SAN DIEGO — The father of a Marine who was arrested by immigration authorities while visiting his pregnant daughter at Camp Pendleton has a criminal record that includes charges of domestic violence and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday.
Esteban Rios was deported to Mexico in 1999, removed from the United States again in 2005 and ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2020 after entering the country illegally a third time, the department said.
The statement was the first detailed account that Homeland Security provided since the Marine, Steve Rios, said last week that his father was detained after visiting the Southern California military base, released with ankle monitors and detained again when reporting days later to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, as ordered.
Homeland Security initially did not provide details when asked several times by The Associated Press on Tuesday for information on any criminal record Esteban Rios had, saying only that “criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.” The department said it had no other information to release.
On Thursday — one day after AP published a story on Esteban Rios, and two days after it sought details from the department — DHS released the detailed account of his criminal record. The department also accused the AP of having “deliberately obscured the facts,” despite the agency having not provided AP with the information it accused the news organization of obscuring.
Steve Rios of Oceanside told San Diego station KNSD that his parents inspired him to enlist in the Marines. He said they came to the U.S. from Mexico more than 30 years ago and have washed cars and cleaned houses for his whole life.
“It was just making them proud, right? I’ve seen all the struggles they’ve gone through,” Steve Rios told the station. “The least I could do, right, and serve this country and try to, you know, put some time in.”
Steve Rios said he and his parents were picking up his younger sister and her husband, who is also a Marine, at Pendleton on Sept. 28, as they have done that every weekend for the past few months while she is expecting her first child. After stopping at the gate, ICE officials arrived to detain both parents, later releasing them with ankle monitors. He said his father was deported Oct. 10.
The Rios family told the station the parents had no criminal record, had pending green card applications sponsored by Steve Rios and authorization to work.
In response to inquiries from AP, Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, issued a statement Tuesday that read, “Under President (Donald) Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem, if you break the law — including domestic violence and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The statement did not say anything about Esteban Rios, including whether he was arrested or charged with any crime or if he had any immigration history.
When AP followed up to ask whether Esteban Rios and his wife had criminal histories, Luis Alani, a communications strategist at ICE, wrote, “By statute, ICE has no information on these aliens. To clarify, there is no information we can release.”
The Trump administration has attempted to postpone at least nine challenges to its immigration policies during the government shutdown, including cases that could determine whether people can be held in detention centers without bail.
Federal judges have repeatedly said no.
In the detention-without-bail case, Judge Brianna Fuller Mircheff said that if the deportation apparatus is still running during the shutdown, an immigration-related challenge should continue too.
“Despite the government shutdown, Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to remove noncitizens from the community; noncitizens continue to be detained under the policy that is challenged in this case; and immigration courts continue to process cases involving detained respondents,” the court’s order states.
“Given that individuals are continuing to be detained subject to the challenged policy, the Court declines to indefinitely stay adjudication of whether such individuals are lawfully detained,” it states.
Immigrant advocacy groups filed the class action lawsuit in California against a July 8 policy change ending bond eligibility for people who have lived in the country for years but are in detention centers while their immigration cases continue.
It’s one of at least nine legal challenges to the Trump administration’s immigration policies that the Department of Justice has sought to pause during the shutdown, which is now in its second week with no progress toward an end.
Most judges are insisting on keeping their scheduled deadlines, pointing to continued immigration enforcement and urgency of the lawsuits, which also include challenges against the end of temporary deportation protections for Venezuelans, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s deportation and federal funding freezes for so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions.
Starting Oct. 1, the first day of the government shutdown, DOJ attorneys began approaching courts with requests to delay immigration-related proceedings as part of the department’s plan to limit civil litigation during the lapse in federal funding.
The DOJ shutdown contingency plan states that it will continue to deal with cases where the safety of human life or protection of property would be compromised significantly by a delay. It also states attorneys have to keep working if judges deny the department’s requests.
Some groups suing the government over immigration matters argue that there would be serious impacts to putting the cases on hold.
The case over whether the Department of Homeland Security can end temporary protected status for Venezuelans, for example, affects about 600,000 people directly and could have repercussions for others with these protections.
“It is important because it’s one of the only hopes with little possibility of continuing the protection for people with TPS,” said Jose Palma, a national coordinator for the National TPS Alliance, which is suing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over ending TPS for Venezuelans.
Palma said moving ahead with the legal challenge is particularly vital in light of a recent Supreme Court decision that allows the government to cut off deportation protections and work authorization for Venezuelans while the ultimate fate of TPS for the population is determined in lower courts.
The case is set to move forward in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel denied the federal government’s request to pause the case because of the government shutdown. However, a federal judge agreed to pause a similar case out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts until the end of the shutdown.
Despite DOJ’s efforts to pause proceedings in the lawsuit seeking to stop the second deportation of Abrego Garcia, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland is requiring the DOJ to bring to a Friday hearing witnesses with first-hand knowledge of the steps the government has taken to deport him to Eswatini, Costa Rica or any other country.
During a hearing on Monday, Xinis lost her patience with the government attorneys’ inability to provide information about the administration’s plan to once again deport Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. She said she wouldn’t pause the case because of “important fundamental questions” at stake, according to Bloomberg.
DOJ also failed to secure an indefinite pause in the lawsuit filed in February by several cities and counties over the Trump administration’s attempts to withhold funding for “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Santa Clara and San Francisco, along with multiple other counties and cities, have been granted preliminary injunctions by District Judge William Orrick twice, as the lawsuit has grown to include other counties, most recently at the end of August.
Following the most recent ruling, the Trump administration’s attorneys had a deadline of Oct. 16 by which they could respond, but on Oct. 1, they filed for a motion to stay, similarly citing the government shutdown as the reason for the need for an extended deadline.
“Absent an appropriation, Department of Justice attorneys and employees of the federal defendants are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including ‘emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,’” the DOJ motion states.
Attorneys representing Santa Clara cited the DOJ’s own contingency plan in response, noting “the Department’s (contingency) plan assumes that the judicial branch will continue to operate, though possibly at a reduced level, through the lapse.”
Orrick promptly denied the motion to stay, and the administration has until the original deadline to reply to the ruling.
The judge’s motion “helps ensure that accountability doesn’t stop when it’s inconvenient for those in power,” said Jonathan Miller, the chief programs officer at Public Rights Project, which is representing some of the cities in the lawsuit.
“The federal government can’t use a shutdown as an excuse to halt oversight while continuing to pursue the policies we’re challenging,” he said.
Ramón Rodriguez Vazquez was a farmworker for 16 years in southeast Washington state, where he and his wife of 40 years raised four children and 10 grandchildren. The 62-year-old was a part of a tight-knit community and never committed a crime.
On Feb. 5, immigration officers who came to his house looking for someone else took him into custody. He was denied bond, despite letters of support from friends, family, his employer and a physician who said the family needed him.
He was sent to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Tacoma, Washington, where his health rapidly declined in part because he was not always provided with his prescription medication for several medical conditions, including high blood pressure. Then there was the emotional toll of being unable to care for his family or sick granddaughter. Overwhelmed by it all, he finally gave up.
At an appearance with an immigration judge, he asked to leave without a formal deportation mark on his record. The judge granted his request and he moved back to Mexico, alone.
His case is an exemplar of the impact of the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to deport millions of migrants on an accelerated timetable, casting aside years of procedure and legal process in favor of expedient results.
Similar dramas are playing out at immigration courts across the country, accelerating since early July, when ICE began opposing bond for anyone detained regardless of their circumstances.
“He was the head of the house, everything — the one who took care of everything,” said Gloria Guizar, 58, Rodriguez’s wife. “Being separated from the family has been so hard. Even though our kids are grown, and we’ve got grandkids, everybody misses him.”
Leaving the country was unthinkable before he was held in a jail cell. The deportation process broke him.
‘Self deport or we will deport you’
It is impossible to know how many people left the U.S. voluntarily since President Donald Trump took office in January because many leave without telling authorities. But Trump and his allies are counting on “self-deportation,” the idea that life can be made unbearable enough to make people leave voluntarily.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, said judges granted “voluntary departure” in 15,241 cases in the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, allowing them to leave without a formal deportation mark on their record or bar to re-entry. That compares with 8,663 voluntary departures for the previous fiscal year.
ICE said it carried out 319,980 deportations from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 20. Customs and Border Protection declined to disclose its number and directed the question to the Department of Homeland Security.
Secretary Kristi Noem said in August that 1.6 million people have left the country voluntarily or involuntarily since Trump took office. The department cited a study by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for immigration restrictions.
Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said 1.6 million is an over-inflated number that misuses the Census Bureau data.
The administration is offering $1,000 to people who leave voluntarily using the CBP Home app. For those who don’t, there is a looming threat of being sent to a third country like Eswatini, Rwanda, South Sudan or Uganda,.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the voluntary departures show that the administration’s strategy is working, and is keeping the country safe.
“Ramped-up immigration enforcement targeting the worst of the worst is removing more and more criminal illegal aliens off our streets every day and is sending a clear message to anyone else in this country illegally: Self-deport or we will arrest and deport you,” she said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.
“They treat her like a criminal”
A Colombian woman dropped her asylum claim at a June appearance in a Seattle immigration court, even though she was not in custody.
“Your lawyer says you no longer wish to proceed with your asylum application,” the judge said. “Has anyone offered you money to do this?” he asked. “No, sir,” she replied. Her request was granted.
Her U.S. citizen girlfriend of two years, Arleene Adrono, said she planned to leave the country as well.
“They treat her like a criminal. She’s not a criminal,” Adrono said. “I don’t want to live in a country that does this to people.”
At an immigration court inside the Tacoma detention center, where posters encourage migrants to leave voluntarily or be forcibly deported, a Venezuelan man told Judge Theresa Scala in August that he wanted to leave. The judge granted voluntary departure.
The judge asked another man if he wanted more time to find a lawyer and if he was afraid to return to Mexico. “I want to leave the country,” the man responded.
“The court finds you’ve given up all forms of relief,” Scala said. “You must comply with the government efforts to remove you.”
“His absence has been deeply felt”
Ramón Rodriguez crossed the U.S. border in 2009. His eight siblings who are U.S. citizens lived in California, but he settled Washington state. Grandview, population 11,000, is an agricultural town that grows apples, cherries, wine grapes, asparagus and other fruit and vegetables.
Rodriguez began working for AG Management in 2014. His tax records show he made $13,406 that first year and by 2024, earned $46,599 and paid $4,447 in taxes.
“During his time with us, he has been an essential part of our team, demonstrating dedication, reliability, and a strong work ethic,” his boss wrote in a letter urging a judge to release him from custody. “His skills in harvesting, planting, irrigation, and equipment operation have contributed significantly to our operations, and his absence has been deeply felt.”
His granddaughter suffers from a heart problem, has undergone two surgeries and needs a third. Her mother doesn’t drive so Rodriguez transported the girl to Spokane for care. The child’s pediatrician wrote a letter to the immigration judge encouraging his release, saying without his help, the girl might not get the medical care she needs.
The judge denied his bond request in March. Rodriguez appealed and became the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that sought to allow detained immigrants to request and receive bond.
On September 30, a federal judge ruled that denying bond hearings for migrants is unlawful. But Rodriguez won’t benefit from the ruling. He’s gone now and is unlikely to come back.
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Associated Press reporter Cedar Attanasio contributed to this story.
On Sept. 16, Barbara Gomes Marques May and her husband arrived at the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration building for what they believed would be the final step in Marques May’s process to obtain her green card.
The interview process had gone smoothly, Tucker May recalled. But toward the end, a federal immigration official she had met with said he needed Marques May to follow him so he could photocopy her passport, he recalled. She and her husband believed the trip would be brief and they would be able to leave.
Instead, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent arrested Marques May, a 38-year-old Brazilian national who has no criminal record and works as a film director in Los Angeles. She was handcuffed and transferred to the ICE facility in Adelanto in San Bernardino County before being sent to Louisiana. Meanwhile, her husband and her lawyer scrambled to try to stop her deportation.
On Wednesday, Marques May was scheduled to board a 6 a.m. flight to her home country, but her attorney was able to file a motion to reopen her deportation proceedings and keep her on U.S. soil, at least temporarily. As of Thursday, she had been moved to Arizona and will return to California while her deportation proceedings remain open, her attorney said.
“It’s very much an ongoing nightmare,” Tucker May said in an interview this week.
Department of Homeland Security officials did not respond to a request for comment about Marques May’s case.
According to her attorney, Marcelo Gondim, Marques May arrived in the U.S. in 2018 on a tourist visa. Gondim said she applied for an extension but was denied. She ended up overstaying her visa, he said, and in 2019, the government sent her a notice to appear for a court hearing to begin deportation proceedings.
But Marques May had moved and had not kept her address up to date with immigration court, and so the letter never reached her, Gondim said. Because she failed to appear, the government issued a removal order against her.
In April 2025, the couple got married and she began the process to apply for a green card, Gondim said. Under the Biden administration, he said, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would have notified Marques May that there was a removal order issued for her and directed her on how to get it resolved.
Overstaying a visa is not considered a criminal offense, and penalties are issued if the person leaves the country. In cases involving married couples, Gondim said, there’s an automatic forgiveness for overstaying a visa, relief that Marques May would’ve been eligible for.
But the Trump administration has instead used courthouses and Citizenship and Immigration Services offices to engage in mass arrests of migrants attending mandated hearings and appointments. Soon, the USCIS will have expanded powers.
In September, the Department of Homeland Security issued a new directive that will allow the agency — which administers and oversees immigration applications — to enforce immigration law with “special agents.” The order goes into effect Monday.
“USCIS will have greater capacity to support DHS efforts by handling investigations from start to finish, instead of referring certain cases to Homeland Security Investigation within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the agency said in a statement.
After Marques May was arrested, May struggled to figure out where federal authorities had sent his wife. Finally, he was able to get in touch with her, and she detailed how, when she was arrested in L.A., she burst into tears, and an ICE agent took a selfie with her, he said.
During her transfer between detention facilities, she told him, she was subjected to harsh conditions, including how she went without food or water for more than 12 hours and had access to bathrooms with no toilet paper. She was given only bread and water and a couple of times an apple.
Marques May, who had surgery this year for chronic back problems, was also denied medical treatment for a device she uses to manage her pain, he said. May went public with her arrest more than a week after she was detained, he said, because he had run out of all legal avenues.
“There is an open disdain being shown by ICE for the basic rule of law for this country,” he said.
May began posting about her arrest online, garnering hundreds of responses and support. A GoFundMe page had raised more than $50,000 as of Thursday. U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who counts Marques May as one of her constituents, said she was “doing everything possible to prevent her deportation and I’m demanding that ICE follow the law.”
“Unfortunately, Barbara’s case is not unique, it reflects a broader pattern under Trump’s immigration policies that are unlawful and cruel,” she posted on X.
Gondim said he repeatedly tried to stop her from being transferred to facilities outside California, only to find barriers and delays by ICE officials to getting legal documents for her to sign. From Adelanto, she was transferred to Arizona, then Louisiana.
The government is not doing anything wrong by complying with the removal order, he said, “but they cannot prevent the person from having access to counsel and be able to present their case to file some form of relief [so they] don’t get unjustly deported.”
To stop Marques May’s imminent deportation, Gondim filed separate motions to reopen her deportation proceedings and terminate her deportation proceedings. Until a judge rules on the case, Gondim said, ICE cannot deport her. He said he’s hopeful that she will end up being released.
“Since she has already an approved petition from her U.S. citizen husband, and she has a clear path to filing a new [application] and getting her green card,” he said, an immigration court judge will not be interested in pursuing a case against a person who should be approved for permanent residency by law.
Until then, May said his wife’s first feature film has been put on hold until she can be released. In 2021, Marques May premiered her short film, “Pretas,” at the Culver Theater for the L.A. Brazilian Film Festival. The film centers on Black women and their experiences dealing with racism and carries a message of creating a more anti-racist society.
“I love Los Angeles so much,” she said in an interview at the time. “I couldn’t be happier. It was a premiere I wasn’t expecting.”
It was their shared love of films that bonded the couple, who met on a dating app, May said. They spent a lot of their time together watching movies, sharing popcorn and then discussing what worked and didn’t in the films.
May says he now thinks about all the immigrants who have not committed any crimes but lack the legal resources to avoid deportation.
“These are human beings that these terrible things are happening to,” he said. “If anybody reads stories like this, if they think this doesn’t apply to them because they’re not married to an immigrant, I beg those people to consider what they think comes next.”
Earlier this week the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided to grant an en banc rehearing in W.M.M. v. Trump. The panel decision in that case ruled that Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was illegal, because illegal migration and drug trafficking and other activities of the Venezuelan drug gang Tren de Aragua do not qualify as a war, “invasion,” or “predatory incursion.” The AEA can only be used to detain and deport immigrants when one of these extraordinary conditions, or a threat thereof, exists.The case will now be reheard by all 17 active Fifth Circuit judges.
In an amicus brief I coauthored in the case on behalf of the Brennan Center, the Cato Institute, and others, we argue that “invasion” and “predatory incursion” require a military attack, and that courts should not defer to presidential assertions that these extraordinary conditions exist. As James Madison put it in addressing this issue, “invasion is an operation of war.”
Otherwise, the AEA and the Constitution’s grant of extraordinary emergency powers when an “invasion” exists could be invoked by the president anytime he wants, thereby creating grave dangers to civil liberties and to the separation of powers. For example, the Constitution states that, in the event of “invasion,” the federal government can suspend the writ of habeas corpus, thereby authorizing indefinite detention without due process – not only of recent immigrants, but also US citizens.
Prominent conservative Judge Andrew Oldham wrote a lengthy dissent to the panel decision, arguing that the definition of “invasion” and other terms in the AEA is left to the unreviewable discretion of the executive. I outlined some key flaws in his argument here. In a solo concurring opinion in United States v. Abbott, a previous Fifth Circuit en banc case, Judge James Ho, another well-known conservative, similarly argued the definition of “invasion” is an unreviewable “political question,” left to the determination of the executive, and also of state governments (under Ho’s approach, they too can claim and “invasion” exists whenever there is illegal migration or drug smuggling). I criticized Judge Ho’s reasoning here.
Both Ho’s approach and Oldham’s would give the president (and, in Ho’s case, also state governments) unlimited authority to declare an “invasion” at any time, and thereby wield sweeping authority to undermine civil liberties and the separation of powers. The federal government could use this power to detain and deport even legal immigrants, and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (including for US citizens). Under the Constitution, in the event of “invasion” state governments can “engage in war” even without congressional authorization. I wrote about the dangers of that in greater detail here, as well as in the amicus brief.
Such vast unilateral authority goes against the text and original meaning of both the Constitution and the Alien Enemies Act. British violations of the writ of habeas corpus were one of the main grievances that led to the American Revolution, and the Founding Fathers did not intend to give the president the power to replicate those abuses anytime he might want.
I will have more to say about these issues as the AEA litigation continues in this case and in other cases currently before various federal courts. We will likely file an updated version of our amicus brief before the en banc Fifth Circuit.
The Moore administration is facing increasing pressure from activists and the head of the Legislative Latino Caucus to boot a discount airline from Thurgood Marshall Baltimore Washington International Airport because it has been flying immigrants targeted for deportation to a detention facility in Louisiana.
A sign protesting Avelo’s contracts with ICE to fly immigrants to detention centers in Louisiana.
A sign protesting Avelo’s contracts with ICE to fly immigrants to detention centers in Louisiana.
The Moore administration is facing increasing pressure from activists and the head of the Legislative Latino Caucus to boot a discount airline from Thurgood Marshall Baltimore Washington International Airport because it has been flying immigrants targeted for deportation to a detention facility in Louisiana.
The activists are calling out Avelo Airlines, which signed charter contracts earlier this year with the Department of Homeland Security to carry immigrants rounded up by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency from airports across the country to a detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana, where detainees arrive shackled and in handcuffs.
Avelo operated about 20% of the deportation flights in the U.S. in August, according to data compiled by the website Travel and Tour World.
Avelo’s contract with the federal government has sparked protests across the country — including in Maryland, where it has offered a limited number of commercial flights out of BWI since 2021 and currently runs four round-trip flights a week from the state-owned airport.
So far, even as Gov. Wes Moore (D) amps up criticism of President Donald Trump (R) and his agenda, the state has not sought to block Avelo from doing business at BWI.
Maryland’s deal with Avelo allows either party to walk away from the commercial flight arrangement with 30 days’ notice. But Moore administration officials assert they are powerless to stop ICE from running detainee flights out of BWI.
Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s), the chair of the Latino Caucus, wrote to Moore and state transportation officials in mid-September, urging them to end their contract with Avelo because the airline is abetting the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on undocumented immigrants — which often results in immigrants who have legal status being removed from the country.
“I really deeply feel like if we have any control of the business taking place at BWI, we shouldn’t be supporting businesses that don’t reflect the values of Marylanders,” Martinez said in an interview.
He said Moore has yet to respond. But over just a few weeks, the Maryland groups targeting Avelo have collected more than 8,000 petition signatures, urging Moore to cancel the state contract with the airline.
“The main thing is putting pressure on the governor,” said Ryan Harvey, a leader of the Baltimore Rapid Response Network, one of several progressive groups organizing protests over Avelo’s commercial flights at BWI.
But even if the Moore administration sought to remove Avelo from BWI’s lineup of commercial flights, it cannot prevent Avelo or other carriers from running immigrant detainee flights out of BWI or other state airports. That’s because those trips are arranged and overseen by the federal government, and the state is obligated to allow those flights to use airport runways and control towers. The state government has jurisdiction over the BWI terminal and associated businesses, but not airport runways or other flight operations.
‘Aiding Trump’s deportation campaign’
Avelo launched in 2021, just as the U.S. was beginning to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, offering low-cost flights in the U.S. and to nearby Caribbean islands. The carrier began providing commercial service to and from BWI in spring 2022.
“We are thrilled to welcome Avelo Airlines to our market,” Ricky Smith, who was then the executive director of the Maryland Aviation Administration, said at the time. “Avelo will offer low fares and convenient access, and will boost tourism to Maryland and the entire National Capital region. We remain committed to growing our air service portfolio and adding new travel options for our customers.”
Avelo’s financial journey since its launch has been tenuous, according to a recent account by Forbes, which may explain why the airline signed federal contracts worth an estimated $150 million to transport undocumented immigrants.
The blowback has been swift and vocal, with protests erupting across the country. Some call for passengers to boycott the airline, while others have urged government officials to eliminate financial incentives to Avelo for its commercial operations — or to block the operations altogether.
A New York Times article, noting that Avelo flies to several “liberal cities on the coasts,” suggested the airline is “aiding Trump’s deportation campaign.”
Harvey said Maryland activists were inspired when they heard about protests targeting Avelo in Connecticut, which have spread across the country.
“The national campaign is a bunch of local, grassroots operations that got in touch with each other,” he said.
Similarly, Martinez said lawmakers in Maryland, responding to the concerns of their constituents, have spoken to their counterparts in other states about strategy and tactics.
“I’ve heard from constituents throughout my district,” he said. “They’re really concerned that their tax dollars are being used in some way to deport their neighbors.”
The 2022 deal struck between Avelo and Maryland transportation officials allows either party to terminate the contract for the airline to run commercial flights out of BWI with just 30 days’ notice — which means Moore could end the agreement in short order.
“There should be no repercussions if the state decided that Avelo should pack up in 30 days,” Harvey said.
Jonathan Dean, a spokesperson for the Maryland Aviation Administration and BWI, said the state provided no financial incentives to the airline when it arrived in 2022. He said information on what revenues the state is deriving from the arrangement with Avelo could only be obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request. Commercial airlines typically pay the state landing fees and charges related to facilities and equipment rental at BWI.
Avelo is currently running a total of four round-trip commercial flights a week in and out of BWI, to and from New Haven, Connecticut, and to and from Wilmington, North Carolina, Dean said. Between July 1, 2024, and June 30 this year, Avelo flew 36,164 commercial passengers at BWI, he said, for a passenger market share of 0.14%.
Courtney Goff, a spokesperson for Avelo, told Maryland Matters that the airline is aware of the protests in Maryland and across the country. But she referred questions on the ICE flights to the Department of Homeland Security.
“We recognize the right of individuals to peacefully assemble and assert their freedom of speech,” Goff said in an email. “Avelo’s main priority continues to be maintaining the safety and timeliness of our operation that nearly eight million Customers across the country continue to enjoy.”
The ICE media office did not respond to an email with a series of questions about possible detainee flights out of Maryland airports in 2025.
But even if Maryland ended its arrangement with Avelo for commercial flights, that would not prevent Avelo or other carriers from running detainee flights out of BWI or other state airports.
A sign protesting Avelo’s contracts with ICE to fly immigrants to detention centers in Louisiana. (Photo by Josh Kurtz)
Flights arranged by ICE “are part of a private contract between a flight operator and the federal government,” Dean said.
“A number of these flights have been arranged by the federal government and flown through a private fixed-base operator at BWI Marshall Airport. The national airspace, airline operations, and access to airports are regulated by federal law,” Dean said. “As a federally funded, public-use airport, BWI Marshall Airport is required by federal law to provide access to all certified air carriers without discrimination.
“The Maryland Aviation Administration (MAA) does not schedule, inspect, or authorize these flights,” he added.
Dean said MAA officials are aware of one ICE flight that Avelo operated this year carrying immigrants from BWI to the detention center in Louisiana. That’s one of about 30 detainee flights that departed from BWI this year, he said. The others have been operated by GlobalX, a charter airline, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
These flights have yielded no revenues for the state, Dean said. Activists will continue to pressure state policymakers on Avelo, Harvey said.
“Marylanders would like to see leaders do more,” he said.
A federal immigration judge has ordered Mahmoud Khalil — a former Columbia University graduate student linked to pro-Palestinian protests — to be deported to either Algeria or Syria.
The ruling was issued last week, but it first came to light in court papers filed by Khalil’s lawyers on Wednesday as part of his lawsuit against the government. A green card holder, Khalil alleges the Trump administration detained him for months and sought to deport him as part of a wider policy of punishing foreign students for protesting Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas. The Trump administration has accused him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric.”
On Friday, Louisiana-based immigration Judge Jamee Comans denied Khalil’s motion for a waiver preventing his removal from the U.S. because he allegedly misrepresented his background on his green card paperwork. Comans once again ordered him to be deported to either Algeria, where Khalil is a citizen, or Syria, where he was born.
Khalil now has 30 days to appeal Comans’ ruling to a Justice Department body called the Board of Immigration Appeals, and if his appeal is rejected, he will lose his green card status and be ordered to leave the country, his lawyers said in a letter Wednesday to U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz.
Lawyers for Khalil told Farbiarz they plan on amending his lawsuit against the administration in light of “these latest, highly unusual developments.” In a statement Wednesday, Khalil’s legal team argued the immigration judge “rushed to a decision without providing a hearing on the evidence as due process requires, engaging in multiple procedural irregularities.”
“It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech,” Khalil said in the statement. “Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again.”
CBS News has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
The legal fight between Khalil and the federal government stretches back to March, when he was first detained by immigration agents in New York. Khalil is one of several international students who were detained due to their links to pro-Palestinian campus activism, which the Trump administration alleges is riddled with antisemitism — a charge the protesters deny.
Initially, the Trump administration argued Khalil could be deported under a federal law allowing noncitizens to be removed if the Secretary of State determines that their presence poses “adverse foreign policy consequences.”
In June, Farbiarz blocked the government from deporting Khalil on foreign policy grounds, finding his “career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled.” A month later, Khalil was released from immigration detention in Louisiana.
But his immigration case continued under a separate allegation leveled by the Trump administration. In addition to the foreign policy claims, the government had accused Khalil of leaving out details about his past associations on his immigration paperwork, including membership in a United Nations agency that works with Palestinians and his “continuing employment” at the British Embassy in Lebanon.
In last week’s ruling, Comans found that Khalil was not legally entitled to a waiver of deportation on those allegations. The immigration judge also said that Khalil shouldn’t get discretion from the court because of the “gravity of his conduct.” She called Khalil an intelligent, ivy-league educated individual” who should’ve known disclosure was required.
“This Court finds that Respondent’s lack of candor on his [immigration forms] was not an oversight by an uninformed, uneducated applicant,” the judge wrote. “Rather, this Court finds that Respondent willfully misrepresented material fact(s) for the sole purpose of circumventing the immigration process and reducing the likelihood his application would be denied.”
Khalil has denied making misrepresentations, saying he was not a member of the U.N. agency, but was instead an unpaid intern through Columbia. He has also stated that he stopped working at the British Embassy in Beirut in 2022, despite the government’s claims that he continued working there after that.
In a statement Wednesday, his lawyers called the claims “baseless” and “pretextual.”
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani joins ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ to break down the legal ruling allowing deportation proceedings against Mahmoud Khalil to move forward and shares an update on the Menendez brothers’ case.
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A federal immigration judge has ordered Mahmoud Khalil deported to either Algeria or Syria after ruling he hid information on his U.S. green card application.
Judge Jamee Comans issued the Sept. 12 decision in Louisiana and said that Khalil did not disclose his internship with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and ties with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an anti-Israel campus coalition.
Court filings unsealed Wednesday and published by the American Civil Liberties Union also show Coman cited the activism ties as central to her ruling.
Former Columbia Univrsity student Mahmoud Khalil speaks to the press as he arrives at Newark airport in Newark, New Jersey, on June 21, 2025. (KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)
She denied Khalil’s motion for relief, writing that the omissions were deliberate and constituted grounds for removal.
Federal authorities argue that Khalil’s misrepresentations involved politically sensitive affiliations, raising both national security and foreign policy concerns.
He spent more than three months in detention in Louisiana before being released in June, when U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the public.
Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil talks to the press during the press briefing organized by Pro-Palestinian protesters who set up a new encampment at Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus on Friday evening, in New York City, United States on June 01, 2024. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Farbiarz also temporarily blocked Khalil’s removal while reviewing his claim that the government’s actions amounted to retaliation for protected political speech.
Khalil’s legal team confirmed Wednesday that they plan to appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. They framed the case as a broader civil rights battle.
“It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech,” Khalil said in a statement. “Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
Emma Bussey is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Before joining Fox, she worked at The Telegraph with the U.S. overnight team, across desks including foreign, politics, news, sport and culture.
In separate attacks this month, the U.S. military blew up two speedboats in the Caribbean Sea, killing 14 alleged drug smugglers. Although those men could have been intercepted and arrested, President Donald Trump said he decided summary execution was appropriate as a deterrent to drug trafficking.
To justify this unprecedented use of the U.S. military to kill criminal suspects, Trump invoked his “constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive” to protect “national security and foreign policy interests.” That assertion of sweeping presidential power fits an alarming pattern that is also apparent in Trump’s tariffs, his attempt to summarily deport suspected gang members as “alien enemies,” and his planned use of National Guard troops to fight crime in cities across the country.
Although Trump described the boat attacks as acts of “self-defense,” he did not claim the people whose deaths he ordered were engaged in literal attacks on the United States. His framing instead relied on the dubious proposition that drug smuggling is tantamount to violent aggression.
While that assumption is consistent with Trump’s often expressed desire to kill drug dealers, it is not consistent with the way drug laws are ordinarily enforced. In the absence of violent resistance, a police officer who decided to shoot a drug suspect dead rather than take him into custody would be guilty of murder.
That seems like an accurate description of the attacks that Trump ordered. Yet he maintains that his constitutional license to kill, which apparently extends to civilians he views as threats to U.S. “national security and foreign policy interests,” transforms murder into self-defense.
Trump has asserted similarly broad authority to impose stiff, ever-changing tariffs on goods imported from scores of countries. Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected that audacious power grab, saying it was inconsistent with the 1977 statute on which Trump relied.
The Federal Circuit said the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which does not mention import taxes at all and had never before been used to impose them, does not give the president “unlimited authority” to “revise the tariff schedule” approved by Congress. The appeals court added that “the Government’s understanding of the scope of authority granted by IEEPA would render it an unconstitutional delegation.”
Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) against alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has also run into legal trouble. This month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit concluded that Trump had erroneously relied on a nonexistent “invasion or predatory incursion” to justify his use of that 1798 statute.
Trump argued that the courts had no business deciding whether he had complied with the law. “The president’s determination that the factual prerequisites of the AEA have been met is not subject to judicial review,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign told the 5th Circuit.
Trump took a similar position in the tariff case. As an opposing lawyer noted, it amounted to the claim that “the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, for as long as he wants, so long as he declares an emergency.”
Trump also thinks his presidential powers include a mandate to protect public safety by deploying the National Guard, with or without the approval of state or local officials. In pursuing that plan, he claimed at a Cabinet meeting last month, he has “the right to do anything I want to do,” because “I’m the president of the United States.”
As Trump sees it, that means “if I think our country is in danger—and it is in danger in these cities—I can do it.” In effect, Trump is asserting the sort of broad police power that the Constitution reserves to the states.
If Trump’s crime-fighting plan provokes legal challenges, he is apt to argue that his authority is not only vast but unreviewable. That dangerous combination is emerging as a hallmark of his administration.
After a pair of federal judges in Tennessee had cleared the way for Kilmar Ábrego García to be released from pretrial detention, on August 22nd, so that he could spend a couple of days with his family before a scheduled check-in at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, he was taken directly to a nearby hotel. The first thing he did was change into a new set of clothes that his wife, Jennifer Vasquez, had bought for him. Then he was given some flowers and ushered into a small room where Vasquez, their three children, other relatives, and supporters were waiting. He picked up his youngest son as people chanted, “¡Sí, se pudo!”—something like “Yes, we did!”
The child had been in a car with Ábrego García when ICE arrested him, near their home in Maryland, on March 12th. The arrest occurred during the government’s scramble to fly hundreds of people—mostly Venezuelans it claimed were members of the Tren de Aragua gang—to be incarcerated in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, under the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act. (A federal appeals court in New Orleans has since ruled that President Donald Trump had improperly invoked the law.) Days later, Ábrego García, a Salvadoran native, was sent to CECOT on a plane with some of them, beginning one of the highest-profile campaigns of retribution against an individual person of Trump’s second term.
On March 24th, lawyers for Ábrego García and his family filed a civil lawsuit demanding his return, and the courts quickly ruled that he had been deported in error. His entanglement with ICE had begun six years earlier, in March, 2019, when the Prince George’s County police department, in Maryland, arrested him and three other day laborers outside a Home Depot. (More recently, he has been employed as a sheet-metal worker.) He sought asylum and the right to not be refouled, or forcibly returned to a place where one is subject to persecution—in his case, to El Salvador. An immigration judge in Baltimore denied him the asylum request but granted him the latter, in a “withholding of removal,” which allowed him to work in the U.S. without risk of being sent back to his home country. The judge found that he had a “well-founded fear” of persecution there, on account of official corruption and a history of extortionist demands and death threats from a local gang, against both him and his family, who ran a pupusa business.
Eduardo Zelaya, a Salvadoran organizer with CASA—one of the immigrants’-rights organizations that, alongside a team of immigration lawyers, has been advocating for Ábrego García’s freedom since March—was with him in Tennessee. “Seeing the family reunified felt like a victory,” he told me in Spanish. “But, at the same time, it felt like the beginning of a battle.”
That battle had started during the effort to secure his release. Ábrego García had finally been returned from El Salvador on June 6th—but to Tennessee, not to Maryland, and only once the government had filed a new set of charges, in an indictment, accusing him of unlawfully transporting undocumented immigrants across state lines. The federal magistrate judge in Tennessee handling pretrial matters in the new case, Barbara Holmes, finding that he posed no risk of flight or danger to other people, had ordered him released on June 22nd to await trial. But that release was delayed for two months, as officials, in public and before judges in Maryland and Tennessee, offered shifting explanations as to the government’s intentions with the indictment. Did the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security want Ábrego García to face, as Attorney General Pam Bondi has put it, “American justice”? If so, he’s presumed innocent until proved otherwise, in a criminal court of law. Or did they want him to face the deportation system right away, and remove him to a country other than El Salvador under the immigration laws? If so, there would be a process for that in immigration court. What the government could not pursue is both courses at once.
Faced with this legal reality, on the night of Thursday, August 21st, hours before Ábrego García was to be released, ICE devised a choice for him. He could agree to delay his release until the following Monday, and then be deported to Costa Rica, whose government had just committed to granting him refugee status or residency—in exchange for pleading guilty to the federal indictment in Tennessee. Or, he could be released as planned, decline the plea offer, report to his scheduled appointment at the ICE field office in Baltimore, and risk being deported this time, inexplicably, to Uganda, if he chose to await trial. His criminal-defense team in Tennessee, which is seeking to have the indictment thrown out as a “vindictive and selective prosecution,” immediately brought this development to the attention of Waverly Crenshaw, the U.S. district judge overseeing the prosecution, stating, “There can be only one interpretation of these events: the DOJ, DHS, and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat.” (The government has since said that it plans to deport him instead to Eswatini; on Thursday, Reuters reported that the African nation had no knowledge of this arrangement.)
Ábrego García preferred to be released as scheduled, and, when he arrived for his ICE appointment in Baltimore, hundreds of supporters were waiting outside, including members of Congress, state and local officials, and faith leaders. “When he goes in that building, we’ll be supporting him. We continue to fight. No matter what happens in there today, we got his back,” Representative Glenn Ivey, of Maryland, said. Ábrego García read a prepared statement, in Spanish. “I want you to always remember that today I can say with pride that I am free and reunited with my family,” he said. Moments with his loved ones had given him the “strength and hope to continue this fight.” Speaking of others who have been detained under the Trump Administration, he said, “God is with us. He will never leave us. He will bring justice to all the injustice they’ve done.”
The crew had just poured a concrete foundation on a vacant lot in Altadena when I pulled up the other day. Two workers were loading equipment onto trucks and a third was hosing the fresh cement that will sit under a new house.
I asked how things were going, and if there were any problems finding enough workers because of ongoing immigration raids.
“Oh, yeah,” said one worker, shaking his head. “Everybody’s worried.”
The other said that when fresh concrete is poured on a job this big, you need a crew of 10 or more, but that’s been hard to come by.
“We’re still working,” he said. “But as you can see, it’s just going very slowly.”
Eight months after thousands of homes were destroyed by wildfires, Altadena is still a ways off from any major rebuilding, and so is Pacific Palisades. But immigration raids have hammered the California economy, including the construction industry. And the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling this week that green-lights racial profiling has raised new fears that “deportations will deplete the construction workforce,” as the UCLA Anderson Forecast warned us in March.
There was already a labor shortage in the construction industry, in which 25% to 40% of workers are immigrants, by various estimates. As deportations slow construction, and tariffs and trade wars make supplies scarcer and more expensive, the housing shortage becomes an even deeper crisis.
And it’s not just deportations that matter, but the threat of them, says Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist at the Anderson Forecast. If undocumented people are afraid to show up to install drywall, Nickelsburg told me, it “means you finish homes much more slowly, and that means fewer people are employed.”
Now look, I’m no economist, but it seems to me that after President Trump promised the entire country we were headed for a “golden age” of American prosperity, it might not have been in his best interest to stifle the state with the largest economy in the nation.
Especially when many national economic indicators aren’t exactly rosy, when we have not seen the promised decrease in the price of groceries and consumer goods, and when the labor statistics were so embarrassing he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and replaced her with another one, only to see more grim jobs numbers a month later.
I had just one economics class in college, but I don’t recall a section on the value of deporting construction workers, car washers, elder-care workers, housekeepers, nannies, gardeners and other people whose only crime — unlike the violent offenders we were allegedly going to round up — is a desire to show up for work.
Because I know from experience that some of you are frothing, foaming and itching to reach out and tell me that illegal means illegal.
So go ahead and email me if you must, but here’s my response:
We’ve been living a lie for decades.
People come across the border because we want them to. We all but beg them to. And by we, I mean any number of industries — many of them led by conservatives and by Trump supporters — including agribusiness, and hospitality, and construction, and healthcare.
Because the tough talk is a lie and there’s no longer any shame in hypocrisy. It’s a climate of corruption in which no one has the integrity to admit what’s clear — that the Texas economy is propped up in part by an undocumented workforce.
At least in California, six Republican lawmakers all but begged Trump in June to ease up on the raids, which were affecting business on farms and construction sites and in restaurants and hotels. Please do some honest work on immigration reform instead, they pleaded, so we can fill our labor needs in a more practical and humane way.
Makes sense, but politically, it doesn’t play as well as TV ads recruiting ICE commandos to storm the streets and arrest tamale vendors, even as the barbarians who ransacked the Capitol and beat up cops enjoy their time as presidentially pardoned patriots.
Small businesses, restaurants and mom and pops are being particularly hard hit, says Maria Salinas, chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Those who survived the pandemic were then kneecapped again by the raids.
With the Supreme Court ruling, Salinas told me, “I think there’s a lot of fear that this is going to come back harder than before.”
From a broader economic perspective, the mass deportations make no sense, especially when it’s clear that the vast majority of people targeted are not the violent criminals Trump keeps talking about.
Giovanni Peri, director of the UC Davis Global Migration Center, noted that we’re in the midst of a demographic transformation, much like that of Japan, which is dealing with the challenges of an aging population and restrictive immigration policies.
“We’ll lose almost a million working-age Americans every year in the next decade just because of aging,” Peri told me. “We will have a very large elderly population and that will demand a lot of services in … home healthcare [and other industries], but there will be fewer and fewer workers to do these types of jobs.”
Dowell Myers, a USC demographer, has been studying these trends for years.
“The numbers are simple and easy to read,” Myers said. Each year, the worker-to-retiree ratio decreases, and it will continue to do so. This means we’re headed for a critical shortage of working people who pay into Social Security and Medicare even as the number of retirees balloons.
If we truly wanted to stop immigration, Myers said, we should “send all ICE workers to the border. But if you take people who have been here 10 and 20 years and uproot them, there’s an extreme social cost and also an economic cost.”
At the Pasadena Home Depot, where day laborers still gather despite the risk of raids, three men held out hope for work. Two of them told me they have legal status. “But there’s very little work,” said Gavino Dominguez.
The third one, who said he’s undocumented, left to circle the parking lot and offer his services to contractors.
Umberto Andrade, a general contractor, was loading concrete and other supplies into his truck. He told me he lost one fearful employee for a week, and another for two weeks. They came back because they’re desperate and need to pay their bills.
“The housing shortage in California was already terrible before the fires, and now it’s 10 times worse,” said real estate agent Brock Harris, who represents a developer whose Altadena rebuilding project was temporarily slowed after a visit from ICE agents in June.
With building permits beginning to flow, Harris said, “for these guys to slow down or shut down job sites is more than infuriating. You’re going to see fewer people willing to start a project.”
Most people on a job site have legal status, Harris said, “but if shovels never hit the ground, the costs are being borne by everybody, and it’s slowing the rebuilding of L.A.”
Lots of bumps on the road to the golden age of prosperity.
Immigrants with removal orders are being fined up to $998 each day and sued by the Trump administration for non-compliance
The case stems from an arrest during a routine ICE check-in.Credit: Courtesy Neal via Adobe Stock
The Trump administration is now issuing large fines to immigrants with removal orders and suing those who do not comply in an effort to force self-deportation, immigration lawyers told ABC News.
As per the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun using a 1996 law to issue fines to individuals with removal orders. Notices warned immigrants to leave the U.S. voluntarily to avoid financial penalty.
In June, the Trump Administration announced that it would impose new fines, decrease the time for appeal and no longer give a 30-day notice period. ICE claimed they issued over 10,000 fines within that same month. Said fines range from $100-$500 for each unlawful entry or attempted entry, and up to $998 daily for up to five years.
In June, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the fines apply to those who enter the country illegally, ignore removal orders or do not comply with “voluntary departure orders.”
“Financial penalties like these are just one more reason why illegal aliens should use CBP Home to self-deport now before it’s too late,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS Assistant Secretary, said in the statement.
Before July, people received a notice of intent, which they could appeal. Now, however, individuals are simply receiving invoices, Florida immigration attorney John Gihon told ABC News.
Those who received fines and did not comply are now being sued by the Trump administration. Gihon noted that one of his clients was unable to comply due to a lack of proper travel documents. New York immigration attorney Edward Cuccia told ABC News that his clients have received million-dollar fines despite the fact that they work minimum wage jobs.
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Attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Merle Kahn, told ABC News, “They could be fined over $1.8 million if they have an outstanding deportation order and didn’t leave.”
Supporters of the DACA program rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court, circa 2023. (Photo by Robin Bravender / States Newsroom)
New Mexico Democratic U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján joined more than 40 Senate Democrats in calling upon U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Krisi Noem to make clear that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients have protection from deportation.
DACA is a status conferred through a 2012 federal law that affords immigrants who were brought to the United States as children protection, also known as “dreamers,” from being deported for renewable two-year periods.
According to a news release, the Sept. 3 letter to Noem stems from a statement made by DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in which she said, “Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportation.”
The senators’ letter notes that, “DACA was created to provide protections from immigration enforcement for certain noncitizens brought to the United States as children, also known as Dreamers, who undergo strict background checks and meet specific educational or work requirements. In contrast to Ms. McLaughlin’s puzzling statement, public DHS guidance makes clear that DACA holders are ‘not considered to be unlawfully present’ in the United States and that ‘[a]n individual who has received deferred action is authorized by DHS to be in the United States for the duration of the deferred action period.’”
The letter urges Noem to correct McLaughlin’s statement “to accurately reflect DACA and ensure that DHS recognizes and abides by the protections of DACA moving forward.”
Heinrich, Luján and other Senate Democrats also sent a letter earlier this year to the Trump administration pushing for it to reopen applications for DACA status, following a court ruling that paved the way for them to resume. In July, Heinrich introduced legislation to protect DACA recipients’ private information.
Federal immigration arrests in Colorado surged this summer as the Trump administration charged ahead with its plans to mass-deport undocumented immigrants.
But as arrests have spiked, law enforcement agencies increasingly have detained people without any prior criminal convictions or charges, internal data show.
Between June 11 and July 28, ICE arrested 828 people in Colorado, according to a Denver Post analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley. That amounted to more than 17 arrests per day, a more than 50% increase from the first five months of the Trump administration, through June 10, a period covered in a previous Post story. The rate from this summer was also more than five times higher than the daily arrest average from the same time period in 2024.
Of those detained over the summer, only a third had prior criminal convictions noted in the records. Another 18% had pending charges, indicating that nearly half had been neither convicted nor charged with a crime and that their only violation was immigration-related.
That, too, is a shift: In the earlier months of President Donald Trump’s second term, two-thirds of the 1,639 people arrested in Colorado had either been convicted of a crime (38%) or charged with one (29%).
“That tracks with what we would have expected (and) what we’ve been hearing from community sources,” said Henry Sandman, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “The data and the reality disproves ICE’s talking points that they’re going after criminals. We’re seeing tactics increase. They’re trying to increase arrest numbers as high as possible, whatever the reason may be for detaining folks.”
Steve Kotecki, a spokesman for Denver’s ICE field office, did not respond to a request for comment late last week.
The data, obtained directly from ICE by the UC Berkeley researchers through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, offers the clearest look at immigration enforcement activities available, as ICE doesn’t post recent information online. For this analysis, The Post examined arrests that occurred in Colorado; arrests that were listed in the dataset as occurring in Wyoming but which took place in a Colorado city; and arrests lacking a listed state but which occurred in a Colorado town or county.
The Post removed several apparent duplicate arrests and a similarly small number of arrests in the region that did not have a specific location listed. The analysis also included a handful of people who appeared to have been arrested twice in the span of several months.
When listing a detainee’s criminal background, the data provides no details about the criminal charges or prior crimes. Illegally entering the country is typically treated as a civil matter upon first offense, but a subsequent entry is a felony criminal offense.
More info about July operation
The newly released data includes the same nine-day period in July during which ICE has said it arrested 243 immigrants without proper legal status “who are currently charged with or have been convicted of criminal offenses after illegally entering the United States.” The arrests, the agency said, all occurred in metro Denver.
But the data published by the UC-Berkeley researchers does not fully match ICE’s public representations.
During the same time frame, the agency arrested 232 people, according to the data. Most of those arrested during that time had never been convicted or charged with a crime, at least according to what’s in the records. Sixty-six people had a previous criminal conviction, and 34 more had pending charges.
Kotecki did not respond to questions about the July operation.
The Post previously reported that ICE falsely claimed that it had arrested a convicted murderer in Denver as part of the July operation. The man had actually been arrested at a state prison facility shortly after his scheduled release, state prison officials said last month.
While ICE claimed the man had found “sanctuary” in the capital city — a shot taken at Denver’s immigration ordinances — The Post found that state prison officials had coordinated his transfer directly to ICE. He was then deported to Mexico, and information matching his description is reflected in the UC Berkeley data.
It’s unclear if all of ICE’s arrests are fully reflected in the data, making it difficult to verify ICE’s claims. The researchers’ data is imperfect, experts have told The Post. The records likely represent the merging of separate datasets before they were provided by the government, increasing the likelihood of mistakes or missing data.
Some arrests in Colorado were listed as occurring in other states or had no state listed at all. Other arrests were duplicated entirely, and researchers have cautioned that ICE’s data at times has had inaccurate or missing information.
The anonymized nature of the data, which lacks arrestees’ names but lists some biographical information, also can make it difficult to verify. When ICE announced the results of the July operation, it named eight of the people it had arrested. Court records and the UC Berkeley data appear to match up with as many as seven of them.
The eighth, Blanca Ochoa Tello, was arrested on July 14 by ICE’s investigative branch in a drug-trafficking investigation, court filings show. But it’s unclear if she appears in the ICE data, as she was arrested in La Plata County and no woman arrested in that county was listed in the data.
To verify ICE’s July operation claims, The Post examined arrest data in Colorado and Wyoming, which jointly form the Denver area of operations for the agency. The Post also searched for arrests in every other state to identify any arrests that may have occurred in a Colorado area but were errantly listed under other states.
Federal agents detain a man as he exits a court hearing in immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on July 30, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Nationally, immigration authorities had their most arrest-heavy months this summer, according to data published by researchers at Syracuse University. Immigration officials arrested more than 36,700 people in June, its highest single-month total since June 2019, during Trump’s first term. More than 31,200 were arrested across the country in July.
The Trump administration has also set out to increase its detention capacity to accommodate the mass-deportation plans.
As of late July, ICE planned to triple its detention capacity in Colorado, according to documents obtained last month by the Washington Post. That plan includes opening as many as three new facilities and the expansion of Colorado’s sole existing facility in Aurora.
DHS officers watch from the parking lot as protesters gather at the entrance to the ICE Colorado Field Office on Aug. 30, 2025, in Centennial. (Photo By Kathryn Scott/Special to The Denver Post)
Over the course of this year, ICE arrested people in Colorado who were originally from more than 60 countries, according to the data. That included 10 Iranians arrested in late June or early July. Six of those people were arrested on June 22, the day after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. Three more were arrested over the next 48 hours.
The vast majority of the undocumented immigrants who were arrested and deported were returned to their home countries, though roughly 50 were sent somewhere else, the data show. Nine Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, when alleged gang members were dispatched to a notorious prison there.
ProPublica identified roughly a dozen Coloradans who were sent to that prison. It reported that several were arrested in late January, which matches information listed in the ICE data published by UC Berkeley.
Advocates’ fears of continued arrests have escalated as ICE’s funding has surged. On Aug. 30, several immigration advocates picketed outside an ICE field office in Centennial after a number of immigrants received abrupt notices to check in at the facility.
Four people were detained, said Jordan Garcia, the program director for the American Friends Service Committee’s immigrant-rights program in Colorado.
Among them, he said, was an older Cuban man with dementia. Garcia and other advocates spoke with the man and his son before they entered the facility. The son later came out, Garcia said, and said that his father had been detained.
As ICE ramps up for more deportations under President Trump, Nicholas Nehamas, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times, talks with applicants at an ICE recruitment fair in Texas.
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Nicholas Nehamas, Kassie Bracken, Christina Shaman, June Kim and Andrew Cagle
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem touted the results of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, saying more than 1 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally chose to leave the country.
“According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, we have 1.6 million illegal aliens that have gone home voluntarily,” Noem told reporters during an Aug. 19 visit to the U.S. southern border. “They have left the United States, returned to their countries at the encouragement of President (Donald) Trump and his policies so that they have an opportunity to come back to America the right way.”
Noem repeated the statistic at an Aug. 26 cabinet meeting.
The Department of Homeland Security told PolitiFact that tens of thousands of immigrants had used a government app to voluntarily leave the country, and that 1.6 million immigrants who were in the country illegally had left the U.S. since Jan. 20, when Trump took office. But it didn’t specify how Noem reached that number.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics did not present this data as Noem described.
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An Aug. 14 press release announcing that 1.6 million immigrants had left the U.S. showed one possible source for Noem’s data; the press release included a chart from the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors low immigration levels.
On Aug. 12, the organization published a report analyzing survey data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Current Population Survey.
“We preliminarily estimate that the number of illegal immigrants has fallen by 1.6 million in just the last six months,” the report said.
Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies and one of the report’s authors, told PolitiFact the “overwhelming majority” of the 1.6 million would have left on their own.
But the number also includes immigrants who, for example, were deported, died, left voluntarily and those whose status changed such as by getting asylum. DHS previously told PolitiFact that it had deported 239,000 people as of June 30.
The Center for Immigration Studies number is an estimate. And the group’s report pointed to several data limitations, including a lack of official government data and possible reluctance by immigrants to complete a government survey because of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“There is always some uncertainty in research of this kind, which we point out in our report,” Camarota told PolitiFact, adding that he would refer to the number as an estimate “based on the best data available.”
The U.S. Census Bureau has cautioned against using the Current Population Survey to estimate the number of foreign-born people in the country. It said the Current Population Survey’s sample size of 60,000 households makes it less reliable than data from the bureau’s American Community Survey, which has a sample size of 3.5 million households.
Using the Current Population Survey, the Pew Research Center estimated that the U.S. foreign born population had dropped by 1.4 million people from January to June. However, it did not specify how many of those people were in the U.S. illegally and it also noted that part of the drop could be attributed to decreased survey responses.
Other researchers who study immigrant populations also said the Current Population Survey points to a drop in the number of people in the U.S. illegally. However, they said it’s too soon to know by how much.
Surveys used to estimate the number of immigrants illegally in the U.S. have limitations
The Department of Homeland Security and severalresearchgroups typically publish annual estimates of how many immigrants are in the U.S. illegally. Every group has its own methodology, but collectively, the groups rely on Census Bureau data.
Researchers generally rely on the bureau’s more robust American Community Survey. That’s because the Current Population Survey’s sample size has a large margin of error, said Robert Warren, a demographer and senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies of New York, one of the groups that estimates the immigrant population.
In July 2025 the Current Population Survey reported an adult foreign born population of 48.5 million people with a margin of error of plus or minus 830,000 people, Jed Kolko, an economist who served as under secretary of commerce for economic affairs during the Biden Administration, told PolitiFact. By comparison, the 2023 American Community Survey reported an adult foreign born population of 45.5 million with a margin of error of plus or minus 162,000.
The Current Population Survey is published monthly compared with the American Community Survey, which is published once a year and its data is from the year prior. The American Community Survey’s time lag makes it useless in measuring the most recent, month-by-month changes in the nation’s foreign born population, Warren said.
Group questions whether respondents were reluctant survey participants
The Center for Immigration Studies’ report acknowledged that immigrants in the U.S. illegally might be more reluctant to complete the government’s Current Population Survey or identify themselves as foreign-born. The Trump administration has given immigration officials access to other federaldata to help identify and potentially deport people.
“If (fewer people are responding), then our estimate of illegal immigrants based on the survey may be overstating the decline in their actual numbers,” the Center for Immigration Studies report said.
Camarota, the report’s co-author, has since questioned the report’s suggestion that immigrants may have been reluctant to participate, calling it nothing more than a possibility: “There is as yet no evidence of this,” Camarota wrote in an Aug. 20 blog post.
The group’s report also acknowledged that administrative data needed to estimate the unauthorized immigrant population is unavailable, further increasing the “uncertainty of our estimate.”
To estimate the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Camarota told PolitiFact, he first needs to estimate the number of people in the country legally. DHS and State Department data on people who have legally entered the country hasn’t been updated since May 2025, he said.
What we know about the current unauthorized population in the U.S.
Multiple immigration experts said they believe the Current Population Survey data points to signs of a decrease, but it’s not conclusive enough to say how much with certainty.
For example, the Pew Research Center’s estimate that the foreign born population had dropped by 1.4 million people didn’t include how many of those people were in the U.S. illegally. The center’s estimates of the unauthorized population rely on the 2023 American Community Survey.
The Current Population Survey “may offer an early sign that immigrants, unauthorized and legal alike, are leaving the country in some number, though not to the extent suggested by DHS or others,” Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that also estimates the number of unauthorized people in the U.S., said.
“We think more likely at this point that lower survey response rates among immigrants and the small sample size of the survey are driving much of the estimated change,” Mittelstadt said, adding that a drop of 1.6 million people “would be far outside trends the U.S. has seen before, even during economic recessions and prior periods of high immigration enforcement.”
Warren said the Current Population Survey “provides strong evidence of a decline.”
Even though the 1.6 million figure in six months would be “unprecedented,” he said there have been drops in the foreign population. From 2016 to 2019, an average of 1.3 million people left the foreign-born population each year, according to Warren’s analyses of the American Community Survey.
Mark Hugo Lopez, director of race and ethnicity at Pew Research Center, said the drop in the unauthorized immigrant population is in part because of a decrease in the number of people illegally entering the U.S. and the administration’s stepped up enforcement. That could include people who voluntarily left the country.
“More data is needed though to assess this. As it becomes available, we’ll know more,” he said.
Our ruling
Noem said, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics statistics show, “We have 1.6 million illegal aliens that have gone home voluntarily.”
The number Noem presented as a statement of fact appears to be based on an estimate from an immigration think tank’s analysis of data from a Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census survey. It has a small sample size and large margin of error.
The figure represents not only people who might have voluntarily left the U.S., but also people who were deported, died or whose status changed such as by receiving asylum.
Other researchers said the preliminary government data shows there has likely been a decrease in the unauthorized immigrant population but it’s too soon to know how large it is. One research group estimated that the foreign born population had dropped by 1.4 million people between January and June. However, it didn’t estimate how many of those people were in the U.S. illegally.
That group and other immigrant population researchers added that immigrant participation in the government survey might have declined, which could inflate the drop.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. We rate it Half True.
A judge this weekend blocked the deportation of hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children to Guatemala after lawyers notified the court that the children were being loaded onto planes. Camilo Montoya-Galvez has more.
A federal judge on Sunday blocked the Trump administration from sending any unaccompanied migrant child to Guatemala unless they have a deportation order, just hours after lawyers alerted her of what they described as a hurried government effort to deport hundreds of children.
U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued her order as the deportation effort was fully underway, with planes with migrant children on board ready to take off from Texas.
Earlier Sunday, in the overnight hours, Sooknanan issued a temporary restraining order barring officials from sending a group of 10 migrant children between the ages of 10 and 17 to Guatemala, granting a request from attorneys who alleged the effort would skirt legal protections Congress established for these minors. She also scheduled a hearing in the afternoon to weigh the case’s next steps.
But Sooknanan abruptly moved up the hearing earlier on Sunday, saying she had been alerted that some migrant children were already in the process of being deported.
As that hearing got underway, Sooknanan announced she had just issued a broader temporary restraining order blocking any deportations of unaccompanied children from Guatemala and in U.S. custody who did not have a deportation order. She instructed Drew Ensign, the Justice Department representing the Trump administration, to quickly inform officials they had to halt their deportation plans.
Ensign acknowledged deportation planes had been prepared to take off on Sunday, but said they were all “on the ground” and still on U.S. soil. He said he believed one plane had taken off earlier but had come back.
At the request of Sooknanan, Ensign said he confirmed that the children on the planes would be deplaned and returned to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for caring for migrant minors who enter the U.S. without authorization and without their parents or legal guardians.
HHS houses unaccompanied children in shelters or foster homes until they turn 18 or until they can be placed with a suitable sponsor in the U.S., who are often family members.
Sooknanan conceded her temporary restraining order, which is set to last 14 days, is “extraordinary” but justified it on the grounds that the government had decided to “execute a plan to remove these children” in the “wee hours” of a holiday weekend.
In their lawsuit, lawyers for the group of Guatemalan children said the Trump administration had launched an effort to deport more than 600 migrant minors to Guatemala without allowing them to request humanitarian protection, even though U.S. law protects them from speedy deportations. They alleged the children could face abuse, neglect or persecution if returned to Guatemala.
Ensign, the Justice Department attorney, said the Trump administration was not trying to formally deport the Guatemalan children under U.S. immigration law, but instead repatriate them to Guatemala so they could reunite with relatives there. He said the Guatemalan government and the children’s relatives had requested the reunifications.
But lawyers for the children disputed the government’s claims, citing one case in which they say a child’s parents did not request any repatriation. They also said a law known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act says unaccompanied migrant children who are not from Mexico must be allowed to see an immigration judge and apply for legal protections before any deportation effort. Some of the children facing return to Guatemala still have pending immigration cases, the attorneys said.
Ensign said the government’s legal position is that it can “repatriate” these children, based on authority given to HHS to reunite “unaccompanied alien children with a parent abroad in appropriate cases.”
Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the deportation plans.
Neha Desai, an attorney at the California-based National Center for Youth Law who works with migrant minors, said the U.S. government was attempting to deport children with “already filed claims for legal relief based on the abuse and persecution that they experienced in their home country.”
“This is both unlawful and profoundly inhumane,” Desai added.
Most of the unaccompanied children who cross the U.S. southern border without legal permission hail from Central America and tend to be teenagers. Once in the U.S., many file applications for asylum or other immigration benefits to try to stay in the country legally, such as a visa for abused, abandoned or neglected youth.
As part of its larger crackdown on illegal immigration, the Trump administration has sought to make drastic changes to how the U.S. processes unaccompanied children. It has made it harder for some relatives, including those in the country illegally, to sponsor unaccompanied children out of government custody and offered some teenagers the option to voluntary return to their native countries.
The Trump administration has also directed agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies to conduct “welfare checks” on children released from HHS custody, a move it has said is in response to disputed claims that the Biden administration “lost” hundreds of thousands of migrant minors.
There are currently roughly 2,000 migrant children in HHS care.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, serving as the emergency judge over the Labor Day weekend, issued an emergency order early Sunday that halted the Trump administration’s apparent plan to deport more than 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children.
The order came just hours after immigrant advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the unannounced removals.
Sooknanan rescheduled a hearing from 3 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. after learning that some children were already being prepared for removal. In her ruling, Sooknanan ordered the government to immediately cease all efforts to transfer or repatriate any child covered by the lawsuit, which was filed by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC). The putative class includes all Guatemalan minors in federal custody as of August 31 who do not have final removal orders.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment via email on Sunday.
Why It Matters
As of August 2025, there are just under 2,000 children in Health and Human Services (HHS) custody, with a majority originating from Central American countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
The Trump administration has carried out more so-called welfare checks of immigrant children across the U.S. and has ramped up enforcement actions such as placing children in expedited removal proceedings. Immigrant advocates have raised concerns about these practices. Unaccompanied children are considered a protected and vulnerable group.
The case raises urgent questions about the treatment of vulnerable migrant children and the erosion of legal safeguards under federal immigration law. At stake are protections enshrined in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which mandates due process and prohibits expedited removal of unaccompanied minors from non-contiguous countries. The lawsuit also highlights concerns about discrimination, lack of access to counsel, and potential violations of the Fifth Amendment.
What To Know
Sooknanan’s order came after attorneys alerted the court that Guatemalan children were already being moved toward removal. The judge instructed the government to stop all transfers and confirmed that the class includes minors in the custody of the ORR who lack executable removal orders.
During the hearing, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign acknowledged that one flight may have departed but returned. He added all children covered by the lawsuit remain in U.S. custody and no further flights will leave under the court’s directive. Attorneys for the children said some remain on planes in Harlingen and El Paso, Texas, ABC News reported.
The NILC lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of coordinating with the Guatemalan government to repatriate more than 600 minors without legal hearings. The complaint argues that this violates federal statutes protecting unaccompanied children and denies them the opportunity to seek asylum or contest removal.
According to NILC attorneys, the Trump administration intended to deport the children within hours under a “pilot program” coordinated with the Guatemalan government. The plan reportedly included transferring minors from ORR custody to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for removal, bypassing ongoing immigration proceedings.
Federal law exempts unaccompanied children from expedited removal and guarantees them access to immigration court hearings. The lawsuit argues that the administration’s actions violate TVPRA, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), and constitutional due process rights.
The complaint, filed just after 1 a.m. Sunday, names 10 plaintiffs identified only by initials, ranging in age from 10 to 17. Two are listed simply as “minors.” The emergency relief motion followed within 30 minutes.
Though the case has not yet been formally assigned, Sooknanan is presiding due to her emergency designation.
A similar lawsuit filed Saturday in federal court in Chicago led to a temporary halt of deportations for four Guatemalan minors. U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to review that case. Former President Joe Biden appointed both judges.
NILC attorneys argue that the children face grave risks if returned to Guatemala, including persecution and trauma. They accuse the administration of violating its legal obligations and undermining the rights of asylum-seeking minors.
Part of a group of 92 unaccompanied Guatemalan migrant minors who were deported from Mexico arrive to their country at the Air Force Base in Guatemala City on February 7, 2023. Part of a group of 92 unaccompanied Guatemalan migrant minors who were deported from Mexico arrive to their country at the Air Force Base in Guatemala City on February 7, 2023. Johan Ordonez/Getty Images
What People Are Saying
Efrén C. Olivares, vice president of litigation and legal strategy at the NILC, said: “It is a dark and dangerous moment for this country when our government chooses to target orphaned 10-year-olds and denies them their most basic legal right to present their case before an immigration judge. The Constitution and federal laws provide robust protections to unaccompanied minors specifically because of the unique risks they face. We are determined to use every legal tool at our disposal to force the administration to respect the law and not send any child to danger.”
The NILC legal filing said: “Defendants’ actions are thus exposing children to multiple harms in returning them to a country where they fear persecution and by flouting their legal obligations to care for them in the United States.”
Gladis Molina Alt, executive director for the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, previously told Newsweek: “Every child in U.S. custody has the right to due process, to seek protection under current asylum law, legal counsel, and an individualized decision that hears their claim for protection first. To strip away those protections is to put children’s lives on the line. We will not stand by while the government treats children as political pawns instead of human beings with rights, voices, and futures.”
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, previously told Newsweek: “Reports that the administration is planning to return hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children raise serious concerns about whether due process and child welfare standards are being upheld.
“Protections for these children were enacted with bipartisan support to ensure that vulnerable children are screened for trafficking, abuse, or fear of persecution before any decision is made about their future. Any new policy must be consistent with these longstanding legal protections and grounded in child welfare best practices.”
What Happens Next?
The court will continue reviewing the case to determine whether the emergency order should be extended or converted into a preliminary injunction. If the administration is found to have violated federal law, broader restrictions on deportation procedures for unaccompanied minors may follow.
Additional hearings and filings are expected in the coming days.
Since March, President Trump’s administration has made an example of a Salvadoran native who lived in Maryland with his family, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was detained by immigration authorities in Baltimore on Monday to face renewed efforts to deport him after a brief period of freedom.
In this undated photo provided by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in April 2025, a man identified by Jennifer Vasquez Sura as her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is forced to sit with other prisoners by guards in the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador.
(U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland via AP)
U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland via AP
FILE – This undated photo provided by Murray Osorio PLLC shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
(Murray Osorio PLLC via AP)
Murray Osorio PLLC via AP
The family of Kilmar Abrego Garcia stands at a rally to demand his release. Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported in March to a prison in El Salvador.
(WTOP/Kate Ryan)
WTOP/Kate Ryan
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA’s Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
(Courtesy Chris Van Hollen)
Courtesy Chris Van Hollen
This courtroom sketch depicts, from left, attorney Sean Hecker, Kilmar Abrego Garcia and attorney Rascoe Dean in court during Garcia’s detention hearing on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn.
(AP Photo/Diego Fishburn)
AP Photo/Diego Fishburn
Protesters gather outside the Federal Courthouse before arguments about whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be released from jail on Friday, June 13, 2025 in Nashville, Tenn.
(AP Photo/George Walker IV)
AP Photo/George Walker IV
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, third from right, leaves the Putnam County Jail, Friday, Aug. 22, 2025, in Cookeville, Tenn.
(AP Photo/Brett Carlsen)
AP Photo/Brett Carlsen
Kilmar Abrego Garcia hugs his youngest son, with his wife Jennifer to his right.
(Courtesy CASA)
Courtesy CASA
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, front left, and her husband Kilmar Abrego Garcia, front center, attend a protest rally at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, to support Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
(AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough
Kilmar Abrego Garcia attends a protest rally at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, to support Abrego Garcia.
(AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough
Since March, President Donald Trump’s administration has made an example of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who lived in Maryland with his family.
The now-30-year-old was deported to an infamous maximum security prison in El Salvador and has since been transferred to Tennessee and then back to Maryland. He’s now faced with the threat of again being deported, but this time to Uganda.
But, how did this case begin? Let’s break it down.
March
On March 12, Abrego Garcia was arrested while driving in Baltimore after working a shift as a sheet metal apprentice and picking up his 5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house.
Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador who illegally entered the U.S. in 2011, had previously received a withholding of removal order in 2019 by an immigration judge who said he’d likely face harm if returned to his home country.
The Trump administration admitted its violation of the judge’s order was “an administrative error.”
Robert Cerna, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acting field office director of Enforcement and Removal Operations, wrote in a court document that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was “carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13.”
Police and other immigration officials asserted Abrego Garcia’s involvement in the MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, gang because he wore a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie and had tattoos on his hands and arms.
April
While calls from around the country were being made for Abrego Garcia’s return, the Trump administration doubled down.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia on April 4. The Supreme Court ruled on April 10 that the administration must work to bring him back. A three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the administration’s claim that it can’t do anything to free Abrego Garcia and return him to the U.S. “should be shocking.”
During a meeting between Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in April, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said two courts found Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13. Miller said that once the gang was declared a foreign terrorist organization, Abrego Garcia “was no longer eligible for any form of immigration relief,” and was not legally allowed to be in the U.S.
In that same meeting, Bukele called the idea of returning Abrego Garcia to the United States “preposterous,” adding he has no basis to return a “terrorist.”
In an April 16 social media post, the Department of Homeland Security showed court filings for a domestic violence protective order against Abrego Garcia, which claimed in May 2021 he attacked his wife, ripping off her shirt, grabbing her and bruising her. The case was dismissed when his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, failed to appear in court.
While visiting the Central American country, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, met with Abrego Garcia, writing in a post on X that he was able to “pass along his message of love” from his wife. Van Hollen’s meeting came hours after he said he was denied entry into the high-security Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where Abrego Garcia was being held.
Tens of other Democratic lawmakers held meetings in El Salvador, warning of the unprecedented disregard for the constitutional right to trial and pushing for Abrego Garcia’s return.
May
Authorities from Tennessee released a video in May that showed Abrego Garcia being stopped by police for speeding in 2022. Body camera footage shows Abrego Garcia telling the responding officer that he and eight others inside the vehicle had been working construction in Missouri.
Because officers did not see any luggage in the vehicle, they suspected it was a human trafficking incident. However, the officer did not cite Abrego Garcia for driving infractions, instead writing him up for driving with an expired driver’s license.
ABC News reported that the man whose vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving during the traffic stop is incarcerated in Alabama. Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, 38, claimed Abrego Garcia worked for his “taxi service,” transporting undocumented immigrants from Texas to other states.
When details of the Tennessee traffic stop were first publicized, Abrego Garcia’s wife said he sometimes transported groups of fellow construction workers between job sites.
June
On June 6, Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States, but only to a Nashville prison where he was to face criminal human smuggling charges. He pleaded not guilty to those charges.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes, the presiding federal judge in Abrego Garcia’s case in Tennessee, ordered his release from jail before his trial, despite the threat of ICE taking him back into custody.
Holmes acknowledged in her ruling Sunday that determining whether Abrego Garcia should be released is “little more than an academic exercise” because ICE will likely detain him. But the judge wrote that the government failed to prove that Abrego was a flight risk, that he posed a danger to the community or that he would interfere with proceedings if released.
During a court hearing, Holmes set specific conditions for Abrego Garcia’s release that included him living with his brother, a U.S. citizen, in Maryland. But she held off on releasing him over concerns that prosecutors can’t prevent ICE from deporting him.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys asked the judge, who had already extended the waiting period before the trial, to keep him in jail because of “contradictory statements” by the Trump administration over whether or not he’ll be deported upon release.
“The irony of this request is not lost on anyone,” the attorneys wrote.
July
Abrego Garcia said he faced terrible treatment and psychological torture while in the notorious CECOT prison. He said he was kicked and hit, forced to kneel for long periods of time and deprived of sleep.
Bukele denied the claims, saying, “If he’d been tortured, sleep-deprived, and starved, why does he look so well in every picture?”
The Trump administration said it would plan to deport Abrego Garcia if he were released from criminal custody before his Tennessee trial.
CBS News reported that Emil Bove, the principal associate deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice, sent text and email messages allegedly offering new insight into the administration’s response to its mistaken deportation of Abrego Garcia in March. A whistleblower who revealed the message showed him unsuccessfully pressing his colleagues to fulfill a court order to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
By July 16, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw to, yet again, delay his release from jail in order to prevent the administration from deporting him. The attorneys filed a motion for a 30-day stay of any release order that would allow Abrego Garcia to “evaluate his options and determine whether additional relief is necessary.”
He rejoined his family in Maryland while he awaited trial on human smuggling charges.
Video released by advocates showed a room decorated with streamers, flowers and signs. He embraced loved ones and thanked them “for everything.”
Jossie Flor Sapunar, with CASA, the organization providing legal assistance to Abrego-Garcia and his family, told WTOP’s Nick Iannelli that the moment was “bittersweet” because he was finally reunited with his family but still faced the threat of deportation again.
“The joy is here, but it’s agonizing knowing he faces that deportation threat,” she said. “Unfortunately, nothing we have seen so far gives us the lasting optimism that Kilmar’s reunification with his family will be permanent.”
Unfortunately, Sapunar was right.
Despite Abrego Garcia’s release into his brother’s custody for home detention, ICE told his attorneys he was to report to immigration authorities three days later. He was detained by immigration authorities in Baltimore, who argue they may deport him to the East African nation of Uganda.
Although Abrego Garcia can’t be deported to El Salvador without violating the judge’s order, officials have said they plan to deport him to any country that will take him.
Before he was taken into custody, Abrego Garcia spoke in front of a crowd of supporters, saying through a translator: “Promise me that you will continue to pray, continue to fight, resist and love.”
Since Aug. 25, Abrego Garcia has been in immigration custody once again.
His lawyers have sought a gag order on the Trump administration, ordering them to stop making negative comments that they say could jeopardize a fair trial.
After being taken into ICE custody, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said he is seeking asylum in the U.S.
Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing a suit challenging Abrego Garcia’s detention and deportation, has ruled the government cannot remove him from the continental U.S. before an evidentiary hearing for the lawsuit on Oct. 6.
She also ordered that he be kept within 200 miles of her court in Greenbelt to ensure he can access his lawyers. He’s being held at a detention facility in Farmville, Virginia, which is west of Richmond, according to ICE’s website.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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