WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has scrapped plans to use nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars to pay people who believe they were wrongly prosecuted by the Justice Department — a proposal that halted work on legislation to fund immigration and deportation activities. 

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified Tuesday before a House committee the DOJ will no longer move forward with those plans shortly after Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said the administration had reversed course. 

That decision could clear the way for the Senate to debate a roughly $70 billion package meant to fund immigration and deportation for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term. 

“I think his statements are going to be very definitive, very clear and create the certainty that I hope all of our members, and House members need as well, in order for us to proceed on the reconciliation bill,” Thune said, referring to Blanche. “But I’m not guaranteeing that happens yet.” 

Blanche confirmed Thune’s statements when he testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee in the afternoon.

“We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said when pressed by the subcommittee’s top Democrat, Rep. Grace Meng of New York.

“You and Associate Attorney General Woodward signed earlier documents regarding the settlement and this fund, would both of you now sign and release documents reversing the DOJ position on the fund?” Meng asked.

“We’re not moving forward with the fund. I’m not sure what that means to sign documents reversing. There’s nothing to reverse,” Blanche replied.

The DOJ posted on social media this week that it plans to abide by a temporary court ruling that blocked distribution of the funds, but Republican lawmakers said that wasn’t enough to end the impasse it created.

The Justice Department announced the creation of the fund last month as part of a legal settlement between Trump and the IRS over leaked copies of his returns during Trump’s first term. The settlement included provisions that precluded future IRS investigations into Trump and his family.

Senate Republicans weigh in

Thune said GOP senators had a “quite robust conversation” during a closed-door lunch about the DOJ fund and whether to move forward with their immigration and deportation package. 

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said after that meeting it’s up to GOP leaders to determine whether there are enough votes to move forward with the immigration package. 

“I think the next step is for our whip team to find out where everybody’s at based on the administration’s indication that they’re not going to move forward with the fund,” Hoeven said. 

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said there is a “chance” that Republicans could begin a marathon amendment voting session on the immigration bill as soon as Wednesday, if Blanche’s testimony alleviates concerns created by the DOJ fund. 

Montana Sen. Steve Daines, however, said he believes it’s “unlikely” that process begins this week. 

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said earlier in the day, before the lunch, that he wouldn’t accept taxpayer dollars going toward people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. 

“To provide restitution to somebody who assaulted a police officer and pled guilty to it. I mean, man, I’ve seen some crazy stuff before, but that’s right up there with crazy,” he said. 

Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis said he needs to know “if it’s dead or nearly dead.” 

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford said he wants clarification from the White House about the settlement fund in light of the court’s ruling. 

He added that Republicans are waiting to see if “the court case set aside both the settlement fund and the audits.”

“We need clarification for what it is and isn’t, because the White House already said ‘we agree, we don’t like it, but we agree with the courts,’” Lankford said. “What does that mean?”

Amendment to ban fund

Democrats have also criticized Trump and those in his administration over the fund, vowing to block it in law. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during an afternoon press conference that promises from Trump and administration officials are “worthless.” 

“Trump sued his own government, had his own Justice Department settle the case and is now trying to use taxpayer dollars to pay off his MAGA allies, billionaire buddies and cop-beating insurrectionists,” Schumer said. 

“And let’s be clear, Trump has not killed this slush fund,” he added. “He has not revoked the special tax immunity he gave himself and his family. He has not ended the corruption. He hit a temporary roadblock. That’s it.”

Schumer said the first amendment he would offer during debate on Republicans’ immigration and deportation bill would “ban Trump’s slush fund permanently and revoke his family’s free rein to commit tax fraud forever.”

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

In at least four states, migrants detained in ICE facilities have launched hunger strikes in recent weeks to protest the conditions in which they are being held.

An ongoing hunger and labor strike at the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall facility in Newark, New Jersey, reportedly involves roughly 300 people and has sparked daily protests outside the jail, which is owned and operated by the GEO Group, a private security company that provides security, maintenance, food and medical care under a 15-year contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Earlier this month, it was reported that at least 20 detainees at the 750-bed Desert View Annex in Adelanto, California, had launched a hunger strike to call attention to what they allege are substandard conditions at that facility, including a lack of medical care, unsafe drinking water, and mold.

And last month, hunger strikes reportedly erupted at the 1,800-bed North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, and at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, which has a capacity of nearly 1,900. North Lake is the largest facility in the Midwest, and Moshannon Valley is the largest in the Northeast.

The GEO Group operates all of the facilities where the hunger strikes have taken place.

Families of migrants detained at Delaney Hall say their relatives  are being tear gassed and beaten by guards. Outside the facility, ICE agents have countered protesters with pepper spray, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

In a statement on Thursday, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherill said the New Jersey Department of Health tried to conduct a health inspection of Delaney Hall, but was denied access to all but a limited portion of the facility. Sherill said Delaney Hall should be shut down.

“Refusing to provide full access raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide from public view,” she said in the statement. “I am calling for ICE to immediately de-escalate the situation as I continue working to keep New Jersey residents safe.”

ICE issued a statement dismissing the accusations of substandard conditions at the facilities as a “hoax.”

“All detainees are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries. Illegal aliens also have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the statement says. “Certified dietitians evaluate meals. In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

In a statement, the GEO Group asserted that its support services “are monitored by ICE, including by on-site agency personnel, and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure compliance with ICE’s detention standards and contract requirements regarding the treatment and services ICE detainees receive.”

For the last few days, Gabriela Fuentes, 35, has protested outside Delaney Hall.  She said her husband, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala on a work visa, told her recently that the guards had beaten and tear gassed him and other detainees.

“We’re all human, we’re all people, just because we’re Hispanic does not mean that we need to be treated like this,” Fuentes said.

Haddy Gassama, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, described the hunger strikes as “the natural consequence of a detention system that’s really falling apart at its seams.”

“Hunger strikes are a tool that people use when they are most desperate, where they feel that they have no other options,” Gassama said. “It’s really the natural consequence of what happens when you supersize a detention system that’s already rife with abuse so fast, with so much money, with so little accountability.”

Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the immigrant rights group Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, said it’s hard to get a handle on the scope of the hunger strikes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

“Upon the hunger strike, the detention center stopped communication lines to that particular unit, so it’s hard for us and for family members to stay up-to-date on what was happening,” Rivera said.

In Michigan, Ruby Robinson, an attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, called for more state oversight of ICE detention facilities.

“It’s our understanding that they do not really have the means to adequately provide the oversight that’s needed, and outside of that, we don’t really see any other oversight, besides visits from members of Congress,” Robinson said.

“Because many immigrants are being detained in county jails, not just private detention facilities, there’s an opportunity to ensure that state law is followed. And if state law is insufficient, then it needs to be updated to basically reflect reality.”

This story was updated to include a statement from the GEO Group.

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

In its latest effort to narrow pathways to immigration to the United States, the Trump administration says it will crack down on attorneys who file fraudulent asylum claims for their clients.

The U.S. has long granted asylum to people who are unable or unwilling to return to their home countries because they have been persecuted, or fear persecution, based on their race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinions.

In a directive it issued on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security instructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to develop anti-fraud policies and to take action against immigration attorneys who file false asylum claims in an immigration court.

James Percival, Homeland Security’s general counsel, said “it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country.”

“Historically, ICE has depended on the discipline of immigration judges and the enforcement of criminal fraud laws to deter this conduct, but ICE has its own tools,” Percival said in a statement. “Now, thanks to this directive, ICE attorneys have greater authority to enforce the law and stop the abuse of our asylum system by illegal aliens and attorneys.”

The limited available data suggests that asylum fraud is extremely rare. A 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office found that as asylum applications increased during the early 2010s, the terminations of asylum status due to discovered fraud declined, from 103 in 2010 to 34 in 2014.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted asylum to a total of 76,122 people during that period and terminated asylum status for 374 of them because of fraud.

The administration’s new anti-fraud directive comes one month after a federal appeals court struck down an executive order by President Donald Trump that sought to close the U.S. border to asylum-seekers.

A panel of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump’s executive order, which he issued on the first day of his second term, and subsequent administration guidance to turn back asylum-seekers without a court hearing were “unlawful” and “cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

A surge in voluntary departure agreements in immigration courts is raising concerns that Trump administration tactics are unfairly pressuring immigrants into leaving the United States, even if they have a legal right to stay.

Voluntary departures during the second Trump administration reached 89,494 cases as of May 1, according to a Stateline analysis of immigration court data processed by the Deportation Data Project, an academic research initiative. That’s more than seven times the number recorded in the last 16 months of the Biden administration (11,977).

A 10-month-old policy of mandatory detention without bond, now being challenged in appeals courts and likely to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, increases the pressure on immigrants to leave. Mandatory detention for immigrants who crossed a border illegally to get into the United States was upheld by an appeals court for Texas and Louisiana, which are the most common locations for voluntary departure cases, according to Stateline’s analysis.

“Conditions in some detention facilities are dire and, especially in the locations where bond is unavailable, individuals may feel voluntary departure is their best option in those circumstances,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Voluntary departure is a court agreement that requires an immigrant to pay for the trip out of the country and face fines for any delay. A possible benefit for the immigrant is avoiding a court order of removal that could make it all but impossible to return to the U.S. and live here legally.

Voluntary departure doesn’t include people who used a government app to leave with a federally paid plane ticket and a cash incentive, now $2,600.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pushing to quickly build and open new detention centers, with human rights groups describing crowded, often unsanitary conditions. Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, 51 people have died in the facilities, ICE reported.

The Department of Homeland Security wants to reach 1 million deportations a year.

“We see people choosing to take voluntary departure, not because they don’t have a right to stay in the United States, but because they can’t handle being in these really inhumane conditions in detention any longer,” said Shayna Kessler, director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Advancing Universal Representation Initiative, which advocates for a system like public defenders for immigration court.

Voluntary departure could be the best option, Kessler acknowledged, but “without consulting an attorney it’s impossible to know.”

Indefinite incarceration

Under the Trump policy, people who crossed the border illegally and were later arrested by immigration enforcement are incarcerated without bond. The Laken Riley Act, signed into law last year, had extended mandatory detention to immigrants arrested on suspicion of crimes as minor as shoplifting, even if the charges are later dropped.

The newer policy — which was described in the Project 2025 blueprint before Trump was elected in 2024 — would affect millions of people, no matter how long ago they came to the U.S. and even if they legally applied for asylum.

Three federal appeals courts have put the mandatory detention requirement on hold but two have let it stand, meaning the policy’s constitutionality likely will be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Earlier this year, a federal judge in Oregon accused immigration authorities of using the threat of extended detention to “win the numbers game at the cost of debasing the rule of law.”

“For the one detainee who has the audacity to challenge the legality of her detention and gains release, several more remain detained or succumb to the threat of lengthy detention, and then instead ‘voluntarily’ deport,” U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai wrote in a February opinion. He was referring to an agricultural worker arrested en route to the fields who won release after resisting pressure to sign voluntary departure papers.

One long-time immigrant in the same lawsuit, called Victor C.G. in court papers, said he was pressured to sign papers agreeing to leave for Mexico during a three-week detention after being arrested on his way home from work. He refused to sign and was released on bond after an attorney intervened; the man has lived in the United States for 26 years and had legal work authorization based on a pending visa for cooperating crime victims.

Similarly, an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit in Illinois filed in October accused immigration authorities of “coercing and threatening detainees” to sign voluntary departure agreements while held in squalid, crowded conditions at a detention center, giving up their right to fight deportation cases in court.

A November restraining order in that case required immigration authorities at the Broadview facility near Chicago to hold immigrants in sanitary conditions with access to attorneys, and to give them enough time and language help to understand paperwork such as voluntary departure agreements. The restraining order is still in place during settlement negotiations, according to court papers.

Pressure from judges

Immigration judges can also apply pressure for voluntary departure, said Jacquelyn Pavilon, coauthor of a report on voluntary departure for the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York City-based nonprofit with a mission to limit mass incarceration.

Notes from court observers, shared with the Vera Institute, show a pattern of judges suggesting voluntary departure, especially Republican-appointed judges speaking to immigrants without attorneys, Pavilon said. The Trump administration has fired immigration judges seen as too lenient and hired new ones, most recently 82 new judges announced May 21.

In a Newark, New Jersey, immigration court observed by Stateline on May 21, one Trump-appointed judge suggested voluntary departure to a family from Colombia after denying their asylum claim. “This would at least avoid a removal order,” said the judge, Leila McNeill Mullican.

The family, a married couple from Bridgeton, New Jersey, with a 20-year-old son who arrived in 2023, did not have an attorney. They chose to appeal McNeill Mullican’s decision instead of taking voluntary departure, saying they feared crime and Venezuelan-based gangs when they left in 2023. They told Stateline they would consider hiring an attorney for the appeal.

There were similar immigrant complaints about unfair pressure for voluntary departure during the first Trump administration and also under the Obama administration. Numbers peaked at around 3,000 a month under Obama and the first Trump administration, but reached more than 9,000 a month recently, according to the Stateline analysis.

One partner of an immigrant told Stateline in a chat message that signing the agreement seemed like the safest way to preserve an application for a green card. The couple left Los Angeles for Costa Rica last year through voluntary departure.

“Thankfully my partner was not detained but they were on basically weekly surveillance and being monitored with a Smart Link app,” the person wrote. “I think we just felt the pressure of what could happen if they remained in the U.S. and continued in removal proceedings. I would like to think that it’s working out for us.”

The Department of Homeland Security replied to Stateline questions with an unattributed statement: “We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App.

“The United States is offering illegal aliens $2,600 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.”

In the past, DHS has said “tens of thousands” have used the app, which is not the same as a voluntary departure outcome in court that requires travel at the immigrant’s expense.

The department did not offer a new estimate in response to Stateline’s questions, but maintained that “more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations” and that there had been 900,000 arrests and 900,000 deportations during the administration as of May 17.

It’s true that the noncitizen population has dropped sharply in government surveys — a Stateline analysis of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey shows it dropped by 2.3 million to about 25 million between January 2025 and April 2026. But many experts such as those at the Center for Migration Studies see the reported drop as being caused not by self-deportations, but rather by fear of responding to government surveys in an atmosphere of hostility to immigrants.

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

WASHINGTON — Long-time federal immigration official David Venturella will lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency spearheading President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.

Venturella will replace outgoing ICE acting Director Todd Lyons, who last month announced he would leave his position by May 31, the DHS official told States Newsroom on Wednesday. Venturella will also take on the role on an acting basis. ICE has been without a permanent, Senate-confirmed director since Trump first took office in 2017.

Venturella will oversee an agency that has come under intense congressional and public scrutiny after federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January. 

The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti led to a months-long shutdown of DHS, after Democrats pushed for constraints on federal immigration officers. The shutdown ended last month, and Republicans are moving forward with funding ICE and Customs and Border Protection for the next three years, through a complex legislative process that does not require Democratic votes. 

Venturella worked at DHS during the Obama administration, when he led the Secure Communities program in which local law enforcement shared fingerprints and booking information with federal immigration officials to identify immigrants in the country without legal authorization. The Obama administration eventually ended the program, but Trump revived it in 2017.

Venturella has also worked for the private prison company GEO, which earns billions in government contracts to detain immigrants across the country. He retired from GEO in 2023 after serving as the vice president of client relations.

As appeals courts split on the constitutionality of mandatory detention for millions of immigrants, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to decide the matter.

A Trump administration policy threatening imprisonment without bond has been struck down by three appeals courts, which could soon be joined by a fourth, but upheld by two others. The conflicting orders mean the Supreme Court must straighten out the situation as immigrants now could face different fates in different states.

The new detention policy, implemented in a July 2025 memo, threatens millions of immigrants with imprisonment without bond if they crossed a border illegally to get into the United States, no matter how long ago or whether they’ve applied for asylum. Without bond means they must be detained while awaiting court action.

The policy is a key part of the Trump administration’s stated goal to get 1 million removals a year, including deportations and voluntary returns.

So far the pace is about half that, or roughly 460,000 for the current fiscal year, if the daily rate as of mid-April continues, according to an analysis by Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University.

This spring’s mixed appeals court rulings mean that in some states, detainees may be offered bond hearings and a chance to be released pending new court dates. In other states, people can now be held indefinitely.

Most recently, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee,  struck down the policy Monday, saying it “strains reason” to suggest Congress intended to put millions of people into immigration detention. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Alabama, Florida and Georgia, also struck it down last week, saying the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 does not give President Donald Trump “unfettered authority to detain, without the possibility of bond, every unadmitted alien present in the country.”

In April, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Connecticut, New York and Vermont, also struck down the policy, calling it “the broadest mass-detention-without-bond mandate in our Nation’s history for millions of noncitizens.”

Judges in another appeals court covering New England states, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, appeared skeptical of the policy in a hearing this month but have not yet ruled.

Meanwhile the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, encompassing Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, upheld the new policy, saying the status quo gives people living here illegally more rights than those at the border seeking legal admission.

“It seems strange to suggest that Congress would have preserved bond hearings exclusively for unlawful entrants,” the 5th Circuit ruling said. Those states have some of the largest detention centers in the country, often accepting transfers from other states. The cross-state transfers complicate legal cases attempting to free those detained there.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Arkansas and several Midwestern states, also upheld the Trump policy.

Conflicting appeals rulings like these, known as “circuit splits,” generally lead to a Supreme Court ruling to settle them, experts say.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a Stateline request for comment. Last July, a department spokesperson told The Associated Press that “President (Donald) Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe.”

The Trump administration policy flies in the face of decades of federal practice that let many immigrants stay free on bond while they pursue their court cases, said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade group.

“This has done a lot of damage to people who are caught in detention with a very low amount of due process,” Dojaquez-Torres said.

The policy has also flooded federal courts with petitions for release by people denied bond under the policy, she added. Thousands were filed each week from January through late April, compared with a few dozen a week last year before the policy was enacted, according to a ProPublica report.

The threat of indefinite detention can be an incentive for immigrants who have been arrested to agree to the administration’s option of “voluntary departure.”

Hannia Ortega, who left Oklahoma for her native Mexico at age 22 last fall to avoid the threat of detention, said the policy has “helped me not to regret leaving.”

“I’ve had the opportunity to meet people here who were deported and were not given the chance to fight their cases in front of a judge. One of the people I met was an Uber driver who was deported after 36 years in the states,” Ortega wrote in an email to Stateline.

Ortega won an award for leadership and good grades in a Tulsa high school, and said she also earned a community college degree there with the help of a private scholarship for students living in the country illegally.

She decided staying in the U.S. was too risky. Her parents brought her illegally as a 6-year-old and she did not qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, a program with some deportation protections.

“It is scary and just speaks to how dangerous it has gotten for every single immigrant in the United States. I pray that better days are ahead for all but it seems unlikely any time soon,” Ortega wrote.

It’s hard to tell exactly how many immigrants are threatened with indefinite detention, but of about 14.6 million undocumented residents, the Center for Migration Studies estimates, something like 5.5 million could have entered the country illegally, making them subject to the detention policy.

There are no recent estimates for the percentage, said Robert Warren, senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies of New York. But in 2017 the center estimated 38% of unauthorized immigrants crossed the border illegally either by evading border patrol officers or surrendering to them and getting a court notice to fight deportation proceedings. Others overstayed legal visas and would not be subject to the new policy.

Mustafa Cetin, a New Jersey immigration attorney, said two of his clients from Turkey were denied bond despite a clean criminal record and active asylum cases in court. Both were arrested in October during routine check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he said.

Both won release on bond through federal court decisions, and one has already won an asylum case, he said. Both followed a familiar pattern of seeking asylum in 2023 and 2024.

“They say, ‘Don’t come in,’ but if you come in, they will process you (with a court appearance ticket),” Cetin said. “We’ve seen this play out for hundreds of thousands of people. Then, this administration, instead of trying to deal with those who come to the border, they decided to scare people away.”

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

By Naisha Roy/Medill News Service

WASHINGTON — Dozens of people gathered on a sandy lot in front of the White House construction zone Tuesday evening, carrying posters peppered with monarch butterflies and unfurling massive banners reading “Set kids free.”

The butterflies symbolized immigrants without legal status, as the protesters called to abolish all detention facilities in the United States as part of a “Close the Camps” vigil and protest organized by the Coalition to End Family and Child Detention and others, including the National Education Association.

“Migration is beautiful,” said Anat Shenker-Osorio, a communications manager who represented the NEA and her own firm at the event. “People move, and that should be celebrated.”

Many of the protesters were from Texas, rallying against the conditions in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center south of San Antonio. 

Over the last few months, several advocacy group reports and lawsuits have alleged the facility lacks potable drinking water, healthcare, adequate food and clean clothing for detainees, many of whom are children.

“Families are reporting worms and mold in the food that’s making children ill,” said Trudy Taylor Smith, a policy administrator for the Children’s Defense Fund in Texas who was at the protest. “They are reporting a lack of access to clean drinking water. The tap smells foul. It’s making children sick, and yet if people want to avoid the tap and access clean water, they have to pay their own money to buy bottled water from the commissary.”

Democrats demand release of families

Dilley is the larger of two facilities in the country that hold immigrant families with children. Both had been shuttered for nearly four years, until the Trump administration reopened them in early 2025. 

Since then, children at the Dilley detention center reported feeling “sadness and depression,” in handwritten letters to ProPublica news reporters. They also wrote about losing their appetites and missing home. 

On the same day as the protest, a delegation of congressional Democrats led by Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, visited the Dilley facility and urged the Department of Homeland Security to release all families detained there. The delegation included Reps. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas; Christian Menefee, D-Texas; Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz.; Henry Cuellar, D-Texas; Mark Takano, D-Calif.; and Chellie Pingree, D-Maine.

“The kids, as you can imagine, were distraught. They were sobbing most of the time that we were with them,” Castro said after the inspection. “When it comes to the Dilley detention center, it’s one horror after another and one abuse after another.”

The Trump administration has denied the reports of mistreatment in Dilley, saying in a press release that all detainees have access to educational resources, infant care packages and regular medical screenings. “In most cases, this is the best healthcare illegal aliens have received in their entire lives,” the release reads.

Single mothers detained with children

Dianne Garcia, a pastor at San Antonio’s Roca de Refugio Church, led the protest with a moment of silence in honor of those detained and deported. so far. Garcia has seen 18 people in her community detained, including several single mothers sent to Dilley with their children.

“I knew a 3-year-old. He used to be the most gregarious kid,” she said. “Now he’s afraid all the time, always by his mother’s side.”

About 1 in 3 Texan children have an immigrant parent, per the Migration Policy Institute. 

The Austin school district lost over 3,000 students this year, partly because parents feared sending their kids to school amid immigration sweeps.  

“When children don’t feel safe to go to school, when enrollment drops, that means teachers are laid off, that means they lose funding,” Taylor Smith said.

Despite this, the Trump administration has announced plans to expand holding areas for children. 

Many demonstrators spoke out against a proposed detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana, set to be a “short-term facility,” where migrant families and unaccompanied children would be held for three to five days. 

Trump administration officials have said the facility will only temporarily house people who have agreed to “self-deport,” or leave the country voluntarily.

The detention facility’s construction was sited inside the Alexandria International Airport complex, across from the tarmac. U.S. officials deport hundreds of immigrants without legal status every day on ICE-contracted planes from this airport. 

Already, an investigation by The Guardian found the former military facility to be heavily contaminated with PFAS, toxic “forever chemicals” directly linked to cancer and other diseases. 

‘The same thing as being in a cage’

The protest organizers hoped to prevent more detention centers, and abolish the ones that already exist. Some attendees were former detainees, like Sulma Franco, who came to the United States in 2009 from Guatemala and was immediately sent to a facility by the Border Patrol. She called the detention center where she was held a hielera, or icebox, referencing the frigid temperature. 

“Being in a detention center is the same thing as being in a cage or being in jail,” she said, in an interview conducted in Spanish. “I believe the solution isn’t improvement; the solution is to close them permanently.”

Shenker-Osorio, the communications manager, said part of the protest’s goal was to maintain pressure on the White House and shift the rhetoric around how detention is discussed. 

Instead of “facilities,” for example, some of those at the event specifically chose to use the word “camps,” referencing the similarity in conditions to Nazi concentration camps. 

The coalition has a policy working group that communicates with Congress, with the ultimate aim of passing legislation banning family detention.

“This isn’t a difficult moral question,” Taylor Smith said. “Children don’t belong in cages.”

Medill News Service articles are reported and written by graduate student journalists in the Washington program of the Medill School at Northwestern University.

The leader of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted that he had never even heard of some of the countries his agency has been deporting immigrants to.

“Now we are actually removing people to countries that I didn’t even know existed,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said during a panel discussion at the 2026 Border Security Expo in Phoenix, speaking of the third country deportation program in which the administration has sent immigrants to African nations they have no ties to. 

Lyons added that the third country deportation program has been “a huge game changer” in implementing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. 

Lyons was one of a series of Trump administration speakers, including “border czar” Tom Homan, who spoke Tuesday, and interim U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who will be giving the event’s keynote speech on Wednesday. 

Lyons, who will be resigning at the end of this month, made the comment during a “State of the Border” panel discussion. Last year, Lyons used the session to declare that ICE’s goal was to deport millions of people with the efficiency that Amazon delivers packages. 

During last year’s event, Homan and other speakers told the military industrial complex representatives in the crowd that the Trump administration is depending on the private sector to implement its mass deportation agenda. 

That message remained largely unchanged this year, though Lyons and others also took aim at the public perception of the enforcement actions which have led to nearly two-thirds of Americans saying ICE has gone too far. 

Homan claimed that those who work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE and similar agencies have been “vilified by the media” and members of Congress, taking particular offense to comments made by elected officials comparing their actions to Nazi Germany. 

Homan said that ICE is just “enforcing the laws” written by members of Congress and called those remarks the “ultimate insult.” 

The rampant use of violence by immigration agents, including the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year, has been well documented on social media and in the press.

Homan also went on to falsely claim that ICE has not arrested individuals in churches or at hospitals. There have been multiple reports of recent immigration enforcement activity at churches as well as at hospitals. The Trump administration in 2025 rolled back federal protections that designated hospitals as protected areas where ICE could not do enforcement actions. 

On those enforcement actions, Homan said that more are coming. He said he had been speaking with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has agreed to hire more deportation officers. 

“You ain’t seen shit yet,” Homan said to applause and cheers from the crowd. “This is going to be a good year.” 

Homan also claimed that New York will be seeing more ICE agents due to a proposed law that would ban police in the Empire State from entering into 287(g) agreements with ICE. Such agreements leverage local resources to do the investigative legwork for federal immigration agents and increase deportation rates. 

“We’re going to flood the zone. You’re going to see more ICE agents than you’ve seen before,” Homan said of New York if they pass such a law, claiming that it would make the state less safe and make it harder for ICE to do its job. “You forced us in this position.” 

During the “State of the Border” panel in which Lyons participated, officials lauded the Trump administration for letting them “do the work” and touted the low number of illegal border crossings that have occurred under the second Trump administration. 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott also spoke directly to “any illegal aliens out there.” 

“We’re going to go find your entire family, your entire network. Anybody you spoke to on the phone. We’re going to take out that entire network,” Scott said, adding that one arrest at the border can lead to multiple arrests inside the United States of other individuals. 

Both Scott and Lyons also shot back at a question asked by a member of the audience who asked for them to respond to reporting by ProPublica that found more than 170 U.S. citizens have been arrested by immigration agents.

“We don’t arrest U.S. citizens, we arrest criminals. Period,” Scott said, adding that any U.S. citizen they do arrest is likely a criminal and that they are overseen by the Office of the Inspector General and FBI. Lyons made a similar statement. 

The Trump administration has gutted the OIG and DHS itself has reportedly been obstructing the work of the OIG in recent months. ICE has also arrested U.S. citizens during enforcement actions who were often later released without being charged with a crime. 

A small group of protesters showed up to the event Tuesday. Among them was Democratic U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari.

On the show floor, vendors hawked their wares to Border Patrol agents, Homeland Security Investigations agents and local law enforcement that were seen by the Arizona Mirror walking the floor. 

A large majority of this year’s vendors focused on camera platforms, some meant to provide persistent surveillance and others meant to be placed at ports of entry to scan faces in cars in real time. 

Also present were a number of vendors aiming to integrate artificial intelligence with workbook systems or camera platforms. 

Two of the most prevalent forms of tech at the expo this year were drones and technology to counter them. 

But it wasn’t just surveillance technology and military grade tech meant for the border at the expo. 

One piece of equipment shown to the Mirror was the “Upper Hand Glove” by On Point Solutions. It is a wearable metal detector in the form of a glove meant to streamline the metal detection process. 

Also present at the expo were companies looking to cash in on transporting detained immigrants as well as housing them. 

The Mirror examined the list of companies set to be in attendance to highlight some of the key trends as well as noteworthy companies seeking the attention of the government officials.  

Some have ties to Trump and his allies, such as Andruil Industries, which is tied to Trump ally Palantir.

A quarter of immigration arrests since August were labeled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “collateral,” a type of arrest and detention that’s been challenged in court as an end run around civil rights.

Public outrage and lawsuits over the arrests may be tamping down the large-scale sweeps that foster them, but tens of thousands were arrested this way between August and early March.

Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deportation.

But collateral arrests can result from street sweeps and raids in which a person is singled out for questioning based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant. That person could be taken into custody if agents think they may be subject to deportation and also likely to flee if released.

Labeled for the first time ever, the collateral arrests are reported from August to early March in ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Stateline. In that time there were about 64,000 collateral arrests, a quarter of the 253,000 total arrests by ICE.

About 70% of the collateral arrests were for people with immigration-related crimes or violations alone, compared with 41% for arrests with warrants. Less than 2% of those with collateral arrests were convicted of a violent crime, one-third the rate of other arrests, and only 18% were convicted of any crime, compared with 33% for other arrests.

The collateral arrests contributed to an overall pattern of lower and lower shares of arrests for serious crimes, and more for immigration offenses alone.

Arrests climbed from about 12,000 in January 2025 to more than 40,000 in December, but fell back to 30,000 this February. The share of people with only immigration-related crimes and violations rose to more than half in December and January, the peak months for collateral arrests, and the share of violent criminals fell from 10% to 4% of arrests in that time.

New policy

ICE announced a new policy in January to issue warrants in real time if agents think an immigrant is deportable and “likely to escape,” though that policy faces a court challenge.

Total arrests and collateral arrests have been falling since December, whether because of the new policy or because of cutbacks in the large-scale street sweeps that tend to produce them.

One factor is public outrage over raids sweeping up noncriminals in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

“The sort of large operations within big cities, as they were occurring, seems to have subsided somewhat,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said. “After the kind of public outcry following Minneapolis, it seems as though, at least for now, that tactic has kind of been paused.”

The Trump administration’s focus on mass deportation opened the way for more collateral street arrests with less investigation, she added.

“If it’s a more targeted arrest, they would take the time to sort of essentially have an investigation. It’s a pretty resource-intensive way that just would not yield the kind of numbers ICE was being told to produce,” she said.

The new policy was filed in court papers in February as a response to a lawsuit over ICE sweeps in the District of Columbia last year, alleging ICE agents “have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino.”

The case resulted in a preliminary injunction in December requiring a halt to warrantless arrests without establishing probable cause that the person is living here illegally and is a flight risk.

One plaintiff in the class-action case, José Escobar Molina, said in the lawsuit that agents in two cars pulled up to him as he approached his work truck on Aug. 21, grabbing him by the arms and legs and handcuffing him without asking any questions. Escobar, 47, said in the court papers that he’s lived in the district for 25 years and has had temporary protected status as a Salvadoran native the whole time. He was held overnight in Virginia before being released.

Other lawsuits are also challenging collateral arrests, such as an incident in Idaho in which agents with warrants for five people ended up arresting 105 immigrants at a Latino community event in October.

In North Carolina, four U.S. citizens and a visa holder sued in February, saying they were arrested in the Charlotte’s Web immigration crackdown in November without warrants, as is typical of collateral arrests.

“I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me,” said Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, one of the citizens and a North Carolina native, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. He said he was doing landscaping work Nov. 15 when agents pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him, then held him in a car before releasing him.

One Illinois case that started in the first Trump administration challenged warrantless arrests and traffic stops used as a pretext for immigration arrests. A 2022 settlement required ICE to document “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status before arresting somebody. The case continues since a judge found in February that the new ICE policy of issuing warrants in real time after a detention violates the consent decree.

Shares of collateral arrests

In the months since August where collateral arrests are now labeled, the District of Columbia and Illinois stand out with high shares of collateral arrests. More than half the arrests in the district were collateral, as were 41% of those in Illinois. There were eight states in which at least 30% of arrests were collateral: Alabama, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota.

West Virginia, where there was a “statewide surge” of immigration enforcement in January with state and local cooperation, stands out for its high rate of total arrests as well as a large share of collateral arrests.

ICE labeled 1,300 arrests during Operation Metro Surge as ‘collateral’

For the eight months between August and early March, West Virginia had 1,831 arrests, or 1 in 10 of the state’s noncitizen population as of 2024, the latest data available. That’s by far the largest share in the country, followed by 7% in Wyoming (where truck drivers were targeted for immigration arrests in February) and 4% in Mississippi.

West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey, in a statement, cited the cooperation of state and local agencies with ICE through the 287(g) program that assists with immigration enforcement. He praised ICE, saying “they have removed dangerous illegal immigrants from our communities and made our state safer for families and law-abiding citizens.”

Few of those arrested in the surge were violent criminals, however. More than half of those arrested during the surge were collateral arrests, and only 1% — nine immigrants — had a violent crime conviction, according to the Stateline analysis. More than three-quarters, about 500 people, had only an immigration-related violation or crime.

Judges didn’t always agree that collateral arrests and detentions in the West Virginia surge were legal under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, ordered two detainees released in January. He noted that “similar seizures and detentions are occurring frequently across the country” without any evidence they’re necessary as required by the Constitution.

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

WASHINGTON — Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus raised serious concerns Thursday about the impact of a recent Department of Justice decision that will make it easier to deport hundreds of thousands of people brought into the country unlawfully as children, referred to as Dreamers. 

Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro said the April 24 decision from the Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals, “put a target for deportation on every single Dreamer in this country.”

The decision from the BIA found that having Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, status is not enough to prevent a deportation, making it easier for Dreamers to be removed from the U.S. There are roughly 500,000 DACA recipients. 

The case before the three-judge panel stemmed from an appeal from immigration attorneys from the Department of Homeland Security after an immigration judge terminated removal proceedings for a DACA recipient, Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago that cited her status as reason she could not be deported.  

While the decision does not mean Santiago will be immediately deported, it does set precedent for similar cases. 

Separately, immigration advocates have warned that DACA recipients have been swept up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation drive and have been detained despite their legal status. 

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat said the decision will allow immigration judges to remove DACA recipients first without terminating their status.

“Before, you had to terminate their DACA status, before they got deported,” the New York Democrat said. “Now they could go straight ahead and do this egregious action by the Board of Immigration Appeals. This is a serious escalation (of) the assault against DACA recipients.”

Spokespeople for the Justice Department did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.

Trump ‘crusade’ against DACA

Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada said the recent decision “is the Trump administration’s latest move to attack Dreamers.” She criticized Trump for going back on his comments that he would “work with the Democrats on a plan,” to keep DACA recipients in the country. 

“That is just an indefensible decision,” she said. “Their ruling on DACA is a clear escalation in President Trump’s crusade to strip protections from DACA recipients. He is attacking the program from every angle.”

DACA was created by President Barack Obama’s administration in 2012 to protect eligible residents from deportation and allow them to obtain temporary work permits,  driver’s licenses and to qualify for in-state tuition for higher education.

In Trump’s first term, he tried to rescind the program in 2017 by halting new applications and sending hundreds of thousands of recipients across the country into limbo. The Supreme Court eventually ruled against the Trump administration.

Some Republican-led states have challenged the legality of DACA and an appeals court allowed for work permits to expire in Texas, but kept deportation protections. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday will hear oral arguments on the Trump administration’s efforts to strip temporary legal status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, a move that could open them up to deportation.

The case has the potential to have an impact on multiple lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to end protections for more than 1.3 million immigrants from all over the globe with Temporary Protected Status, granted because they hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return. 

The effort to end TPS designation is part of President Donald Trump’s broader efforts to curtail immigration and strip legal status for people, opening them up to his mass deportation drive. 

“The decision will have the capacity to impact everyone with TPS,” José Palma, a coordinator for the National TPS Alliance, told reporters. 

Palma is a TPS recipient from El Salvador.

At the start of the second Trump administration there were 17 countries with a TPS designation. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended the status for 13 countries — Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.  

Noem argued that she determined the countries no longer met the threshold for TPS and that the designation was not in the interest of the United States.

The moves sparked multiple lawsuits from immigration advocates and TPS recipients. Lower courts have mostly blocked the terminations from taking effect, but it’s still resulted in loss of work authorizations, healthcare and deportations of some people with temporary status, Palma said.

In the TPS Haiti and Syria case before the justices, which was consolidated from two separate cases, lawyers argue that DHS did not follow proper government procedures in revoking the status. 

They also contend that the termination of a country destination was predetermined and motivated by racism, especially the targeting of Black immigrants such as Haitians. 

“The most damning evidence is President Trump’s own words, his own actions,” Sejal Zota, one of the attorneys on the Haiti TPS case, told reporters during a briefing. “During his last campaign, he falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of the people in Springfield (Ohio). And days later, after the pets comment, he promised to revoke Haiti’s TPS and send them back to their country.”

Even after the justices rule, the outcome of the cases is not final because both cases were in preliminary stages at the district court level before the Trump administration took the two cases to the Supreme Court, skirting the typical appeals courts. 

A ruling is expected in late June or early July, and then both cases would go back to the lower courts to continue on the merits argument. However, the practical effect, if the Supreme Court finds in favor of the government, would be that Haitians and Syrians would be potentially subject to deportation. 

History of TPS

Congress created TPS in 1990 and instructed the attorney general to consult with appropriate agencies, such as the State Department, to designate a country that is too unsafe to return to due to war, major disasters or other extraordinary circumstances. 

When Congress created DHS in 2002 – in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack – that authority was transferred over to the secretary of Homeland Security. 

A designation lasts six,12 or 18 months, and each recipient has to undergo a background check in order to remain in the U.S. and have valid work permits. Congress did not place any limits on how many times a country can be renewed for TPS, citing the potential for long-term conflicts like civil war.

Zota, one of the attorneys on the TPS case for Haiti, said the Trump administration has “attempted to reverse-engineer the facts to justify its politically … motivated decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS.”

She said the State Department has warned people not to travel to Haiti due to gang violence, kidnappings, terrorist activity and civil unrest. 

The State Department advises people if they still plan to travel to Haiti to make sure to leave dental records and DNA in case their family needs to identify their remains. 

“Our own government has conceded the peril there,” Zota said. 

Haiti was first given a TPS designation after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The designation was renewed multiple times due to the disaster and then again after Haiti’s president was assassinated by gangs in 2021, leading to further destabilization, violence and food shortages. 

What is the role of the courts?

Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney arguing on behalf of TPS holders from Syria, said one of the questions the justices will be presented with is whether the courts have any role in making sure that the federal government complies with making TPS decisions, such as making sure that the country determinations are made in coordination with relevant agencies. 

He added that the Trump administration is not coordinating with the State Department to evaluate country conditions, which he argues is not following proper administrative procedure.

“You’ll hear a lot of talk in the Supreme Court argument about whether we’re challenging a determination with respect to TPS decisions, and that’s because there’s a provision of the TPS statute which says there’s no judicial review of any determination with respect to a termination of TPS,” Arulanantham said to reporters.

Arulanantham is also the co-director at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

He said that the Trump administration is arguing about that TPS statue and whether the courts have any say.

“We think it means that the courts are not allowed to second-guess decisions about whether countries are safe,” he said. “The government thinks it means that … the courts aren’t allowed to look at any of this and that any decision they make, any rule that they set for TPS, is immune from review entirely.”

In briefs to the high court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer has argued that the lower courts should not interfere with the DHS secretary’s decision.

Arulanantham said there’s a “huge amount” at stake in the Trump administration’s argument about review of TPS designations. 

“If the government is correct, then they can terminate TPS without conducting any country conditions review at all,” he said. “They can do it for reasons that are completely arbitrary.”

Other TPS decisions

This is not the first time a TPS case has appeared before the justices during the second Trump administration. 

The high court twice allowed the Trump administration to remove TPS for more than 300,000 of the 600,000 Venezuelans in the program. Because those decisions were made on an emergency basis, the justices did not give any legal reasoning before sending the cases back to the lower courts. 

Federal judges have often cited the lack of opinion from the high court when issuing a ruling to block the Trump administration from ending TPS designation from other countries. 

Wednesday’s oral arguments will be the first time the justices will hear a TPS case and give a decision on their ruling about the Trump administration’s move to revoke protections. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House on Thursday passed a measure that would extend Temporary Protected Status for Haiti for three years, in a rare rebuke by the GOP-led Congress to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Ten Republicans defected, including Reps. Maria Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez of Florida, Rich McCormick of Georgia, Don Bacon of Nebraska, Mike Lawler and Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Mike Turner and Mike Carey of Ohio and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. 

Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California independent who caucuses with the GOP, also voted for the bill. 

The bill, which succeeded 224-204, came as Trump’s administration has sought to revoke legal protections for immigrants with Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, including Haitian nationals, amid his crackdown on immigrants without legal status.  

The bill now heads to the GOP-led Senate, and should that chamber pass the measure, would almost certainly be vetoed by Trump. 

Discharge petition

The Democratic-led effort came to the floor under a discharge petition, which allows a bill to skirt Republican leadership and be brought to the House floor once it gains the signatures of a majority of House members.

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley — a Massachusetts Democrat and co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus — brought forth the petition in January and it reached the 218-signature threshold in late March.

Pressley’s petition forced a floor vote on a bill from New York Democratic Rep. Laura Gillen. The version voted on by the House would require the secretary of Homeland Security to designate Haiti for TPS until April 2029. 

Lawler, a New York Republican, was an original co-sponsor of Gillen’s measure.

Lawler, Salazar, Fitzpatrick and Bacon had also signed on to Pressley’s discharge petition.

The bill’s passage in the House came just days before the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments over Trump’s efforts to revoke TPS for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. 

A federal judge in February blocked the termination of TPS for Haiti from going into effect — shortly before the designation was slated to end. 

TPS is provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary to nationals who cannot safely return home. The deportation protection lets individuals legally work in the United States, with renewal cycles that range from six to 18 months.  

‘A death sentence’

“Let us be clear about what deportation would mean — we would be sending parents back into danger, ripping our seniors away from their caregivers, faith leaders back into instability, and essential workers back into insecurity,” Pressley said at a Wednesday press conference she and Gillen held with colleagues and advocates regarding the effort. 

“To deport anyone to a country that is grappling with layered political, humanitarian and economic crises is unconscionable, it is dangerous and it is preventable,” Pressley added. 

“To deport anyone to Haiti right now is unlawful, and it would be a death sentence.”