School district officials in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, say their sense of security is shaken and their hearts shattered after four students from the district were recently taken by officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Columbia Heights Public School District says two children were taken on Tuesday, including a 17-year-old boy on his way to school. He was removed from his car and taken away.
Then in the afternoon, 5-year-old Liam Ramos was taken with his father while in their driveway after just arriving home from his preschool classroom. School officials say the child was used as bait to knock on the door and ask to be let in, letting officers see if anyone else was home.
“Why detain a 5-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” said Superintendent Zena Stenvik.
The Department of Homeland Security later said that the child was not targeted by ICE, but was “abandoned” by his father. It said his father fled federal agents as they approached his vehicle, leaving the child. DHS said the father, whom they described as an illegal alien from Ecuador, was later taken into custody as other ICE officers stayed with the child.
School officials say there was an adult there who offered to take the child, but ICE did not allow that.
Federal officials said on Thursday that the boy and his father are together at an immigration processing center in Dilley, Texas.
An attorney for the Ramos family, Marc Prokosch, and the school district deny that Liam was abandoned by his father.
Prokosch said Liam and his father entered the U.S. legally from Ecuador and Liam’s father doesn’t appear to have a criminal record.
The Ecuadorian government said its consulate in Minneapolis contacted ICE as soon as it got word that Liam was being held, adding that it is “monitoring the situation of the child in order to safeguard their safety and well-being.”
Two weeks ago, a 10-year-old student in fourth grade was taken by ICE agents on her way to elementary school with her mother. During the arrest, the child called her father on the phone to tell her that ICE agents were bringing her to school. The father then came to the school to find out that both his daughter and wife had been taken.
School officials say both children and their parents are being held in a detention center in Texas. They say Liam Ramos’ family is following U.S. legal parameters and has an active asylum case with no order of deportation.
The school officials also said they don’t know what happened. They want the public to get involved as this is happening to students all across the state of Minnesota.
“We are asking to please reach out to your congressional representative to ask for an immediate and peaceful resolution to this occupation,” Stenvik said. “Please help us and other schools to again be a safe place where all belong and all succeed.”
The district also has an immigration lawyer to help figure out how to get the students back to Minnesota.
Federal immigration authorities removed a Maryland father to El Salvador on Tuesday despite two court orders saying not to.During an emergency hearing Thursday at federal court in Baltimore, a federal judge examined what happened to Jose Serrano-Maldonado.Federal authorities admitted they made a mistake, conceding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated court orders filed in the system, even with a banner in Serrano-Maldonado’s file that said, “Do not remove.”But the feds couldn’t say why they did it anyway.The judge called this a very bad situation and demanded to know, in writing, exactly who took what steps, when and why.Serrano-Maldonado’s immigration attorney, Anna Alyssa Tijerina, is fighting for his immediate return to the United States, telling the judge that her client’s life is in danger.”He told me he is going to try and remain in his house as much as possible until this is resolved. He told me he wants to come back to the United States, even if it’s back to the detention center,” Tijerina told sister station WBAL-TV.Assistant U.S. Attorney Beatrice Thomas offered no comment outside the court when asked questions by WBAL. In court, Thomas told the judge that the government is working to fly Serrano-Maldonado back on “ICE Air” but that there’s a lot of red tape and it could take many days.The judge ordered status updates to be filed daily until Serrano-Maldonado is returned to the U.S. It’s unlikely that those daily status updates will be accessible publicly because the government said it plans to file the updates under preliminary seal.”I can’t imagine being in (the family’s) position of knowing, not knowing. At least, ‘There’s no new update today,’ is an update, right? They know something, they know that nothing was done today, but something will be done tomorrow,” Tijerina told WBAL. “For the sake of my client, for the sake of my client’s life in El Salvador, and for the sake of his family, I hope that this gets resolved quickly.”Thursday’s hearing was the first of three immigration hearings for this sole judge in the single courtroom on just one day.
Federal immigration authorities removed a Maryland father to El Salvador on Tuesday despite two court orders saying not to.
During an emergency hearing Thursday at federal court in Baltimore, a federal judge examined what happened to Jose Serrano-Maldonado.
Federal authorities admitted they made a mistake, conceding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated court orders filed in the system, even with a banner in Serrano-Maldonado’s file that said, “Do not remove.”
But the feds couldn’t say why they did it anyway.
The judge called this a very bad situation and demanded to know, in writing, exactly who took what steps, when and why.
Serrano-Maldonado’s immigration attorney, Anna Alyssa Tijerina, is fighting for his immediate return to the United States, telling the judge that her client’s life is in danger.
“He told me he is going to try and remain in his house as much as possible until this is resolved. He told me he wants to come back to the United States, even if it’s back to the detention center,” Tijerina told sister station WBAL-TV.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Beatrice Thomas offered no comment outside the court when asked questions by WBAL. In court, Thomas told the judge that the government is working to fly Serrano-Maldonado back on “ICE Air” but that there’s a lot of red tape and it could take many days.
The judge ordered status updates to be filed daily until Serrano-Maldonado is returned to the U.S. It’s unlikely that those daily status updates will be accessible publicly because the government said it plans to file the updates under preliminary seal.
“I can’t imagine being in (the family’s) position of knowing, not knowing. At least, ‘There’s no new update today,’ is an update, right? They know something, they know that nothing was done today, but something will be done tomorrow,” Tijerina told WBAL. “For the sake of my client, for the sake of my client’s life in El Salvador, and for the sake of his family, I hope that this gets resolved quickly.”
Thursday’s hearing was the first of three immigration hearings for this sole judge in the single courtroom on just one day.
Videos of confrontations between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Minneapolis residents have flooded social media, showing some of the 3,000 officers who are deployed in the city stopping, questioning and detaining residents.
In one case, immigration agents escorted a U.S. citizen who is a grandfather of Hmong ancestry out of his house in his underwear in freezing weather. In another case, a father of a 5-year-old girl was briefly detained and zip-tied after he said a federal agent falsely accused him of not being a U.S. citizen because of his accent. The agency is also under scrutiny for reportedly dispatching a 5-year-old boy to knock on the front door of his home to lure relatives outside before agents then took the child into custody.
The events have sparked protests and prompted confusion over what ICE is legally allowed to do in public and private locations. Are there limits on when and how ICE can approach or detain you? Does the law differentiate between encounters in public versus a private space, such as a home? And is the Supreme Court becoming more tolerant of aggressive ICE actions?
Legal experts weighed in on the public’s constitutional protections from immigration stops and detentions.
What rights do people have when approached by ICE?
Federal lawgivesimmigration agents the authority to arrest and detain people believed to have violated immigration law. But everyone — including immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally — is protected against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
“All law enforcement officers, including ICE, are bound by the Constitution,” said Alexandra Lopez, managing partner of a Chicago-based law firm specializing in immigration cases.
The Fourth Amendment doesn’t stop ICE from trying to deport people who have broken immigration law, but it has traditionally constrained the agency. The more extensive an enforcement action is, the higher the bar for immigration officers to justify their actions.
For example, officers can question someone in a public place, but more extensive interactions — such as a brief detention that’s not a formal arrest — require a “reasonable suspicion” that someone has committed a crime or is in the U.S. illegally, the Supreme Court has ruled.
Reasonable suspicion “has to be more than a guess or a presumption,” said Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor. To meet this standard, a reasonable person would need to suspect that a crime was being committed, had been committed or would be committed.
Agents must meet an even higher bar to arrest someone. They need “probable cause,” which generally requires enough evidence or information to suggest a person has committed a crime.
What is a “Kavanaugh stop”?
Historically, the Supreme Court has ruled that racial or ethnic profiling is unconstitutional. But a recent opinion by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh gave ICE increased discretion to use race as a factor for stopping and questioning people.
In the 2025 case Noem v. Perdomo, Kavanaugh was one of six justices who voted to stay a lower court ruling in favor of plaintiffs challenging federal immigration enforcement tactics in Los Angeles. Kavanaugh wrote that “apparent ethnicity” could be used as a “relevant factor” in determining reasonable suspicion, as long as it was combined with other factors and not used on its own.
Before Kavanaugh wrote this, courts had “often ruled that agents could not stop someone just because they ‘looked like an immigrant’ or were in a high-crime area,” Lopez said. But if immigration officers follow Kavanaugh’s guidance, “it gives ICE a lot more discretion and justification to profile.”
Critics of Kavanaugh’s opinion “argue that the ‘relevant factor’ language invites abuse, opening the door to ethnic profiling,” said Rodney Smolla, a Vermont Law and Graduate School professor.
But Kavanaugh’s opinion was not co-signed by other justices, and it came from a procedural ruling rather than a substantive one, so its legal impact might be limited. The Supreme Court “has not made a definitive ruling on ‘Kavanaugh stops’ and their permissibility,” said Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor.
Somin and other legal analysts have said Kavanaugh appeared to dial back his support for race or ethnicity as a factor when he wrote a different opinion several months later, in Trump v. Illinois, which stopped the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard in Illinois.
Chongly (Scott) Thao, a U.S. citizen, at his home on Jan. 19, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn., the day after federal agents broke open his door and detained him without a warrant. (AP)
Do people’s rights differ inside their homes versus in a public space?
The Supreme Court has generally ruled that, unless a resident grants consent, law enforcement cannot enter a private home without a warrant signed by a judge, which requires the government to provide evidence showing probable cause.
“This means a person inside the house generally need not open the door, need not converse with the agent, and may require the agent to slip the warrant under the door or hold it to a window,” Smolla said. There are some exceptions, such as if an officer encounters a violent crime in progress, or someone needing medical care.
Securing a judicial warrant is time consuming and is typically reserved for high-priority cases in which people are suspected of crimes beyond immigration violations, Lopez said. “It’s much easier for ICE to arrest individuals in public,” she said.
In the past, federal immigration officers typically would not forcibly enter homes if they only had an administrative warrant issued by ICE itself, without a judge’s approval. Some lower courts have ruled in the past that entering homes without a judicial warrant violates the Fourth Amendment.
Specific ICE officials have authority to issue administrative warrants. The warrants require “probable cause to believe” that the person named in the warrant is subject to removal. But they are not reviewed by anyone in the judicial branch.
A leaked ICE memo approved entering homes without consent using an administrative warrant alone, as long as a final order of removal has been issued, The Associated Press reported Jan. 22.
The AP, citing a whistleblower disclosure, said the memo has been used to train new ICE officers, and “those still in training are being told to follow the memo’s guidance instead of written training materials that actually contradict the memo.”
The May 12, 2025, memo, signed by ICE acting director Todd Lyons, said the Department of Homeland Security “has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence” but added that “the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.”
If this policy were to be challenged in court, it’s unclear whether it would be ruled constitutional.
What can people do if they think ICE has infringed on their Fourth Amendment rights?
If you believe that your rights were violated, perhaps causing an injury or property loss, your options for suing for compensation are limited.
Unlike many state laws, federal law generally prohibits civil lawsuits against federal officials for violating people’s rights. A 1971 Supreme Court decision briefly loosened these prohibitions, before tightening them again.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Berkeley’s law school, and Burt Neuborne, a New York University emeritus law professor, wrote, “In one case, the Supreme Court held that people who had been illegally thrown off the Social Security disability rolls and were left without income could not sue, even though they had been given no due process. In another, the court declared that a man dying of cancer after the prison repeatedly denied him any medical care could not sue.”
David Rudovsky, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, said there might be an opportunity to sue under a different law, the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Still, he said, plaintiffs would face a steep challenge: “It’s not an easy path, and most people can’t afford to retain a lawyer.”
ICE’s Operation Metro Surge started in the Twin Cities metro area nearly two months ago. The Trump Administration says they’ve arrested at least 3,000 immigrants in Minnesota. But federal officials have released only limited information about those who have been detained.
When WCCO looked at cases online, most filed recently are habeas corpus, which an attorney clarifies means someone is in federal custody who maybe shouldn’t be.
“Not a single one of my clients detained has a criminal record and all of them were in a process of some kind,” said immigration lawyer Carrie Peltier.
Peltier says she’s been working nonstop for the past year.
“It’s by choice in-part,” she added. “You really connect with your clients and you feel terrible for what they’re going through. And think if I don’t answer the phone, then who will answer the phone?”
Others WCCO spoke to in her field say the same.
On Minnesota’s federal court website there’s a portal showing all of the cases that have been filed. The list refreshes every 15 minutes and is growing hour by hour.
Peltier says her name is on five of the filings posted in the last week. Many filings on behalf of those seeking asylum from countries where they didn’t feel safe.
“They’re afraid and don’t understand what’s happening because they’re doing everything they’re told to do,” said Peltier.
Now, they’re at the mercy of the court system.
“The judges are for sure struggling to keep up, that’s pretty clear,” said Peltier. “However, the government is responding with a one paragraph statement.”
Which she adds, impacts how the judges are sorting through these cases.
“So there’s not a lot that the judges have to sort through and sift through each time, they’ve done the analysis. So when the government gives a non response response, they can just grant the motion,” Peltier told WCCO. “Sometimes people can’t empathize with a problem until it happens to them, but I wish it weren’t the case.”
Peltier told WCCO right now, many of the clients she works with are staying home as much as possible for their safety.
Data obtained by The New York Times illustrates the differences between President Trump’s and President Biden’s approaches to deportations. Our data reporter Albert Sun describes what we found.
By Albert Sun, Gilad Thaler, Melanie Bencosme, Joey Sendaydiego, Edward Vega, Jon Miller and Thomas Trudeau
January 18, 2026
Albert Sun, Gilad Thaler, Melanie Bencosme, Joey Sendaydiego, Edward Vega, Jon Miller and Thomas Trudeau
Germán Rodolfo Varela López with his baby niece in his arms.
Varela family.
Germán Rodolfo Varela López was forced to flee Venezuela more than two decades ago after doing something that marked him for life: standing in public, in uniform, and denouncing President Hugo Chávez.
Now, after 20 years of living quietly in the United States, the former Venezuelan National Guard lieutenant faces deportation — which his family says could cost him his life.
Varela reported faithfully to U.S. immigration authorities, raised three children, built a business and stayed far from the politics that once forced him to flee his country. In 2005, a U.S. immigration judge ruled that returning him to Venezuela would likely result in torture or death, granting him protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Today, Varela sits in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Tennessee, detained since November 2025 and facing possible deportation, perhamaybe not to Venezuela, but to Mexico. His family and fellow Venezuelan exiles warn that such a move could place him in grave danger.
When judges grant protections under the Convention Against Torture, that typically prohibits deportation to the country where they could face danger. However, they can still be sent to third countries, lawyers told the Herald, and Mexico could eventually send Varela back to Venezuela.
“This is not a technical immigration issue,” said José Antonio Colina, president of the Venezuelan exile group Veppex. “It’s about whether the United States will uphold the protection it already granted against torture.”
A case rooted in dissent
Varela’s story begins in one of the most turbulent chapters of Venezuela’s modern history.
In 2002, he and Colina were young officers who joined the Plaza Altamira protests in Caracas, a rare public civic-military movement against Chávez. The officers accused the government of politicizing the armed forces and tolerating the presence of Colombian guerrilla groups and Cuban military personnel on Venezuelan soil.
Germán Rodolfo Varela López when he was an active officer in Venezuela. Varela family.
By late 2003, both men were accused by the Chávez government of terrorism and faced arrest warrants and threats. On Dec. 19, 2003, they arrived at Miami International Airport and formally requested political asylum. They were detained at the Krome processing center near the Everglades, passed interviews showing they had credible fear of being persecuted if they were returned to their country — and then saw their cases against them in Venezuela escalate.
The Venezuelan government accused them of attacks on the Spanish embassy and Colombian consulate in February 2003. It filed an extradition request. In the course of over a dozen hearings before a federal judge, the allegations were examined but never substantiated.
In February 2005, their asylum petitions were denied, but the U.S. granted both men protections under the Convention Against Torture, finding that they would be tortured or killed if returned to Venezuela. After a hunger strike and further appeals, both were released in April 2006 under a high-control program for migrants who cannot be deported.
Colina settled in Miami. Varela moved to Memphis.
Two decades of compliance — then detention
According to his brother, Carlos Varela, Germán complied with every immigration requirement for the next two decades, reporting first monthly, then quarterly, then annually. He never had a criminal record and cooperated with U.S. authorities. A Miami Herald search of public records found only traffic infractions over his two plus-decades in the U.S.. He paid a fine for failing to stop at a red light in Florida, records show, and a judge withheld convictions in two 2011 speeding cases in Illinois.
That changed on Nov. 21, 2025, during what Carlos described as a routine immigration check-in in Tennessee. Varela was fitted with an ankle monitor and told to return the following week. When he did, ICE detained him, informing him that his Convention Against Torture protection could be reviewed.
Over the following weeks, Varela was told he would be removed from the United States to a third country — with Mexico emerging as the likely destination.
“From the first day, he said Mexico was the same as Venezuela,” Carlos said. “He told me, ‘I’m scared. I can’t sleep.’”
Mexico can be dangerous
On Friday, the first flight carrying deportees from the U.S. landed in Venezuela since U.S. forces captured leader stronman Nicolás Maduro. The United States had paused deportations to Venezuela for a little over a month. The Trump administration sent Venezuelans to Mexico instead as part of its aggressive mass deportation agenda that is expanding third-country deportations.
Advocates supporting Venezuelan immigrants in Mexico, immigration attorneys in Miami, and Venezuelan dissidents in the United States emphasized that Mexico is not necessarily a safe third country for deportees.
Venezuelans are being dropped off in parts of southern Mexico where there is a large presence of organized and violent crime, said activists on the ground, and where there are fewer legal resources to help them legalize their status.
Varela could try to seek asylum in Mexico. But it’s also possible that Mexico could deport Varela and others fleeing political repression to Venezuela.
And even if Varela were to remain in Mexico, Colina and other exiles argue that networks linked to the Venezuelan regime — including figures associated with the Cartel of the Suns and transnational gangs such as Tren de Aragua — operate with enough reach to endanger former military opponents there.
Jose Antonio Colina, the founder of VEPPEX, a nonprofit made up of Venezuelans who were politically persecuted and now live in exile, Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com
In a letter sent this month to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Colina urged immediate U.S. intervention, warning that deportations of CAT-protected Venezuelans to third countries like Mexico risk “chain refoulement” — indirect return to torture through intermediaries.
“CAT explicitly prohibits removals where there is a substantial risk of torture, whether by government agents or with their acquiescence,” Colina wrote. “That protection applies globally, not only to Venezuela.”
The letter highlights Varela’s case as nearly identical to Colina’s own: both entered the U.S. together in 2003, both were accused by the Chávez government of politically motivated crimes, and both were granted CAT protection after judges found a credible risk of torture.
Varela, Colina noted, has since lived openly in the United States and even contributed as a security analyst to Spanish-language media, including CNN en Español — visibility that exiles say increases his risk.
Appeal to Washington
Colina’s letter asks Rubio to promote an immediate moratorium on deportations to third countries for Venezuelans with CAT deferrals, particularly former military officers, and to urgently review Varela’s detention, including possible release under supervision or bond.
The appeal also cites Venezuela’s incomplete political transition: while Maduro has been captured and some Venezuelan political prisoners released, human rights groups such as Foro Penal report that hundreds of political and military detainees remain imprisoned in the South American nation, with repression continuing under figures like Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. And though the United States removed Maduro, his second in command, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, is now at the helm of the Venezuelan government.
“This is not a post-dictatorship environment,” Colina said in an interview. “The structures of persecution are still there.”
Silence and fear
Carlos Varela said the last time he heard from his brother was the day before officials interviewed him again. Germán sounded panicked. he said. Since then, there has been silence.
Colina said detainees from Germán’s facility are often transferred during early-morning hours — frequently to Mexico — heightening fears that removal could already be under way.
Compounding the concern are Varela’s health issues. He suffers from diabetes and hypertension, and his family says he has received inadequate medical care while detained. They have been unable to visit him or provide legal assistance. Shelter providers in Mexico who are receiving U.S. deportees say they have been overwhelmed by a wave of older immigrants who have chronic conditions, and they struggle to help them find care.
A test of U.S. commitments
Immigration experts say the case raises broader questions about the durability of protections granted under the Convention Against Torture.
“CAT is supposed to be one of the strongest safeguards in U.S. immigration law,” said a former immigration attorney familiar with similar cases, who requested anonymity. “Reopening those cases decades later — and deporting people to third countries with known risks — undermines that protection.”
Carlos Varela said that his brother believed the U.S. would honor his word and protect him from the government he stood up to over 20 years ago.
“We’re asking it to do that now — before it’s too late.”
Galardonado periodista con más de 30 años de experiencia, especializado en la cobertura de temas sobre Venezuela. Amante de la historia y la literatura.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March of last year, will learn next month whether the federal government might re-detain him.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March of last year, will learn next month whether the federal government might re-detain him.
Maryland federal Judge Paula Xinis says she will rule by Feb. 12 whether the removal order granted a year ago was a final one. If she determines it was, the government could take him back into custody.
In the meantime, Abrego Garcia, 30, is spending time with his American wife, Jennifer, and other family members in Maryland. He was released from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility just before Christmas, according to his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg.
“For him the homecoming was incredibly emotional,” said Sandoval-Moshenberg. “This is a person who spent nearly all of 2025 in a jail or detention center.”
Abrego Garcia immigrated illegally from El Salvador to the United States as a teenager, and had since been living and working in Maryland.
He was first detained in March 2025 and then mistakenly deported to El Salvador, despite an order mandating that he not be sent there for safety reasons.
The government then returned him in June, only to subsequently take him back into custody and charge him with human trafficking in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia denies those charges; a trial for those charges was delayed pending the resolution of his deportation status.
The Donald Trump administration has named a number of places Abrego Garcia could be deported, including several nations in Africa. His preference would be to be deported to Costa Rica, where he would not be in fear of being re-deported to El Salvador.
Costa Rica has already agreed to grant Abrego Garcia legal refugee status.
“It’s been the U.S. government that’s keeping him in this country,” said Sandoval-Moshenberg. “Our argument isn’t that he can’t be deported; our argument is that he must be deported. But he must be deported to Costa Rica because that’s the country that’s offered him safety.”
The Trump administration has insisted, without proof, that Abrego Garcia is a violent gang member. He has said he has never been a member of MS-13 or any other criminal gang.
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A federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a lower court decision that released Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail, bringing the government one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the Palestinian activist.A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia instructed the lower court to dismiss Khalil’s habeas petition, a court filing that secured his release. The panel ruled that the federal district court in New Jersey did not have jurisdiction over the matter because immigration challenges are handled differently under the law.In a 2-1 decision, the panel wrote that federal immigration laws require deportation challenges be made by filing a petition for review of a final order of removal to a federal appeals court — not a lower-level district court.“That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple—not zero or two,” the panel wrote. “But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government conduct.”The law bars Khalil “from attacking his detention and removal in a habeas petition,” the panel added.Messages sent to Khalil and his legal team were not immediately returned.
PHILADELPHIA —
A federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a lower court decision that released Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail, bringing the government one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the Palestinian activist.
A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia instructed the lower court to dismiss Khalil’s habeas petition, a court filing that secured his release. The panel ruled that the federal district court in New Jersey did not have jurisdiction over the matter because immigration challenges are handled differently under the law.
In a 2-1 decision, the panel wrote that federal immigration laws require deportation challenges be made by filing a petition for review of a final order of removal to a federal appeals court — not a lower-level district court.
“That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple—not zero or two,” the panel wrote. “But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government conduct.”
The law bars Khalil “from attacking his detention and removal in a habeas petition,” the panel added.
Messages sent to Khalil and his legal team were not immediately returned.
There are about 98,000 immigrants from Somalia living in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau’s latest 2024 estimates. About 83% are naturalized U.S. citizens.This comes as the Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is ending temporary protected status for Somali immigrants.File video above: Temporary protection status ends for Nicaraguans and HonduransTPS offers protection from deportation and work authorization for those who are facing unsafe conditions in their home countries. Only a fraction of immigrants from Somalia in the U.S. have been granted TPS.The majority of Somali immigrants in the U.S. — about 44% — live in Minnesota. Ohio and Washington host the second-highest number of immigrants from Somalia, just over 10,000 each. President George H.W. Bush first granted TPS to Somalis in 1991 during the country’s civil war. Subsequent administrations have repeatedly renewed that status, including most recently President Joe Biden in 2024.Over the past decade, the total Somali immigrant population in the U.S. has remained about the same, although a growing number have become naturalized citizens. There are about 260,000 total people of Somali descent in the U.S. as of 2024 estimates — that’s including those born in the U.S.PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiPiFmdW5jdGlvbigpeyJ1c2Ugc3RyaWN0Ijt3aW5kb3cuYWRkRXZlbnRMaXN0ZW5lcigibWVzc2FnZSIsKGZ1bmN0aW9uKGUpe2lmKHZvaWQgMCE9PWUuZGF0YVsiZGF0YXdyYXBwZXItaGVpZ2h0Il0pe3ZhciB0PWRvY3VtZW50LnF1ZXJ5U2VsZWN0b3JBbGwoImlmcmFtZSIpO2Zvcih2YXIgYSBpbiBlLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdKWZvcih2YXIgcj0wO3I8dC5sZW5ndGg7cisrKXtpZih0W3JdLmNvbnRlbnRXaW5kb3c9PT1lLnNvdXJjZSl0W3JdLnN0eWxlLmhlaWdodD1lLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdW2FdKyJweCJ9fX0pKX0oKTs8L3NjcmlwdD4=
There are about 98,000 immigrants from Somalia living in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau’s latest 2024 estimates. About 83% are naturalized U.S. citizens.
This comes as the Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is ending temporary protected status for Somali immigrants.
File video above: Temporary protection status ends for Nicaraguans and Hondurans
TPS offers protection from deportation and work authorization for those who are facing unsafe conditions in their home countries. Only a fraction of immigrants from Somalia in the U.S. have been granted TPS.
The majority of Somali immigrants in the U.S. —about 44% — live in Minnesota.
Ohio and Washington host the second-highest number of immigrants from Somalia, just over 10,000 each.
President George H.W. Bush first granted TPS to Somalis in 1991 during the country’s civil war. Subsequent administrations have repeatedly renewed that status, including most recently President Joe Biden in 2024.
Over the past decade, the total Somali immigrant population in the U.S. has remained about the same, although a growing number have become naturalized citizens.
There are about 260,000 total people of Somali descent in the U.S. as of 2024 estimates — that’s including those born in the U.S.
WASHINGTON — After President Trump ordered strikes that led to the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, celebrations erupted in Venezuelan communities across the U.S.
But for many of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants facing possible deportation, their relief and joy were cut by the fear about what comes next from an administration that has zeroed in on Venezuelans as a target.
“Many of us asked ourselves, ‘What’s going to happen with us now?’” said A.G., a 39-year-old in Tennessee who asked to be identified by her initials because she lacks legal status. Even so, Maduro’s ouster gave her a lot of hope for her mother country.
Venezuelans began fleeing in droves in 2014 as economic collapse led to widespread food and medicine shortages, as well as political repression. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans are now living outside the country — including 1.2 million in the U.S.
Venezuelans migrants walk toward Bucaramanga, Colombia, in 2019.
(Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
A.G. and her now-18-year-old son arrived at the southern border in 2019. Since then, she said, they have built a good life — they own a transport company with delivery trucks, pay taxes and follow the law.
Maduro’s fall left her with mixed feelings.
“He’s obviously a dictator, many people have died because of him and he refused to give up power, but the reason that they entered Venezuela, for me what President Trump did was illegal,” she said. “Innocent people died because of the bombs. I’m asking God that it all be for good reason.”
Dozens of Venezuelans and others were killed in the U.S. invasion — more than 100, a government official said — including civilians.
The Trump administration is framing its Venezuela operation as an opportunity for Venezuelans like A.G. “Now, they can return to the country they love and rebuild its future,” said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Tragesser.
Katie Blankenship, a Miami-based attorney with Sanctuary of the South who has represented many Venezuelans facing deportation, sees a less promising future.
“We’re going to see increased targeting of Venezuelans to force them to leave the U.S. into a political and socioeconomic environment that’s likely only more destabilized and subject to more abuse,” she said.
The Venezuelan community in the U.S. swelled, in part, because the Biden administration expanded pathways for them to enter the country.
Volunteer help a Venezuelan immigrant at the storage units from a volunteer-run program that distributes donations to recently arrived Venezuelan immigrants in need, in Miami, Fla., in 2023.
(Eva Marie Uzcategui / Los Angeles Times)
One of those programs allowed more than 117,000 Venezuelans to purchase flights directly to the U.S. and stay for two years if they had a U.S.-based financial sponsor and passed a background check. Other Venezuelans entered legally at land ports of entry after scheduling interviews with border officers.
By the end of the Biden administration, more than 600,000 Venezuelans had protection from deportation under Temporary Protected Status, a program used by both Republican and Democratic administrations for immigrants who cannot return home because of armed conflict, natural disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly referred to Venezuelan immigrants as criminals, singling them out more than any other nationality — in 64% of speeches, an Axios analysis showed. He has said repeatedly, without evidence that Venezuela emptied its prisons and mental institutions to flood the U.S. with immigrants.
One of Trump’s first acts as president was to designate the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization. Within two months, he invoked an 18th century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport 252 Venezuelan men accused of being Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned and tortured despite many having no criminal histories in the U.S. or Latin America.
Later, the Trump administration stripped away protections for Venezuelans with financial sponsors and TPS, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling the latter “contrary to the national interest.”
In a September Federal Register Notice, Noem said that TPS for Venezuelans undercut the administration’s foreign policy objectives because one result of allowing Venezuelans in the U.S. was “relieving pressure on Maduro’s regime to enact domestic reforms and facilitate safe return conditions.” In other words, if Venezuelans returned home, that would pressure the government to enact reforms.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, along with U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, left, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, right, participates in a news conference near Camp 57 at Angola prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary and America’s largest maximum-security prison farm, to announce the opening of a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility that will house immigrants convicted of crimes in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, on Sept. 3, 2025.
(Matthew Hilton / AFP via Getty Images)
The administration has offered contrasting assessments of conditions in Venezuela. Noem wrote that although certain adverse conditions continue, “there are notable improvements in several areas such as the economy, public health, and crime.”
Throughout the year, though, the State Department continued to reissue an “extreme danger” travel advisory for Venezuela, urging Americans to leave the country immediately.
Conditions for Venezuelans in the U.S. grew more complicated after a man from Afghanistan was accused of shooting two National Guard members in November; in response, the administration froze the immigration cases of people from 39 countries, including Venezuela, that the administration considers “high-risk.” That means anyone who applied for asylum, a visa, a green card or any other benefit remains in limbo indefinitely.
After a panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act in September, the Justice Department appealed. In a support brief filed in December, the Justice Department cited escalating tensions with Venezuela.
David Smilde, a Tulane University sociologist and expert on Venezuelan politics, said that invading Venezuela could justify renewed use of the Alien Enemies Act.
The law says the president can invoke the Alien Enemies Act not only in times of “declared war,” but also when a foreign government threatens or carries out an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” against the U.S.
“Now it will be difficult, I think, for the court to say, ‘No, you can’t use this,’” Smilde said.
With U.S. officials promising improved conditions in Venezuela and encouraging citizens to return, Smilde said, they could invoke the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who don’t leave willingly.
“There’s several layers to this,” he said, “and none of it looks very good for Venezuelan immigrants.”
This couple from Venezuela shared their story of why they left their three children back in their home country and spoke of the the experiences of their travel to the United States at the Parkside Community Church in Sacramento on June 16, 2023.
(Jose Luis Villegas / For The Times)
Jose, a 28-year-old Venezuelan living east of Los Angeles, fled Venezuela in 2015 after being imprisoned and beaten for criticizing the government. He lived in Colombia and Peru before illegally crossing the U.S. border in 2022, and now has a pending asylum application. Jose asked to be identified by his middle name out of fear of retaliation by the U.S. government.
The news this week that an ICE agent had shot and killed a woman in Minnesota heightened his anxiety.
“You come here because supposedly this is a country with freedom of expression, and there is more safety, but with this government, now you’re afraid you’ll get killed,” he said. “And that was a U.S. citizen. Imagine what they could do to me?”
People visit a memorial for Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Jose qualifies for a work permit based on his pending asylum, but his application for one is frozen because of the executive order following the National Guard shooting.
The news of Maduro’s arrest was bittersweet, Jose said, because his mother and grandmother didn’t live to witness that day. He said his mother died last year of kidney failure due to lack of medical care, leaving him as the primary breadwinner for his two young sisters who remain in Venezuela with their father, who is disabled.
Still, he said he’s happy with what Trump has done in Venezuela.
“People are saying he’s stealing our petroleum,” he said, “but for 25 years, Cuba, China and Iran have been stealing the petroleum and it didn’t improve our lives.”
Many Venezuelans were encouraged by news that Venezuela would release a “significant number” of political prisoners as a peace gesture.
For Jose, that’s not enough. Venezuela’s government ordered police to search for anyone involved in promoting or supporting the attack by U.S. forces, leading to detentions of journalists and civilians.
“Venezuela remains the same,” he said. “The same disgrace, the same poverty and the same government repression.”
A.G. said she was heartened to hear Noem say Sunday on Fox News that every Venezeulan who had TPS “has the opportunity to apply for refugee status and that evaluation will go forward.” But the administration quickly backtracked and said that was not the case.
Instead, Noem and other administration officials have doubled down on the notion that Venezuelans without permanent lawful status should leave. Noem told Fox News that there are no plans to pause deportation flights despite the political uncertainty in Venezuela.
Tragesser, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, said the agency’s posture hasn’t changed.
“USCIS encourages all Venezuelans unlawfully in the U.S. to use the CBP Home app for help with a safe and orderly return to their country,” he said.
For the first time in modern history, the United States is on the brink of losing its most basic engine of growth: more births than deaths.
According to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) Demographic Outlook, released Tuesday, the year 2030 marks a tipping point that will fundamentally reshape the economy and social fabric. That’s the year the “natural” U.S. population—the balance of births over deaths—is projected to vanish.
“Net immigration (the number of people who migrate to the United States minus the number who leave) is projected to become an increasingly important source of population growth in the coming years, as declining fertility rates cause the annual number of deaths to exceed the annual number of births starting in 2030,” the CBO writes. “Without immigration, the population would begin to shrink in 2030.”
From that point on, every additional person added to the U.S. population will come from immigration, a demographic milestone once associated with aging countries like Italy and Japan.
The shift is striking not only for what it says about America’s rapidly aging society, but also for how soon it is expected to arrive. Just a year ago, many demographic forecasts—including the CBO’s own forecast—placed this crossover well into the late 2030s or even the 2040s. The updated outlook from CBO moves the timeline forward by nearly a decade.
This rapid acceleration, the CBO said, is driven by the “double squeeze” of declining fertility and an aging populace, combined with recent policy shifts on immigration. CBO analysts have drastically lowered their expectations for the total fertiility rate, now projecting it to settle at just 1.53 births per woman — well below the 2.1 “replacement rate” needed for a stable population. At the same time, the massive “Baby Boomer” generation is reaching ages with higher mortality rates, causing annual deaths to climb.
The timeline further compressed following the passage of the 2025 Reconciliation Act, which increased funding for more ICE agents and immigration judges to process cases faster, resulting in approximately 50,000 immigrants in detention daily through 2029, CBO said. The office calculated that these provisions will result in roughly 320,000 fewer people in the U.S. population by 2035 than previously estimated.
The new projections show that U.S. population growth will steadily decelerate over the next three decades until it finally hits zero in 2056. For most of the 20th century, the population grew at close to 1% a year: a flat population would represent a historic break from that norm.
The economic consequences of this shift are hard to overstate. While the number of retirees swells, the pool of workers funding the social safety net — and caring for the aging population — is narrowing. Americans aged 65 and older are the fastest-growing segment of the population, pushing the “old-age dependency ratio” sharply higher. In 1960, there were about five workers for every retiree. Today, that ratio is closer to three-to-one. By the mid-2050s, the CBO projects it will fall to roughly two workers per retiree. The contraction will have “significant implications” on the federal budget, including outsized effects on Social Security and Medicare, placing pressure on those trust funds which rely on a robust base of payroll taxes that a stagnant population cannot easily provide.
Further, because national GDP is essentially the product of the number of workers multiplied by their individual productivity, the loss of labor force growth means the American economy will have to rely almost entirely on technological breakthroughs and AI to drive future gains. This may be happening ahead of schedule, as continued weak employment growth in December showed a “jobless expansion,” in the words of KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk, as Fortune previously reported.
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The officers are often masked, armed and do not identify themselves. At a Chili’s in the Key West airport, they arrested 11 people at a family reunion. On a canal near Fort Lauderdale, they picked up two men who’d gone fishing. In July, they detained a young man with a work permit and held him for three months. They stopped a construction worker in a small city near Orlando for jaywalking.
And, in a chilling video of a traffic stop on Dec. 3, five officers surrounded a Toyota Corolla and dragged a 33-year-old woman in scrubs from her car.
“I am a U.S. citizen!” she screamed to a reporter filming the spectacle. “Please help me!”
Under the pretense of removing violent criminals from the streets, President Donald Trump’s administration is waging a sweeping, relentless crackdown on immigrants — whether they are in the country legally or not. Florida, where nearly one in every four people are immigrants, has become one of the nation’s strongest anti-immigration enforcers — arresting more people than any other state except Texas.
A Miami Herald analysis of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data found that more than 20,000 immigrants have been arrested since Trump assumed office again on Jan. 20, 2025. The president found an eager partner in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who boasted in November that his Florida Highway Patrol alone had “gotten close to 10,000 arrests of illegal aliens this year.”
Minimum number of people arrested on immigration related charges in Florida in 2025
While state officials tout the arrest of predators and other criminals, the Herald investigation found that officers are often taking whoever they can — including immigrants with work permits and pending asylum cases, spouses and parents of United States citizens, workers with no criminal records, and, as in the case of the woman in scrubs, U.S. citizens.
“I want to make something absolutely clear: This is not the America that I grew up in, and this is not the America that we represent,” wrote Dayana O., the behavioral therapist in the video, in a statement to the Herald. She asked that her full name not be used for fear of retaliation.
Dayana O. was forcibly removed from her car, cuffed and detained on Dec. 3, 2025, even though she is a U.S. citizen. David Goodhue dgoodhue@miamiherald.com
The Herald’s tally of 20,000 is an undercount. The data is only through mid-October and does not include U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrests in Florida, because the federal government doesn’t release those numbers by state. Nor could it account for thousands of state agency arrests, because a public-facing dashboard only began in August and is incomplete.
But the number is still almost three times higher than 2024’s — the equivalent of a small city nearly the size of Key West disappearing from the state.
Neither the DeSantis administration nor the U.S. Department of Homeland Security answered repeated requests for the number of people arrested in Florida in 2025 and data on the charges against them.
The administration has described undocumented immigrants as “an existential threat.” Officers “will stop at nothing to hunt you down,” reads one DHS post. For Christmas, the government rolled out a holiday stipend of $3,000 for voluntary departure and released a series of videos, including one of Santa in an ICE vest, on social media.
“This Christmas, our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks,” is the caption for one DHS post on X, published with a video montage of holiday imagery set to an electronic version of “All I Want for Christmas” and the words: “Christmas after Mass Deportations.”
A post from the White House reads: “Avoid the Nightmare Before Christmas!”
In Florida, the Alligator Alcatraz and Krome detention centers are filled with complaints of inhumane conditions. Detainees are ping-ponged from one center to another, often across the country, and encouraged to sign deportation orders.
Six people died in federal immigration custody in Florida in 2025, the Herald found. At least 30 have died across the country. A record 65,000 immigrants nationwide were in detention centers, federal prisons or local jails as of late November, according to the latest Immigration and Customs Enforcement data.
Many people — including U.S. citizens — have been stopped and questioned. The federal government claims citizens are not being arrested, but in fact, more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained across the country, an examination by ProPublica found.
Under DeSantis, Florida has allocated more than $298 million to immigration enforcement, opened two state-run detention facilities and signed more agreements for local and state agencies to act as federal immigration agents than anywhere else in the country. More than 5,900 officers from 119 Florida law-enforcement agencies are helping the feds, according to a report by the State Board of Immigration Enforcement.
President Donald Trump tours Alligator Alcatraz on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. Daniel Torok/White House
When reached for comments with a list of nine questions, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin wrote: “The first ‘question’ reveals how ridiculous this story is going to be. Embarrassing.”
McLaughlin was objecting to this statement: “We have found that, under the pretense of removing violent criminals from the streets, the Trump Administration is waging a sweeping, relentless crackdown on immigrants — whether they are in the country legally or not.”
Instead of answering a reporter’s questions about how many immigrants had been detained in Florida, she sent the Herald an email that included 10 people with criminal records. She said that through local partnerships in Florida, “hundreds of rapists, murderers, gang members, pedophiles, and drug traffickers are off of Florida communities and are now out of our country.
“Floridians should take a moment this holiday season and give thanks to the men and women of ICE, as well as their state and local leaders, for playing a key role in arresting the worst of the worst from their communities,” McLaughlin wrote.
Nearly a quarter of the 20,000 people detained — more than 4,800 — only had immigration violations, according to the federal data, which was obtained by the University of California-based Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Herald. A third of those arrested in Florida by the Herald’s count had criminal convictions, and the rest pending criminal charges — which include non-violent crimes such as driving without a valid license.
Since January 2025, the government has claimed without evidence that those arrested nationwide, some of whom have been shuffled to the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a notorious prison in El Salvador, are the “worst of the worst.” But many of the immigrants caught in the crackdown and left for months in detention are working people who have built lives in the U.S. — or were trying to.
Gabriel Hernandez Alvarez, 19, came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor from Honduras when he was 15. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
“Truthfully, I don’t know what Latinos are doing wrong,” said Gabriel Hernandez Alvarez: who is a 19-year-old from Honduras with a valid work permit and a pending asylum case but was arrested by the Florida Highway Patrol in July. He spent three months in detention.
“Yes, there are people who aren’t good,” he said, “but there are people who came to work, to move their families forward, and we don’t deserve what is happening.”
A ‘scalpel’ not a ‘sledgehammer’
Both the DHS and DeSantis mass-deportation campaigns are likely to intensify.
The Trump administration has also heavily restricted legal migration — implementing far-reaching travel bans, pausing asylum decisions and canceling naturalization ceremonies for some. He placed full or partial travel bans on nearly 40 countries and announced reviews of green-card holders from 19 countries.
In May, DeSantis sent a proposal to the White House outlining his plan to carry out Florida’s own crackdown — and establish detention centers to house 10,000 people. He, too, has urged restrictions on birthright citizenship. The governor declined to be interviewed for this report.
“Because Florida leads the nation in illegal immigration enforcement, we took proactive steps to increase transparency and highlight our success,” Molly Best, DeSantis’s press secretary, wrote in an emailed statement. “In August 2025, we built and launched a comprehensive enforcement dashboard that showcases the strong results of our illegal immigration-related arrests.”
But a Dec. 15 report submitted to the Florida Senate highlights the challenges in the state’s dashboard, which only shows data since August. Reporting is inconsistent and lagging. Some agencies are not reporting anything at all. Multiple departments told the Herald they had no immigration arrests despite the site showing otherwise.
Sheriff Grady Judd’s office in Polk County has arrested nearly 600 “aliens,” according to the dashboard. More than 200 of them were only taken for federal immigration violations — not for a local or state crime, according to data analyzed by the Herald. Meanwhile, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office had only logged nine arrests in the dashboard since August.
Miami-Dade County’s population is more than three times higher than Polk’s. It also has more pending deportation cases than anywhere else in the country — more than 146,000 as of September, according to TRAC Reports, a non-profit based at Syracuse University.
Judd told the Herald in an interview that — while his office is just following the law — “everyday business people” are “getting called up as collateral.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is joined by Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey and Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, right, at a press conference about immigration on Jan. 15, 2025. Ernst Peters/The Ledger Ernst Peters/The Ledger / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
“I’m advocating that we need to figure out a system to legalize the good, hard-working, God-fearing, honest people that came across the border inappropriately, illegally, but they’re not violating any laws. They’re just working hard. They’re not taking any government money,” Judd said.
“I’m all for that, but irrespective of that, I’m not a legislator. I’m a rule-enforcer, and the rules say they’re here illegally, and that’s where the conflict is,” he added. “We need to use a scalpel on this issue, you know, not a sledgehammer.”
The number of people who have legal protections from deportation but are now subject to arrest is rapidly growing. About 14 million people live in the U.S. without authorization or with temporary or precarious protection, according to the Pew Research Center. Hundreds of thousands of people relied on humanitarian immigration programs, which were terminated in 2025, making those people suddenly “illegal” and subject to deportation.
The arrests are ripping apart communities, activists, lawyers and immigrants told the Herald.
“It seems like that’s been the purpose and the goal — to take immigrants and people of color off the streets and out of our communities,” Lupita Vazquez Reyes, a volunteer with Unidos Immokalee northeast of Naples, said. “Almost like purging them.”
‘These are working people’
On a sunny Thursday afternoon in August, a four-bedroom home in Palm Beach County was surrounded by about 27 sheriff’s deputies, 26 cop cars, a K9 unit and at least one Florida Highway Patrol troopers.
Inside, two elementary-school girls had been doing homework in bed. Outside, the officers yelled over a loudspeaker for a man to surrender. Carrying guns and battering rams, the officers ran along the sides of the building and blocked the exits, according to PBSO body cam footage reviewed by the Herald.
Around 8 p.m., they broke down the doors and smashed the windows. Glass shattered across backpacks on a blue bedspread in a girls’ bedroom.
They threw projectiles with pepper spray into the attic, where two men were hiding, according to a police report.
Five men were arrested. Local activists and neighbors later were allowed to enter the home. In videos shared with the Herald, the girls stare through the broken windows. When the raid started, they hid in a closet with their mother, who held a baby, they told activists.
The officers weren’t looking for drug dealers or gang members — but for 27-year-old Guatemalan Jony Darinel Vasquez Lopez, charged with driving without a valid license, failure to stay in a designated lane, DUI, having an expired registration, driving a van without a bumper and evading arrest.
In July, the Florida Highway Patrol had pulled him over for driving a van without a bumper and then arrested him for being in the country illegally. He fled from the patrol car handcuffed, according to news reports.
The four other men in the house were all taken into ICE custody.
A spokesperson for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office later told a city commissioner in an email that officers were aiding the Florida Highway Patrol with a warrant for resisting arrest.
The next morning, a principal picked up the girls and drove them to school.
To Mariana Blanco, the director of operations of the nearby Guatemalan-Maya Center, the show of force didn’t fit the crime.
“That’s when we realized it was kind of like a free for all, that they would be able to enter homes in that way, in the form of a raid with so many officers,” Blanco said.
“It seems like the majority of these arrests are collateral damage,” she said.
Asked about the raid, PBSO spokesperson Therese Barbera told reporters to reach out to the Florida Highway Patrol, which did not respond to requests for comments.
“PBSO deputies assists ICE or FHP when requested ONLY,” Barbera wrote in an email to the Herald.
The total number of arrests, operations and raids — and the impact of Florida’s unprecedented year of immigration enforcement — remain unclear.
In April, a coalition of federal and state officers made 1,120 arrests across Florida in what was touted as the largest single-week ICE operation in the agency’s history.
“The best is yet to come,” DeSantis said at a press conference after the operation.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference on Thursday, May 1, 2025. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com
A government press release stated that 63% had a criminal records, but officials would not list all those arrested or the charges against them.
Reporters submitted public-records requests for immigration-related reports from over 50 police departments. The reports show people getting arrested regularly on sidewalks, highways and in homes. Many start with minor traffic violations, like driving without a license, too much exhaust coming out of a truck, riding a bike with broken tail lights or making an illegal U-turn.
In Ocoee, a city about 12 miles outside of Orlando, a police officer stopped a man for jaywalking in November — and then arrested the 38-year-old construction worker on immigration charges.
A report from the Ocoee Police Department shows a man arrested on immigration charges after he was stopped for jaywalking. Ocoee Police Department
On the 500 block of Beach Road on Jupiter Island — a narrow strip of land hugging the coast north of Palm Beach — one officer sat for days in his car, running license plates through a scanner.
Between September and October, the officer arrested at least 10 men on immigration charges after the scanner did not turn up a valid driver’s license.
In December, immigration attorney Victor Martínez was returning to his office in Miami after getting some coffee when he saw three workers in a landscaping truck get detained by Florida state troopers and federal agents. He immediately took out his phone and began recording.
In the video shared with the Herald, an agent wearing glasses on top of a mask escorts one handcuffed man while a state trooper speaks to another, also in handcuffs.
A bystander can be heard trying to shame the agents in Spanish: “Go find the thieves, go find the scoundrels! These are working people.”
‘I’m a U.S. Citizen! Please help me’
The behavioral therapist in scrubs — pulled over by Customs and Border Protection agents at mile marker 103.4 in Key Largo — had been stopped for immigration operations twice before. But this time was different.
“I know that I haven’t done anything incorrect. I’m just driving on my way to work,” she said to officers in a video released by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. As she reached for her license, agents yelled at her to open her door. They then pulled her from the car, her arms flailing.
The video shows three large men trying to wrestle the 85-pound woman to the ground and handcuff her as she screams, “I’m a U.S. citizen!” She is then carried into an unmarked SUV.
She was released about 10 minutes later.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection told the Herald she refused to roll down her window or show identification, and that the car belonged to her “illegal alien boyfriend.” Agents told Dayana that she was stopped because the car was registered to an “illegal alien.”
Attorneys told the Herald that the stop appeared to violate the woman’s rights. If they were looking for the owner of the car and saw that he wasn’t there, agents should have let the woman go. They would need a reason to believe that she was an “alien.”
Videos show that her window was open. Dayana told the Herald that her husband, who owns the Toyota Corolla, was arrested by the same agency — and by one of the same officers — the month before. He has been in immigration custody since.
She said she was traumatized by the experience and keeps thinking that agents are after her even though she is a U.S. citizen.
“I’m always looking out the window to make sure no one is at my house,” she said.
In April, agents arrested a 20-year-old U.S. citizen from Georgia and detained him for more than 30 hours. On May 2, they arrested an 18-year-old U.S. citizen named Kenny Laynez Ambrocio at a traffic stop and tased his undocumented coworker.
A U.S. citizen filmed as officers wrestled his coworkers to the ground, tased one man and arrested him during a traffic stop. Kenny Laynez Ambrocio Courtesy of The Guatemalan-Maya
The three U.S. citizens in Florida were all detained after traffic stops.
Other people, who have spent months in detention, told the Herald that they had valid legal cases or documents.
Caught in the dragnet are the immigrants who have built lives in the country — they have U.S.-citizen children, they own local businesses, they pay taxes.
On April 30, 11 family and friends of one Irish family were detained by the Border Patrol while eating lunch at the Chili’s in Key West International Airport. Most had lived in the U.S. for decades and had U.S.-citizen children. One had a green card. They had arrived under a visa-waiver program with Ireland, some in the 1990s or early 2000s, and overstayed.
They were visiting from Long Island to celebrate the 50th birthday of Myles O’Connor. He and his wife had valid work permits, their son told the Herald.
But O’Connor, his wife, and his 72-year-old father were detained for six months, leaving the 21-year-old U.S.-citizen son to care for two younger siblings.
By September, the son, Jerry O’Connor, had made multiple trips to visit his father in the Broward Transitional Center and his mother in a Texas detention center. His mother’s hair was falling out, and she appeared gaunt: the bones seemed to jut out of her face.
She was confined to a room in a crowded facility for up to 23 hours a day, he said. He confronted her ICE officer and asked why she couldn’t just have an ankle monitor.
“What would you do, like, if this was your mother?” he asked, in tears. “She never did anything wrong in her life.”
Letters from Alligator Alcatraz
The Trump and DeSantis administrations’ goal has been clear: Use the threat of detention to get people to leave.
In June, during the course of eight days, the state built Alligator Alcatraz at a 6,000-acre site in the Everglades in west Miami-Dade. Each bed costs $245 a day, or $450 million annually, the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates. “Very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” Trump said at a July 1 press conference there.
Aerial imagery shows the development at the site of Alligator Alcatraz. The image on the left was taken in February 2024 and the image on the right was taken in October of 2025. Planet Labs PBC
A spokesperson for Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier later said the facility held “deranged psychopaths.”
The Herald obtained exclusive data of around 1,800 people detained or scheduled to be detained there in July. A third had no criminal convictions or charges — and some only traffic citations.
By late September, at least 237 men on the list, with only immigration violations, were still being detained in eight states. They ranged in age from 18 to 72. Some told the Herald they had yet to see a judge.
At the grand opening, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem toured rows of bunk beds and cages.
Two weeks later, 19-year-old Gabriel Hernandez Alvarez arrived on a bus, shackled by the hands and feet.
“What I saw was a really ugly place,” he said. When he asked how other detainees were taken, they would say “from work.” “Doing things right, and nothing wrong.”
Officials have not answered repeated questions from the Herald about how many people are detained there currently.
Hernandez Alvarez was 15 when he fled gangs in Honduras and traveled to the U.S. border with his 9-year-old brother. The children were detained for a month before authorities released them to their mother in Florida. He went to Lake Worth Community High School, applied for asylum and received a work permit that would last from 2024 until 2029.
Gabriel Hernandez Alvarez, 19, holds a photograph of himself when he arrived in the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor from Honduras in 2020 when he was 15. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
The 19-year-old is soft-spoken but determined. He works in construction and dreams of owning his own company.
For 23 days, he slept on a bunk bed inside a chain-link cell at Alligator Alcatraz. The bright lights never turned off, toilets wouldn’t flush, and for days, he couldn’t shower. “We didn’t see the light of day,” he said.
In one incident, Hernandez Alvarez said he saw a guard beat up a Cuban man after he asked for water.
“He cornered him and beat him mercilessly, and it wasn’t just him, three others joined in to beat him up,” Hernandez Alvarez said. State officials did not answer reporters’ questions about the incident, but other detainees have described beatings at the facility.
Haymel De La Vega, a Miami resident, has been assisting her friend Rogelio Enrique Bolufe Izquierdo, an immigrant from Cuba, with his asylum case. Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com
Twenty detainees have written letters describing their experiences in Alligator Alcatraz. Haymel De La Vega, whose friend was arrested and detained at the facility in August, is collecting their testimonies and video statements. The men describe being shackled for up to 48 hours straight; guards beating detainees; and racist insults.
Under the statement “I was tortured in Alligator Alcatraz,” written in English and Spanish, 40 detainees signed their names.
In August, Hernandez Alvarez was transferred without explanation to a detention center in Denver. On Sept. 8, he had his first hearing. His lawyer, Mark Diaz, asked the judge why the 19-year-old could not wait out his asylum case outside of detention. Soon after, he was released.
“Never in my entire career have I seen my clients being treated the way they’re treated,” said Jan Peter Weiss, an attorney who runs the firm representing Hernandez Alvarez. “It causes a feeling of hopelessness.”
Many immigrants with no criminal records are ineligible for bond hearings under a new policy that was enacted in July. Weiss said that in 2025 he saw “a lot more hate involved” in policy decisions. Shortly after Trump was elected, his office was flooded with new cases, and officials had placed a goal for ICE officers to arrest 3,000 immigrants a day.
“It means treating my immigrant population as cattle, round them up and place them wherever you can place them,” Weiss said about the directive. “And we’ll get to them, and when we get to them, we’ll make sure they’re thrown out.”
DeSantis had said Alligator Alcatraz would be a “one-stop shop” from which detainees would face a quick deportation. But as immigrants inside fought for the right to stay and courts grew overwhelmed with cases, detainees were stuck for months in limbo.
Attorney Jan Peter Weiss at his office in Lake Worth, Florida, on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
Some cannot afford to leave, or fear that they will be killed if deported, but are running out of legal options.
Junior Betnardin, a 31-year-old Haitian, was arrested in Puerto Rico in early September, sent to Alligator Alcatraz and released. He bought a ticket back to San Juan, where authorities gave him an ankle monitor. But in November, a judge dismissed his case during a hearing. They told him to buy a plane ticket out of the country by Dec. 17, he said.
He’d fled Haiti after armed men tried to recruit him – first to the Dominican Republic, then to Puerto Rico. His lawyer, Yamila Rodriguez Maldonado, said he applied for Temporary Protected Status in March and never heard back, leaving him in “Judicial limbo.” The TPS designation for Haitians was ended by the Trump administration and is set to expire in February.
“It is very unfair that there is a remedy available for them,” Rodriguez Maldonado said, “and the government leaves them without that protection.”
If sent back to Haiti, Betnardin said, there is a “90% chance I would die.”
The young man, a tile worker, can’t afford more lawyer fees. He checked in with authorities, unable to buy a ticket, and they scheduled a follow-up appointment.
“Truth be told, I don’t yet know what I am going to do,” he said.
“Can I go back to Haiti to die?”
‘Training the Kids’
Lake Worth Beach, where the August raid took place, is a seven-square-mile city just 12 minutes away from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. With one of the largest concentrations of Guatemalan immigrants in the country, Palm Beach County has been the target of relentless arrests.
Guatemalans represent the second-largest group of people detained in Florida after Mexicans, according to ICE data analyzed by the Herald.
The Guatemalan-Maya Center, a social-service agency run by an Irish Catholic priest on Lake Worth Road, is struggling to keep up.
Blanco, the center’s director of operations, said she and her team have a running list of 180 detainees who were arrested in the surrounding area in 2025. But the center doesn’t track the multitude of others who have been deported.
It’s as though people have gone missing, she said. Families call the center frantic, unable to locate their loved ones. Children are left behind when a parent is detained or deported. A volunteer’s husband was arrested while mowing a lawn, and she was later arrested in a traffic stop in front of their children.
On Dec. 11, staff members drove around Lake Worth Beach, placing signs on the streets where they knew someone had been taken. “ICE KIDNAPPED A COMMUNITY MEMBER HERE,” the signs read.
“I never knew how fragile our democracy was until living through this Trump administration,” Blanco said. “I keep thinking, well, how can they get away with this? Who is going to stop them?”
“Nobody really stops them,” she said, answering her own question. “They continue to get more aggressive.”
Immigrants from Guatemala’s indigenous Mayan communities have worked in the area for decades — speaking 22 languages, but sometimes, no Spanish or English. Their children, many of them U.S. citizens, are their interpreters, legal advisors and advocates.
Now, Blanco said, staffers are turning reluctantly to a last line of defense: “Training the kids.”
Mariana Blanco, director of operations, shows a children’s book to a child at the Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth, Florida, on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
In October, she sat with a 15-year-old whose parents saw federal agents on their doorstep through a security camera while at work.
Slowly, Blanco went over what the teen should do if the agents come back. And made him repeat it, again and again. He held back tears. First, ask if they have a warrant signed by a judge, she said.
“If they bust down the door, it’s going to be really scary. It’s going to be really scary, but it’s gonna be temporary,” she told him. “You’re gonna hold your younger siblings hand, and you’re just gonna wait.”
“You’re not gonna say anything,” she said. “They’re probably gonna be yelling. They’re gonna be, you know, breaking down doors, but you guys are just gonna stick together, right?”
But he was not born here, and Blanco was worried that the officers would think he was an adult and take him as well.
“It’s horrifying,” Blanco said through tears. “Having to prepare a child for something like that is just awful.”
The government insists it does not separate families, but the children tell a different story.
Seven children from six families are flown to Guatemala, departing from Miami International Airport on Dec. 4, 2025. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
In 2025, the center coordinated travel and chaperones for 18 children going alone to Guatemala, the majority of whom had one or both parents deported. Nearly 80 other families and temporary caretakers have reached out to the center for assistance with travel documents, the majority on behalf of children, staff said.
At Unidos Immokalee, volunteers are also helping children reunite with deported parents, going to countries some have only heard of in stories. They also say they are responding to an onslaught of arrests across Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, Immokalee and nearby communities.
“It has been utterly traumatizing and utterly relentless in its pursuit of a specific demographic of our community,” said Lupita Vazquez Reyes, the Unidos Immokalee volunteer.
Agents pulled over a Pacific Tomato Growers bus with about 40 people on Nov. 12 in Immokalee, according to the group, which says 35 were detained.
The Florida Highway Patrol denied a Herald public-records request for body camera footage and related reports, citing a federal statute related to ICE detainees, and did not respond to a list of questions about the incident. The group and a community observer sent the Herald videos and photos that they took during the arrests.
A woman prays in Spanish inside the bus. Unmarked white vans line the road, some driven by men in camouflage uniforms. In one video, a man is tased while officers pin him to the ground. Unidos Immokalee said the man was a 20-year-old U.S. citizen whose mother was on the bus. His brother was also tased, they said, and their 13-year-old sister was pushed by the Florida Highway Patrol troopers.
“Get off of him!,” someone yells in the background of another video. “What is wrong with you guys? Just because we’re brown you guys want to treat us like criminals? “We speak the same language,” he screams. “We’re educated just like you.”
About two weeks after the bus arrests, the group organized an art night to support farmworkers.
In a drawing of a girl in her mother’s belly, a child wrote: “Te extraño mamá.” “I miss you mom.”
Unidos Immokalee hosted an art night for children amid deportations on Nov. 23. Lisette Morales
Methodology
Federal immigration and state law enforcement officers have arrested more than 20,000 people in Florida since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, according to Miami Herald estimates. The Miami Herald analyzed data from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The records were obtained by the University of California-based Deportation Data Project via a public records lawsuit and then made public. The data is through Oct. 15, 2025 and includes certain information about the person arrested, including previous criminal convictions and country of citizenship. The Herald’s figures are an undercount. The state of Florida also separately releases figures on the number of individuals detained by state agencies but neither those records nor the federal ICE data are detailed enough to account for possible overlaps. The Herald did not include the figures released by the state in its analysis. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection also recorded apprehending at least 3,200 individuals in its Miami sector since Jan. 21, 2025. But that office has jurisdiction over Georgia and the Carolinas as well as Florida. The agency records do not note the exact place of apprehension. The lack of details meant that the Herald was not able to determine how many unique individuals CBP apprehended in Florida or if there was any overlap between its figures and those released by ICE.
Credits
Claire Healy | Esserman Investigative Fellow
Ana Claudia Chacin | Investigative Reporter
Churchill Ndonwie | Esserman Investigative Fellow
Ana Ceballos | Reporter
Shirsho Dasgupta | Data Reporter
Shradha Dinesh | McClatchy Data Fellow r
Syra Ortiz-Blanes | Reporter
David Goodhue | Reporter
Veronica Egui Brito | Reporter
Jacqueline Charles | Reporter
David Newcomb | Development & Design
Tyler Dukes | AI innovation editor
Pedro Portal | Photographer
Al Diaz | Photographer
Matias Ocner | Photographer
Alie Skowronski | Multimedia Journalist
Trish Wilson | Investigations Editor
John Parkhurst | Copy Editor
This story was originally published December 31, 2025 at 9:13 PM.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura leave the United States District Court District of Maryland, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Greenbelt, Md. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia reveals that high-level Justice Department officials pushed for his indictment, calling it a “top priority,” only after he was mistakenly deported and then ordered returned to the U.S.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty in federal court in Tennessee to charges of human smuggling. He is seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution is vindictive — a way for President Donald Trump’s administration to punish him for the embarrassment of his mistaken deportation.
To support that argument, he has asked the government to turn over documents that reveal how the decision was made to prosecute him in 2025 for an incident that occurred in 2022. On Dec. 3, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw filed an order under seal that compelled the government to provide some documents to Abrego Garcia and his attorneys. That order was unsealed on Tuesday and sheds new light on the case.
Earlier, Crenshaw found that there was “some evidence” that the prosecution of Abrego Garcia could be vindictive. He specifically cited a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on a Fox News program that seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he had won his wrongful deportation case.
Rob McGuire, who was the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee until late December, argued that those statements were irrelevant because he alone made the decision to prosecute, and he has no animus against Abrego Garcia.
In the newly unsealed order, Crenshaw writes, “Some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision.”
DOJ officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee where Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding. There were nine passengers in the car, and state troopers discussed the possibility of human smuggling among themselves. However, he was ultimately allowed to leave with only a warning. The case was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations, but there is no record of any effort to charge him until April 2025, according to court records.
The order does not give a lot of detail on what is in the documents that were turned over to Abrego Garcia, but it shows that Aakash Singh, who works under Blanche in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, contacted McGuire about Abrego Garcia’s case on April 27, the same day that McGuire received a file on the case from Homeland Security Investigations. That was several days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor on April 10.
On April 30, Singh said in an email to McGuire that the prosecution was a “top priority” for the Deputy Attorney General’s Office, according to the order. Singh and McGuire continued to communicate about the prosecution. On May 15, McGuire emailed his staff that Blanche “would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later,” Crenshaw writes.
On May 18, Singh wrote to McGuire and others to hold the draft indictment until they got “clearance” to file it. “The implication is that ‘clearance’ would come from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General,” Crenshaw writes.
A hearing on the motion to dismiss the case on the basis of vindictive prosecution is scheduled for Jan. 28.
Palau has struck a deal with the U.S. to accept up to 75 deportees from the U.S. in exchange for $7.5 million in foreign aid.
The agreement will allow “third-country nationals” who have never been charged with a crime to live and work in the Pacific nation, which has a population of about 18,000 people, according to announcements Wednesday from President Surangel Whipps Jr.’s office and the U.S. Embassy in Koror.
“The United States deeply appreciates Palau’s cooperation in enforcing U.S. immigration laws, which remains a top priority for the Trump administration,” the U.S. Embassy in Koror said in a statement. “In this regard, the United States granted $7.5 million to address the needs of relevant Palau public services.”
The agreement was formalized through a memorandum of understanding, with Palau citing labor shortages as a key motivation.
“Palau and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding allowing up to 75 third country nationals, who have never been charged with a crime, to live and work in Palau, helping address local labor shortages in needed occupations,” Whipps’ office said in a statement.
President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event Dec.19, 2025, in Rocky Mount, N.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The Trump administration will also provide $6 million to support Palau’s struggling civil service pension plan system and $2 million for new law enforcement initiatives, according to Whipps’ office.
Palau, a former filming location for the long-running reality TV series “Survivor,” has long been a recipient of U.S. support and relies heavily on foreign aid, according to the New York Post.
Castaways from the Ulong Tribe — James Willson, Ibreham Rahman, Bobby Jon Drinkard and Stephanie LaGrossa — during the third episode of Survivor: Palau on CBS. (Monty Brinton/CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images)
Under a deal brokered during the Biden administration, Washington committed $889 million in aid over 20 years, according to the State Department.
As the Trump administration ramps up mass deportations, many countries have agreed to take illegal immigrants, including Uganda, Rwanda, Eswatini, South Sudan, Costa Rica, Panama and El Salvador.
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this report.
Sophia Compton is a Writer at Fox News Digital. Sophia was previously a business reporter covering finance, energy and tourism and has experience as a TV news producer. She graduated with a journalism degree in 2021 from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Florida’s Catholic bishops made an appeal on Monday for a pause in immigration enforcement for the Christmas holidays, but the White House said operations will continue.
The appeal to President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was issued by Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski and signed by seven other members of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“The border has been secured,” Wenski wrote. “The initial work of identifying and removing dangerous criminals has been accomplished to a great degree. Over half a million people have been deported this year, and nearly two million more have voluntarily self-deported.”
“At this point, the maximum enforcement approach of treating irregular immigrants en masse means that now many of these arrest operations inevitably sweep up numbers of people who are not criminals but just here to work,” he continued. “It should be noted that a significant majority of those detained in Alligator Alcatraz have no criminal background.”
The archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski, raises his hand while addressing a crowd during a panel on immigration at Georgetown University in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025.(AP)
He noted that migrant sweeps sometimes include people with legal authorization to be in the U.S. and that surveys show Americans believe immigration enforcement operations are going too far.
“Eventually these cases may be resolved, but this takes many months causing great sorrow for their families … A climate of fear and anxiety is infecting not only the irregular migrant but also family members and neighbors who are legally in the country,” Wenski said.
“Since these effects are part of enforcement operations, we request that the government pause apprehension and round-up activities during the Christmas season,” he said. “Such a pause would show a decent regard for the humanity of these families. Now is not the time to be callous toward the suffering caused by immigration enforcement.”
The White House did not directly address the appeal for a holiday pause, but did say that enforcement activities would be business as usual.
“President Trump was elected based on his promise to the American people to deport criminal illegal aliens. And he’s keeping that promise,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Wenski, like many other Catholic leaders, has been an outspoken advocate for treating illegal immigrants humanely.
The White House said immigration enforcement activities would be business as usual.(Getty Images)
In September, he joined other Catholic leaders on a panel at Georgetown University criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown for splitting up families, inciting fear and upending church life.
Wenski also cited the contributions illegal immigrants make to the U.S. economy.
“If you ask people in agriculture, you ask in the service industry, you ask people in health care, you ask the people in the construction field, and they’ll tell you that some of their best workers are immigrants,” Wenski said. “Enforcement is always going to be part of any immigration policy, but we have to rationalize it and humanize it.”
Wenski has joined the “Knights on Bikes” ministry, an initiative led by the Knights of Columbus that brings attention to the spiritual needs of migrants held at immigration detention centers, including “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades. He recalled praying a rosary in the scorching heat outside its walls before receiving permission just days later to celebrate Mass inside the facility.
“The fact that we invite these detainees to pray, even in this very dehumanizing situation, is a way of emphasizing and invoking their dignity,” he said.
Last month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a “special message” in which they slammed Trump’s mass deportation agenda and the “vilification” of illegal immigrants, expressing concern over the fear and anxiety immigration raids are stoking in communities, as well as the denial of pastoral care in detention centers.
Pope Leo XIV has urged local bishops to speak out on social justice concerns.(Grzegorz Galazka/Archivio Grzegorz Galazka/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
The special message was endorsed by Pope Leo XIV and Bishop Ronald Hicks, who the pontiff recently named as the next archbishop of New York, replacing conservative Cardinal Timothy Dolan as the leader of the country’s second-largest Catholic diocese. Dolan announced earlier this year he would resign upon turning 75, which is required by Catholic law.
“I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have,” Leo said last month. “If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts, there’s a system of justice.”
The pope has previously urged local bishops to speak out on social justice concerns and has suggested that people who support the “inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States” may not be pro-life.
A Border Patrol agent drives down to the beach. (Photo by Chris Stone/Times of San Diego)
The U.S. Border Patrol Monday announced a significant reduction in illegal border crossings in the San Diego Sector, but an increase in narcotics seizures.
“Through the first two months of the new fiscal year, the sector has recorded 1,793 apprehensions,” according to a USBP statement. “This represents a 93% decrease over the same period a year ago, when the sector had already recorded 24,735 apprehensions. This low a level of activity has not been seen in the sector since the 1960s.”
Chief Border Patrol Agent Justin De La Torre attributed the decrease to a combination of factors, most notably tougher immigration and border security policies.
“By no longer releasing people into the U.S, we have removed the incentive for those considering illegal entry via smuggling routes,” De La Torre said. “We no longer have people illegally entering and surrendering to agents, expecting to be released, which allows Border Patrol agents to return to patrol and interdiction efforts rather than processing and releasing hundreds of illegal aliens a day. This significant reduction in illegal border crossings underscores the value of strong border security policy and a whole-of-government approach.”
De La Torre also cited stepped-up deportation efforts nationally.
“Less money is going to the criminal organizations that facilitate human smuggling and generate violence in Mexico,” he said. “We are now seeing far fewer people being exploited and endangering their lives by using criminal smuggling networks to illegally enter the country.”
De La Torre said the region is also off to a strong start in narcotics seizures.
“San Diego Sector had a record-breaking year in fiscal 2025, seizing 11,311 pounds of methamphetamine,” he said. “It looks to continue that momentum, having already taken 970 pounds of methamphetamine, 555 pounds of cocaine and 113 pounds of fentanyl off the streets in the first two months of fiscal 2026.”
To report suspicious activity to the U.S. Border Patrol, call 911 or the San Diego Sector at 619-498-9900.
Immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra is on the precipice of being released from an immigration detention facility after an immigration judge ruled Sunday that she can post bail.
Denver immigration judge Brea Burgie set Vizguerra’s bail at $5,000, but she included no other restrictions, like an ankle monitor. Her family intends to immediately post the bond, her legal team said in a statement. She likely won’t be released for at least 24 to 48 hours, said Jenn Piper, the program co-director for the American Friends Service Committee of Denver. Still, Burgie’s ruling means Vizguerra, a mother of four children, will be home by Christmas.
The order comes two days after Vizguerra’s legal team argued that the activist, who was born in Mexico and has spent most of the last 28 years in the United States, posed no flight risk and was not a danger to the community. She has been detained in the Aurora detention center since March, when she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at her work.
Vizguerra’s legal team said Sunday that Burgie found that Vizguerra “does not pose a danger to the community,” nor did she pose a flight risk, given her “strong family and community ties” and her previous compliance with court proceedings.
Vizguerra’s bail hearing took place Friday because of the order of a separate federal judge last week. When her family posts bail, Vizguerra will be released while her broader legal efforts to stay in the country — and fight her deportation — play out in both immigartion and federal court.
An activist who received national attention when she sheltered in a Denver church for years during President Donald Trump’s first term, Vizguerra was named one of TIME’s most influential people in 2017. Earlier this year and while in detention, she won a humanitarian award from the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.
Vizguerra’s supporters have held regular vigils for her outside of the detention center for months.
Thousands of people braved the bitter cold Saturday morning, marching more than a mile along Minneapolis’ Lake Street corridor in a massive, coordinated anti-immigration enforcement protest.
DHS says its agents have arrested more than 400 people since the operation began three weeks ago. It’s unclear how many of those 400 are still detained or have been sent elsewhere.
The federal agency has also touted more than one dozen arrests of individuals with criminal convictions.
Saturday’s protest and march, however, was a chance for community members to band together, organizers say.
“We want to make sure that everybody across the world and across the country knows that the mass deportation agenda is not good for immigrants,” said Emilia González Avalos, executive director of UNIDOS. “It’s not good for communities. It’s not good for local economies.”
“Businesses are struggling. Nobody wants to go out and shop. People are not buying basic things like toilet paper, eggs, milk, formula because they’re scared,” González Avalos said.
Groups on hand pushed back on the idea that ICE is detaining “the worst of the worst.”
“Most of the immigrants here are working very hard,” said Silvia Ibanez of the Immigrant Defense Network. “They are here because they are trying to find a better future for their family, and that’s not a crime.”
Saturday’s march ended at Karmel Mall, which organizers said was symbolic of the way the city’s Latino and Somali communities have both been targets of the latest DHS enforcement.
José Trejo López thought the immigration agent separated him from his brother Josué so the officer could ask more questions during a March check-in in New York City.
José and Josué, 20 and 19 years old at the time, had been to dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-ins in the nearly 10 years since they fled El Salvador as children with their mother. The appointments often took all day and sometimes required missing school and final exams. José felt embarrassed to tell his teachers and classmates where he was going, but also knew he had to fulfill his immigration obligations and maintain good conduct and his arrest-free record.
“You have to follow the law, because when you follow the law things go well, right?” José said.
That day, José heard the rattle of handcuffs. The officer told him not to make a scene. As Josué turned and saw his older brother restrained, a different officer handcuffed him, too.
By the time the brothers had walked into ICE’s field office for their 8 a.m. appointment, about two months into President Donald Trump’s second administration, rumors swirled that immigration agents were detaining people at routine immigration check-ins. These appointments are typically for people with pending immigration cases who aren’t considered threats to the public.
Detaining people at check-ins became part of Trump’s effort to carry out mass deportations, one of his 2024 campaign promises. But the strategy contradicted Trump’s and his administration’s assurances that immigration agents would pursue “the worst of the worst always first.”
“I’m talking about, in particular, starting with the criminals. These are some of the worst people anywhere in the world,” Trump said Aug. 22, 2024.
On Oct. 31, CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell asked Trump about his promise “to deport the worst of the worst, violent criminals.” Trump answered, “That’s what we’re doing.”
Neither José nor Josué have been convicted of a crime. The same is true for 73% of the more than 65,000 immigrants in ICE detention as of November, a record number of detainees. Nearly half of all immigrants in ICE detention have neither a criminal conviction nor pending criminal charges. Of the immigrants with criminal convictions, 5% have been convicted of violent crime such as murder or rape, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
Despite what Trump said, some of the most high-profile moments during his administration’s mass deportation campaign did not lead to large-scale arrests of violent criminals.
In March, the Department of Homeland Security sent nearly 250 Venezuelan men to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. A ProPublica investigation later found that only 32 of the men had U.S. criminal convictions, most for nonviolent offenses such as retail theft or traffic violations.
In the first half of a months-long Chicago immigration crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” immigration officers arrested 1,900 people, two-thirds of whom had no criminal convictions or pending charges, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.
When we asked the White House whether its detention strategy was in line with what Trump and officials have said publicly, spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “The Trump Administration’s top immigration enforcement priority is arresting and removing the dangerous violent, illegal criminal aliens that Joe Biden let flood across our Southern Border — of which there are many. Recent ICE arrests include criminal illegal aliens who are rapists, pedophiles, and murderers. But anyone who is illegally present in the country, and as a result breaking U.S. laws, is eligible for deportation if they do not take advantage of self-deportation opportunities.”
José and Josué were applying for a legal status. They were not in hiding and had spent years appearing before ICE officers and immigration judges.
In May, José and Josué were deported to El Salvador, a country the rest of their family had already fled.
“We followed the law and we were punished,” José said.
Josué Trejo López, left, and José Trejo López, right, fled El Salvador, when they were 10 and 11 years old. They settled in Georgia where they learned English and eventually graduated high school. (Courtesy of José Trejo López)
The brothers’ quest for legal residency
Fleeing threats of gang violence in El Salvador, José and Josué arrived in the U.S. in summer 2016 at ages 11 and 10 with their mother, Alma López Díaz.
U.S. officials stopped the family at the southern border and released them into the U.S. while they sought asylum. The family moved in with the boys’ aunt in Georgia.
The brothers enrolled in school and learned English by reading books, using language-learning apps and correcting themselves after classmates teased them.
By 2020, judges had denied the family’s asylum case and appeals because gang extortion is not generally considered a reason for asylum, said Ala Amoachi, who became the brothers’ immigration lawyer in 2024. José and Josué had received a deportation order.
Deportation orders are paused when people file appeals. José and Josué were appealing until 2020, when their appeals ran out, but they continued to appear at ICE check-ins. Amoachi said the government likely didn’t deport them during that time because they had no criminal records and for humanitarian considerations “such as family unity and the fact that they have a younger brother who’s a U.S. citizen and who’s disabled.”
In 2025, when the brothers were detained, they had a viable pathway to obtaining legal status, based on a process their attorney started in 2024.
We contacted DHS to ask why the brothers were detained and deported while they had a pending immigration case and received no reply.
During his second term, Trump has significantly curtailed legal pathways for immigrants. In January, he ended a Biden-era program that let people schedule immigration appointments at the border and legally enter the U.S. to seek asylum. Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has stripped hundreds of thousands of people of temporary legal protections that let them live and work in the U.S.
José continued to try to build what he called his American dream, but his immigration status presented obstacles to buying a car and getting a job.
In 2024, the brothers moved to Long Island, New York, where their mother’s long-distance partner lived.
Amoachi initiated a process for them to apply for Special Immigrant Juveniles Status, a protection for young immigrants who were abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent. The brothers’ father had abandoned them, court documents say. When approved, the status allows immigrants to eventually apply for permanent residency. The brothers’ previous lawyer in Georgia had failed to tell them this status was an option, Amoachi said.
Under the Biden administration, immigrants granted Special Immigrant Juveniles status were protected from deportation. In June, the Trump administration ended the deportation protection program and began detaining and deporting people with Special Immigrant Juveniles status. Immigrant advocacy groups are suing the government over the changes.
A federal agent wears an Immigration and Customs Enforcement badge while standing outside an immigration courtroom at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York, June 10, 2025. (AP)
A sudden, unexpected outcome
José’s dream of starting fresh in New York was short lived.
At the March 14 appointment, an ICE officer asked whether the brothers were contesting their removal order, and when José handed over their paperwork, the officer said, “‘This doesn’t work,’” José recounted.
Within minutes, the brothers were in handcuffs.
There’s no data about how many people have been arrested while attending required ICE check-ins, but news stories and social media clips are rife with examples of immigrants being detained and separated from family members. Lawyers have warned clients about the tactic. In San Diego, several immigrants are suing the government following their detention at check-ins.
Amoachi, who has worked as an immigration lawyer for 15 years, said before Trump’s second term, she had never seen a case like José’s and Josué’s — young men with deportation orders but no criminal convictions or gang affiliation and a pending application — end with detention.
About a week after the brothers were detained, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said the administration was prioritizing criminals.
“We’re going to keep targeting the worst of the worst, which we’ve been doing since Day One, and deporting from the United States,” Homan said March 23.
Homan speaks as Trump listens at a primary election night party in Nashua, New Hampshire, Jan. 23, 2024. (AP)
Leaving everything behind
Detention was the first leg in the two-month journey that would lead the brothers back to El Salvador.
Hours after the brothers were detained, immigration officers shackled them and took them to a Buffalo, New York, detention center.
In detention, José worked with a detained pastor to host weekly church services. Josué took a job in the kitchen — cleaning dishes and helping serve food — earning $1 a day. He used the money to call his mom or buy ramen, a delicacy in detention. Josué also taught English to fellow detainees and served as an unofficial translator for immigration officers.
On March 26, a New York family court judge ruled that José and Josué had been abandoned by their father and it was not in their best interest to return to El Salvador. Even so, they remained detained.
In early May, officers called in the brothers for processing, which would mean they’d either be deported or released, José said. Fellow detainees rooted for them.
The outcome wasn’t as hoped. The brothers were transported to Louisiana.
For several days, José and Josué stayed in holding cells dubbed “hieleras,” Spanish for “ice boxes,” with about 100 people in each. On May 7, their mother’s birthday, an officer called the brothers’ names to board a flight to El Salvador. Once on the plane, José said an officer entered with a separate list of names for people who could get off the flight. That was José’s last hope. But the brothers’ names weren’t called.
“When the plane took off, I knew I was leaving behind my mom,” José said. “Literally everything was staying behind. Our dreams. Everything.”
Josué Trejo López, left, and José Trejo López, right, in El Salvador, a country they fled in 2016 and where they have no family. (Courtesy of José Trejo López)
Stuck in limbo
Nine years after fleeing their home country, José and Josué, now 21 and 20, landed in El Salvador. They had no passports; U.S. immigration authorities had taken them when they applied for asylum and never returned them.
Authorities gave each brother a piece of paper with his name on it as a form of identification. When José and Josué arrived at an immigration processing center, they saw people waiting for U.S. deportees. No one was waiting for them.
“I looked at my brother and said, ‘Now what? What do we do?’” José said.
Their mother sent their grandmother’s childhood friend to pick them up. For the first few nights, the brothers couldn’t eat or sleep. They have since been diagnosed with PTSD and depression, Amoachi said.
A few weeks after José and Josué arrived in El Salvador, Josué’s high school in Georgia held its graduation ceremony. Rather than walking across the stage, he watched from his phone as they announced his name, and he cried in José’s arms.
Seven months after being deported, José and Josué yearn for the possibility of reuniting with their families. Amoachi has filed several appeals on their behalf.
José said the brothers followed the conditions: going to court, attending ICE check-ins, having good moral conduct and no criminal record.
“So what is the legal pathway?” José asked. “There isn’t one.”
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
Immigration authorities must provide detained activist Jeanette Vizguerra with a bail hearing in the next week, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in Denver.
The order offers an avenue for potential temporary release for Vizguerra, an immigrant without proper legal status who has spent nine months in federal immigration detention.
The activist was arrested in March and has been fighting efforts by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and deport her ever since. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Nina Wang requires that authorities give Vizguerra the opportunity to seek a temporary release before an immigration judge in Aurora’s detention center by Christmas Eve.
Her hearing is currently set for Friday morning, according to one of her attorneys, Laura Lichter.
If granted bail, Vizguerra would be released from detention while her immigration case continues to wind its way through the courts. Because Vizguerra is fighting her deportation both in federal court and in immigration court, it will likely be “many months or even years” before her case is fully resolved, Wang said.
The Mexico-born activist has lived in the United States for more than 30 years and has repeatedly fought attempts to deport her, though she accepted a voluntary departure in 2011. During the first Trump administration, she sought shelter in a Denver church and was named by TIME as one of the most influential people of 2017. She left the church’s sanctuary and was given reprieves by ICE.
But early in Trump’s second term, she was arrested in March in what her attorneys have argued was an intentional effort to detain and deport her because of advocacy that’s protected by the First Amendment. Her detention was celebrated by ICE on social media, and one agent allegedly told her, “We finally got you.”
In Wednesday’s order, Wang said Vizguerra’s allegations that she was targeted specifically because of her speech raised “serious due process concerns.”
.jpeg "Germán Rodolfo Varela López with his baby niece in his arms.")
