deportation

SIR Keir Starmer is under huge pressure to take a tougher line on immigration — as even his own MPs reckon his asylum shake-up is not enough.

The Prime Minister has been warned he will lose the next election unless the Government gets a grip on the Channel crisis — with one backbencher calling for a “national emergency” to shut down most asylum claims.

7

7

7

It came as Nigel Farage cranked things up with a blueprint that pledges a mass deportation blitz within 30 days of arrival at No10.

Last week, Home Office figures revealed that a record number of people have claimed asylum in the UK since Labour came to power.

Just over 111,000 made claims in the year to June — with 32,000 migrants currently living in taxpayer-funded hotels.

Even yesterday, migrants continued to board dinghies off the coast of France to attempt the dangerous Channel crossing.

Reform UK leader Mr Farage is today due to unveil plans to arrest all illegal arrivals on entry, detain them on disused military bases and deport them within a month.

Under the blueprint, the UK would leave the European Convention on Human Rights and scrap the Human Rights Act, replacing it with a new British Bill of Rights.

The hardline stance will be pitched directly against the package unveiled by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper at the weekend.

Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice said: “The Reform plan will defeat the lawyers using human rights laws to stop deportations.

“Labour’s plans will still allow the lawyers to use the ECHR and human rights to stop removals.”

Ms Cooper promised to scrap the tribunal system and replace it with panels of “professionally trained adjudicators” to fast-track appeals and reduce the backlog of 51,000 cases, which each take an average of more than a year.

She insisted the “broken” process was leaving thousands of people in the system for years on end and vowed to substantially reduce the numbers in asylum hotels.

It comes after the High Court granted a temporary injunction that will force the Home Office to relocate around 138 male asylum seekers from a hotel in Epping, Essex, in a matter of days.

Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told The Sun yesterday: “The British people expect our borders to be secure and they are rightly angry at the situation on our south coast.

“If the Government’s current measures don’t end the boat crossings, then we must go further and faster, including declaring a national emergency if necessary and closing our country to all asylum claims except for unaccompanied children.

“The message must be crystal clear — if you cross the Channel illegally, you will be detained and returned immediately. No loopholes, no delays, no excuses.”

Veteran Labour MP Graham Stringer echoed his comments, saying: “We need to persuade people who are coming here in the belief they will be allowed to stay and get priority in terms of housing and healthcare, that this won’t be the case.

7

7

7

7

“And if that means withdrawing from international treaties, then so be it.” He also warned: “It will be very difficult to win the next election if we don’t solve the problem of illegal immigrants being given the right to stay.

We need to make it far more difficult for asylum seekers to want to come to this country

Jo White, leader of Labour’s Red Wall Caucus

“We need a more fundamental look at how to tackle illegal migration than the Government is currently pursuing.”

Jo White, leader of Labour’s Red Wall Caucus, also urged tougher action, saying: “I want Yvette Cooper to look at every possible solution — and there are many more than just looking at how fast the appeal system is working.

“We need to make it far more difficult for asylum seekers to want to come to this country.”

She went on: “I firmly believe that if we don’t sort it, then Labour are under threat at the next election.

“So I want this Government to look at every solution possible. And I’m very, very keen that Britain does take a look at what (Denmark) is doing.”

Denmark has pursued some of the toughest asylum policies in Europe, including plans to process claims in third countries, tighter rules on residency and benefits, and measures aimed at discouraging new arrivals.

FAILED asylum seekers and foreign offenders are being left in Britain for up to a year because their governments are dragging their feet over travel papers, a Home Office file reveals.

The official guide, published by the department, shows deportations are crippled by delays from overseas embassies.

5

5

Egypt, Guinea and Burkina Faso are among the worst offenders — taking six to 12 months to issue the documents needed to put its citizens on a plane home.

By contrast, Italy, Belgium and Sri Lanka can turn the paperwork around in less than two weeks, while India averages one month.

But the file also shows no reliable timescale is available at all for dozens of countries — leaving removals at the mercy of slow or unpredictable foreign bureaucracies.

The delays mean some migrants remain in Britain long after their claims have failed, with taxpayers footing the bill for hotel rooms, benefits and legal fees while they wait.

Yesterday, fed-up protesters raised St George’s Cross and Union flags outside some of the 210 hotels being used to house migrants — as PM Sir Keir Starmer announced plans to overhaul the failing asylum system.

Among those targeted was the Castle Bromwich Holiday Inn in Birmingham.

Outside the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf, East London, a group of protesters gathered with one holding a banner that read: “Enough is enough protect our women and girls.”

Another said: “Tower Hamlets council house homeless Brits first.”

There were also protests outside the Holiday Inn in Solihull, West Midlands, and the Manchester South Hotel.

At least 15 people were arrested at protests relating to migrant hotels on Saturday.

Following the release of the Home Office file, Reform UK demanded ministers get tough.

Deputy party leader Richard Tice said: “Foreign countries know Starmer’s Britain is a pushover, so it’s no wonder they are dragging their feet when it comes to accepting deportations.

“Britain needs to start using its diplomatic and economic power.

5

“Countries that refuse to take their criminals back should not get off scot-free but instead face serious sanctions.

“Unfortunately, with this meek Labour Government, we will continue to be seen as a meek nation on the global stage.”

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp also hit out, saying: “Countries that do not fully and promptly co-operate should suffer visa sanctions — where we don’t give visas to citizens of those countries to come here.

‘TOO WEAK’

“Then, they would pretty soon fall into line.

“The legal power exists to do that but this Labour Government is too weak to use it.”

There is currently a 106,000-strong backlog of asylum claim cases, including at least 51,000 appeals.

Last week, official statistics showed a record 111,000 people applied for asylum in the UK during the first year of Labour coming to power.

The Government has said its latest plans would introduce independent panels to hear appeal cases to speed up the process and deport failed asylum seekers quicker.

A new commission will prioritise cases of those living in costly asylum hotels and foreign national offenders.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “We cannot carry on with these completely unacceptable delays in appeals as a result of the system we have inherited, which mean that failed asylum seekers stay in the system for years on end at huge cost to the taxpayer.”

5

5

She added: “Overhauling the appeals system so that it is swift, fair and independent, with high standards in place, is a central part of our Plan for Change.”

But the new scheme could take months to implement and record numbers of people continue to cross the Channel on small boats.

Tory Mr Philp said: “The Government is too weak to do what’s really needed — such as repeal the Human Rights Act for all immigration matters and deport all illegal immigrants immediately upon arrival.”

The Home Office said: “For some countries receiving returnees from the UK, establishing their identities and nationalities can take time.

“Where that is the case, we work with their respective governments closely to drive timings down to the minimum possible.”

Aug. 23 (UPI) — A day after his release from custody, Kilmar Abrego Garcia faces the possibility of being deported to Uganda, lawyers for the El Salvadoran national said in a court filing Saturday.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers claim the federal government is pushing their client to accept a guilty plea in relation to human trafficking charges in Tennessee, or face deportation to the African nation. He was born in El Salvador, immigrated to the United States as a teenager around 2011 and violated a 2019 court order that protected him from deportation.

On Friday, a federal magistrate judge released Abrego Garcia from custody while he awaits trial for the Tennessee incident.

He was then immediately ordered to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Baltimore.

The judge ordered the federal government to give the 30-year-old at least 72 hours notice before undertaking deportation proceedings to give his lawyers a chance to file a legal challenge.

“Despite having requested and received assurances from the government of Costa Rica that Mr. Abrego would be accepted there, within minutes of his release from pretrial custody, an ICE representative informed Mr. Abrego’s counsel that the government intended to deport Mr. Abrego to Uganda and ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office Monday,” lawyers said in their court filing.

“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.”

Abrego Garcia was initially deported to El Salvador this past March after federal officials accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang and illegally entered the United States in 2011.

The move came amid President Donald Trump‘s crackdown on illegal immigration across the country.

The Trump administration later admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was due to an administrative error.

He was later returned to the United States after his case became national news, leading people to advocate for his repatriation, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen Jr., D-Md. Abrego Garcia lives in Baltimore with his wife and children.

He has been held in custody since returning to the United States in relation to the 2022 human trafficking charges in Tennessee.

Federal officials have promised to deport him to Costa Rica in exchange for a guilty plea, but have said that offer will be rescinded shortly if Abrego Garcia doesn’t make a deal.

The T visa, an underutilized lifeline for immigrant survivors of human trafficking, is experiencing a sharp rise in applications, despite increasing processing times and deportation risks.

Also known as T nonimmigrant status, the visa allows people who have experienced severe forms of human trafficking to remain in the country for up to four years if they are helpful to law enforcement in the investigation and prosecution of their trafficker. Approved applicants can work in the U.S., are eligible for certain state and federal benefits, and can apply for a green card after three years on the visa (or earlier if the criminal case is closed).

Julie Dahlstrom, founder and director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at Boston University, said increased awareness of the visa and the courts’ expanding definitions of trafficking may have contributed to the increase, along with mounting barriers to other pathways for immigrant relief.

Congress created the T visa in 2000 as part of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, intending to bolster law enforcement agencies’ capabilities to prosecute human trafficking crimes while offering protections to survivors. The same law also established the U visa, which provides legal status for victims who have suffered substantial abuse as a result of serious crimes including trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault. U visa applicants must also be willing to assist law enforcement in their investigation of these crimes.

“Many [applicants] are eligible for the U visa as well, but they’re taking now over 20 years for an individual to get access … so I think that has influenced lawyers and survivors, if they are eligible for the T visa … to go ahead and also file T visa applications,” Dahlstrom said. “Especially under the Trump administration, we’ve seen more barriers to asylum access, special immigrant juvenile status access, so I expect we’ll continue to see that move.”

USCIS updated the T visa rules in August 2024 with a process called called bona fide determination that gave survivors earlier access to benefits while their application is pending approval. It also granted them deferred action, which places individuals on a lower priority for removal proceedings.

Erika Gonzalez, training and technical assistance managing attorney from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, explained that although early access to benefits had existed in the federal statute, it was never implemented because applications were processing fast enough to not need it.

“They have updated the [bona fide determination] process to now have a formal process to engage with, and it does parallel with the sharp increases in filing,” Gonzalez said.

As T visa applications rose, so too did approvals. Last year, the number of approvals broke 3,000 for the first time though it still fell short of the 5,000 cap.

Processing times for T visas have also increased, jumping from a median of 5.9 months in 2014 to 19.9 months this fiscal year.

Denial rates for T visas, meanwhile, have fluctuated.

“We were seeing increased denial rates under the prior Trump administration and then improved rates under Biden,” Dahlstrom said.

Denials can leave T visa applicants vulnerable to deportation. In 2018, USCIS began allowing removal proceedings if an application was rejected with a notice to appear (NTA).

According to a 2022 report co-written by Dahlstrom, which obtained USCIS data through Freedom of Information Act litigation, USCIS issued a total of 236 NTAs to denied T visa applicants from 2019 to 2021. President Biden rescinded this policy with a January 2021 executive order, but last February, USCIS published new guidance once more expanding the circumstances where the agency could issue NTAs.

These policies, alongside escalated coordination between law enforcement and other agencies, have heightened fear among survivors applying for the T visa, Dahlstrom explained.

“We are seeing in real time the results of including requirements around law enforcement engagement, especially when there’s greater cooperation with ICE and greater concerns about deportation,” Dahlstrom said. “These programs are being politicized and, in some ways, weaponized if you’re denied and you’re placed in proceedings.”

Since February’s policy update, at least one person has self-deported after Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied her stay despite her pending T visa application.

So far in the fiscal year 2025, USCIS has approved 1,035 T-visas and rejected 693, which surpasses the number rejected in each of the last four years.

“It’s too early to tell what we’re going to see, but if we continue to see these numbers, it’s both going to mean a rise in denials and very few cases adjudicated amidst more and more applications being filed, which is really troubling,” Dahlstrom said. “These are statutorily protected programs, but what they can do is really slow them down, make them ineffective just in the way that they’re processing applications.”

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska announced plans for an immigration detention center in the remote southwest corner of the state as President Trump’s administration races to expand the infrastructure necessary for increasing deportations.

The facility will be dubbed the “Cornhusker Clink,” a play on Nebraska’s nickname of the Cornhusker State and an old slang term for jail. The alliterative name follows in the vein of the previously announced “Alligator Alcatraz” and “Deportation Depot” detention centers in Florida and the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana.

Republican Gov. Jim Pillen said Tuesday he and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had agreed to use an existing minimum security prison work camp in McCook — a remote city of about 7,000 people in the middle of the wide-open prairies between Denver and Omaha — to house people awaiting deportation and being held for other immigration proceedings. It’s expected to be a Midwest hub for detainees from several states.

“This is about keeping Nebraskans – and Americans across our country – safe,” Pillen said in a statement.

The facility can accommodate 200 people with plans to expand to 300. McCook is about 210 miles west of Lincoln, the state capital.

“If you are in America illegally, you could find yourself in Nebraska’s Cornhusker Clink. Avoid arrest and self deport now using the CBP Home App,” Noem said in a separate statement.

Noem’s agency posted a picture on social media showing ears of corn wearing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hats, standing in front of a prison fence.

The governor said later at a news conference in McCook that the center will have the advantage of being located at an existing facility and near a regional airport. He told reporters he didn’t know if the center would house women as well as men or if children could be held there. He said he first learned the federal government was interested in the facility on Friday.

Pillen also announced he would order the Nebraska National Guard to provide administrative and logistical support to Nebraska-based immigration agents. About 20 soldiers will be involved. And he said the Nebraska State Patrol would allow six troopers to help federal immigration agents make arrests.

Adding detention facilities to hold growing number of immigrants arrested

The Trump administration is adding new detention facilities across the country to hold the growing number of immigrants it has arrested and accused of being in the country illegally. ICE centers were holding more than 56,000 immigrants in June, the most since 2019.

The new and planned facilities include the remote detention center in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” which opened last month. It’s designed to hold up to 3,000 detainees in temporary tent structures. When Trump toured it, he suggested it could be a model for future lockups nationwide.

The Florida facility also been the subject of legal challenges by attorneys who allege violations of due process there, including the rights of detainees to meet with their attorneys, limited access to immigration courts and poor living conditions. Critics have been trying to stop further construction and operations until it comes into compliance with federal environmental laws.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced last week that his administration is preparing to open a second facility, dubbed “Deportation Depot,” at a state prison in north Florida. It’s expected to have 1,300 immigration beds, though that capacity could be expanded to 2,000, state officials said.

Also last week, officials in the rural Tennessee town of Mason voted to approve agreements to turn a former prison into an immigration detention facility operated by a private company, despite loud objections from residents and activists during a contentious public meeting.

And the Trump administration announced plans earlier this month for a 1,000-bed detention center in Indiana that would be dubbed “Speedway Slammer,” prompting a backlash in the Midwestern state that hosts the Indianapolis 500 auto race.

Corrections director Rob Jeffreys said the 186 inmates currently at the McCook work camp will be transferred to other state facilities over the next 45 to 60 days. The repurposed facility will be run by the state but will be paid for by the federal government. He said it’s already set up and accredited to hold prisoners, so detainees won’t be housed in tents or other temporary quarters.

The Nebraska plan has already raised concerns

In a video posted to social media, state Sen. Megan Hunt, an independent, blasted a lack of transparency about plans for a detention center, citing her unfulfilled request to the governor and executive branch for emails and other records.

She urged people to support local immigrant rights groups.

“The No. 1 thing we need to do is protect our neighbors, protect the people in our communities who are being targeted by these horrible people, these horrible organizations that are making choices to lock up, detain, disappear our neighbors and families and friends,” Hunt said.

Around a half-dozen protesters sat in the hallway outside the governor’s office Tuesday afternoon making signs that said, “No Nazi Nebraska” and “ICE = Gestapo.”

Maghie Miller-Jenkins of Lincoln said she doesn’t think an ICE detention center is a good idea, adding the state should tackle problems like child hunger and homelessness. “This state has numerous things they could focus on that would benefit the constituents,” she said.

Funk writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minn., Jack Dura in Fargo, N.D., and Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security has walked back what lawyers called an illegal attempt to fast-track the deportation of a woman who has lived in the U.S. for nearly 30 years and to expel her without an immigration court hearing, her attorneys said.

Lawyers for Mirta Amarilis Co Tupul, 38, filed a lawsuit earlier this month to stop her imminent deportation to Guatemala. A U.S. district court judge in Arizona dismissed the case Wednesday after the federal government moved the woman to regular deportation proceedings and agreed in writing not to attempt expedited removal again, her lawyers said.

The judge had granted an emergency request to temporarily pause the deportation while the case played out in court.

The case highlighted broader concerns that the Trump administration is stretching immigration law to speed up deportations in its effort to remove as many immigrants as possible.

Federal law since 1996 holds that immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for fewer than two years can be placed in expedited removal proceedings which bypass the immigration court process. Longtime immigrants, however, cannot be removed until they’ve had a chance to plead their case before a judge.

In a sworn declaration, one of Co Tupul’s attorneys wrote that a deportation officer told her the agency had a “new policy” of placing immigrants in expedited removal proceedings after their first contact with immigration authorities.

“This appears to have been a test case in which the administration attempted to enforce a ‘new policy’ against Ms. Co Tupul,” Eric Lee, one of Co Tupul’s attorneys, said Thursday. “The district court quickly shut down this effort in no uncertain terms. Maybe this has slowed the government’s efforts to expand expedited removal, or maybe the government is waiting for another test case where the non-citizen lacks legal representation.”

Emails reviewed by The Times showed that Co Tupul’s lawyer provided extensive evidence of her longtime residence. Immigration officials told the lawyer that her client would remain in expedited removal proceedings anyway.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that after Co Tupul’s lawyers provided documentation verifying she had lived in the U.S. for more than two years, “ICE followed the law and placed her in normal removal proceedings.”

“Any allegation that DHS is ‘testing out’ a new policy regarding illegal aliens who have been in the country for longer than two years into expedited removal is false,” McLaughlin added.

Co Tupul, a Phoenix resident, was pulled over as she drove to her job at a laundromat on July 22. She remains detained at Eloy Detention Center, about 65 miles southeast of Phoenix.

Foreign criminals will face immediate deportation after receiving a custodial sentence, under new plans announced by the justice secretary.

Under the proposals, those who are given fixed-term sentences could be deported straight away and would be barred from re-entering the UK.

The decision over whether they go on to serve their sentences abroad would be up to the country they are sent to, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) told the BBC. In theory, this means that some criminals may be able to walk free upon arrival in their destination country.

Foreign offenders make up around 12% percent of the prison population, with prison places costing £54,000 a year on average, according to the government.

It says the new powers would save money for British taxpayers and protect the public.

Those serving life sentences, such as terrorists and murderers, will serve their full prison sentence in the UK before being considered for deportation, it said.

Once a custodial sentence is handed down by a judge, the decision over whether someone will be deported will fall to a prison governor, the MoJ said.

Authorities would retain the power to keep criminals in custody if, for example, they were planning further crimes against the UK’s interests or were seen as a danger to national security.

The MoJ told the BBC that its definition of a foreign national is based on the conditions laid out in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act.

If passed, the new powers could be applied to those already in prison, meaning the government could begin deportations immediately. As of January 2024, there were about 10,400 foreign nationals in the prison system.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that foreign criminals would be sent “packing” if they “abuse our hospitality and break our laws”.

“This government is taking radical action to deport foreign criminals, as part of our Plan for Change. Deportations are up under this government, and with this new law they will happen earlier and faster than ever before,” she said.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick criticised the plans, warning that some countries may refuse to take in those who are deported.

“If countries won’t take back their nationals, Starmer should suspend visas and foreign aid. His soft-touch approach isn’t working,” he said.

The announcement comes after a tweak in the law in June, expected to come into force in September, meaning prisoners would face deportation 30% into their prison sentence rather than the current 50%.

The government will now need Parliament to greenlight its proposal to bring this down further to 0%.

A United States appeals court has thrown out a lower judge’s determination that the administration of President Donald Trump could face charges for acting in contempt of court during the early days of his mass deportation drive.

The ruling on Friday undid one of the most substantial rebukes to the Trump administration since the start of the president’s second term.

The appeals court, however, was split two to one. The majority included two Trump-appointed judges, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao. The sole dissent was Judge Cornelia Pillard, an appointee from former President Barack Obama.

In a decision for the majority, Rao ruled that the lower court had overstepped its authority in opening the door for Trump officials to be held in contempt.

“The district court’s order attempts to control the Executive Branch’s conduct of foreign affairs, an area in which a court’s power is at its lowest ebb,” Rao wrote.

But Pillard defended the lower court’s decision and questioned whether the appeals court was, in fact, eroding judicial authority in favour of increased executive power.

“The majority does an exemplary judge a grave disservice by overstepping its bounds to upend his effort to vindicate the judicial authority that is our shared trust,” she wrote.

Trump administration celebrates decision

The appeals court’s decision was hailed as a major victory by the Trump administration, which has long railed against the judicial roadblocks to its agenda.

“@TheJusticeDept attorneys just secured a MAJOR victory defending President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal alien terrorists,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on social media.

“We will continue fighting and WINNING in court for President Trump’s agenda to keep America Safe!”

The court battle began in March, when US District Court Judge James Boasberg, based in the District of Columbia, heard arguments about Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan men accused of being gang members.

That law allows for swift deportations of foreign nationals — and has, prior to Trump, only been used in wartime.

Boasberg ruled to pause Trump’s use of the law and ordered the administration to halt any deportation flights, including those that may already be in the air.

But two deportation flights carrying about 250 people nevertheless landed in El Salvador after the ruling.

The Trump administration maintained it was unable to safely reroute the flights and expressed confusion about whether Boasberg’s verbal order was binding.

It also questioned whether Boasberg had the authority to intervene. Trump went so far as to call for Boasberg’s removal, writing on Truth Social in March: “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

Weighing penalties for contempt

In April, Boasberg determined that the Trump administration’s actions showed a “willful disregard” for his ruling. He concluded that “probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt”.

A contempt finding can result in various sanctions, including fines and prison time, although it remains unclear what penalties the Trump administration could have faced.

“The court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily,” Boasberg continued. “Indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory.”

Trump’s Department of Justice, for its part, maintained that Boasberg had tread on the president’s executive power in issuing the order.

Also in April, the US Supreme Court lifted Boasberg’s temporary restraining orders against using the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members.

But it nevertheless ruled that the targeted immigrants “are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal” before their deportations.

The Trump administration has faced persistent scrutiny over whether it was complying with that order, as well as other decisions from lower courts that interfered with its deportation campaign.

Critics have accused the president and his allies of simply ignoring rulings they disagreed with, raising questions of contempt in other cases, as well.

Inside Friday’s appeals court ruling

But the two Trump-appointed judges on the appeals court, Katsas and Rao, upheld the Trump administration’s position that Boasberg’s rulings had gone too far.

“The district court’s order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,” Katsas wrote.

He compared Boasberg’s order to recall the deportation flights to a district court’s order in July 1973 that sought to halt the US bombing of Cambodia. Within hours, however, the Supreme Court upheld a stay on that opinion, allowing the bombing to proceed.

“Any freestanding order to turn planes around mid-air would have been indefensible,” Katsas wrote, citing that 1973 case.

But Pillard — the Obama-appointed judge — offered a counterargument in her dissent, pointing out that the US is not currently at war.

She also noted that the Venezuelan men who were deported on the March flights had, by and large, not faced criminal charges. Yet, the US had chosen to deport them to El Salvador for imprisonment in a maximum-security facility with a history of human rights abuses.

“Whatever one might think about a Supreme Court Justice’s emergency order superintending an ongoing military operation, the authority of a federal district court to temporarily restrain government officials from transferring presumptively noncriminal detainees to a foreign prison without any pre-removal process is well recognized,” Pillard wrote.

The appeals court’s decision comes just days after the Department of Justice announced it had filed a formal complaint against Boasberg, accusing him of misconduct for public comments he made criticising the Trump administration’s approach to the judiciary.

Critics have called the complaint a blatant retaliation and evidence of an increasing politicalisation of the Justice Department.

A decade ago, Jesus Adan Rico breathed a big sigh of relief. That was when the Chino High School student, a Dreamer, learned an immigration judge had effectively shelved his deportation proceedings. Maria Torres, who came to the U.S. at 2 years old, also had her deportation proceedings paused by an immigration judge because she recently married a U.S. citizen.

Yet just eight weeks ago, Adan Rico — now 29, married with a new child — discovered that the Trump administration had revived his deportation case, even though he has renewed his DACA status at least four times. Torres learned the government wants to bring back her case just as she was preparing for her green card interview.

“No matter what we do, no matter how far we go in school, in our jobs and with our families, it doesn’t matter. It is all hanging by a thread,” he said.

Adan Rico and Torres are among thousands of immigrants who have built lives around the assumption they are safe from being detained and deported. Now they face that threat at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, which is giving new life to administratively closed cases in a bid to step up immigration enforcement.

Some lawyers have received dozens of motions to recalendar — the first step to reopen old cases. If lawyers don’t succeed in opposing those motions, the immigrants could wind up back in courthouses that in recent months have become a hub for arrests.

“It has been 10 years,” Adan Rico said. “And all of a sudden our lives are on hold again, at the mercy of these people that think I have no right to be here.”

DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, flanked by Madison Sheahan, left, and Todd Lyons, speaks during a news conference at ICE headquarters in May.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

When asked about the government’s push to restart old proceedings, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin declined to address questions about the administration’s change in policy or respond to attorneys’ complaints about the process. She released a statement similar to others she has offered to the media on immigration inquiries.

“Biden chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including criminals, into the country and used prosecutorial discretion to indefinitely delay their cases and allow them to illegally remain in the United States,” she said. “Now, President Trump and Secretary Noem are following the law and resuming these illegal aliens’ removal proceedings and ensuring their cases are heard by a judge.”

Attorneys handling these proceedings say the government is overwhelming the courts and immigration lawyers by dredging up cases, many of which are a decade or more old. In several of these, clients or their original lawyers have died. In other cases, immigrants have received legal status and were surprised to learn the government was attempting to revive deportation proceedings against them.

Since the 1970s, immigration judges have administratively closed deportation proceedings in order to ease the massive backlog on their dockets and prioritize more urgent cases. The maneuver essentially deferred a case, but didn’t completely dismiss it, giving both the court and the immigrant wiggle room. The idea was that immigrants could pursue other forms of relief such as a hardship waiver or deferred status. The government could reopen the case if needed.

Across the country, immigration attorneys have received a flurry of requests by Homeland Security’s Office of Principal Legal Advisor to revive cases. The motions, attorneys say, appear similar in language, and lack analysis or reference to a change that prompted the decision. In their motions, Trump administration lawyers argue that the targeted immigrants have not been granted green cards and therefore do not have legal status to be here.

The motions urge immigration judges to use their discretion to revive cases and consider whether a person has been detained or the pending application’s “ultimate outcome or likelihood of success.”

What distinguishes immigration proceedings from cases in federal or state courts is that both the lawyers and the judges are part of the executive branch, not the judiciary branch. They answer to Secretary Kristi Noem and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, respectively.

Attorneys and clients are racing against the clock to submit opposition to these motions. Many have become in essence private investigators, tracking down clients they haven’t seen in years. Other attorneys, who have retired, are looking to other immigration attorneys to pick up their client’s case.

“The court is drowning in these motions because we’re trying to resist these,” said David L. Wilson, an immigration attorney at Wilson Law Group in Minneapolis. He first received a batch of 25 government motions at the end of May — and then they kept coming every few weeks. One case involved a client from El Salvador who had been granted Temporary Protected Status, and whose case was administratively closed in 2006.

Adan Rico, a new father who is studying to be an HVAC technician in the Inland Empire, was stunned that the government was seeking to revive deportation proceedings.

The attorney who originally represented him has since died. “If it wasn’t for his daughter calling, I would have never found out my case was reopened,” he said. “The Department of Homeland Security never sent me anything.”

Attorney Patricia M. Corrales speaks at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles office in April.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

His new attorney, Patricia Corrales, said Adan Rico’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status doesn’t come up for renewal until 2027 and it defers deportation proceedings. But Corrales, who has received about a dozen motions, said it appears the government isn’t even checking whether the individuals are alive, much less their immigration status.

One of her cases is that of construction worker Helario Romero Arciniega. Seven years ago, a judge administratively closed deportation proceedings for Romero Arciniega, after he was severely beaten with a metal sprinkler head and had qualified for a visa for crime victims.

This year, government officials filed a motion to bring back the deportation proceedings against the construction worker, even though he had died six months ago.

“They don’t do their homework,” Corrales said of the government lawyers. “They’re very negligent in the manner in which they’re handling these motions to re-calendar.”

Some attorneys have reported delays in their ability to file their opposition motions because the court is so overwhelmed.

When asked about the backlog, Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesperson for the federal immigration court known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review, confirmed that the court “must receive the underlying initial motion before it can accept a response to that motion.”

Some immigrants now in legal limbo were just steps away from finalizing their green card applications.

Maria Torres, an L.A. County resident and mother of two, said she was only 2 years old when she was brought to the U.S. by her family. She grew up undocumented, and when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program became available, applied to gain work authorization.

But in 2019, at 21, she was arrested on suspicion of a misdemeanor DUI, which put her into deportation proceedings. She took the classes and paid her ticket. With deportation proceedings open against her, she was able to get her case closed in 2022 while she sought a visa through her husband, a U.S. citizen.

Her visa was approved, and with just one interview appointment left, Torres felt blindsided when she received a call from her attorney’s office, saying the government wanted to restart deportation proceedings against her.

“I just felt my heart sink and I started crying,” she said. Her attorney submitted a motion opposing the recalendaring of the case, and they are waiting to hear how a judge will rule. In the meantime, she said, she’s hopeful she’ll have her final interview for her approved visa before then.

“People aren’t getting due process,” said attorney Mariela Caravetta. “It’s very unfair to the client because these cases have been sleeping for 10 years.”

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Mariela Caravetta, an immigration attorney in Van Nuys, said that, since early June, about 30 of her clients have been targeted with government motions to reopen their cases.

By law, she has to reply in 10 days. That means she has to track down the client, who may have moved out of state.

“It’s bad faith doing it like that,” said Caravetta, who accused the federal government of flooding the immigration courts in an effort to meet its deportation quotas.

“People aren’t getting due process,” she said. “It’s very unfair to the client because these cases have been sleeping for 10 years.”

Caravetta has convinced some judges to deny the government motions because the clients are seeking ways to legally stay in the country. In a handful of cases, she hasn’t been able to reach her clients.

The government isn’t making an effort to reach out to attorneys to discuss the cases, as is required, she added. “That would save a lot of time for everybody,” she said. Her clients may have U-visas, which give relief to migrants who have been victims of crime and who help investigators or prosecutors. But the government’s motions say, “These people have not done anything to legalize their status, we need a final resolution.”

Matt O’Brien, a former federal immigration judge and deputy executive director of FAIR, which advocates for stricter immigration laws, said the Trump administration is “enforcing the Immigration and Nationality Act the way that Congress wrote it.”

He questioned why attorneys are complaining about cases being recalendared, saying “it’s akin to a motion of reopening a case in any other court.”

Yet for many immigrants whose cases are being revived, the risks are high. Judges have discretion to deny motions to reopen cases, and have done so in some situations, attorneys say. But judges have also approved the government’s request if there is no opposition from the immigrant or their attorney.

At that point, cases are put on the calendar. If it gets scheduled, and the immigrants do not show up to court, they could eventually be ruled “in absentia,” which would make them vulnerable to immediate deportation and bar them from entering the country legally for years.

It all fits with the Trump administration’s goal of increasing deportation numbers, say many immigration lawyers and former officials.

“They are getting the largest pool possible of people that they can remove, and removing them from the country,” said Jason Hauser, the former chief of staff of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “And what stands in the way from that is a working due process of an immigration system.”

In April, Sirce E. Owen, acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, issued a memo criticizing the use of administrative closure, referring to it as “a de facto amnesty program with benefits” because it offers work authorization and deportation protections. Owen, a former immigration judge, rescinded previous Biden administration guidance that offered a more proactive approach to administrative closures.

Owen stated that, as of April, about 379,000 cases were still administratively closed in immigration court and cited them as a contributing factor to the court system’s backlog of 4 million cases.

In immigration courts in Los Angeles and San Diego, attorneys are already seeing these cases come before immigration judges. Many clients have expressed shock and despair at being dragged back into court.

Sherman Oaks attorney Edgardo Quintanilla has seen about 40 cases recently, including some dating back to the 2010s. Clients, he said, are alarmed not only by the government’s legal maneuvers but by the prospect of entering a federal building these days.

“There is always the fear that they may be arrested when they go to the court,” he said. “With everything going on, it is a reasonable fear.”

Last week, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who shows more fealty to President Trump than to the U.S. Constitution she swore to uphold, filed a complaint against the only federal judge who has initiated contempt proceedings against the government for defying his orders.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, she alleged, had undermined the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary by making “improper public comments” about Trump to a group of federal judges that included Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

What is Boasberg alleged to have said?

No transcript has emerged, but according to Bondi’s complaint, at a March session of the Judicial Conference of the United States, Boasberg is alleged to have expressed “a belief that the Trump Administration would ‘disregard rulings of the federal courts’ and trigger ‘a constitutional crisis.’ ”

The Judicial Conference is the perfect place to air such concerns. It is the policy-making body for the federal judiciary, and twice a year about two dozen federal judges, including the Supreme Court chief justice, meet to discuss issues relevant to their work. Recently, for example, they created a task force to deal with threats of physical violence, which have heightened considerably in the Trump era. But nothing that happens in their private sessions could reasonably be construed as “public comments.”

“The Judicial Conference is not a public setting. It’s an internal governing body of the judiciary, and there is no expectation that what gets said is going to be broadcast to the world,” explained former U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who spent seven years as director of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, a kind of think tank for the judiciary. I reached out to Fogel because he is part of a coalition of retired federal judges — the Article III Coalition of the nonpartisan civic education group Keep Our Republic — whose goal is to defend the independence of the judiciary and promote understanding of the rule of law.

Bondi’s complaint accuses Boasberg of attempting to “transform a routine housekeeping agenda into a forum to persuade the Chief Justice and other federal judges of his preconceived belief that the Trump Administration would violate court orders.”

You know how they say that every accusation is a confession in Trump World?

A mere four days after Boasberg raised his concerns to fellow federal judges, the Trump administration defied his order against the deportation of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.

You probably remember that one. A plane carrying the deportees was already in the air, and despite the judge’s ruling, Trump officials refused to order its return. “Oopsie,” tweeted El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele after it landed. “Too late!”

Thus began the administration’s ongoing pattern of ignoring or flouting the courts in cases brought against it. It’s not as if the signs were not there. “He who saves his Country does not violate any law,” Trump wrote on social media in February, paraphrasing Napoleon Bonaparte, the dictatorial 19th century emperor of France.

In June, Erez Reuveni, a career Department of Justice attorney who was fired when he told a Maryland judge the government had deported someone in error, provided documents to Congress that implicated Emil Bove, Trump’s one-time criminal defense attorney, in efforts to violate Boasberg’s order to halt the deportation of the Venezuelans. According to Reuveni’s whistleblower complaint, Bove, who was acting deputy attorney general at the time, said the administration should consider telling judges who order deportations halted, “F— you.”

Bove denied it. And last week, even though other Justice Department whistleblowers corroborated Reuveni’s complaint, Bove was narrowly confirmed by the Senate to a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge.

“The Trump Administration has always complied with all court orders,” wrote Bondi in her complaint against Boasberg. This is laughable.

A July 21 Washington Post analysis found that Trump and his appointees have been credibly accused of flouting court rulings in a third of more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling. The cases have involved immigration, and cuts to the federal funding and the federal work force. That record suggests, according to the Post, “widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system.”

Legal experts told the Post that this pattern is unprecedented and is a threat to our system of checks and balances at a moment when the executive branch is asserting “vast powers that test the boundaries of the law and Constitution.”

It’s no secret that Trump harbors autocratic ambitions. He adores Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, who has transformed the Hungarian justice system into an instrument of his own will and killed off the country’s independent media. “It’s like we’re twins,” Trump said in 2019, after hosting Orbán at the White House. Trump has teased that he might try to seek an unconstitutional third term. He de-legitimizes the press. His acolytes in Congress will not restrain him. And now he has trained his sights on the independent judiciary urging punishment of judges who thwart his agenda.

On social media, he has implied that Boasberg is “a radical left lunatic,” and wrote, “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

Some of Trump’s lapdogs in the House immediately introduced articles of impeachment (which are likely to go nowhere).

Roberts was moved to rebuke Trump: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” he said in a statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Some described his words as “stern.” I found them to be rather mild, considering the damage Trump’s rhetoric inflicts on the well-being of judges.

“It’s part of a longer term pattern of trying to … weaken the ability of the judiciary to put checks on executive power, ” Fogel told me. He is not among those who think we are in a constitutional crisis. Yet.

“Our Constitution has safeguards in it,” Fogel said. “Federal judges have lifetime tenure. We are in a period of Supreme Court jurisprudence that has given the executive a lot of leeway, but I don’t think it’s unlimited.”

I wish I shared his confidence.

Bluesky: @rabcarian
Threads: @rabcarian

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — An Ohio city whose Haitian migrants were disparaged by a Donald Trump falsehood last year as he pitched voters on his plans for an immigration crackdown is now bracing to defend the community against possible deportation.

A group of about 100 community members, clergy and Haitian leaders in Springfield gathered this week for several days of training sessions as they prepare to defend potential deportees and provide them refuge.

“We feel that this is something that our faith requires, that people of faith are typically law-abiding people — that’s who we want to be — but if there are laws that are unjust, if there are laws that don’t respect human dignity, we feel that our commitment to Christ requires that we put ourselves in places where we may face some of the same threats,” said Carl Ruby, senior pastor of Central Christian Church.

Ruby said the ultimate goal of the group is to persuade the Trump administration to reverse its decision to terminate legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

“One way of standing with the Haitians is getting out the message of how much value they bring to the city of Springfield,” he said. “It would be an absolute disaster if we lost 10,000 of our best workers overnight because their TPS ends and they can no longer work.”

In lieu of that, Ruby said, participants in the effort are learning how to help Haitians in other ways. That includes building relationships, accompanying migrants to appointments with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and providing their families with physical shelter.

A speaker addresses a training session July 29, 2025, at Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, which advised community and church leaders on how to support and shelter immigrants facing deportation.

(Obed Lamy / Associated Press)

A city in the crosshairs

Springfield found itself in an unwelcome spotlight last year after Trump amplified false rumors during a presidential debate that members of the mid-size city’s burgeoning Haitian population were abducting and eating cats and dogs. It was the type of inflammatory and anti-immigrant rhetoric he promoted throughout his campaign.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in June that it would terminate TPS as soon as Sept. 2 for about 500,000 Haitians who are already in the United States, some of whom have lived here for more than a decade. The department said conditions in the island nation have improved adequately to allow their safe return. The United Nations contradicts that assertion, saying that the economic and humanitarian crisis in Haiti has only worsened with the Trump administration’s cuts in foreign aid.

The announcement came three months after the administration revoked legal protections for thousands of Haitians who arrived legally in the United States under a humanitarian parole program as part of a series of measures implemented to curb immigration. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal judge’s order preventing the administration from revoking the parole program.

Last month, a federal judge in New York blocked the administration from accelerating an end to Haitians’ TPS protections, which the Biden administration had extended through at least Feb. 3, 2026, citing gang violence, political unrest, a major earthquake in 2021 and other factors.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said at the time that the Trump administration would eventually prevail and that its predecessors treated TPS like a “de facto asylum program.” In the meantime, the government has set the expiration date back to early February.

TPS allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. Immigrants from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and Lebanon, were receiving those protections before Trump took office for his second term in January.

Participants hold a discussion in a breakout session during a training hosted by the group Undivided at Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, aimed at teaching community and church leaders how to support and shelter immigrants facing deportation July 29, 2025.

(Obed Lamy / Associated Press)

Residents ponder next steps

Charla Weiss, a founding member of Undivided, the group that hosted the Springfield workshop, said participants were asked the question of how far they would go to help Haitian residents avoid deportation.

“The question that I know was before me is, how far am I willing to go to support my passion about the unlawful detainment and deportation of Haitians, in particular here in Springfield?” she said.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a longtime supporter of the Haitian community, was briefed by Springfield leaders during a visit to the city Friday. He told reporters that the state is bracing for the potential of mass layoffs in the region as a result of the TPS policy change, a negative for the workers and the companies that employ them.

“It’s not going to be good,” he said.

Lamy and Smyth write for the Associated Press and reported from Springfield and Columbus, Ohio, respectively.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Monday filed a misconduct complaint against the federal judge who has clashed with President Trump’s administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Escalating the administration’s conflict with U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said on social media that she directed the filing of the complaint against Boasberg “for making improper public comments about President Trump and his administration.”

The complaint stems from remarks Boasberg allegedly made in March to Chief Justice John Roberts and other federal judges saying the administration would trigger a constitutional crisis by disregarding federal court rulings, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Associated Press.

The comments “have undermined the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” the complaint says, adding that the administration has “always complied with all court orders.” Boasberg is among several judges who have questioned whether the administration has complied with their orders.

The meeting took place days before Boasberg issued an order blocking deportation flights that Trump was carrying out by invoking wartime authorities from an 18th century law.

The judge’s verbal order to turn around planes that were on the way to El Salvador was ignored. Boasberg has since found probable cause that the administration committed contempt of court.

The comments were supposedly made during a meeting of the Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary’s governing body. The remarks were first reported by the conservative website The Federalist, which said it obtained a memo summarizing the meeting.

Boasberg, the chief judge in the district court in the nation’s capital, is a member of the Judicial Conference. Its meetings are not public.

The complaint calls for an investigation, the reassignment of the deportations case to another judge while the inquiry is ongoing and sanctions, including the possible recommendation of impeachment, if the investigation substantiates the allegations.

Trump himself already has called for Boasberg’s impeachment, which in turn prompted a rare response from Roberts rejecting the call.

The complaint was filed with Judge Sri Srinivasan, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

More than 250 Venezuelans who were deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, were sent home to Venezuela earlier this month in a deal that also free 10 U.S. citizens and permanent residents who had been held by Venezuela.

But the lawsuit over the deportations and the administration’s response to Boasberg’s order remains in his court.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

As a Christian who smuggled Bibles into my home country of Iran, I became a target of the country’s Islamist regime, which imprisons and sometimes kills those who invite Muslims to convert. After living under house arrest for two years, I fled as a refugee and was ultimately resettled to the United States.

I experienced true religious freedom for the first time in my life in this country, of which I am now a proud, grateful citizen — and that’s why I am shocked by the ways that my government is now treating my Iranian congregants, who have been detained by masked officers, separated from their families and threatened with deportation to a country that would kill them for their Christian faith. What I have witnessed gives me flashbacks to Tehran, and I believe that America must be better.

Two families who are a part of the Farsi-speaking evangelical congregation that I pastor in Los Angeles have been detained in recent weeks. First, a couple and their 3-year-old daughter, who are in the process of seeking asylum because they fear persecution if they were returned to Iran. They were detained at their court hearing in downtown Los Angeles on June 23. The entire family is now being held in South Texas.

The next day, I received a call from a woman in my church. Like me, she had been forced to flee Iran for Turkey when her involvement in Iran’s underground churches was exposed.

When the woman and her husband found themselves in a desperate situation in Turkey last year, they were not offered the option to fly to the U.S. as resettled refugees as I had been in 2010. Instead, they flew to South America, made a treacherous journey north and waited in Mexico for an appointment they reserved on a U.S. government app, CBP One, to be able to explain their situation to officers of the U.S. government.

Once lawfully allowed in with provisional humanitarian status, they found our church — where they could be baptized and publicly profess their faith in Jesus — and legal help to begin their asylum request. They received their work authorization documents and found jobs. Their first asylum hearing in immigration court was scheduled for this September.

When President Trump returned to office, however, his administration both suspended all refugee resettlement and canceled humanitarian parole for those who had been allowed to enter via the CBP One app. Many parolees received menacing letters instructing them to self-deport or face prosecution, fines or deportation. But these letters also noted that these instructions did not apply to those who had “otherwise obtained a lawful basis to remain,” such as a pending asylum application.

That’s why I was so shocked to receive a call from the woman in my congregation informing me that her husband had been detained by masked immigration officers on the street, just a few blocks from our church. I rushed over and began to film the shocking scene: First he was detained by masked officers, and then she was. I asked if they had a judicial warrant, but if they did, they would not show me. The woman experienced a panic attack and was taken to a hospital but discharged into ICE custody; she is now hours away in a detention center in California. Her husband is in a detention center in Texas.

It’s not just these two families who are affected. My community of Iranian Christians is terrified of being detained and deported back to Iran, where they fear being killed for their faith. Some have lost jobs because they fear leaving their homes. Others lost jobs because their work authorization, tied to humanitarian parole, was abruptly terminated.

I believe that America is better than this. This behavior reminds me disturbingly of what I fled in Iran. But I know that most Americans do not support this, nor do most fellow evangelical Christians: Many evangelicals voted for Trump because he pledged to protect persecuted Christians — not to deport them. While most evangelicals want those convicted of violent crimes detained, one-quarter or less of us say that about other immigrants, and 7 in 10 believe the U.S. has a moral responsibility to receive refugees. I have been overwhelmed by the support of English- and Spanish-speaking sister congregations of our church, by the outreach of Christians from across the country and by a recent biblically rooted statement of many California evangelical leaders.

Now, Congress has passed legislation to exponentially increase the funding for detaining and deporting immigrants. Trump’s administration has been clear that anyone in the country unlawfully — including more than a million who were here lawfully until his administration abruptly canceled their status — is at risk of deportation. According to a recent study by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 80% of those vulnerable to deportation are Christians; some, like those in my church, would likely face death if deported to their home countries.

I hope and pray Trump will reverse course on these policies, going after those who genuinely present a public safety threat but having mercy on others, especially those who fled persecution on account of their faith. And until he does make that policy shift, I plead with Congress to pass real immigration reforms that would halt these horrifying detentions and deportations.

Ara Torosian is a pastor at Cornerstone West Los Angeles.

OCHOPEE, Fla. — Deportation flights from the remote Everglades immigration lockup known as ”Alligator Alcatraz″ have begun and are expected to increase soon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday.

The first flights operated by the Department of Homeland Security have transferred about 100 detainees from the immigration detention center to other countries, DeSantis said during a news conference near the facility.

“You’re going to see the numbers go up dramatically,” he said.

Two or three flights have already departed, but officials didn’t say where those flights headed.

Critics have condemned the South Florida facility as cruel and inhumane. DeSantis and other Republican officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Building the facility in the Everglades and naming it after a notorious federal prison were meant as deterrents, DeSantis and other officials have said.

The White House has delighted in the area’s remoteness — about 50 miles west of Miami — and the fact that it is teeming with pythons and alligators. It hopes to send a message that repercussions will be severe if U.S. immigration laws are broken.

Trump has suggested that his administration could reopen Alcatraz, the notorious island prison in San Francisco Bay. The White House also has sent some immigrants awaiting deportation to a detention lockup in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and others to a megaprison in El Salvador.

The Everglades facility was built in a matter of days over 10 square miles. It features more than 200 security cameras and more than 5 miles of barbed wire. An adjacent runway makes it more convenient for homeland security officials to move detainees in and out of the site.

It currently holds about 2,000 people, with the potential to double the capacity, Florida Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Friday.

DeSantis wants the U.S. Justice Department to allow an immigration judge on site to speed up the deportation process.

“This was never intended to be something where people are just held,” he said. “The whole purpose is to be a place that can facilitate increased frequency and numbers of deportations.”

Critics have challenged federal and state officials’ contention that the detention center is just run by the state of Florida. Environmental groups suing to stop further construction and expansion demanded Thursday to see agreements or communications between state and federal officials and to visit the site.

Seewer writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Mike Schneider contributed to this report.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has revealed that deportation flights have begun to depart from a remote detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz, as the Republican leader seeks to put his state at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.

Speaking from the south Florida site on Friday, DeSantis framed his efforts as a model for other states seeking to partner with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“I’m pleased to report that those flights out of Alligator Alcatraz by DHS have begun,” DeSantis told reporters.

“ The reality is this provides an ability to enhance the mission, to increase the number and frequency of deportations. And so what’s been done here has really been remarkable.”

A representative for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Garrett Ripa, also confirmed that “two or three removal flights” had already been conducted from the Alligator Alcatraz facility and that more were planned.

He indicated that those flights contained “ up to a hundred individuals who were illegally present in the state of Florida”.

Delegating resources

President Trump campaigned for re-election last November on the promise that he would undertake the “largest deportation operation in American history”.

But with more than 11 million undocumented people believed to be living in the United States, critics have pointed out that his ambitions may outstrip the amount of detention space and resources the government has available.

That has led the Trump administration to seek additional resources from state and local authorities, as well as assistance from foreign governments.

He has also deployed the military to assist in immigration enforcement operations, a task traditionally outside its scope.

Part of Trump’s toolkit has been deputising state and local leaders through Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

While the federal government is solely responsible for immigration enforcement, Section 287(g) creates a loophole that allows ICE to enter into written agreements with state and local authorities to perform specific immigration-related functions.

Speaking alongside DeSantis on Friday, Larry Keefe, the head of Florida’s newly established State Board of Immigration Enforcement, said his team has already taken advantage of such arrangements.

“Just within the last couple of days, the federal government has issued credentials to over 1,200 Florida sheriff’s deputies and over 650 FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] agents and other state and local law enforcement agencies,” Keefe said.

“We have more than doubled our capability and capacity to effect arrests.”

Florida at the forefront

Florida, however, has been testing the limits of what it is able to do independently in terms of cracking down on undocumented immigration within its state lines.

Earlier this year, for instance, the Florida’s Republican-led government passed a law, known as SB 4-C (PDF), that imposes stiff criminal penalties on adult undocumented immigrants who knowingly enter the state.

But federal courts placed an injunction to prevent the law from taking effect, on the basis that it preempts the federal government’s authority over all things immigration.

Still, President Trump has hailed the aggressive immigration efforts in Florida, his adopted home state, where he maintains a residence, Mar-a-Lago, as well as golf courses.

Earlier this month, he visited Alligator Alcatraz, applauding its fast-paced construction. “This is what you need,” Trump said at the time. “A lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators.”

Critics have denounced the facility as an exercise in cruelty, with reports emerging of poor conditions inside Alligator Alcatraz. Some immigrants have said they faced floodwater, poor sanitation, clogged toilets and clouds of mosquitoes as they stayed in fenced-in units where the lights were never dimmed.

Environmental groups and Indigenous members of the local Seminole and Miccosukee tribes have also criticised the facility for its location in the middle of the Everglades wetlands, a sensitive ecosystem prone to seasonal flooding.

Utilising an old airfield

Built across eight days in June, Alligator Alcatraz sits atop the site of the former Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida.

That set-up has been a benefit for plans to also use the facility for deportation flights, DeSantis said on Friday. He described transferring immigrants from their detention cells to planes with relative ease.

“One of the reasons why this was a sensible spot is because you have this runway that’s right here,” DeSantis explained.

“You don’t have to drive them an hour to an airport. You go a couple thousand feet, and they can be on a plane and out of here.”

He added that the site already has runway lighting and 18,927 litres — or 5,000 gallons — of jet fuel on site. That, he hopes, will help pave the way for the number of deportation flights to increase in the coming weeks.

“ The cadence is increasing,” DeSantis said. “We’ve already had a number of flights in the last few days.”

Alligator Alcatraz — named for a forbidding island prison in the San Francisco Bay that closed in the 1960s — has the capacity to hold up to 3,000 people, according to Florida officials.

DeSantis has long positioned Florida as the “blueprint” for what Republican leadership in the US could look like, and in 2023, he launched a short-lived presidential campaign to challenge Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Increasing the pace

In his remarks on Friday, DeSantis briefly acknowledged the shortcomings in Trump’s mass-deportation plans, playing up the efficiency of the Alligator Alcatraz system.

“ICE has been understaffed — you know, is not scratching the surface of what would need to be done to get to where you have the largest mass deportation in history,” he said.

“So you’ve got to increase that tempo. You have a limited amount of time to do it. I think we’ve got to assume we’ve got these four years under the Trump administration to really get the job done.”

DeSantis also brushed aside concerns that the isolated facility cuts immigrants off from their legal representation and their right to be heard before a court.

He pointed out that he plans to have immigration judges on site. But he also questioned whether undocumented people should be allowed the same due process rights as US citizens and immigrants with legal status.

“To me, it’s like, if you are subjected to a traditional criminal process, there’s a whole a bunch of due process that goes into that,” DeSantis said.

By contrast, DeSantis argued that the immigration process “should be a pretty simple process. You either have a right to be here or you don’t.”

A United States judge has blocked immigration authorities from immediately detaining and deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia upon his release from jail.

The decision was part of a one-two punch on Wednesday, as two courts weighed in on the Maryland father’s fate.

Abrego Garcia was catapulted into the national spotlight in March after the administration of President Donald Trump wrongfully deported him to his native El Salvador, despite a court order protecting him from removal.

His case became emblematic of the early days of Trump’s mass deportation drive, with critics accusing the president of taking a slapdash approach that violated the due process of the law.

In recent weeks, Abrego Garcia has been held in a Tennessee prison, as the Trump administration pursues criminal charges against him.

But in one of Wednesday’s twin rulings, US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville upheld the finding that Abrego Garcia could be released from jail, rejecting Trump administration claims that he might be a danger or a flight risk.

Crenshaw also expressed doubt about the Trump administration’s claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of the gang MS-13, citing a lack of evidence.

His decision allows Abrego Garcia to potentially be released from detention as he awaits a January trial on human smuggling charges. Still, his release has been once again delayed for a period of 30 days, at the request of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, who fear he could be deported.

Simultaneously on Wednesday, a second court hearing was unfolding in Maryland under US District Judge Paula Xinis.

She has been hearing arguments about Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation to El Salvador, as part of a lawsuit filed by his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura.

Given that Trump officials have signalled they plan to deport Abrego Garcia if he is released, Xinis issued a ruling requiring that immigration officials to give him notice of three business days if they initiate removal proceedings.

The Trump administration, Xinis wrote, has “done little to assure the court that, absent intervention, Abrego Garcia’s due process rights will be protected”.

Xinis also ordered the government to restore the legal status that Abrego Garcia had previously been under, which allowed him to live and work in Maryland.

Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March, in violation of an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring him from being sent back to his home country.

His lawyers have maintained that Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador as a teenager to avoid gang threats.

The government acknowledged that Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador had been the result of an “administrative error”.

Judge Xinis — and later the US Supreme Court — ultimately ruled that the Trump administration had a responsibility to “facilitate” his return to the US.

But the Trump administration doubled down, arguing that Abrego Garcia’s removal was lawful and painting him as a member of MS-13.

Trump even posted a picture of himself to social media holding a photo of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles, with the letters and numbers for “MS-13” digitally superimposed on each finger, next to real tattoos of a smiley face and marijuana leaf.

“He’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles,” Trump wrote, falsely, on April 18.

Judge Xinis had threatened to find the Trump administration in contempt of court for failing to adequately facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release, or provide meaningful updates. Officials had argued that they had little power to bring him back, given that he was held in El Salvador.

But in early June, the Trump administration abruptly announced Abrego Garcia’s return to the US. At the same time, the Justice Department revealed it had obtained an indictment to criminally charge Abrego Garcia.

At the centre of the government’s case is a video from a November 2022 traffic stop, showing Abrego Garcia driving a Chevrolet Suburban SUV with three rows of seats. A police officer heard in the footage speculates that the nine passengers could be involved in human smuggling, but no charges were brought at that time.

His lawyers have dismissed the government’s case as “preposterous”.

Still, before Xinis’s ruling, the lawyers had requested Abrego Garcia remain in custody as he awaits trial, for fear that he might be immediately deported if released.

While Abrego Garcia cannot be sent to El Salvador again, the Trump administration has maintained he can be legally deported to a third country, even one where he has no personal ties.

Last month, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could, at least in the short term, continue to deport individuals to such third-party countries while legal challenges proceed against the practice.

Some of those third-party countries have included South Sudan and Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, both of which have faced accusations of human rights abuses in their prisons.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security took to the social media platform X on Wednesday to criticise Xinis’s latest ruling.

“The fact this unhinged judge is trying to tell ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] they can’t arrest an MS-13 gang member, indicted by a grand jury for human trafficking, and subject to immigration arrest under federal law is LAWLESS AND INSANE,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote, reiterating unproven claims.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, however, applauded Wednesday’s court decisions.

“These rulings are a powerful rebuke of the government’s lawless conduct and a critical safeguard for Kilmar’s due process rights,” lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement.

Alistair Kitchen is a writer from Australia who was blocked from entering the US in June 2025.

In this Unmute, Kitchen describes how he endured hours of interrogation and had his phone confiscated and forensically downloaded by Customs agents before he was deported back to Australia. He believes it was over his writing on the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University and his views on Israel-Palestine.

Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia have asked a federal judge in Tennessee to delay releasing him from jail in order to prevent the Trump administration from trying to swiftly deport the Maryland construction worker.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. in Nashville is expected to rule soon on whether to free Abrego Garcia while he awaits trial on human smuggling charges. If the Salvadoran national is released, U.S. officials have said he would be immediately detained by immigration authorities and targeted for deportation.

Abrego Garcia became a prominent face in the debate over President Trump’s immigration policies when he was wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador in March. That expulsion violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shields Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he likely faces threats of gang violence there.

The administration claimed that Abrego Garcia was in the MS-13 gang, although he wasn’t charged and has repeatedly denied the allegation. Facing mounting pressure and a U.S. Supreme Court order, the Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. last month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called “preposterous.”

The smuggling case stems from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding, during Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. Police in Tennessee suspected human smuggling, but he was allowed to drive on.

U.S. officials have said they’ll try to deport Abrego Garcia to a country that isn’t El Salvador, such as Mexico or South Sudan, before his trial starts in January because they allege he’s a danger to the community.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville ruled a month ago that Abrego Garcia is eligible for release after she determined he’s not a flight risk or a danger. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys asked her to keep him in jail over deportation concerns.

Holmes’ ruling is being reviewed by Crenshaw after federal prosecutors filed a motion to revoke her release order.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys initially argued for his release but changed their strategy because of the government’s plans to deport him if he is set free. With Crenshaw’s decision imminent, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed a motion Sunday night for a 30-day stay of any release order. The request would allow Abrego Garcia to “evaluate his options and determine whether additional relief is necessary.”

Earlier this month, U.S. officials detailed their plans to try to expel Abrego Garcia in a federal court in Maryland. That’s where Abrego Garcia’s American wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is suing the Trump administration over his wrongful deportation in March and is trying to prevent another expulsion.

U.S. officials have argued that Abrego Garcia can be deported because he came to the U.S. illegally around 2011 and because a U.S. immigration judge deemed him eligible for expulsion in 2019, although not to his native El Salvador.

Following the immigration judge’s decision in 2019, Abrego Garcia was released under federal supervision, received a federal work permit and checked in with ICE each year, his attorneys have said. But U.S. officials recently stated in court documents that they revoked Abrego Garcia’s supervised release.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys in Maryland have asked U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to order the federal government to send Abrego Garcia to that state to await his trial, a bid that seeks to prevent deportation.

His lawyers also asked Xinis to issue at least a 72-hour hold that would prevent immediate deportation if he’s released from jail in Tennessee. Xinis has not ruled on either request.

Finley writes for the Associated Press.

Despite being wrongly deported and returned to the US, lawyers say Abrego Garcia again faces expulsion.

Lawyers representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia have asked a judge in Tennessee to delay his release from jail, in a bid to avoid deportation.

The filing on Monday was the latest turn in the case of Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to his native El Salvador by the administration of President Donald Trump in March, but later returned to the US in June following a Supreme Court order.

Abrego Garcia has been held in jail since his return, as he faces smuggling charges related to a 2022 traffic stop.

His lawyers have dismissed the charges as “preposterous” and an effort by US officials to demonise Abrego Garcia, who has become a cause celebre for opponents of Trump’s mass deportation drive.

At the same time, they believe that if Abrego Garcia is released ahead of his trial, he will be detained by immigration agents and deported, according to the Monday filing.

They requested that any release of Abrego Garcia be delayed by 30 days so he can “evaluate his options and determine whether additional relief is necessary”.

US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr is expected to soon rule on whether to free Abrego Garcia, after another judge ruled he could be released as he did not pose a flight risk.

Plan to deport

The Trump administration has long maintained that Abrego Garcia, a resident of Maryland, was a member of an MS-13 gang, a claim his lawyers have said was based on faulty information.

Abrego Garcia has never been convicted of a crime or had the claims adjudicated in court.

He was among those loaded onto a deportation flight to El Salvador under the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, which the Trump administration has argued allows for the swift deportation of alleged gang members.

Administration officials later admitted that Abrego Garcia had been wrongly deported due to an “administrative error”, as an immigration judge in 2019 had shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador. The judge determined he faces threats of gang violence in his home country.

Still, for several months, the administration refused to return Abrego Garcia, who came to the US in 2011 without documentation.

Trump officials have since said that the immigration judge’s 2019 order only applies to El Salvador, and have maintained that they can legally deport Abrego Garcia to a third country.

Last month, the US Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration could deport individuals to far-flung third countries, including war-torn South Sudan, until a legal challenge to the practice makes its way through the lower courts.

Abrego Garcia’s wife, meanwhile, has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in Maryland. His lawyers have requested that he be transferred to state custody while the criminal and civil cases proceed.