and sending them to a hellhole prison in El Salvador and to other countries he would assuredly describe as sh—holes — even to a dysfunctional non-country such as Libya, in the midst of a civil war, without giving them time to respond to the charges against them.
Under his broad definition, importing drugs to satisfy Americans’ appetites for illicit substances is a terrorist threat, not a public health issue.
Even when the administration is forced to admit error in deporting people who have a legal right to be here, it is not returning them. See, Abrego Garcia, mistakenly deported to a notorious El Salvadoran prison.
Like many citizens of color, I’ve become hardened to Trump’s racist animus. We’ve been cast as job stealers, criminals and a threat to American culture. This is the same animus that made the civil rights movement necessary.
Not so long ago, we thought the pendulum had swung to a more equitable, inclusive country.
But then more than 77 million Americans voted for Trump for the purpose of making America great again.
A country led by an authoritarian leader who thumbs his nose at the rule of law is not the America I know. And it certainly isn’t great.
Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025. Amid several legal disputes, the Trump administration has continued its controversial deportation policy to El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland slammed the Trump administration Friday for its “blatant lack of effort to comply” with her order earlier this month to report steps taken to facilitate the return of a second wrongly deported man to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.
“Defendants’ untimely response is the functional equivalent of, ‘We haven’t done anything and don’t intend to,’” U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, whom President Donald Trump appointed in 2018, wrote in her order blasting a nonresponse from the Department of Homeland Security.
“Telling this Court that ‘[i]t is DHS’s understanding that Cristian is in the custody of El Salvador,’ adds nothing to the underlying record and simply reflects a lack of any effort to obtain or provide information regarding Cristian’s ‘current physical location and custodial status,’” she wrote.
Friday’s order from Gallagher is the latest scathing remark from federal judges who have found the Trump administration either violated their preliminary injunctions or restraining orders, or have broadly invoked executive privileges to stonewall information in immigration cases.
Gallagher, like other federal judges who have found themselves in the spotlight for blocking immigration-related policies, raised concerns about the Trump administration skirting due process rights and slow-walking rectifying deportation mistakes as the government continues its aggressive campaign of mass deportations.
Officials at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and President Donald Trump himself have continued to claim broad authority to conduct immigration removals. They have lashed out against the judges, labeling them as “activists” and accusing them of blocking the Trump administration’s agenda.
“Its very important that we’re able to get these people out fast,” Trump said during a press availability in the Oval Office Friday. “We have judges that don’t want that to happen. It’s a terrible thing.”
Violating removal protections
Two cases of men whom the administration sent to El Salvador despite court orders blocking their removals stemmed from the first major case of the administration apparently disregarding a judicial order: a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg not to remove migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
Despite the mid-March temporary restraining order from Boasberg, three planes landed in El Salvador hours later and roughly 300 men were sent to the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.
Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and a 20-year-old referred to in court documents only by the pseudonym Cristian, whose case Gallagher is handling, were among them.
Abrego Garcia had, since 2019, a court order protecting him from deportation to his home country of El Salvador because an immigration judge was concerned he would face gang violence if returned.
Cristian, who arrived in the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, was part of a class action that barred removal from the U.S. while his asylum case was pending in immigration court.
In both cases, the administration has said it is powerless to compel the Salvadoran government to release them, an argument Gallagher expressed frustration with Friday.
“Defendants simply reiterated their well-worn talking points on their reasons for removing Cristian and failed to provide any of the information the Court required,” Gallagher wrote.
The U.S. is paying El Salvador up to $15 million to detain removed immigrants.
“As a Venezuelan native, he is in El Salvador only because the United States sent him there pursuant to an agreement apparently reached with the government of El Salvador,” Gallagher wrote.
Judges see pattern of defiance
In Abrego Garcia’s high-profile case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, also in Maryland, said “nothing has been done” by the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Administration officials have admitted he was mistakenly deported to CECOT.
Xinis recently denied the Department of Justice’s request for an extra 30 days to submit documents on its efforts to return Abrego Garcia.
He remains in a lower-level prison in El Salvador, despite a Supreme Court order from April that directed the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S.
A judge in Massachusetts found the Trump administration violated his preliminary injunction barring third-country removals of migrants without due process after eight men were deported to South Sudan and given less than 24 hours to challenge their removal to a county on the cusp of another civil war.
Boasberg, who sits in a federal court in the District of Columbia, found probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt for violating his temporary restraining order that ordered deportation planes carrying men removed under the Alien Enemies Act to be returned to the U.S. over concerns they did not receive due process.
The Trump administration has challenged all those decisions on an emergency basis to the U.S. Supreme Court.
‘A judge in Boston running foreign policy’
Top administration figures have argued it is the judges who have overstepped, trespassing on the executive branch’s role in setting foreign policy.
In the Oval Office Friday, Trump singled out U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy, who is overseeing the case in Massachusetts.
“You can’t have a judge in Boston running foreign policy in places all over the country because he has a liberal bent or he’s a radical left person,” Trump said.
Murphy was appointed by former President Joe Biden.
That case, which centers on removing migrants to a country they are not citizens of, could play an outsized role in the legal battle over the administration’s approach to immigration after Supreme Court decisions this month have allowed the Trump administration to end two temporary legal programs and exposed more than 800,000 immigrants to potential deportation.
Many of those who lost protections hail from countries that are deemed too dangerous for return.
‘Get them out rapidly’
The Trump administration has publicly stated Abrego Garcia will not return and accused him, without producing evidence, that he is a leader of the MS-13 gang.
The president has also acknowledged that if he wanted to, he could secure the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. But Trump said he would not, alleging that Abrego Garcia has gang ties.
The president posted pictures on social media of Boasberg, who was pressing Department of Justice attorneys for answers on if his order was deliberately violated. It prompted a rare response from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who stressed the importance of an independent judiciary.
While the Supreme Court eventually lifted Boasberg’s nationwide injunction on the use of the Alien Enemies Act, federal judges in Colorado and parts of New York and Texas have blocked use of the wartime law within their districts, citing concerns about due process.
Top Trump officials, such as Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have floated suspending habeas corpus, which allows people who believe they are being unlawfully detained to petition for their release in court.
Habeas corpus claims are currently the only avenue that Venezuelans subject to the Alien Enemies Act have to challenge their deportation under the wartime law.
“We can’t keep them for years here as they go through trial,” Trump said Friday of swift deportations. “We have to get them out rapidly.”
Abrego Garcia and Cristian
In an April order, Gallagher wrote that Cristian’s case is similar to Abrego Garcia’s and that “like Judge Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”
In that order, Gallagher said the federal government must show “a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).”
On May 6, she affirmed her decision that the Trump administration must facilitate Cristian’s return, but put her own order on pause to allow for Department of Justice attorneys to appeal to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
The appeals court declined the Trump administration’s request to pause her order.
Gallagher said Friday she would give the Trump administration officials until Monday to “remedy their noncompliance.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
A federal judge in California said Thursday he is considering issuing an order to preserve work permits for a small group of Venezuelans with temporary protected status, which allows migrants to live in the United States for a set period without fear of deportation.
They were granted these extended protections by immigration officials before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that allowed the Trump administration to revoke those protections.
A hearing before U.S. District Judge Edward Chen was the first in the case since the Supreme Court on May 19 allowed the Trump administration to end temporary protections for a group of 350,000 Venezuelans and vacated Chen’s order blocking the administration’s move.
Chen, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to a seat in the Northern District of California, acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s decision has left an “island” of about 5,000 Venezuelans who have gotten work permits approved until October of 2026 — before the high court’s order moved up the date their TPS status expired.
“It’s a small exception,” he said.
Attorneys for those TPS holders filed an emergency motion to protect that subgroup to keep those work and deportation protections through October 2026. They are also pushing for an expedited hearing schedule to challenge the administration’s revocation of protections because the group of Venezuelans lost protections in April, meaning they are subject to deportation.
“Every day that there’s not a final decision in this case, our plaintiffs are now subject to deportation, are now losing their jobs, and we need to move urgently towards a final resolution in this case,” Jessica Karp Bansal, who is representing the National TPS Alliance, said at a Thursday hearing.
Back and forth
In March, Chen found that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to revoke extended protections for Venezuelans previously granted under the Biden administration until October of 2026 was arbitrary and capricious. His order overturned Noem’s revocation of protections for one group of Venezuelans who were placed on TPS in 2023.
The group of Venezuelans given protections in 2023 were initially scheduled to lose that status on April 7, meaning the Supreme Court’s May decision allowed Noem to immediately revoke the extended protections. The second group’s protections will end in September.
The groups who brought the suit against Noem represent TPS holders from Venezuela. The immigration groups have amended their complaint to include TPS holders from Haiti, whose protections will expire in August after Noem revoked an extension.
A federal district court in New York this week held oral arguments on the termination of TPS for more than 300,000 Haitians.
The California case is also before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear oral arguments in July.
Noem cited gang activity as her reason for not extending TPS for the 2023 group of Venezuelans.
The attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of the TPS holders, are also pressing for discovery to obtain records and documents to show the decision process for ending TPS for nationals from Venezuela and Haiti.
Chen set a status conference for June 24 at 1 p.m. Pacific Time.
Migrants from Mexico and Guatemala are apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers after crossing a section of border wall into the U.S. on Jan. 04, 2025 in Ruby, Arizona. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Center for Migration Studies Thursday released a report finding the population of people in the United States without permanent legal status increased to 12.2 million in 2023, using the most recent Census Bureau American Community Survey data.
It’s a number that grew by 2 million from 2020 to 2023, according to the study by the nonpartisan New York think tank that studies domestic and international migration.
Six states that have the largest population of people without permanent legal status also saw some of the biggest increases. They are California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas. Of those states, the fastest-growing were Florida, New York and New Jersey.
That population estimate includes not only people in the U.S. without legal authorization, but immigrants in programs that provide temporary legal status. That would include programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Temporary Protected Status, as well as people with pending asylum cases or who received humanitarian parole status since 2021.
The study noted that estimating the size of the population without permanent legal status could “become even more challenging in the next few years” because the census data collection could be affected by mass firings of federal workers as the Trump administration aims to cull the federal workforce.
Authors of the study also took into consideration the Trump administration’s efforts to enact mass deportations and how the population could decline, not due to removals but rather a decrease in the number of immigrants responding to survey data.
“The salient questions would be: Did the decline occur because deportations increased, including of populations stripped of temporary legal status, because fear led to an increase in emigration, because fear reduced the response rates in the surveys, or because of a combination of these or other factors?,” according to the study.
The annual report from the think tank runs counter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s congressional testimony in May to Senate appropriators that there are more than 20 million people in the country without legal authorization.
Other think tanks that study migration, such as the Migration Policy Institute, have estimated as of 2021, there were 11.2 million immigrants in the U.S. without legal authorization.
Venezuelan migrants
One major finding in the study by the Center for Migration Studies was that the population of Venezuelan immigrants increased from 55,000 in 2013 to 220,000 in 2020.
According to the study, that population then doubled in 2023 to 445,000, which is around the time the Biden administration granted TPS protections for a second group of Venezuelans after granting TPS for a first group of Venezuelans in 2021. Roughly half a million Venezuelans are under the TPS program and are at risk of losing protections from deportation.
That program allows nationals from countries deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, political instability or other unstable conditions to remain in the U.S. for up to 18 months unless their protections are renewed by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary.
The Trump administration is moving to end TPS for Venezuelans and invoked an 18th-century wartime law to rapidly deport any Venezuelan national 14 and older who is suspected of gang ties.
The Supreme Court has blocked the use of the wartime law over concerns of due process, and has not ruled on the constitutionality of using the law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But the high court is allowing the Trump administration to continue its efforts to end TPS for Venezuelans who were granted protections in 2023.
Central American migrants
The study also found the population of Central American immigrants grew by 1.2 million from 2013 to 2023. With the highest levels of migration at the southern border in 20 years, the Biden administration in January 2023 created a program to allow nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – nearly all from Central America – to be sponsored with work visas and have deportation protections.
Roughly 532,000 people are in that program. The Trump administration has made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to end it, potentially opening those immigrants up to rapid deportation.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will allow, for now, the Trump administration to terminate temporary protections for a group of 350,000 Venezuelans, striking down a lower court’s order that blocked the process.
The order still means the group of Venezuelans on Temporary Protected Status — a designation given to nationals from countries deemed too dangerous to return to remain in the U.S. — will be able to continue to challenge in court the end of their work permits and the possibility of removal. But they no longer have protections from deportation.
No justices signed onto the ruling, which is typical in cases brought before the high court on an emergency basis, but liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted she would have denied the request.
TPS status for that group of Venezuelans — a portion of Venezuelans living in the United States, not all of them — was set to end on April 7 under a move by the Trump administration.
But U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of the Northern District of California in March blocked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to vacate an extension of TPS protections that had been put in place by the Biden administration until October 2026.
The case is now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Chen, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, blocked the Trump administration from removing protections for that group of Venezuelans on the basis that Noem’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious,” and potentially motivated by racism.
“Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” Chen wrote in his order.
Noem cited gang activity as her reason for not extending TPS for the group of 350,000 Venezuelans, who came to the United States in 2023.
A second group of 250,000 Venezuelans who were granted TPS in 2021 will have their work and deportation protections expire in September. Chen’s order did not apply to the second group of Venezuelans.
Those with TPS have deportation protections and are allowed to work and live in the United States for 18 months, unless extended by the DHS secretary.
Democrats criticized Monday’s decision, including Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.
“Ending protections for Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s regime is cruel, short-sighted, and destabilizing,” he wrote on social media.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington state, wrote on social media that Venezuelans “face extreme oppression, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, and torture — the exact type of situation that requires our government to provide TPS.”
Monday’s order is one of several immigration-related emergency requests from the Trump administration before the Supreme Court.
Last week, the high court heard oral arguments that stemmed from an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.
And justices in a separate case, again, denied the Trump administration from resuming the deportations of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delivers remarks to staff at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters on Jan. 28, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta-Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Wednesday harshly criticized three Democrats who were accosted by federal immigration officials while protesting the opening of an immigrant detention center in New Jersey.
Democrats at the hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee in turn said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials physically assaulted the lawmakers.
Noem, who was appearing to discuss President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget for the agency, said the Democrats who went to Delaney Hall to oversee the conditions were not conducting proper oversight.
Members of Congress are allowed to conduct oversight visits at any DHS facility that detains immigrants, without prior notice, under provisions in an appropriations law.
“I believe that it was breaking into a federal facility and assaulting law enforcement officers,” Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, said.
Newark incident
Last Friday, the three New Jersey Democratic members – Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez — were in Newark protesting the reopening of an immigrant detention center.
The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, was arrested. It was a stark escalation of Democratic lawmakers’ opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
After the incident, Menendez detailed how ICE agents “pushed, physically assaulted two female members of Congress.”
Several Republicans on the panel that oversees Homeland Security, including Chair Mark Green of Tennessee, said there should be consequences for the Democrats, such as criminal charges.
Green accused one of three Democrats of assaulting a law enforcement officer.
“This behavior demands a swift and firm response, and I assure you, action will be taken,” Green said.
Arizona GOP Rep. Eli Crane suggested there be criminal charges lodged against the Democratic members and Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee suggested to Noem that she “look into actions (to) be taken if a member assaulted” law enforcement.
The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, slammed Noem for the incident.
“Instead of following the law, masked ICE personnel stopped and assaulted the members,” he said. “Then, to make matters worse, instead of launching an investigation into the incident, your department lied to the press about the situation and threatened to arrest members of Congress for doing their job.”
One of the Democrats who was at the detention center protest, McIver, sits on the committee, but she did not speak to Noem about the incident.
“This is not about me,” McIver said, and instead pressed Noem about international students who had their visas revoked.
Focus on Abrego Garcia
Democrats criticized Noem and the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement that has led to swift deportations and concerns about a lack of due process.
They especially focused on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador.
Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner called Noem’s leadership of DHS “sloppy,” and said it has led to immigrants and even U.S. citizen children being wrongly deported.
“Instead of enforcing the laws, you have repeatedly broken them,” Magaziner said. “You need to change course immediately before more innocent people are hurt on your watch.”
California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell asked Noem if Abrego Garcia was given proper due process.
Swalwell said he was defending due process and held up a poster that showed Trump holding a picture of Abrego Garcia’s hand that digitally added “MS-13” tattoos to his knuckles.
He asked her several times if the photo was doctored. Noem did not answer the question but said she was unaware of the image.
Instead she said that even if Abrego Garcia were returned to the United States, he would be immediately deported. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia but he remains in El Salvador.
Crane asked Noem if she supported suspending habeas corpus, something that top Trump officials such as Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have floated.
Habeas corpus allows people who believe they are being unlawfully detained to petition for their release in court, and it’s used to challenge immigration detention. It’s currently the only avenue that Venezuelans subject to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 have to challenge their deportation under the wartime law.
“That’s not in my purview to weigh in on,” Noem said. “This is the president’s prerogative to pursue, and he has not indicated to me that he will or will not be taking that action.”
The U.S. Constitution allows for habeas corpus to be suspended “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Crane argued that unauthorized immigration counted as an “invasion,” and therefore could be used to suspend habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus has been suspended four times in U.S. history, during the Civil War; in almost a dozen South Carolina counties that were overrun by the Ku Klux Klan during reconstruction; in a 1905 insurrection in U.S. territories in the Philippines; and after the Pearl Harbor bombing in Hawaii.
Noem said that she is supportive of Trump’s policy.
“The president has been clear that he wants to empower states to give them the opportunity to build out their response,” she said.
She said that while the federal government will be there for support, that local and state governments “know what they need.”
Thompson asked Noem if she had a plan for the federal government responding to natural disasters.
Noem said while there is nothing in writing, “the White House is coming forward with a plan…that will be making recommendations.”
GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, said that while he supports efforts to “reform FEMA,” he stressed to Noem that “we can’t leave those who can’t fend for themselves.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, some of them masked, work alongside Harrison County, Miss., sheriff’s deputies to make arrests in an investigation into illegal immigration and cockfighting in early May. States are increasingly setting policy for sheriffs on how much they can cooperate with ICE at local jails. (Photo by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Local sheriffs are on the front lines in deciding whether to participate in the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans. But states increasingly are making the choice for them.
More and more, sheriffs’ hands are tied no matter whether they do — or don’t — want to help with deportations, though they often get the blame when conservatives draw up lists of sanctuary cities.
“‘Naughty lists,’ as we call them, are not super helpful here,” said Patrick Royal, a spokesperson for the National Sheriffs’ Association. “We all know there are places like Colorado where you can’t [help with deportations], and places like North Carolina where you have to.”
Cooperation between sheriffs and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lies at the heart of the Trump administration’s immigration detention policy. The administration plans to punish noncooperative jurisdictions with funding cuts — though many legal experts agree that cooperation is voluntary unless state or local laws say otherwise.
Sheriffs, who typically run local jails, must decide what to do when faced with immigration detainers — requests from ICE to hold onto incarcerated people up to two extra days so ICE officers can show up and arrest them. ICE issues those detainers when the agency reviews fingerprints sent electronically for background checks as part of the jail booking process.
Otherwise, arrested suspects who post bond or are otherwise released by a judge might go free despite their immigration status, prompting ICE in some cases to pursue them in the community.
In North Carolina, Sheriff Garry McFadden ran on a platform of limiting cooperation with ICE when he was elected in Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte, in 2018. But today, McFadden must comply with detainers because of a state law passed last year.
You can’t say we’re a sanctuary county and have state laws that say we have to work with ICE. You can’t have both.
– Sheriff Gary McFadden, Mecklenburg County, NC
In a now-retracted Facebook post, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis in late April accused Mecklenburg and several other North Carolina counties of “shielding criminal illegal immigrants” as sanctuary jurisdictions. Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said in the post he was writing federal legislation to prosecute sanctuary jurisdictions.
“You can’t say we’re a sanctuary county and have state laws that say we have to work with ICE. You can’t have both,” McFadden said. He added that he’d like more choice about whether to comply with detainers. A federal funding cutoff would endanger important jail programs such as rape counseling, he said.
“Everybody’s focused on immigration like that’s the biggest fire, and nobody wants to address the other things. The losers will be the prisoners who need all these services we provide,” McFadden said.
Conservative sheriffs in Democratic-controlled states also can be frustrated by state policy on detainers. Sheriff Lew Evangelidis of Worcester County, Massachusetts, said he’s been criticized for releasing prisoners wanted by ICE but sometimes has no choice: A 2017 state Supreme Court ruling prohibits holding prisoners based on detainers.
“If they [ICE] want this person and consider them a threat to public safety, then I want that person out of my community. I want to keep my community safe,” said Evangelidis. He supported a Republican-sponsored effort in the state legislature to allow 12-hour holds for ICE if a judge determines the prisoner is a threat to public safety, but the amendment was voted down in April.
States act on detainers
Many experts agree that ICE detainers can be legally ignored if states allow sheriffs to do that.
“That detainer request is just that, a request, it’s not a requirement,” said Cassandra Charles, a staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, which is opposing Louisiana’s lawsuit to reverse a court-ordered ban on cooperation between Orleans Parish and ICE.
The general counsel for the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, Eddie Caldwell, agreed that the detainers are voluntary under federal law.
The association supports a state bill now under consideration that would require not only the 48-hour detention but also a notice sent 48 hours before release to let ICE know the clock is running. The proposal has passed the House.
The notification matters, Caldwell said, because there can be criminal proceedings that take weeks or months, so ICE in many cases doesn’t realize the 48-hour window has started.
Tillis’ office said the senator’s disagreement with McFadden, a Democrat, and other sheriffs is about that notification.
“It’s not necessarily that [sheriffs] are breaking the law, but rather making it as difficult as possible for ICE to take prisoners into custody by refusing to do some basic things. Notification is important,” said Daniel Keylin, a senior adviser to Tillis.
States including California, Colorado and Massachusetts ban compliance with the ICE detainers, on the general principle that it’s not enough reason to hold people in jails when they’re otherwise free to go because of bail or an end to their criminal cases. Those three states have made recent moves to defend or fine-tune their rules.
California’s attorney general also has issued guidance to local jurisdictions based on a 2017 state law limiting cooperation with immigration authorities. That law withstood a court challenge under the first Trump administration.
Colorado has a law against holding prisoners more than six hours longer than required, and a new bill sent to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis last week would specify that even those six hours can’t be for the purpose of an immigration detainer.
Iowa, Tennessee and Texas are among the states requiring cooperation with detainers.
And Florida has gone further, requiring sheriffs to actively help ICE write detainers though official agreements in which local agencies sign up to help enforce immigration laws.
Cooperation boosts arrests
Such cooperation makes a big difference, experts say — jails are the easiest place to pick up immigrants for deportation, and when local sheriffs and police help out, there are more arrests.
“A larger share of ICE arrests and deportations are happening in places where local law enforcement is cooperative with ICE,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director for the Migration Policy Institute’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program, speaking at a recent webinar.
“A declining share of arrests and deportations are happening from places like California, where there are really strict limitations on local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE,” she added.
ICE is making about 600 immigration arrests daily, twice the rate as during the last year of the Biden administration, said Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, speaking at the same event.
Reports on deportations are incomplete, Chishti said, but he estimated the current administration is on track to deport half a million people this year and is trying to get that number higher.
“The Trump administration has not been able to change the laws that are on the books, because only Congress can do that,” Chishti said. “It’s going to take congressional action for the Trump administration to achieve its aim of higher [arrest and deportation] numbers.”
President Donald Trump has added more pressure, last month requesting a list from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of sanctuary cities, which he says would face funding cuts. The administration also has sued some states, including Colorado, Illinois and New York, over their policies.
Asked for comment on the legality of funding cutoffs for sanctuary policies, Bondi’s office referred to a February memo in which she promised to “end funding to state and local jurisdictions that unlawfully interfere with federal law enforcement operations.” The memo cites a federal law saying local officials “may not prohibit, or in any way restrict” communication about immigration status.
Local jurisdictions in Connecticut, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington joined a February lawsuit led by the city and county of San Francisco and Santa Clara County in California against a Trump administration executive order calling for defunding cities with sanctuary policies, calling the order “illegal and authoritarian.”
In April, a U.S. district court in California issued a preliminary injunction in that case preventing any funding cutoff over sanctuary policies to the cities and counties in the lawsuit. And on Friday, the federal judge, William Orrick, ruled that the injunction applies to any list of sanctuary jurisdictions the administration may target for funding cuts.
Trump’s new executive order seeking the list cannot be used as “an end run” around Orrick’s injunction, the judge wrote, while he decides the legality of detainer policies and other issues.
“The litigation may not proceed with the coercive threat to end all federal funding hanging over the Cities and Counties’ heads like the sword of Damocles,” Orrick wrote.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
The U.S. Supreme Court, as seen on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Thursday made an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the deportation of more than half a million immigrants granted humanitarian protections under the Biden administration.
A federal judge in Massachusetts in April blocked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from ending the humanitarian parole program for 532,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. An appeals court rejected the request from the Trump administration to stay the lower court’s order.
In the filing to the high court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that the Immigration Nationality Act bars judicial review of discretionary decisions, such as humanitarian parole.
Sauer adds that Noem terminated the program because it does not align with the interests of the Trump administration.
“The district court’s order stymies the government’s ability to terminate parole grants that the Secretary has determined undermine U.S. interests, and thus it inhibits the government’s pursuit of its foreign policy goals,” according to the brief.
Presidents for decades have used their parole authority to allow for migrants to obtain protected status.
President Joe Biden created the program in 2023 that temporarily grants work permits and allows nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to remain in the country if they are sponsored by someone in the United States.
Thursday’s emergency request is one of several immigration related challenges the Trump administration is asking the high court to intervene in after district courts and appeals courts have ruled against the administration.
Deported migrants queue to receive an essential items bag during the arrival of a group of deported Salvadorans at Gerencia de Atención al Migrante on Feb. 12, 2025 in San Salvador, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
This report has been updated.
WASHINGTON — Immigration attorneys are asking a Massachusetts federal judge for an emergency temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration from removing their clients to Libya and Saudi Arabia as soon as Wednesday, in a major new development in President Donald Trump’s drive for mass deportations.
“Multiple credible sources report that flight/s are preparing to immediately depart the United States carrying class members for removal to Libya,” according to the new filings, referring to a group of migrants.
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy did not grant the groups request for a temporary restraining order. But he did issue a late Wednesday order that clarified any deportations to Libya would violate his preliminary injunction barring such removals to a third country without proper notice.
“If there is any doubt—the Court sees none—the allegedly imminent removals, as reported by news agencies and as Plaintiffs seek to corroborate with class-member accounts and public information, would clearly violate this Court’s Order,” Murphy wrote.
Murphy is also considering whether the Department of Defense should be included in his preliminary injunction “[b]ased on DHS’s representations that DoD has been conducting third country removals, allegedly without any involvement of DHS.”
Sending migrants to the North African nation is striking, as it is the site of an ongoing conflict and the State Department has a travel advisory against traveling to Libya due to “crime, terrorism, unexploded land mines, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict.”
The class members the attorneys are concerned about include nationals from Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam. As the Trump administration seeks to carry out mass deportations, it’s sought partnerships with countries to take migrants, such as sending them to CECOT, a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The practice has spawned numerous ongoing lawsuits over use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and allegations the administration is ignoring due process for deportees.
In a complication, Libya’s prime minister in Tripoli, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, wrote on social media that his country would not accept migrants deported by the Trump administration.
“We refuse to be a destination for the deportation of migrants under any pretext, and any understandings made by illegal parties that do not represent the Libyan state, and do not bind us politically or morally, as human dignity and national sovereignty are not a negotiable card,” he wrote.
Injunction bars removals
Attorneys say such removals would violate Murphy’s preliminary injunction granted in April.
“Class members were being scheduled for removal despite not receiving the required notice and opportunity to apply for (United Nations Convention Against Torture) protection,” according to the filing. “This motion follows class counsel receiving multiple reports that class members and their immigration counsel have not received the required protections provided by this Court’s Preliminary Injunction.”
The attorneys are also asking that any class members removed to Libya be returned to U.S. soil.
Flights to Saudi Arabia
There are also concerns that those in the group could be removed to Saudi Arabia.
“Class Counsel has also received a report that Defendants and those working with them may be planning flights to Saudi Arabia. At least one detainee—a citizen of Laos—reported that he had been verbally informed he was to be removed imminently to Saudi Arabia on a military flight,” according to the brief.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
In April, Murphy certified the class to include all immigrants with final orders of removal who were facing deportations to a country that was not their home country.
Murphy, who was appointed by former president Joe Biden, issued a nationwide injunction to bar that group’s removal to a third country without first being provided written notice.
He also ruled that those who are being removed to such a country must “be given an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture, and/or death.”
The suit was brought by the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Human Rights First.
“Libya has a long record of extreme human rights violations,” according to the court filing. “Any Class Member who is removed to Libya faces a strong likelihood of imprisonment followed by torture and even disappearance or death. Indeed, given Libya’s human rights record, it is inconceivable that Class Members from other countries would ever agree to removal to Libya, but instead would uniformly seek protection from being removed to Libya.”
Torture and abuse among human rights violations
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report on the country found human rights violations experienced by migrants who were either being held by Libya’s government or armed groups.
“The criminal and nonstate armed groups controlling extralegal facilities routinely tortured and abused detainees, subjecting them to arbitrary killings, rape and sexual violence, beatings, electric shocks, burns, forced labor, and deprivation of food and water, according to dozens of testimonies shared with international aid agencies and human rights groups,” according to the report.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report on Saudi Arabia said it was possible migrants were killed by Saudi Arabia forces.
“There were reports that Saudi security forces along the border with Yemen killed significant numbers of African and Yemeni migrants and asylum seekers using both explosive weapons and by shooting individuals at close range,” according to the report.
Minister of Justice and Public Security Héctor Villatoro, right, accompanies Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center during a tour of the CECOT prison on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Two federal judges Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelans, limiting the rulings to Colorado and a New York district.
U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York Alvin K. Hellerstein found that President Donald Trump’s invocation of the wartime law was likely not valid, because there is no “existence of a ‘war,’ ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion,’” as required by the Alien Enemies Act statute.
A similar order was made by U.S. District Judge for the District of Colorado Charlotte N. Sweeney, who noted the Trump administration likely exceeded the scope of the Alien Enemies Act in its use of it.
Hellerstein, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, also reiterated in his order that anyone in the United States – including those who are not citizens – is entitled to due process.
He noted that the Venezuelan nationals subject to the Alien Enemies Act were deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, CECOT, “with faint hope of process or return.”
“The sweep for removal is ongoing, extending to the litigants in this case and others, thwarted only by order of this and other federal courts,” Hellerstein wrote. “The destination, El Salvador, a country paid to take our aliens, is neither the country from which the aliens came, nor to which they wish to be removed. But they are taken there, and there to remain, indefinitely, in a notoriously evil jail, unable to communicate with counsel, family or friends.”
Two Venezuelan men who feared they would be subjected to the proclamation brought the suit in the Southern District of New York. It’s now a class to cover any Venezuelan potentially subject to the proclamation.
Sweeney, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, also ordered the suit should cover a class of people.
The New York area in which Trump officials would be barred from using the wartime law includes New York City, the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx and Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Westchester counties.
Multiple rulings against administration
This is the third preliminary injunction granted by federal judges against Trump’s use of the wartime law in a court’s district. The president invoked the Alien Enemies Act to subject for removal any Venezuelan national 14 and older with suspected ties to the Tren de Aragua gang.
Tuesday’s rulings are similar to another out of Texas, where Trump-appointed Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. struck down the Trump administration’s use of the wartime law to deport Venezuelan nationals in the Southern District of Texas.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is at the forefront of challenges against the Trump administration’s use in March of the Alien Enemies Act, praised the preliminary injunction in New York.
“The court joined several others in correctly recognizing the president cannot simply declare that there’s been an invasion and then invoke a wartime authority during peacetime to send individuals to a Gulag-type prison in El Salvador without even giving them due process,” said Lee Gelernt, lead ACLU attorney on the case.
The ACLU has filed lawsuits against the use of the wartime law in federal courts in Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D.C.
Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at maximum security penitentiary CECOT on April 4, 2025 in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
BALTIMORE — A federal judge in Maryland Tuesday will for 48 hours pause her own order to require the federal government to facilitate the return of an asylum seeker mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, while the court waits for the Trump administration’s anticipated appeal of her decision.
“I am simply skeptical that we’re going to get … compliance or facilitation based only on this court’s order without allowing it to go to the next level,” said U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, nominated by President Donald Trump in 2018, at a hearing. She also indicated she was concerned the asylum seeker was denied due process, a major question as lawyers challenge Trump administration deportations.
Richard Ingebretsen, arguing on behalf of the Department of Justice, said the Trump administration plans to appeal Gallagher’s earlier order to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
It’s the second case of a wrongly deported man sent to El Salvador’s brutal Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, prison, following the high-profile case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Maryland man was erroneously deported there despite a 2019 court order barring such action.
That case is now in closed proceedings before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland, as discovery and depositions from officials interviewed under oath about the case continue. The Department of Justice and the White House have strongly fought the return of Abrego Garcia.
Earlier agreement protected asylum seeker
In the case heard in Maryland on Tuesday, the 20-year-old man who was sent to El Salvador is referred to by the pseudonym “Cristian” in court documents. In 2019, he came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor from Venezuela to apply for asylum.
Under a settlement agreement at the time, Cristian, along with a class of other asylum seekers, could not be deported until their cases were decided by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. His asylum case has not yet been decided.
But Cristian was taken from the U.S. on one of three deportation flights to the CECOT prison in mid-March.
Two of those flights contained Venezuelan men deported under a 1798 law known as the Alien Enemies Act. The Trump administration invoked the wartime law to apply to any Venezuelan national 14 and older who is suspected of having ties to the Tren de Aragua gang.
Ingebretsen argued that Cristian has ties to the gang, and Tuesday’s hearing for a period was closed to the public — put under seal— so Gallagher could be shown that evidence.
In a declaration, Acting Field Office Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement Robert Cerna said Cristian was subject to the Alien Enemies Act because in January he was convicted of possessing cocaine.
Judge issued order for return
Gallagher wrote in an April 23 order that the case before her relates to that of Abrego Garcia and that “like Judge Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”
Gallagher added in her order that the federal government must also show “a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by USCIS.”
Ingebretsen said that the State Department has been made aware of her order, but he did not give any details on steps taken to facilitate Cristian’s return.
“The government’s view is that further compliance should be put on hold,” Ingebretsen said.
Attorneys, on behalf of the 2019 class, are pushing for declarations from the federal government on steps taken to facilitate Cristian’s return, citing concerns he’s been in CECOT for almost two months.
List of detainees
Kevin DeJong, one of those attorneys for the class, asked Gallagher to require the Trump administration to produce a list of the class members, to determine if any more of them have been wrongly deported.
DeJong said another class member — separate from Cristian — has been removed.
“If we don’t know if a class member has been removed, and we don’t know about it, there’s nothing we can do to bring a motion to enforce,” he said.
He is asking the court to order the federal government to provide a list because the Trump administration’s DOJ will only notify migrants’ lawyers of class members removed under Title 8 deportation. Cristian was removed under the Alien Enemies Act, or Title 50.
“We need to know if any class members have been removed for any reason other than Title 8,” DeJong said. “We’re concerned that there are more.”
Gallagher seemed skeptical that she had the authority to do so, as the settlement does not mention a way for a list to be made up.
“It is an unusual settlement agreement in that we don’t have a defined list of class members, a defined way of identifying who is and is not a member,” she said.
Gallagher added that the settlement agreement was “drafted with some degree” of “trust that the government would be acting in good faith and would maintain this list itself.”
‘Process is important’
In the Abrego Garcia case, the Trump administration has argued that because he is a national of El Salvador, he is in that government’s custody and cannot be returned, despite the U.S. paying up to $15 million to El Salvador to detain roughly 300 men at CECOT.
Experts have raised concerns that U.S. foreign assistance funds to El Salvador from the State Department violate the Leahy Law, which bars financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons — that face credible allegations of gross human rights violations.
However, the president has contradicted his own administration, arguing that he has the ability to order Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. Trump has said he is not willing to do so because he believes Abrego Garcia has gang ties, an argument repeated by multiple members of the administration.
In DOJ filings, government attorneys argued that because Cristian was designated for removal under the Alien Enemies Act, he could no longer be part of the 2019 class settlement and the government is therefore not violating the settlement.
On Tuesday, Ingebretsen added that if Cristian were returned to the U.S., his asylum application would be denied by USCIS.
Gallagher rejected that argument and said that based on the settlement, Cristian was allowed a certain form of due process to remain in the U.S. while his asylum case was pending.
“This is not a case about where or not Cristian will receive asylum, the issue is of process,” Gallagher said. “Process is important. We don’t skip to the end.”
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walks past reporters after doing a TV interview with Fox News outside of the White House on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that the agency will provide $1,000 in what it called “travel assistance” to people in the United States without permanent legal status if they self deport.
It’s the latest attempt by DHS to try to meet the Trump administration’s goal of removing 1 million migrants without permanent legal status from the country. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem touted the option as cost-effective.
“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest,” Noem said in a statement. “This is the safest option for our law enforcement, aliens and is a 70% savings for US taxpayers.”
It’s unclear from which part of the DHS budget the funding for the travel assistance is coming, as it would roughly cost $1 billion to reimburse up to $1,000 to meet the goal of removing 1 million people.
DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
President Donald Trump gave his support for the move Monday afternoon, according to White House pool reports.
“We’re going to get them a beautiful flight back to where they came from,” the president said.
Self-deportation would be facilitated by the CBP Home app, which was used by the Biden administration to allow asylum seekers to make appointments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The payment would apparently not be made in advance. DHS said that once those who use the app to self deport arrive in their home country, they will receive a travel stipend of $1,000.
According to DHS, the Trump administration has deported 152,000 people since taking office in January. The Biden administration last year deported 195,000 people from February to April, according to DHS data.
DHS said already one migrant has used the program to book a flight from Chicago to Honduras.
“Additional tickets have already been booked for this week and the following week,” the agency said in a statement.
The Trump administration has rolled out several programs to facilitate mass self-deportations, such as a registry to require immigrants in the country without legal authorization to register with the federal government.
Immigrants who don’t register with the federal government could face steep fines and a potential prison sentence.
Young protesters express their support for Sawyer County Judge Monica Isham, who has been criticized by Republicans for her comments about safety in the courtroom after the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
Sawyer County Circuit Judge Monica Isham drew rebukes from Republican elected officials and conservative media outlets after she reportedly expressed concerns for her safety in court after the April 25 arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hanna Dugan.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
The Examiner has not been able to confirm the authenticity of the email, but WISN News, the ABC affiliate in Milwaukee, reported that two Wisconsin judges confirmed to the station that they had received it from Isham. In the email, Isham allegedly said she would refuse to appear in court unless she received “guidance” and “support” concerning the presence and permissible activities of ICE agents.
Over the weekend of April 26-27, right-wing media outlets obtained and shared the email they claimed Isham sent to other judges.
On Monday and Tuesday Isham appeared in court via Zoom.
There is also added security in the court, and a Sawyer County Deputy told the Wisconsin Examiner there had been a threat to a judge.
A protester holds a sign supporting Judge Monica Isham outside the Sawyer County Courthouse on May 1, 2025 | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
Isham was elected in November 2023 to the newly created Branch 2 court in an uncontested race. She is a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and is the first female and first Native American judge in Sawyer County and only the second Native American circuit court judge in Wisconsin.
In the email, Isham reportedly noted she had sworn an oath of support to the U.S. and the Wisconsin constitutions. She also reportedly added that Judge Dugan was standing by her oath of office when she confronted ICE officers who came to her courtroom in Milwaukee and escorted the defendant they’d come to arrest out a side door.
“Yesterday, Judge Hannah Dugan of Milwaukee County stood on her Oath in the very building she swore to uphold it and she was arrested and charged with felonies for it. Enough is enough,” the email message said.
“I have no intention of allowing anyone to be taken out of my courtroom by ICE and sent to a concentration camp, especially without due process as BOTH of the constitutions we swore to support requires. Should I start raising ball money?”
Criticism of Isham
Isham’s reported threat to not hold court out of concern about interactions with ICE agents drew criticism from three northern Wisconsin Republican legislators who represent Sawyer County.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said Isham should resign.
“Monica Isham is choosing to protect illegal aliens over the law,” Tiffany wrote on X. “She should resign or be removed.”
State Sen. Romaine Quinn and state Rep. Chanz Green, issued a joint statement: “Wisconsin’s Code of Judicial Conduct requires a judge to uphold the integrity of the judiciary. It further states that ‘a judge shall respect and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.’
“Judge Isham’s threat to close court certainly does not promote public confidence in our court system or uphold the integrity of her position as a public official in this state. It is a disservice to the residents of Sawyer County.”
In their joint statement, Quinn and Green note that there had been an intensive effort to expand Sawyer County’s court to the second branch, which was officially recognized in 2023, and they go on to say that if Isham will not exercise her duties, then she should resign.
The Republican Party chair for the 7th CD, Jim Miller, who is also the president of the Hayward City Council, said he has empathy for Judge Isham for saying in the email that she had faced racism in her courtroom.
“That’s sad that she’s had to face that,” said Miller. “If that were my court and I faced racism, I would have held those people in contempt of court.”
However, Miller said that Isham’s threat not to hold court was drawing the ire of many people he had talked to.
“That does not sit well with people because they expect her to be a public servant,” said Miller. “If she is going to get a paycheck, she should come in and do her job. You can’t just boycott working as a public servant. It doesn’t work that way.”
Isham has so far continued to hold court via Zoom.
Miller is also critical of Isham reportedly mentioning those detained by ICE would be sent to a “concentration camp.”
“My recommendation would be for her to at least clarify or maybe apologize for that statement, because that’s a stretch beyond stretch,” said Miller. “People like to throw out the Nazi references on both sides of the aisle, and it really muddies the argument of what’s going on.”
He added, “I think her emotions got the best of her, but I think people have real questions about her ability to make sure that justice is blind at this point, and that’s the biggest concern.”
Support for Isham
On Thursday, May 1, there was a large demonstration at the corners of state highways 27 and 63 in the city of Hayward with many people holding signs supporting Isham.
At 2 p.m. approximately 80 demonstrators left the corner by the state highways and walked two blocks by the Sawyer County Courthouse, and they were joined at the courthouse by over 20 students from Lac Courte Oreilles K-12 school who said they came out to support Isham, a fellow tribal member.
“I’m here to fight for Judge Isham and what we stand for, and I find it inspiring to be here,” said Ashland Demonie, 14.
However, Denomie was also appalled to see some adults driving by swearing at the students and giving the youngsters the middle finger.
“It bothers me because we are just children here fighting for our rights and fighting for who we are, and seeing how harsh some adults respond, who should be more mature, is troubling,” she said.
Ode’iminke Leach, 15, is also a student who came out to support Isham and advocate for Native Americans.
“I’m out here protesting because I support Judges Isham and Dugan,” said Elizabeth Riley of Hayward, a Democrat who has run twice for the 74th Assembly District.
Judge Monica Isham’s relatives, including her grandfather Mike Isham (seated). | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
Riley said she feared that under President Donald Trump, the U.S. would not follow the rule of law but become more like a developing nation where authority is in the hands of a powerful individual rather than the written law and guaranteed rights.
Mary Vintcenda of the village of Exeland said she was at the demonstration to support Isham and the rule of law.
“I support Judge Isham because she is standing up for the rule of law,” said Vintcenda, who was joined at the demonstration with her brother, Tom, who was also holding a sign. “She’s standing up for what’s right, and I wish others would join us.”
“So we’re out here supporting Judge Monica Isham,” said Paul DeMain, former editor and owner of News from Indian Country and a Native American active in Democratic politics who has run for state Senate.
Paul DeMain expressing his support for Judge Monica Isham | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
DeMain said Isham’s email represents concerns that many judges have across Wisconsin after the arrest of Dugan.
“My understanding is the entire state is engaged in a discussion about how to deal with potential ICE raids in the courtroom,” he said.
DeMain said ICE actively pursuing suspects in a court will discourage witnesses from appearing in court if they fear being arrested by ICE.
“Are they going to show up in the courtroom to testify if they think they’re going to get hauled out and deported to El Salvador and put in a concentration camp?” asked DeMain. “These courts need to be safe. They need to be involved with respecting that due process for all U.S. citizens and all people in this country and let the process work it out.”
He added, “I think what’s going on with this administration, showcasing for publicity reasons the arrest of the Milwaukee judge with massive law enforcement officers, cuffing the judge outside in the parking lot, inviting all the right-wing media to take pictures — these are staged events meant to [cause] U.S. citizens to be afraid to speak up, to be afraid to have an oppositional view, to stand up for citizens’ rights in this country.”
Prisoners sit at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. The Trump administration deported 238 alleged members of Venezuelan criminal organizations to the prison. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — A federal judge Thursday struck down President Donald Trump’s use of a wartime law to deport Venezuelan nationals, but limited the scope to the Southern District of Texas.
Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., whom Trump appointed in 2017, wrote in a 36-page order that the administration’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act was unlawful, especially during a time when the U.S. is not at war.
“Allowing the President to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the (Alien Enemies Act), and then summarily declare that those conditions exist, would remove all limitations to the Executive Branch’s authority under the (Alien Enemies Act), and would strip the courts of their traditional role of interpreting Congressional statutes to determine whether a government official has exceeded the statute’s scope,” he wrote.
“The law does not support such a position.”
Rodriguez Jr. rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the presence of members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in the U.S. constituted an “invasion” under which the wartime law could be invoked.
Prior to Trump’s invocation of the act in March against Venezuelan nationals 14 and older suspected of gang ties, the only times the U.S. had used the Alien Enemies Act were during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been at the forefront of the cases regarding the law, also has lawsuits pending in federal courts in Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D.C.
Though the ruling is limited geographically, it applies to an important district for the issue. The original flights carrying men deported under Trump’s use of the law departed from Harlingen, Texas, within the judicial district. The government is also detaining more potential deportees in the district.
The U.S. Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s order that barred the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport any Venezuelan nationals — but the justices said unanimously that the Venezuelans must be afforded due process.
In April, Rodriguez Jr. temporarily halted the use of the Alien Enemies Act over concerns that anyone who is erroneously deported under the wartime law potentially cannot be returned to the United States. He cited the high-profile case of a Maryland man being sent to a prison in El Salvador by mistake.
The U.S. Justice Department, which is representing the administration in the case, did not respond to a message seeking comment.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., right, meets in El Salvador on April 17, 2025, with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident who was erroneously deported to El Salvador by ICE agents in March. (Photo courtesy Van Hollen's office)
WASHINGTON — Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in prison in El Salvador after he was mistakenly deported more than a month ago, and Senate Democrats said Thursday they will file a privileged resolution that would require the State Department to report on human rights conditions in CECOT, the brutal 40,000-capacity facility where Abrego Garcia was first incarcerated.
The resolution also would force the Trump administration to detail its steps to comply with court orders on the removal of Abrego Garcia and other immigrants from the United States.
The announcement of the resolution came after President Donald Trump, during an ABC News interview that aired Tuesday, acknowledged that if he wanted to, he could secure the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador.
However, Trump then refused to do so, alleging Abrego Garcia has gang ties. He pointed to an altered photograph of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles that showed them displaying the characters “MS-13.”
When ABC News journalist Terry Moran pointed out the photo was photoshopped, Trump argued that it wasn’t.
“Why don’t you just say, ‘Yes, he does,’” Trump said to Moran, referring to the MS-13 tattoo. Moran did not reply and moved to another topic.
The Department of Justice has claimed that Abrego Garcia is a leader in the MS-13 gang, but has not provided evidence in court of those connections. Abrego Garcia was granted deportation protections by an immigration judge in 2019 over concerns he would experience violence by gangs if returned to his home country of El Salvador.
The U.S. Supreme Court, an appeals court and a district court all have upheld that Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who the Trump administration admitted was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison, must be returned.
“Donald Trump should stop trampling on constitutional rights of people who reside in America, and the government of El Salvador should stop conspiring with the Trump administration to violate the constitutional rights of those who reside in America, including Abrego Garcia,” Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said at a press conference on the Senate resolution.
The Supreme Court last month ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, but stopped short of requiring it and sent the case back to a federal judge to clarify how the return could be “effectuated.”
The case is now in closed proceedings before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland as discovery and depositions from officials interviewed under oath about Abrego Garcia’s case continue. Xinis on Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s request for another extension to provide information on Abrego Garcia.
$6 million payment
The resolution, backed by Van Hollen, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, would require the State Department to issue a human rights report on El Salvador.
It also specifically asks for a report on the prison known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, where Abrego Garcia was initially sent in March, along with nearly 300 other men deported from the U.S.
The State Department issued a 2023 report on human rights conditions in El Salvador, which noted that there were reports of “systemic abuse in the prison system, including beatings by guards and the use of electric shocks.”
If the resolution manages to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate and House, and the State Department doesn’t issue a human rights report within 30 days, then any foreign assistance to El Salvador would be canceled, Kaine said.
The Trump administration has stated that it’s paying El Salvador $6 million to detain the men at CECOT.
Van Hollen said of that funding, the Trump administration has paid El Salvador about $4 million so far to detain the men and plans to pay as much as $15 million.
Experts have raised concerns that the foreign assistance funds to El Salvador from the State Department violate the Leahy Law, which bars financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons — facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations.
Van Hollen meeting in El Salvador
Van Hollen also pushed back on the Trump administration’s insistence that because Abrego Garcia is in El Salvador’s custody, he cannot be returned.
Van Hollen, who traveled to El Salvador last month seeking a meeting with Abrego Garcia, said during that trip he spoke with El Salvador Vice President Félix Augusto Antonio Ulloa. Van Hollen said Ulloa told him “the only reason the government of El Salvador is holding (Abrego Garcia) is because the Trump administration is paying (El Salvador) to do so.”
Abrego Garcia appeared with Van Hollen in civilian clothes — a stark difference from a video released by the Trump administration that showed Abrego Garcia in a prison uniform and being roughly handled by Salvadoran officials.
In response to the in-person meeting, the White House wrote on its official social media account that Abrego Garcia “is NOT coming back.”
Van Hollen said he has not had any update on the condition of Abrego Garcia since the visit to El Salvador.
Message for Bukele
During El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s first-ever visit to the Oval Office in April, he declined to return Abrego Garcia. In that same meeting, Trump asked Bukele if he would take “homegrown” criminals, meaning U.S. citizens.
Kaine said that he had a message for the president of El Salvador if he accepts U.S. citizens for incarceration.
“You might think it’s cute right now to grab attention by a bromance with President Trump,” he said, adding in Spanish that any alliance with Trump will be short-lived, ending with the conclusion of his term in office. “If you think we’ll forget you violating the human rights of American citizens, you’re wrong,” said Kaine.
Van Hollen added that he, along with Kaine and Schumer, plan to introduce a bill to place sanctions against Bukele and “all those who are part of his government conspiring with Donald Trump to deprive residents of the United States of their constitutional rights.”
A U.S. Border Patrol official vehicle is shown parked near the border. (Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Judiciary Republicans Wednesday worked in committee on a portion of a major legislative package that would help fund President Donald Trump’s plans to conduct mass deportations of people living in the United States without permanent legal status.
The Judiciary panel’s $81 billion share of the “one, big beautiful” bill the president has requested of Congress would provide $45 billion for immigration detention centers, $8 billion to hire thousands of immigration enforcement officers and more than $14 billion for deportations, among other things.
The border security and immigration funds are part of a massive package that wraps together White House priorities including tax cuts and defense spending boosts. Republicans are pushing the deal through using a special procedure known as reconciliation that will allow the Senate GOP to skirt its usual 60-vote threshold when that chamber acts.
On Wednesday, lawmakers continued work on the various sections of the reconciliation bill with markups — which means a bill is debated and potentially amended or rewritten — in the Financial Services, Judiciary, Transportation and Infrastructure and Oversight and Government Reform committees.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said Republicans will spend the rest of this week and next debating the 11 separate bills in committees. Committees when they finish their measures will send them to the House Budget Committee, which is expected to bundle them together prior to a floor vote.
The Judiciary panel’s 116-page bill vastly overhauls U.S. asylum laws. It would, for example, create a fee structure for asylum seekers that would set a minimum cost for an application at no less than $1,000. Applications now are free.
“These and other resources and fees in this reconciliation bill will ensure the Trump administration has the adequate resources to enforce the immigration laws in a fiscally responsible way,” GOP Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio said.
The bill would establish a $1,000 fee for immigrants granted temporary protected status, which would mean they would have work authorizations and deportation protections.
It would also require sponsors to pay $3,500 to take in an unaccompanied minor who crosses the border without a legal status. Typically, unaccompanied minors are released to sponsors who are family members living in the United States.
The bill would also require immigrants without permanent legal status to pay a $550 fee for work permits every six months.
The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, slammed the bill as targeting immigrants.
“Every day, this administration uses immigration enforcement as a template to erode constitutional rights and liberties,” he said.
A final committee vote was expected Wednesday night.
‘A giveaway to ICE’
The Judiciary bill directs half of the fees collected from asylum seekers to go toward the agency that handles U.S. immigration courts, but Democrats criticized the provisions as creating a barrier for asylum seekers.
“The so-called immigration fees that are in this bill are really fines and nothing but a cruel attempt to make immigrating to this country impossible,” Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal said.
Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois, said the bill would not only “gut asylum” but would significantly increase funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.
Funding for ICE detention this fiscal year is roughly $3.4 billion, but the Judiciary bill would sharply increase that to $45 billion.
Garcia called the increase a “a giveaway to ICE, a rogue agency that’s terrorizing communities and clamping (down) on civil liberties and the Constitution itself, because they’ve been directed to do so by this president.”
House Republicans have also included language that would move the Federal Trade Commission into the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, a move Democrats argued would kneecap the FTC’s regulatory authority.
“You’re trying to shutter the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, making it harder for us to enforce our antitrust laws,” Democratic Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont said.
Consumer protections to take a hit
Lawmakers on the House Committee on Financial Services met in a lengthy, and at times tense, session to finalize legislation to cut “no less than” $1 billion from government programs and services under the panel’s jurisdiction, according to the budget resolution Congress approved in April.
Funds in the crosshairs include those previously authorized for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and grants provided under the Biden administration-era Inflation Reduction Act for homeowners to improve energy efficiency.
Chair French Hill said the committee “will do its part to reduce the deficit and decrease direct spending, so that Congress can enact pro-growth tax policies.”
“And remember, today, we are here with one purpose, to do our part to put our nation back on a responsible fiscal trajectory,” the Arkansas Republican said.
Democrats introduced dozens of amendments during the hourslong session to block cuts to community block grants and programs protecting consumers, including veterans, from illegal credit and lending practices.
Ranking member Maxine Waters said committee Republicans’ plans to cut the CFPB by 70% “is ridiculous.”
“The bureau has saved American consumers $21 billion by returning to them funds that big banks and predatory lenders swindled out of them,” said Waters, a California Democrat.
Congress created the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when subprime mortgage lending cascaded into bank failures and home and job losses.
Republicans opposed amendment after amendment.
Rep. María Salazar of Florida tossed a copy of one of Waters’ lengthy amendments straight into a trash can after a staffer handed it to her. Michigan’s Rep. Bill Huizenga held up proceedings for several minutes when he accused Waters of breaking the rules by not distributing enough paper copies of her amendment.
“We cannot allow our government to continue spending money like there are no consequences,” GOP Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska said in response to several Democratic amendments.
A final committee vote was expected Wednesday night.
Transportation section adds fees on electric vehicles
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee also approved, by a party line 36-30 vote, reconciliation instructions that would cut $10 billion from the federal deficit while boosting spending for the U.S. Coast Guard and the air traffic control system.
Like other portions of the larger reconciliation package, the transportation committee’s instructions would add funding for national security and border enforcement, through the Coast Guard funding, while cutting money from programs favored by Democrats, including climate programs and any spending that could be construed as race-conscious.
The bill would provide $21.2 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion for air traffic control systems. It would raise money through a $250 annual fee on electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee on hybrids, while also cutting $4.6 billion from climate programs created in Democrats’ 2022 reconciliation package.
Chairman Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, said the measure included priorities for members of both parties, as well as business and labor interests.
“We all want to invest in our Coast Guard,” he said. “We all want to rebuild our air traffic control system and finally address the broken Highway Trust Fund. We have held countless hearings on all of these topics, both recently and, frankly, for years. And now members have the opportunity to actually act.”
Democrats on the panel complained that the reconciliation package was a partisan exercise and a departure from the panel’s normally congenial approach to business. They introduced dozens of amendments over the daylong committee meeting seeking to add funding for various programs. None were adopted.
“The larger Republican reconciliation package will add more than $15 trillion in new debt, gives away $7 trillion in deficit-financed tax cuts to the wealthy and slashes access to health care and food assistance for families,” ranking Democrat Rick Larsen of Washington said. “Given that, I think we’re going to have to vote no on the bill before us.”
The vehicle fees, which would be deposited into the Highway Trust Fund that sends highway and transit money to states, created a partisan divide Wednesday.
Federal gas taxes provide the lion’s share of deposits to the fund and Republicans argued that, because drivers of electric vehicles pay no gas taxes and hybrid drivers pay less than those who drive gas-powered cars, the provision would make the contributions fairer.
Republicans scrapped a proposed $20 annual fee on gas-powered cars, which Graves said was meant to “start a conversation” on the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund. But the provision “became a political distraction that no longer centered around seriously addressing the problem,” he said.
Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Deluzio criticized the vehicle fees, noting Republicans were pursuing additional revenue opportunities to offset losses from tax cuts.
“I don’t know when you guys became the tax-and-spend liberals,” Deluzio told his Republican colleagues. “But I guess the taxing of car owners so you can pay for tax giveaways to billionaires is your new strategy. Good luck with that.”
Federal employee benefits targeted
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted nearly along party lines, 22-21, to send its portion of the reconciliation package to the Budget Committee, with Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner joining Democrats in opposition.
Turner was the first GOP lawmaker to cast a committee vote against reconciliation instructions this year.
The legislation hits at federal employee benefits and comes as the Trump administration continues to overhaul the federal workforce.
Part of the bill would raise federal employees’ required retirement contribution to a rate of 4.4% of their salary and eliminate an additional retirement annuity payment for federal employees who retire before the age of 62, while cutting more than $50 billion from the federal deficit.
At his committee’s markup, Chairman James Comer said the legislation “advances important budgetary reforms that will save taxpayers money.”
The Kentucky Republican acknowledged that the chief investigative committee in the U.S. House has “very limited jurisdiction to help reduce the federal budget deficit,” noting that the panel is “empowered to pursue civil service reforms, including federal employee benefits and reining in the influence of partisan and unaccountable government employee unions.”
But Democrats on the panel blasted the committee’s portion of the reconciliation package, saying the bill chips away at federal employees’ protections.
Rep. Stephen Lynch, the top Democrat on the panel, said congressional Republicans instructed the panel to target the federal workforce with roughly $50 billion in funding cuts “regardless of the impact on hard-working, loyal federal employees and their critical services that they provide to the American people.”
The Massachusetts Democrat said the bill “threatens to further undermine the federal workforce by reducing the take-home pay, the benefits and workforce protections of 2.4 million federal employees, most of whom are middle-class Americans and a third of whom are military veterans.”
Ohio’s Turner, who voted against the legislation because of the provision reducing pension benefits, said he supported the overall reconciliation package and hoped the pension measure would be stripped before a floor vote.
Turner said “making changes to pension retirement benefits in the middle of someone’s employment is wrong.”
Demonstrators holds signs as a motorist passes with flags supporting President Donald Trump during an April 5, 2025, protest in Columbia, South Carolina. Protestors organized nationwide demonstrations against Trump administration policies and Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Tuesday marked the 100th day of President Donald Trump’s second term, a period filled almost daily with executive orders seeking to expand presidential power, court challenges to block those orders and economic anxiety that undermines his promised prosperity.
Trump has taken decisive actions that have polarized the electorate. He’s used obscure authorities to increase deportations, upended longstanding trade policy with record-high tariffs, made drastic cuts to the federal workforce and ordered the closure of the Education Department.
Those moves have garnered mixed results and led to legal challenges.
The approach to immigration enforcement has yielded lower numbers of unauthorized border crossings compared to last year. But the immigration crackdown has barreled the country toward a constitutional crisis through various clashes with the judiciary branch.
Those nearing retirement have watched their savings shrink as Trump’s blunt application of tariffs, which he promises will replace income taxes, roils markets. Administration officials have promised the short-term tariff pain will benefit the country in the long term.
And White House advisor and top campaign donor Elon Musk’s efforts at government efficiency have resulted in eliminations of wide swaths of government jobs. That includes about half of the Education Department workforce so far, though Trump has signed an executive order to eliminate the department.
The controversial moves appear unpopular, as Americans delivered record low approval ratings for a president so early in his term. Polls spearheaded by Fox News, NPR, Gallup and numerous others yield overall disapproval of Trump’s job performance.
Trump speaks to reporters after signing executive orders in the Oval Office on April 23, 2025. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon look on. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Deportation push tests legal boundaries
Immigration was Trump’s signature issue on the campaign trail and his first 100 days were marked by a crackdown carried out against people with a range of immigration statuses and at least three U.S. citizen children. The aggressive push has led to clashes with the judiciary branch.
A burst of Inauguration Day executive orders Trump signed upon his return to office included some hardline immigration policies he’d promised.
On day one, he declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border that enabled his deployment two days later of 1,500 troops to help border enforcement.
District courts blocked the birthright citizenship and refugee resettlement measures and an appeals court has upheld those interpretations. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in May on birthright citizenship.
Trump’s record on immigration is a clear example of his desire to expand executive power, said Ahilan Arulanantham, a co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law.
“It’s an attempt to expand the government’s powers far beyond anything that we have seen before in this realm,” he said.
Unprecedented authorities
The administration has taken a series of actions considered nearly unprecedented to conduct mass deportations.
Authorities never accused Khalil of committing a crime, but sought to revoke his green card under a Cold War-era provision that allows the secretary of State to remove lawful permanent residents if the secretary deems their presence has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Similar arrests followed at universities across the country.
In mid-March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport two planeloads of people his administration said belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
It was only the fourth time the law was invoked and the first outside of wartime. The first flights left U.S. soil en route to a mega-prison in El Salvador on Saturday, March 15, amid a hearing on the legality of using the law in peacetime.
Prison officers stand guard over a cell block at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025 in El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
When a federal judge entered an oral order to turn the flights around, the administration refused, arguing the oral order was not valid. The administration also ignored a subsequent written order demanding the return of the flights, later arguing the flights were outside U.S. airspace at that time and impossible to order returned.
Administration officials mocked the court order on social media.
The Supreme Court on April 7 allowed for the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected gang members of Tren de Aragua. However, the justices unanimously agreed that those removed under the wartime law needed to have due process and have a hearing to challenge their removal.
Abrego Garcia
A third March 15 flight carried a man who was mistakenly deported in an episode that has gained a national spotlight.
Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, had a final order of removal, but was granted deportation protections by an immigration judge because of the threat he would be harmed by gangs if he were returned to his home country. Despite the protective order, he was deported to the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT prison.
After his family sued over his deportation, the administration admitted he’d been removed through an “administrative error,” but stood by its decision.
The administration argued it had no power to compel the El Salvador government to release Abrego Garcia, despite a possibly illegal $6 million agreement with the country to detain the roughly 300 men.
A Maryland federal court and an appeals court ruled the administration must repatriate Abrego Garcia, whose wife and 5-year-old son are U.S. citizens, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return, but stopped short of requiring it.
The administration has done little to indicate it is complying with that order, earning a rebuke from a conservative judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The Supreme Court’s decision does not … allow the government to do essentially nothing,” Circuit Court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote. “‘Facilitate’ is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear.”
The administration’s relationship with the courts — delaying compliance with orders and showing a clear distaste for doing so — has led to the brink of a constitutional crisis, Arulanantham said.
“They’re playing footsy with disregarding court orders,” he said. “On the one hand, they’re not just complying. If they were complying, Abrego Garcia would be here now.”
But the administration has also not flagrantly refused to comply, Arulanantham added. “They’re sort of testing the bounds.”
Tariffs prompted market drop
Trump’s first 100 days spiraled into economic uncertainty as he ramped up tariffs on allies and trading partners. In early April, the president declared foreign trade a national emergency and shocked economies around the world with costly import taxes.
Following a week of market upheaval, Trump paused for 90 days what he had billed as “reciprocal” tariffs and left a universal 10% levy on nearly all countries, except China, which received a bruising 125%.
Some products, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber and copper, remain exempt for now, though the administration is eyeing the possibilities of tariffs on those goods.
A billboard in Miramar, Florida, displays an anti-tariff message on March 28, 2025. The Canadian government has placed the anti-tariff billboards in numerous American cities in what they have described as an “educational campaign” to inform Americans of the economic impacts of tariffs. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The administration now contends it will strike trade deals with some 90 foreign governments over the pause, set to expire in July.
Meanwhile, an all-out trade war rages with China after Trump hiked tariffs on the world’s no. 2 economy even further to 145%. China responded with 125% tariffs on U.S. goods. The two economies share a massive trading relationship, both in the top three for each other’s imports and exports.
‘Chaotic’ strategy
Inu Manak, fellow for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, summed up Trump’s first 100 days as “chaotic.”
“We haven’t seen anything like this in our U.S. history in terms of how trade policy is being handled. It’s very ad hoc,” Manak said.
“U.S. businesses can’t figure out what to do. And even for the large companies, it’s hard for them to know some of the long-term trajectories of where this was going to go,” Manak said.
Shortly after his second term began, Trump declared a national emergency over illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. — an unprecedented move to trigger import taxes — and began escalating tariffs on Chinese goods, as well as up to 25% on certain products crossing the borders from Canada and Mexico.
Trump hiked existing tariffs on steel and aluminum in mid-March under trade provisions meant to protect domestic production and national security, followed by 25% levies on foreign cars and auto parts — though Trump signed two executive orders Tuesday to grant some tariff relief to carmakers.
The import taxes have alarmed investors, small businesses and American consumers following the 2024 presidential campaign when Trump made lowering prices a major tenet of his platform.
The latest University of Michigan survey of consumers — a staple indicator for economists — reported consumer outlook on personal finances and business conditions took a nosedive in April. Expectations dropped 32% since January, the largest three-month percentage decline since the 1990 recession, according to the analysis.
Manak said Trump’s tariffs are “really at odds with” with the administration’s objectives of helping U.S. manufacturers and cutting costs for Americans.
“The U.S. now has the highest tariff rates in the world,” she said. “That’s going to hurt both consuming industries that import products to make things, and then consumers as well. We’re starting to see notifications coming out on layoffs, and some small businesses considering closing up shop already. And the tariffs haven’t been in place for that long.”
Rhett Buttle, of Small Business for America’s Future, said the policies are “causing real damage in terms of not just planning, but in terms of day-to-day operations.”
Buttle, a senior advisor for the advocacy group that claims 85,000 small business members, said even if Trump begins to strike deals with other countries, entrepreneurs will likely be on edge for months to come.
“It’s that uncertainty that makes business owners not want to hire or not want to grow,” Buttle said. “So it’s like, ‘Okay, we got through this mess, but why would I hire a person if I don’t know if I’m gonna wake up in two weeks and there’s gonna be another announcement?’”
Support dropping
Trillions were erased from the U.S. stock market after “Liberation Day” — the White House’s term for the start of its global tariff policy. The S&P 500 index, which tracks the performance of the 500 largest U.S. companies, is overall down 8.5% since Trump’s inauguration, according to The Wall Street Journal’s analysis.
Numerous recent polls showed flagging support for Trump’s economic policies.
In a poll released Monday, Gallup found 89% of Americans believe tariffs will result in increasing prices. And a majority of Americans are concerned about an economic recession and increasing costs of groceries and other goods, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey between April 17 and April 22.
The Pew Research Center similarly found a growing gloomy outlook among U.S. adults from April 7 to April 13. Results showed a majority of Americans — 59% across race, age and income levels — disapproved of Trump’s approach to tariffs. But when broken down by party, the survey showed a majority of Democrats disapprove while the majority of Republicans approve of the tariff policy.
American households are poised to lose up to $2,600 annually if tariffs remain in place and U.S. fiscal policy doesn’t change, according to the Yale Budget Lab. Analyses show low-income households will be disproportionately affected.
“If these tariffs stay in place, some folks are going to benefit, but a lot of people are going to get hurt,” Manak said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Government spending
Elon Musk, accompanied by his son X Musk and Trump, speaks during an executive order signing in the Oval Office on February 11, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Trump began his second term with a flurry of action on government spending, challenging the balance of power between the president and Congress.
Efforts to unilaterally cancel funding already approved by lawmakers, who hold the authority to spend federal dollars under the Constitution, led to confusion and frustration from both Democrats and Republicans, especially after the U.S. DOGE Service froze allocations on programs that have long elicited bipartisan support.
Many of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back appropriations are subject to injunctions from federal courts, blocking the cuts from moving forward while the lawsuits advance through the judicial system.
Kevin Kosar, senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Trump’s actions on spending so far have sought to expand the bounds of presidential authority.
“We’ve never seen a president in modern times who’s been this aggressive in trying to seize control of the power of the purse,” he said. “To just say, ‘I’m not going to fund this agency, like USAID, despite money being appropriated for it. And we’re going to walk over and take their plaque off their wall and lock their doors.’ This is new.”
Many of Trump’s actions so far indicate to Kosar that the administration expects a change to the balance of power following next year’s midterm elections, when the president’s party historically loses control of at least one chamber of Congress.
“It feels to me that the first 100 days are in large part predicated on an assumption that they may only have two years of unified Republican control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the presidency,” he said. “We know the margins in the House are quite narrow, and the heavy use of executive actions and the simple defunding of various government contracts and agencies all through executive action, just tell me that the administration feels like they have to get everything done as fast as they possibly can, because the time is short.”
Kosar said he’s watching to see if Trump works with Republicans in Congress, while they still have unified control, to codify his executive orders into law — something he didn’t do with many of the unilateral actions he took during his first term.
“He just did executive actions, which, of course, (President Joe) Biden just undid,” he said. “And I’m just wondering: Are we going to see this movie all over again? Or is he going to actually partner with Congress on these various policy matters and pass statutes so that they stick?”
Zachary Peskowitz, associate professor of political science at Emory University, said Trump has been much more “assertive” during the last 100 days than during the first few months of 2017.
DOGE ‘winding down’
U.S. DOGE Service and Musk hit the ground running, though their actions have fallen short of the goals he set, and appear to be sunsetting with the billionaire turning his attention back toward his businesses.
“I think the big bang is winding down. They did a lot of things early on. It’s not clear how many of them are going to stick, what the consequences are,” Peskowitz said. “And I think, big picture, in terms of federal spending, the amounts of money that may have been saved or not are pretty small.”
Democrats in Congress released a tracker Tuesday listing which accounts the Trump administration has frozen or canceled to the tune of more than $430 billion.
But Trump has just gotten started.
The administration plans to submit its first budget request to Congress in the coming days, a step that’s typically taken in early February, though it happens a couple months behind schedule during a president’s first year.
That massive tax-and-spending proposal will begin the classic tug-of-war between Congress, which will draft the dozen annual appropriations bills, and Trump, who has shown a willingness to act unilaterally when he doesn’t get his way.
Trump and lawmakers must agree to some sort of government funding bill before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, otherwise a partial government shutdown would begin. And unlike the reconciliation package that Republicans can enact all on their own, funding bills require some Democratic support to move past the Senate’s 60-vote cloture threshold.
Trump stands with McMahon after signing an executive order to reduce the size and scope of the Education Department during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Eliminating the Education Department
Researchers and advocates predicted even more changes to the federal role in education, underscoring anti-diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and a continued ideological battle with higher education that have marked Trump’s approach to education policy in his first 100 days.
In a torrent of education-related decisions, Trump and his administration have tried to dismantle the Education Department via an executive order, slashed more than 1,300 employees at the department, threatened to revoke funds for schools that use DEI practices and cracked down on “woke” higher education.
The Trump administration has taken drastic steps to revoke federal funding for a number of elite universities in an attempt to make the institutions align more with them ideologically.
Rachel Perera, a governance studies fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, cited “brazen lawlessness” when reflecting on Trump’s approach to higher education in his second term.
“The ways that they’re trying to withhold funding from universities are very clearly in violation of federal law and the processes mandated by civil rights law in terms of ensuring that institutions are offered due process in assessing whether violations have taken place,” Perera said. “There’s not even a pretense of pretending to investigate some of these institutions before taking really dramatic action.”
Whether the administration’s approach continues or not depends on court action, she added.
“I think what the next three years might look like is really going to depend on how some of these lawsuits play out,” Perera said, referencing some of the major legal battles involving the Trump administration.
Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president at the nonprofit policy and advocacy group EdTrust, said “much of what this administration has done has been overreach.” He pointed to the Education Department’s letter threatening to yank federal funds for schools that use race-conscious practices across aspects of student life as one example.
Del Pilar, who was previously deputy secretary of postsecondary and higher education for the state of Pennsylvania, said the administration is “going to take any opportunity to grab at power that advances their ideology.”
Meanwhile, Perera said the consequences of the department implementing a reduction in force plan in March “have yet to be felt.”
“I think we will start to see really the material consequences of the reduced staffing capacity in the coming years, in terms of how programs are administered, in terms of how funding is moving out the building, in terms of auditing, making sure funding is going to the right groups of students that Congress intended for the money to go to, whether big data collection efforts that are congressionally mandated are being carried out in timely and effective ways,” she said.
Protesters gather outside the Federal Building in Milwaukee to denounce the arrest of Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Smart, progressive women pose a serious threat to MAGA supremacy. Just ask Elon Musk, who wasted millions of dollars in Wisconsin trying to win a seat on the state Supreme Court for MAGA candidate Brad Schimel, only to watch Susan Crawford clean Schimel’s clock.
From his first presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016, “Lock her up!” has been Donald Trump’s battle cry. Restoring the greatness of a white, male-dominated America apparently requires menacing displays of dominance over women in positions of authority. Who can forget Trump acting like a stalker, invading Clinton’s personal space and looming behind her during a 2016 debate?
On Friday, a few weeks after MAGA lost its bid to disempower the progressive female majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Trump administration sent federal agents to arrest Hannah Dugan at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Trump’s attorney general and the man he chose to lead the FBI gleefully posted pictures of Dugan’s “perp walk” in handcuffs, crowing about this unprecedented assault on the dignity and authority of a judge and the sovereignty of local courts.
On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Dugan. “In order to uphold the public’s confidence in the courts of this state during the pendency of the criminal proceeding against Judge Dugan, we conclude, on our own motion, that it is in the public interest that she be temporarily relieved of her official duties,” the state’s highest court said in a two-page letter ordering Judge Dugan “temporarily prohibited from exercising the powers of a circuit court judge.”
It’s a perplexing decision. It didn’t arise from any complaint; the Court acted on its own. And Dugan had already been relieved of her duties while she focuses on her defense by the chief judge in Milwaukee, who assigned her calendar to other judges to cover.
Worse, the suspension gives the impression that the federal charges against Dugan are indeed serious. But that impression is not supported by the only evidence the government has produced.
The justification for Dugan’s arrest, laid out in a federal criminal complaint, is that she impeded federal law enforcement agents when she objected to ICE disrupting her court’s proceedings and ushered the man they came to arrest out a side door. The defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who was appearing before Dugan on a misdemeanor battery charge unrelated to his immigration status, exited into the public hallway where the agents were waiting for him. Then they followed him outside and made their arrest — unimpeded.
Fox News claimed Dugan concealed Flores-Ruiz in a jury room. But that assertion is contradicted by the sworn testimony in the government’s own criminal complaint.
The complaint features breathlessly sexist descriptions of Dugan appearing “visibly angry” and “walking quickly,” as if that were evidence of wrongdoing. But any actual wrongdoing is hard to pinpoint.
“Whatever you think of the actual conduct the complaint alleges,” says Dean Strang, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a long-time Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, “there is a real question about whether there’s even arguably any federal crime here.”
The government’s behavior, meanwhile, is “extraordinarily atypical,” for a nonviolent, nondrug charge involving someone who is not a flight risk, says Strang.
The handcuffs, the public arrest at Dugan’s workplace, the media circus — none of it was normal, or justified. Then Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel began posting pictures of Dugan in handcuffs on social media to brag about it.
“So what is it they are trying to do?” asks Strang. His conclusion: “Humiliate and terrify, not just her but every other judge in the country.”
The bigger issue here, beyond an unprecedented, public display of dominance and intimidation by the Trump administration, is that, in turning federal law enforcement into an arm of his personal, vengeance-themed reality show, Trump is running roughshod over the constitutional principle of federalism, which respects the sovereignty of the states, the integrity of the courts and public safety. Scaring defendants, witnesses and victims away from making court appearances makes it harder to administer justice and makes all of us less safe.
But you’d never know that to listen to Republican state officials, who are championing federal agents barging into courts, schools and churches, forgetting everything they ever said about local control and states’ rights. On Tuesday, Assembly Republicans led by Speaker Robin Vos sent a letter to Gov. Tony Evers, declaring “our caucus believes it is imperative that our laws reflect the need for local law enforcement to comply with these efforts.”
Republicans accuse Evers of issuing guidance to state officials that impedes federal ICE raids.
“Unfortunately, recent events in Milwaukee have underscored the importance for our state to legislate and enforce compliance with federal immigration law,” their letter declares, citing Dugan’s arrest.
The Republicans demand that Evers rescind guidance telling state agencies that they need not answer questions, hand over files, or allow ICE to enter non-public areas without a warrant.
Capitulating to an administration that has admitted to deporting U.S. citizens and defied court orders to effect the return of a man it admits was mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran prison is a terrible idea. Big law firms that agreed to drop clients and offer free legal work to appease the Trump administration have eroded trust in the law. Authoritarian undermining of our legal system is a grave danger.
The least the most timid among us can do is insist that the federal government follow the law before caving in. That’s what Dugan did, when she asked if the agents who came to her courtroom to arrest Flores-Ruiz had a judicial warrant. They did not. Nor do they have proof that Dugan herself broke any laws.
The last thing we need right now is more capitulation to MAGA bullying. Stand strong.
White House Border Czar Tom Homan talks with reporters on the driveway outside the White House West Wing on March 17, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — White House border czar Tom Homan on Monday blamed the parents of U.S. citizen children the Trump administration sent to Honduras over the weekend.
At a Monday morning press conference, Homan defended the government’s actions to remove three young children from two different families alongside their mothers who were in the country without legal authorization but participated in a program that allows otherwise law-abiding migrants to stay in their communities.
“If you enter this country illegally, it’s a crime,” Homan said. “Knowing you’re in this country illegally, you put yourself in that position. You put your family in that position.”
The children, all under the age of 10, were placed on deportation flights to Honduras on Friday after their mothers checked in with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New Orleans as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which allows immigrants to stay in their communities while undergoing immigration court proceedings.
An attorney for one of the children, Gracie Willis at the National Immigration Project, said the 4-year-old U.S. citizen with Stage 4 cancer was deported without access to his medication.
Homan has argued the mothers requested to be deported with their children, but attorneys for the families argue they were “denied access to legal counsel, and swiftly deported without due process.”
Due process concerns
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, whom Trump appointed to a seat on the Louisiana federal bench in 2018, expressed concern that a 2-year-old U.S. citizen had been deported, despite her father’s wishes she remain in the U.S., according to court filings.
Doughty scheduled a May 16 hearing because of his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
“The government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote in his order. “But the court doesn’t know that.”
Willis, from the National Immigration Project, raised concerns about a lack of due process and how the deportations have separated families.
“What we saw from ICE over the last several days is horrifying and baffling,” she said in a statement. “These mothers had no opportunity to speak with their co-parents to make the kinds of choices that parents are entitled to make for their children, the kinds of decisions that millions of parents make every day: ‘what is best for our child?’”
Homan has argued the children were deported at the request of the mothers and that the Trump administration was “keeping families together.”
“What we did is remove children with their mothers who requested their children depart with them,” he said. “When a parent says, ‘I want my 2-year-old baby to go with me,’ we made that happen. They weren’t deported. We don’t deport U.S. citizens. The parents made that decision, not the United States government.”
Wisconsin judge
Monday’s remarks from Homan come the day before President Donald Trump will mark the 100th day of his second term. His early days in office have centered on carrying out his campaign promise of mass deportations of millions of people in the U.S. without permanent legal status.
Trump will sign two executive orders on immigration late Monday: one relating to border security and another to require the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to publicly list so-called sanctuary cities that do not coordinate with federal immigration law enforcement.
Homan also stood by the Trump administration’s decision to arrest a federal judge in Wisconsin on the grounds she obstructed immigration officials from detaining a man attending his court hearing. It marked an escalation between the Trump administration and the judiciary branch, raising concerns from Democrats.
The arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan was highly publicized after she was handcuffed in public and FBI Director Kash Patel bragged about the arrest on social media.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News that the Trump administration was going to continue to go after judges who “think they’re above the law.”
“When you cross that line to impediment or knowingly harboring, concealing an illegal alien from ICE, you will be prosecuted, judge or not,” Homan said.
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