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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warrant required

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The coming school year

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

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

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

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

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

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

WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not planning an aggressive campaign at voting sites during the upcoming midterm elections, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday in response to a States Newsroom inquiry about a letter from U.S. Senate Democrats voicing concerns about armed federal agents at polling places.

ICE, an agency within DHS that has sustained intense criticism since the start of the second Trump administration for its aggressive and sometimes deadly tactics, has no plans to target polling sites in November, a DHS official told States Newsroom in an email. 

The official left open the possibility, though, that the agency’s plans could change based on available intelligence.

“ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” the DHS official said. “ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”

The email came from a general DHS media account and did not name the official. The statement did not specify anything about DHS agencies other than ICE.

While DHS made similar statements earlier this year, this one responded to a request for comment about a letter this week from a dozen U.S. Senate Democrats to three Cabinet members demanding to know more about the administration’s possible plans to send federal law enforcement officers to polling places across the country. 

The group, led by Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, sent a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in which the lawmakers asked whether armed federal agents would be deployed at election sites, which they said would be prohibited under federal law. 

“Congress has enacted longstanding criminal prohibitions against sending federal personnel to polling places and using federal power to interfere with elections,” they wrote. “Americans should never have to wonder whether the federal government intends to police the ballot box with armed agents.” 

Democrats have voiced increasing worries that President Donald Trump is seeking to control elements of election administration, which is a state responsibility under the U.S. Constitution. 

The issue is at the center of lawsuits brought by Democratic campaign and nonpartisan voting-rights groups challenging an executive order restricting mail-in voting. And U.S. House Democrats say the administration is withholding disaster relief funds as leverage to force states to change their election laws.

“The letter reflects my and my Senate colleagues’ deep concerns that Donald Trump appears to be planning to steal the upcoming election, which Republicans cannot win on the merits,” Markey said in a Thursday statement to States Newsroom. “We know that no unlawful, illegal, and unconstitutional act is beyond him and we must be ready for it.”

Joining Markey on the Tuesday letter were Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Gary Peters of Michigan, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Andy Kim of New Jersey, Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Maria Cantwell of Washington.

Growing concern 

The senators’ concerns, they said, arise partly from findings revealed earlier this month that came out of an investigation launched in 2025 by the Democratic National Committee. 

Last October, the committee sought records regarding the possible deployment of federal law enforcement officers to polling stations, ballot-drop sites and election offices. The departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense initially did not produce any documents, and during ensuing litigation, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement represented it had found “no responsive records,” according to the July 28 letter. 

But after the DNC challenged the search results, ICE admitted to finding “more than 11,000 potentially responsive pages,” while U.S. Customs and Border Protection, another DHS agency, said it located nearly 117,000, lawmakers wrote. 

The Department of Defense declined to comment Thursday on the senators’ letter, telling States Newsroom that it will instead follow its typical protocol of responding directly to the authors themselves. 

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s focus on elections  

Democrats’ inquiries into the administration’s plans also stem from comments President Donald Trump has made in recent months about election integrity.

When a PBS Newshour correspondent asked Trump in May if he would send ICE agents or National Guard troops to polling sites for the midterms, he said he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”  

And earlier this month, during a nationwide primetime address, he again reiterated claims about the country’s voting systems being vulnerable to hacking and disputed his 2020 presidential loss, sowing doubts about the entire election process despite having a lack of evidence to back up his words.  

“President Trump’s statements, coupled with his repeated threats to invoke the Insurrection Act — which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence — only heighten concerns,” the senators added in their letter. 

“The Administration now has a choice,” they wrote. “It can continue to fuel the appearance that it is laying the groundwork for an unprecedented federal intrusion into state-run elections, or it can finally provide Congress and the American people with the transparency they deserve.”

The lawmakers requested that Blanche, Mullin and Hegseth provide details about any possible plans to deploy federal troops at election sites in November and identify who may have authorized such deployments, setting a deadline of August 11. 

They also asked that the federal agency leaders produce records “concerning the possible deployment of federal law enforcement personnel or troops to polling places or other election sites.” 

WASHINGTON — Federal asylum officers can deny interviews to asylum seekers and send them immediately to an immigration judge, speeding up deportation proceedings, under a rule U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published Tuesday.

The rule, which takes effect immediately, will allow USCIS, a Department of Homeland Security agency, to refer directly to immigration judges certain asylum cases — such as noncitizens who are not yet in deportation proceedings and are proactively seeking asylum — without first conducting an interview or including a referral letter to the judge regarding the applicant’s credibility.

The interim final rule will be in effect while the agency collects public comments and finalizes the rule’s language.

The move is a departure from how USCIS handles asylum cases. It could create weakened asylum claims before immigration judges, resulting in quick denials and orders of removal. 

In order to apply for asylum, a noncitizen has to detail to an asylum officer a fear of persecution “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” 

Asylum officers can use the new rule when USCIS determines that an applicant is barred from applying for asylum, barred from receiving asylum, does not merit a grant of asylum and is not eligible for asylum based on merits of their claim. 

The rule also removes language that asylum seekers have the “right” to an interview. 

USCIS estimates more than 444,000 pending asylum applicants could be affected by the rule. The agency also estimates that about 132,000 future applications for asylum could be impacted. 

The rule could also affect hundreds of thousands of Haitians, who are set to lose their legal protections as the Trump administration plans to revoke Temporary Protected Status. When that status is gone, some could try to apply for asylum but not all would meet the specific standards for persecution laid out in asylum law.

Speeding hearings

Trump officials argued the rule will help backlogs in immigration court. 

“This rule will shorten the total time that it takes asylum officers and Immigration Judges to adjudicate asylum applications,” a DHS press release said. 

USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said in a statement the rule would make sure asylum officers only consider “legitimate” applicants.

“For far too long the asylum system has been exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization, not legitimate claims of protection,” he said. “America’s asylum system exists to protect individuals who genuinely fear persecution and this rule will help ensure that resources are directed to the timely adjudication of those claims instead of to those seeking to use the system as a loophole.”

Officers quicker than judges

But an immigration law expert said the policy may actually slow the asylum claim system.

The executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Ben Johnson, said in a statement that the rule will only worsen the 1.4-million-case backlog in immigration courts because judges can take longer to hear a case than an asylum officer.

“Not only will this rule throw sand into the gears of the immigration courts, it will stack the scales of justice against vulnerable people fleeing torture and persecution by putting them into adversarial court hearings and likely also into detention,” Johnson said. 

“Instead of wasting court resources and depriving asylum seekers of due process, more cases should be directed to asylum officers who can do a thorough review of their case far more quickly than judges,” he continued.

Three people who observed federal immigration enforcement during the Trump administration’s sometimes-violent surge said in a federal lawsuit filed Friday the Department of Homeland Security illegally recorded them and revoked their status in the department’s trusted traveler programs.

The suit, filed in the Southern District of California, says the administration violated a federal privacy law, administrative law and the First Amendment by targeting people who observed and protested aggressive immigration enforcement, including during the deadly operation in Minneapolis in January. 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a legal group that advocates for privacy issues related to technology, is also a plaintiff in the case.

Amid a nationwide surge of immigration enforcement that has included federal agents shooting and killing protesters, observers and immigrants, opponents “did what anyone is supposed to do when they disagree with government action: They exercised their First Amendment rights” by assembling, protesting and recording DHS agents’ activity in public, the suit says.

“In response, DHS decided to record the Americans who were peacefully observing its agents,” the suit says.

Officers with the DHS agencies Immigration and Customs Protection and Border Patrol killed two observers, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis in incidents 17 days apart in January. 

‘Driven home by ICE’

ICE and Border Patrol agents used facial recognition technology, license plate readers and other technology to identify protesters and observers. The agents would then use that information in efforts to intimidate and retaliate against protesters, the suit says. 

Federal immigration officers addressed many legal observers by name, despite having never spoken to them. In Minnesota, legal observers tailing DHS agents in a car would commonly be led back to their own home addresses, according to the suit.

“The experience … is so widespread that Minnesota residents have coined a term for it: being ‘driven home by ICE,’” the suit said.

The practice shows that DHS is no longer following its own 2023 policy on facial recognition, the suit says. The department quietly removed the policy from its website — omitting it even from a set of archived pages — during President Donald Trump’s first month back in office, the suit says.

The complaint argues that amounted to a policy change, which DHS did not conduct through the process agencies must follow under the Administrative Procedure Act. 

The department also retaliated against protesters and observers by revoking their status in DHS trusted traveler programs TSA Precheck and Global Entry, the suit says.

Nicole Cleland, a Minnesota woman who is one of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, said Global Entry status was revoked three days after an encounter with a Border Patrol agent whom she was following at a safe distance, according to the suit.

Chilling rights

The suit alleges DHS’ actions have had a chilling effect on First Amendment-protected activity. 

Cleland has stopped observing DHS operations for fear of further retaliation, according to the suit.

The two other individuals who brought the suit, Jacquelyn Ivey of South Carolina and Anna Walker of California, said they experienced “fear, anxiety and emotional distress” following their interactions with DHS officers.

The suit also mentions activity in Maine, North Carolina and Chicago.

DHS response

In response to a request to DHS for comment, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, which administers Global Entry, said trusted traveler status can be denied for “inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status.”

“Global Entry or other CBP Trusted Traveler Program memberships are not revoked because someone exercises their First Amendment rights,” the spokesperson wrote. “Membership may be denied or revoked for reasons such as criminal activity (including pending charges or warrants), violations of customs or immigration laws, or inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status.”

The spokesperson added that travelers whose Global Entry is denied or revoked can ask for additional review. A Global Entry ombudsman provides “additional oversight” of some cases, the spokesperson said. 

A denial of Global Entry is not an impediment to travel, they wrote.

DHS did not respond to questions about its policies for recording or using facial recognition on observers.

Immigration arrests reached 1,593 per day in early July in a new push to detain and deport immigrants that has led to deaths in traffic stops. There were more than 43,000 arrests in June, the highest recorded by the Trump administration, according to statistics released Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reflecting new bookings into detention facilities. 

The June monthly total surpassed the 42,000 arrests in December, which included Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. If the rate for the first 11 days of July continues for a month it could be even higher, about 49,000 arrests.

Following fatal shootings, ICE officers ordered to wear body cameras at traffic stops

Arrest numbers reached as high as 2,000 per day over a five-day period in late June, according to a New York Times report. The Department of Homeland Security has said it is “delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport pedophiles, murderers, rapists, and other criminals,” though less than a third of current detainees have a criminal conviction and 40% have never been accused of anything but non-criminal immigration violations, according to the statistics.

The Department of Homeland Security posted a list Monday of 15 immigrants previously convicted of serious crimes it said were arrested “while Americans enjoyed the weekend and the FIFA World Cup Finals.” 

The statistics also show that about 2,000 detainees a month have been freed by court-ordered bond hearings, as many federal judges, even many Trump appointees, rule against the administration’s policy of mandatory detention for many immigrants. The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule on the legality of the policy in its October term. 

Two immigrants were shot and killed during enforcement traffic stops in Texas and Maine this month. After a brief pause, President Donald Trump ordered traffic stops to continue. ICE officers will wear body cameras during such stops, according to border czar Tom Homan. 

A man from Mexico, apparently on a valid tourist visa for a vacation, was also killed in traffic in Florida after an encounter with ICE in July. Arrests in New York City immigration courts have also continued despite a court order banning the practice.  

Some of the unusual arrests that have come to light in the current crackdown include a nun from Nigeria walking to church in Texas (she was released the same day) and an Alaska state attorney from China. 

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

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has made its position clear. The agency refuses to require its agents to follow Milwaukee’s law banning masks. Since it is unable to come to this common sense conclusion itself, the remedy is for Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke to sue. This is how we keep secret police at bay.

Goyke has taken the first step. In a July 17 letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, he defends the ICE out MKE ordinance, stating that masked law enforcement “increases the risk of dangerous interactions with the public, undermines accountability and police community relations, and stokes confusions, fear, and intimidation.”

Milwaukee prohibits ICE agents from wearing masks. The Department of Homeland Security staunchly refuses to follow this sensible rule despite a Milwaukee Police Department standard operating procedure that models this basement level of transparency. We need to know what ICE is doing. We need to know who you are. We need to see your faces.

DHS claims that it won’t follow Milwaukee’s ordinance because of the Supremacy Clause. Their claim asserts that municipalities cannot create rules that prevent employees from performing federal duties and, in most cases, the Supremacy Clause makes sense.

We wouldn’t want a city ordinance to keep the U.S. Census Bureau from collecting population data. We wouldn’t want municipalities to prevent the National Weather Service from studying tornados. At the same time, identifiable and transparent federal law enforcement is not at odds with the rule of law. 

Clarity and accountability is at the heart of our Fifth Amendment’s promise of due process. The Supremacy Clause does not supersede our Constitution’s protections. The clause itself is a component of our Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2) and no article or clause may violate the Bill of Rights. 

The Mask-Free MKE ordinance took time to create. Over and over again, our church members returned to the Common Council’s galley seats as the rule was amended, re-written and reviewed by our city attorney, Evan Goyke. Goyke’s job is to make sure that the proposed ordinance is constitutional and enforceable. Goyke’s verdict is that the people of Milwaukee can prohibit masked law enforcement.

Consider the current situation of Giovanni Sosa, a 20-year old with no criminal record. Gio came to the United States when he was 4 years old. Recently, he was snatched by masked ICE agents, leaving his wife Litzy without her husband and his 2 year old daughter without her father.

Gio has worked construction jobs since he was 14 and has never run afoul of law enforcement. Last week, while heading to the barber, his car was surrounded and blocked. His window was smashed and he was handcuffed and dragged to  detention. As he was shoved into a government car, Gio had the presence of mind to yell out his mother’s phone number. Had he not done so, he simply would not have returned home from the errands he was running. Who took him? Where was he? Was his detention legal? Was the use of force necessary?

Our Constitution protects us from having to ask these questions. The Fifth Amendment states that “no person” shall be deprived of life or liberty without protections against arbitrary government actions. Surely, masks cross this line.

DHS claims that it must allow its employees to wear masks for their safety. Lauren Bis, a DHS spokesperson, states, “Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from wearing masks is … a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers.” 

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcers fear that without masks, their employees’ actions would instigate such a strong public outcry that they would be forced to hold officers accountable. They don’t want the public to identify officers responsible for using excessive force. How can DHS officials be opposed to basic transparency before the public it serves?

This is where City Attorney Evan Goyke can help. DHS has convinced itself that the Supremacy Clause supersedes the Constitution. Its insistence that secrecy and obfuscation is a means to serve the people is a slippery rationalization that leads to a secret police force. City Attorney Goyke should sue ICE and require the agency to comply with the law. It is for the good of the residents of Milwaukee, for ICE’s own agents, for MPD officers and for our democratic heritage. This moment of trial will turn our commitment to defend our rights into steel. Our’s is a nation without a secret police. Masks cross a line. At this pivotal hour, Milwaukee must lead.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on July 13 killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national with legal work authorization, in Maine, making him the 22nd person shot at by federal immigration officers during President Donald Trump’s second term. 

Nearly all of those 22 incidents – 19 – involved Department of Homeland Security officers shooting upon people in their vehicles during traffic stops, a crucial nexus, according to a States Newsroom review of news reports and documents. The encounters spanned the nation, from Colorado to Texas to Oregon to New Jersey.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, where he promised to carry out an aggressive immigration crackdown, federal immigration officers have killed six people, three of them U.S. citizens. Four deaths came during traffic stops.

Following Guerrero’s death, the second immigrant to be killed by ICE officers during a traffic stop in a week, DHS put a pause on traffic stop enforcement. But Trump quickly ordered the department to abandon those plans.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that officers will conduct vehicle-related enforcement stops “in order to continue their deportation campaign.”

The agency has plenty of funding at hand. Congressional Republicans last year used a legislative maneuver to allocate roughly $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detainment and deportations, without needing Democratic support. GOP lawmakers did the same move this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol until September of 2029.

After the ICE shooting in Biddeford, the entire Maine congressional delegation called for an independent investigation, with Republican Sen. Susan Collins urging an end to vehicle enforcement.

A Thursday report from the American Civil Liberties Union found patterns of misconduct by immigration agents during Trump’s second term, identifying 432 incidents where agents either used or threatened to use force against immigrants and bystanders.

The report reviewed more than 1,200 incidents across eight states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and New Mexico. 

Of the traffic-related enforcement, the ACLU found in 76 instances, people and passengers were pulled from their cars; windows were smashed 47 times; officers 14 times rammed vehicles into people’s cars; and they hit people with cars six times. 

What happened afterward

In the moments after those 22 shootings, DHS has quickly accused those who were fired upon of using their vehicles as weapons against immigration officers. 

But independent video has often contradicted that narrative. 

In at least five cases DHS brought, charges were dismissed after the department accused U.S. citizens and immigrants shot by federal agents as being the aggressors. 

In August 2025, Francisco Longoria, a Mexican national, was driving his vehicle in San Bernardino, California, when federal immigration agents in unmarked cars tried to pull him over. He fled and the agents fired upon him.

The Department of Justice charged him with attempting to harm agents, but prosecutors couldn’t defend the DHS actions and charges were dismissed. Longoria was not injured.

Marimar Martinez was labeled a domestic terrorist by DHS and indicted after she was shot in her car five times by Border Patrol agents in October 2025, during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration deportation campaign in Chicago. DOJ dropped its charges against Martinez, a U.S. citizen, after the Trump administration accused her of using her car as a weapon.

When the president initially directed immigration agents to the nation’s capitol, Phillip M. Brown, a U.S. citizen, was pulled over by law enforcement, including an immigration officer who shot into his vehicle. During the October 2025 shooting, Brown was not injured, but charged with fleeing from law enforcement. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the case.

During the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation drive in Minneapolis in January, that left two U.S. citizens dead, a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot by a federal agent while in his home. DHS accused Cesar Sosa-Celis of striking an immigration officer with a broom handle, but Cesar Sosa-Celis denied it and surveillance video contracted the federal government’s claim.

The immigration agent who shot Cesar Sosa-Celis was prosecuted by local Minnesota officials and arrested in May for falsely reporting a crime and for assault.

In Houston, on July 7, ICE officers killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, saying he tried to run over agents as has been the case in other incidents.

Salgado Araujo was driving several other people to work that morning when immigration officers approached his van. He was not considered a person of interest, DHS has stated.

The FBI has sought a search warrant to seize plastic bags with “crystal-like substances,” to test for methamphetamine, according to the Texas Tribune. One of the lawyers representing Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was in the van during the shooting, said it was granulated salt.

A grim beginning to the year

The most people shot by federal immigration agents was in January.  Three of the five people shot by ICE and Border Patrol officers were in Minnesota, with two of them fatalities. 

The two deaths were in Minneapolis, where the Trump administration conducted an aggressive deportation campaign that targeted the city, which has a high Somali refugee population. 

That month, federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, and shot and wounded Cesar Sosa-Celis. 

Good was killed while in her vehicle, which then DHS Secretary Kristi Noem labeled her as a domestic terrorist. DHS accused Good of using her SUV as a weapon, but independent video did not uphold that allegation.

A week later, federal immigration officers shot and killed intensive care unit nurse Pretti, who was recording agents on his phone and helping a woman who was pushed down by them. Noem again labeled him a domestic terrorist and said he was attacking agents, but multiple videos taken from different angles do not show that.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to resume traffic stops Wednesday, reversing a one-day pause on the policy after officers killed two immigrants who were in their vehicles in Texas and Maine.

In a post to social media, Trump called the practice of federal immigration officers conducting enforcement during traffic stops “one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective” tools. 

The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign has led to an uptick in people killed by immigration officers, including at traffic stops.  

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security ordered all federal immigration officers to pause vehicle-related enforcement after the killings of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7 and 25-year-old Johan Sebastián in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday. 

Both men were stopped in their vehicles when federal immigration officers shot and killed them. Neither was an initial target of immigration enforcement, DHS said.

Monday’s shooting prompted a demand from Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is in the midst of a tight reelection race, for ICE to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”

Trump said Democrats wanted the pause on immigration enforcement at traffic stops.

“The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch,” he said. “I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to detailed questions about the president’s directive. White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

Congress calls for action

Monday’s shooting sparked calls for action among lawmakers, with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus advocating for dismantling of ICE and Maine’s congressional delegation pressing an independent watchdog to conduct an expedited investigation.

“Given the gravity of the situation and the understandable anxiety within the Biddeford community, we urge you to prioritize this investigation,” the Maine delegation wrote to DHS’s Office of Inspector General. 

“Timely and factual answers will be critical to providing closure for the grieving community and ensuring that federal law enforcement operations are conducted safely, lawfully, and in a manner that respects public safety.”

Collins and independent Sen. Angus King also requested the Department of Justice collaborate with state and local law enforcement authorities to investigate the fatal shooting.

International outrage

Sebastián was a Colombian immigrant with legal work authorization. Salgado Araujo was a Mexican national who had been in the United States for decades and was the father of three U.S. citizen children.

Both of their killings sparked outrage in their communities, as well as from the leaders of Mexico and Colombia.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro called Sebastián’s death, “a murder of a Colombian, a Latin American, at the hands of the US government.”

In a social media post written in Spanish, Petro said he expects to hear from Trump about the shooting. 

“They killed him for believing him to be an inferior being without rights, and as a person, he had all the rights conferred on a human being simply for being born, and he was a citizen with rights in the US,” he said. 

He added that “ICE is an organization that must be denounced on a worldwide scale.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Monday that her government will file complaints to the Justice Department relating not only to Salgado Araujo’s death, but in states where Mexican nationals have died in U.S. federal detention centers or during immigration enforcement.

“I don’t think this situation appears acceptable to anyone,” she said, according to the Texas Tribune. “This is an issue for all Mexicans.”

 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Friday postponed the date that immigrants from seven countries affected by disaster and violence can legally work in the country, extending a deadline that was at odds with federal court orders not yet aligned with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for quick deportations.

The Department of Homeland Security agency issued new guidance to employers saying work authorization for hundreds of thousands of immigrants with Temporary Protected Status impacted by a recent Supreme Court decision would expire in one to two weeks, instead of Friday.

The agency said Haitians with TPS will have valid work authorization until July 24, while nationals of Burma, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen with TPS will have it until July 17.

The decision came hours before immigrants hailing from those countries were set to lose their work authorizations under earlier USCIS guidance.

The Supreme Court ruled June 25 that the Trump administration could move forward with a plan to end TPS for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, even while the lower courts continue hearing legal challenges. 

The conservative justices found the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS was not subject to judicial review, impacting several other cases challenging the termination of humanitarian protections.

But the lower courts had not aligned their cases with the Supreme Court order by Friday, leaving in place, for now, their orders forbidding deportation.

Typically, decisions from the high court go into effect 32 days after a ruling. USCIS jumped ahead of that schedule with its July 1 guidance. The July 24 expiration date is still within 32 days of the court decision and could be further delayed.

Trump and asylum

During his second term, President Donald Trump has ended TPS for about 1 million immigrants who were initially granted humanitarian protections because they hail from countries deemed too dangerous to return. 

Federal judges are still hearing arguments about if the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS was based on discriminatory practices, such as race or country of origin. 

But the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority did not find that immigrants challenging their legal protections being revoked were “entitled” to any judicial holds postponing the end of their TPS. 

TPS recipients from Haiti and Syria will have their deportation protections in place until lower courts lift them or unless they have a protected status other than TPS, such as a pending asylum case. 

But not every TPS recipient can apply for asylum. For example, if someone has TPS due to a natural disaster, they are unlikely to meet the criteria for asylum, which is fear of persecution “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The Trump administration last year stopped processing asylum cases for immigrants from dozens of countries, including Haiti and Syria, but a federal judge in June struck down that policy. 

DHS has said that it plans to deport those who have lost TPS following the Supreme Court’s decision.

So far, the administration has declined to renew protections for 14 countries under TPS. The remaining countries with TPS are El Salvador, Lebanon and Ukraine. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has until Saturday to extend TPS for immigrants from El Salvador, who were the first to receive protections from the program. 

TPS can be renewed on cycles ranging from 6 to 18 months. It does not provide a path to citizenship.

Healthcare crisis

TPS beneficiaries from Haiti make up one of the largest shares of immigrants in the program Congress created in the 1990s.

The states with the largest population of TPS recipients from Haiti are Florida, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio according to the immigration advocacy group fwd.us.

More than 50,000 Haitians with TPS work in the healthcare industry, and lawmakers from both parties have raised concerns about the consequences of such a sudden loss of workers.

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, warned that “immediately shutting off TPS will create a crisis in our hospitals, nursing homes, and in the (intellectual disabilities) community.”

Members of a union that represents healthcare workers along the East Coast gathered in New York City Friday to protest their opposition to work permits ending for TPS recipients and raised concerns that a sudden loss of workers would exacerbate the shortage of caregivers. 

A 2024 report found that nearly half of all nursing homes in the U.S. struggle with staffing shortages. 

“If TPS ends, we will face a caregiver crisis, the likes of which we’ve never seen,” said Andy Cassagnol, the executive vice president of Service Employees International Union Local 1199.

He said the move will worsen staffing shortages in home care settings and nursing homes. 

“This is a cruel, heartless, and inhumane policy that will rip parents away from their children and devastate whole communities,” Cassagnol said of the Supreme Court’s decision. “Imagine seniors and individuals living with disabilities waking up to find their favorite aide is just gone. Maybe someone who is the only familiar face in their lives has disappeared.”

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat who sponsored a bill in the House that would extend TPS for Haiti for three years, said in a statement following the Supreme Court’s decision that the “implications of this ruling are nothing short of catastrophic.”

Haitians allege racism

But even if Pressley’s bill managed to garner 60 votes in the Senate, it’s unlikely that Trump would sign the measure after he vowed on the campaign trail to end TPS for Haitians and used pejorative language to describe Haiti and its people. 

The president’s words regarding Haiti have been central to TPS recipients’ claims that the decision to end protections was due to racism, not an evaluation of improved country conditions.  

The conservative majority of the Supreme Court noted equal protection arguments were unlikely to prevail in the lower courts. 

“None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s guidelines to states on how to request funding under counterterrorism grant programs include potentially illegal demands related to election administration, Democrats on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee said Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA, sent states last month notices of available federal funding for non-disaster grants under the Homeland Security Grant Program, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program and the Transit Security Grant Program.

Those notices included “blatant attempts to force communities to comply with the Trump administration’s political demands” or risk losing $200 million in federal funds, the letter said.

“As we approach the 25th anniversary of September 11th, it is deeply alarming that DHS and FEMA, under Donald Trump, continue to manipulate the very funding born out of a national tragedy,” they wrote. “Playing political games with counterterrorism funding undermines public safety and deprives first responders of the resources they need to do their jobs.”

The panel’s 15 Democrats, led by ranking member Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, signed the letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting FEMA Administrator Robert Fenton.

Spokespeople for DHS, FEMA and the committee’s Republicans did not immediately return messages seeking comment late Thursday. A White House spokesperson referred a request for comment to DHS.

SAVE computer system

The department is withholding up to 20% of the programs’ congressionally appropriated grant funding unless states and cities update their election laws, the Democrats wrote. The administration wants states to use the department’s powerful SAVE computer system to verify the citizenship of every voter, among other demands, the letter said.

The department also continues to retain more than $600 million in 2025 funding, the lawmakers said.

Some of the administration’s demands are unworkable or illegal under federal court decisions or state law, they said.

For example, two days before the notice went to states, a federal judge ruled that states could not use the SAVE system to check voter eligibility.

“It is unclear how or why DHS and FEMA published (notice of funding opportunity) guidance that would deliberately conflict with a court ruling,” they wrote. “To date, FEMA has not provided a revised (notice) that complies with court orders on the use of the SAVE system.”

‘Costly and impossible’ for states

Several requirements, demanded barely five months before midterm elections in November and one month before grant applications are due, “are costly and impossible to achieve on the unrealistic timeline dictated by the administration,” the letter said.

Other criteria were unclear, such as a requirement to “reconcile voters and ballots using a methodology the Secretary has not disclosed,” the Democrats wrote. The department has also not said how post-election manual audits must be conducted.

The lawmakers asked the administration to revert to 2024 guidance, which would remove confusion about the grant programs’ requirements and their legality, release materials that informed the department’s decision to tie the grant funding to election security and to immediately release all holds “explicit or de facto” on last year’s grants.

Constitutional mandate 

The changes would “very likely harm” states’ election integrity, David Becker, the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said in a media briefing earlier Thursday. 

Becker predicted that the order would be “very easy to block” in court.

The department’s requirements are not authorized by Congress or the Constitution, which empowers states to administer elections, Becker said.

“This administration continues to either fail to understand or openly defy the constitutional mandate that gives authority to run elections to the states,” he said.

A new appeals court ruling is another blow to the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy that threatens millions of immigrants with unlimited incarceration without bond if they ever crossed a border illegally.  

A sharply divided 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 on July 2 that such immigrants must receive a bond hearing within 90 days.  One of the two judges said 30 days would be a better time limit. 

The dissenting judge  said having no bond was appropriate, calling the Trump policy “constitutionally sound.” 

The 2025 policy has faced widespread rebellion among federal judges, even Trump appointees, with many of them freeing immigration prisoners and calling the policy unconstitutional. Other appeals courts have also struck it down in a conflict likely to be heard in October by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Last week’s ruling affects three of the states with some of the largest detention centers — Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Immigrants from across the county often  are transferred to those states. 

“Since ICE moves people it has detained so quickly and frequently, isolating them from their lawyers, families and support systems, many New Yorkers are held at detention centers in these states,” said Reed Dunlea, a spokesperson for the New York Immigration Coalition. 

The American Immigration Council, which was a party in the case, noted that the case turned on three longtime Texas residents with no criminal history and U.S. citizen children, all detained in traffic stops. 

The decision “affirms that constitutional rights do not disappear simply because someone is in immigration proceedings,” said Rebecca Cassier, an attorney for the council who argued in the case, in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security, in an unattributed statement to Stateline, said it disagrees with the decision and looks forward to Supreme Court review: “DHS strongly disagrees with the Fifth Circuit panel and is confident in its legal position regarding mandatory detention.”

It’s a partial reversal of the same appeals court’s ruling in February that greenlighted limitless detention for some immigrants in those states despite conflicting rulings for other states that struck down the policy as unconstitutional. As of now only the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the detention policy, covering centers in seven states: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. 

One federal court in California struck down the mandatory detention policy nationwide in a class-action lawsuit. The ruling was stayed pending appeal in March but remains in effect in part of California and has often been cited by other state judges in freeing immigration prisoners, according to a Stateline review of recent immigration rulings. 

The immigrant detention population peaked in January at an all-time high of more than 70,000 people. It declined to about 60,000 in April as fewer non-criminal immigrants were detained in the wake of controversy and protests over enforcement in Minnesota and other places. 

There are some signs that fewer non-criminals are being detained even as arrests have surged in recent days in an attempt by the Trump administration to double the number of arrests to 2,000 a day. The share of immigration arrests that led to detention dropped from 38% last year to 17% between March and May. 

Fewer than 30% of immigrants detained in April had criminal convictions, including traffic offenses and immigration crimes. The others had only immigration violations or pending criminal charges. 

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