deportation

Democrats in the United States Senate have released a string of text messages and email correspondences that they say raises questions about the executive branch’s commitment to complying with court orders.

On Thursday, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released what he described as “whistleblower” evidence about government lawyer Emil Bove.

In his role as acting deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ), Bove directed his colleagues to ignore or mislead courts about President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts, according to Durbin.

“Text messages, email exchanges, and documents show that the Department of Justice misled a federal court and disregarded a court order,” Durbin wrote on social media.

“Mr Bove spearheaded this effort, which demanded attorneys violate their ethical duty of candor to the court.”

Bove – formerly a personal lawyer to President Trump during his criminal trials – was recently nominated to serve in a lifetime position as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. But the Senate must first vote to confirm him to the role.

“Emil Bove belongs nowhere near the federal bench,” Durbin wrote. “This vote will be a litmus test for Senate Judiciary Republicans.”

Durbin indicated the emails and texts he released come from a Justice Department source: Most of the names in the correspondences have been redacted.

But they appear to corroborate allegations made in a complaint in June by Erez Reuveni, a Justice Department lawyer who worked under Bove until his dismissal in April.

In his complaint, Reuveni alleged that Bove told Justice Department lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘f*** you’” if they interfered with President Trump’s deportation plans.

The expletive came up in the context of Trump’s controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that, until recently, had only been used in the context of war.

Trump, however, has argued that undocumented immigration constituted an “invasion” and has attempted to deport people under the law’s authority, without allowing them to appeal their removal.

According to Reuveni, Bove explained to the Justice Department that Trump planned to start the deportation flights immediately after invoking the Alien Enemies Act. He “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what”.

Reuveni understood that interaction as an attempt to circumvent the power of the courts.

In another instance, Reuveni said he was discouraged from asking questions about the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant wrongfully deported to El Salvador despite a court protection order.

When Reuveni admitted before a Maryland court that he did not have “satisfactory” answers about Abrego Garcia’s return, he said Trump officials pressured him to make assertions against Abrego Garcia that “were not supported by law or the record”. He was fired shortly afterwards.

The documents gathered by Senate Democrats appear to offer a look inside those incidents.

In one series of emails, dated March 15, Reuveni responded to a notification that planes bearing deportees under the Alien Enemies Act were still in the air.

“The judge specifically ordered us not to remove anyone in the class, and to return anyone in the air,” he wrote back.

The emails reflected an injunction from District Judge James Boasberg barring deportations and ordering the planes to turn around.

Nevertheless, the planes landed in El Salvador and delivered their human cargo to a maximum security prison, where many remain to this day.

In another instance, a member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) replied to an email thread by saying: “My take on these emails is that DOJ leadership and DOJ litigators don’t agree on the strategy. Please keep DHS out of it.”

Text messages also show Reuveni and an unnamed colleague discussing Bove’s request to tell the courts “f*** you”.

“Guess we are going to say f*** you to the court,” one text message reads.

In another, the colleague appears to react to Trump officials lying before the court. “Oh sh**,” they write. “That was just not true.”

In an interview published with The New York Times on Thursday, Reuveni underscored the grave dangers posed by an executive branch that he sees as refusing to comply with judicial authority.

“The Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,” he told the Times.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has responded with defiance, repeating its claim that Reuveni is simply a “disgruntled employee” lashing out at the employer who fired him.

“He’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

“No one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts.”

Bove himself denied ever advising his colleagues to defy a court order. The Senate is set to decide on his confirmation to the circuit court in the coming weeks.

If he passes the Senate Judiciary Committee – in a vote scheduled for July 17 – he will face a full vote on the Senate floor.

The UN says almost half a million Afghans have left Iran in just a month, as Iranian authorities continue a mass deportation drive of undocumented migrants. Iranian authorities have accused some Afghans of spying for Israel and say undocumented migrants present a security threat.

July 7 (UPI) — The United States has ended federal protections shielding thousands of migrants from Nicaragua and Honduras from deportation, angering immigration and civil rights advocacy groups as the Trump administration continues to remove longstanding immigration protections from migrants.

The Homeland Security Department announced the end of the Temporary Protected Status designation for those from the two Central American nations in separate statements Monday, saying the move will go into effect in 60 days.

Commonly known as TPS, the designation is intended to prevent the deportation of eligible migrants to their home countries where they could be put at risk due to natural disaster or conflict. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has already moved to end TPS designations for Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela and Nepal — which have attracted litigation.

The United States first designated Nicaragua and Honduras for TPS in 1999, following the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch a year prior.

According to DHS figures published in a September report from the Congressional Research Service, nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans and more than 54,000 Hondurans have been approved to stay in the United States under TPS.

“Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that — temporary,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said.

In both statements announcing the end of TPS for Nicaragua and Honduras, DHS cited “improved conditions” in the Central American nations, and that after speaking with interagency partners, Noem decided neither country meets the TPS statutory requirements.

Honduran and Nicaraguan nationals are being “encouraged” to report their departure from the United States with the use of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection smartphone application to leave the country with “a complementary plane ticket” as well as “a $1,000 exit bonus to help them resettle.”

The American Civil Liberties Union was quick to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, asking the court to declare its termination of TPS for Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act as the decision to do so was “not based on an objective review of country conditions.”

It said the termination decision by the Trump administration will affect tens of thousands of migrants, some of whom have been in the United States for 26 years.

“I am devastated at the heartless decision to terminate TPS for Honduras,” Johny Silva, a plaintiff in the case said in a statement from the ACLU.

Silva, 29, has been in the United States since he was three years old, is a father of a U.S. citizen with special needs and works as a certified nurse.

“I’ve been doing it the ‘right way’ the whole time. Now, I am facing losing my job, the ability to care for my family and the only home I’ve ever known,” he said.

Jessica Bansal, an attorney at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, lambasted the Trump administration’s move as not only “callous,” but illegal.

“The administration cannot manufacture a predetermined outcome without regard for its statutory obligations,” Bansal said.

The lawsuit alleges that the decision by the Trump administration was motivated by racism against immigrants perceived as non-White, pointing to comments made by White House officials, including Vice President JD Vance.

Vance had amplified and repeated misinformation that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets. Later, when confronted with proof that the story was false, Vance said he was willing to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.”

Trump returned to the White House in January after using often derogatory rhetoric and misinformation about migrants in support of his plans to conduct mass deportations.

Amid his second term, Trump has tried to make good on his campaign promises, but has attracted criticism for attacking the due process rights of migrants as well as facing litigation. Several judges have issued rulings blocking his termination of TPS for Haitians as well as Venezuelans, with the latter decision being stayed by the Supreme Court in May.

The bipartisan immigration and justice reform FWD.us organization called the move by the Trump administration to terminate TPS for Nicaraguans and Hondurans “a serious mistake” that is part “of a broader campaign to target and preemptively revoke legal status from immigrants, leaving them vulnerable to detention, family separation and deportation.

“It does nothing to strengthen our immigration system, reflects an approach Americans are increasingly rejecting and, as our recent economic analysis shows, will also unnecessarily raise the costs for families in the U.S.,” FWD.us President Todd Schulte said in a statement.

“We need policies that reflect the reality that immigration is good for America and for all Americans.”

GREENBELT, Md. — The U.S. government would initiate deportation proceedings against Kilmar Abrego Garcia if he’s released from jail before he stands trial on human smuggling charges in Tennessee, a Justice Department attorney told a federal judge in Maryland on Monday.

The disclosure by U.S. lawyer Jonathan Guynn contradicts statements by spokespeople for the Justice Department and the White House, who said last month that Abrego Garcia would stand trial and possibly spend time in an American prison before the government moves to deport him.

Guynn made the revelation during a federal court hearing in Maryland, where Abrego Garcia’s American wife is suing the Trump administration over his mistaken deportation in March and trying to prevent him being expelled again.

Guynn said that U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement would detain Abrego Garcia once he’s released from jail and send him to a “third country” that isn’t his native El Salvador. Guynn said he didn’t know which country that would be.

Abrego Garcia became a flash point over President Trump’s immigration policies when he was deported in March to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador. The Trump administration violated a U.S. immigration judge’s 2019 order that shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation to his native country because he likely faced persecution there by local gangs that terrorized his family.

Facing increasing pressure and a Supreme Court order, the Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia last month to face federal human smuggling charges. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have characterized the case as “preposterous” and an attempt to justify his erroneous deportation.

A federal judge in Nashville was preparing to release Abrego Garcia to await trial. But she agreed last week to keep Abrego Garcia behind bars at the request of his own attorneys. They had raised concerns that the U.S. would try to immediately deport him, while citing what they say were “contradictory statements” by the Trump administration.

For example, Guynn had told U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland on June 26 that the U.S. government planned to deport Abrego Garcia to a “third country” that isn’t El Salvador. But he said there was no timeline for the deportation plans.

Later that day, Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin told the Associated Press that the department intends to try Abrego Garcia on the smuggling charges before it moves to deport him.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson posted on X that day that Abrego Garcia “will face the full force of the American justice system — including serving time in American prison for the crimes he’s committed.”

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have asked Xinis to order the government to take Abrego Garcia to Maryland upon release from jail in Tennessee, an arrangement that would prevent his deportation before trial. Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland for more than a decade, working in construction and raising a family with his wife.

Xinis is still considering Abrego Garcia’s lawyers’ request to send him to Maryland if he’s released. Meanwhile, Xinis ruled Monday that the lawsuit against the Trump administration over Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation can continue.

Kunzelman and Finley write for the Associated Press. Finley reported from Norfolk, Va.

For decades, tens of thousands of Afghans – who have fled war and poverty and sought a better future – have crossed into neighbouring Iran.

Tehran has largely been lenient towards members of this community. But in recent years, Iranians seem to have grown tired of hosting them – and sentiment towards foreign nationals has hardened.

The Iranian government has responded by expelling undocumented people. Those being forced out have no choice but to return to the country they escaped from.

While the Taliban government is welcoming returning Afghans, what kind of life awaits them, and what can the international community do to help?

Presenter:

James Bays

Guests:

Arafat Jamal – Afghanistan representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Orzala Nemat – Activist for the rights of Afghan women and director of the Development Research Group,  a UK-based consultancy

Hassan Ahmadian – Assistant professor of West Asian Studies at the University of Tehran

Eight migrants in United States custody have lost a last-ditch attempt to avoid deportation to South Sudan, a country facing ongoing criticism for human rights abuses.

On Friday, Judge Brian Murphy of Boston denied the eleventh-hour appeal, which has been the subject of a flurry of legal activity throughout the day.

The appeal argued that repeated efforts under President Donald Trump to deport the men to South Sudan was “impermissibly punitive”. It pointed out that the US Constitution bars “cruel and unusual punishment”.

In the past, the US Department of State has accused South Sudan of “extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture and cases of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment”. It advises no American citizen to travel there due to an ongoing armed conflict.

But the US Supreme Court has twice ruled that the Trump administration could indeed deport the men to countries outside of their homelands. Its latest decision was issued on Thursday.

The US Department of Justice indicated that the eight men were set to be flown to South Sudan by 7pm US Eastern Time (23:00 GMT) on Friday. They hailed from countries like Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam.

The last-ditch appeal was filed on Thursday night, shortly after the Supreme Court rendered its decision.

Initially, the case was assigned to US District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, DC, who signalled he was sympathetic to the deportees’ request.

He briefly ordered the deportation to be paused until 4:30pm Eastern Time (20:30 GMT), but ultimately, he decided to transfer the case back to Murphy, the judge whose decisions helped precipitate the Supreme Court’s rulings.

Murphy had previously issued injunctions against the deportations to South Sudan, leading to successful appeals from the Trump administration. The eight men, meanwhile, had been held at a military base in Djibouti while the courts decided their fate.

Before he transferred the case back to Murphy, however, Judge Moss said it was possible the deportees could prove their case that the Trump administration intended to subject them to abuse.

“It seems to me almost self-evident that the United States government cannot take human beings and send them to circumstances in which their physical wellbeing is at risk simply either to punish them or send a signal to others,” Moss said during the hearing.

Lawyers for the Trump administration, meanwhile, argued that the deportation’s continued delay would strain relations with countries willing to accept migrants from other countries.

Murphy, who denied Friday’s request, had previously ruled in favour of the deportees, issuing an injunction against their removal to South Sudan and saying they had a right to contest the deportation based on fears for their safety.

The Supreme Court first lifted the injunction on June 23 and clarified its ruling again on Thursday, giving a subtle rebuke to Judge Murphy.

The Trump administration has been pushing for rapid removals as part of its campaign of mass deportation, one of President Trump’s signature priorities.

Opponents have accused the administration of steamrolling the human rights of undocumented people in order to achieve its aims, including the right to due process under the law.

But the Trump administration has framed undocumented migration as an “invasion” that constitutes a national security crisis, and it argued that its strong-armed efforts are needed to expel criminals.

The eight migrants slated to be sent to South Sudan, it said, were “barbaric, violent criminal illegal aliens”. It added that they had been found guilty of crimes, including first-degree murder, robbery and sexual assault.

“These sickos will be in South Sudan by Independence Day,” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a news release on Thursday.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the deportation of several immigrants who were put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, a war-ravaged country where they have no ties.

The decision comes after the court’s conservative majority found that immigration officials can quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger.

The court’s latest order makes clear that the South Sudan flight detoured to a naval base in Djibouti weeks ago can now complete the trip. It reverses findings from federal Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts, who said his order on those migrants still stands even after the high court lifted his broader decision.

The majority wrote that their decision on June 23 completely halted Murphy’s ruling and also rendered his decision on the South Sudan flight “unenforceable.” The court did not fully detail its legal reasoning on the underlying case, as is common on its emergency docket.

Two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, saying the ruling gives the government special treatment. “Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial,” Sotomayor wrote.

Attorneys for the eight migrants have said they could face “imprisonment, torture and even death” if sent to South Sudan, where escalating political tensions have threatened to devolve into another civil war.

“We know they’ll face perilous conditions, and potentially immediate detention, upon arrival,” Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said Thursday.

The push comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Trump’s Republican administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally. The Trump administration has called Murphy’s finding “a lawless act of defiance.”

The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Authorities have reached agreements with other countries to house immigrants if authorities can’t quickly send them back to their homelands. The eight men sent to South Sudan in May had been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S.

Murphy, who was nominated by Democratic President Biden, didn’t prohibit deportations to third countries. But he found migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in danger of torture if sent to another country.

The men have been held in a converted shipping container on the naval base in Djibouti since Murphy found the administration had violated his order by failing to allow them a chance to challenge the removal to South Sudan. They have since expressed a fear of being sent there, Realmuto said.

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

July 3 (UPI) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the family of the man accused of attacking a group of Jewish demonstrators in Colorado last month, ruling that despite confusion caused by the Trump administration, they are receiving their full rights under immigration law and their deportation proceedings are not being expedited.

Hayam El Gamal and her five children were detained by federal immigration agents on June 3, days after her husband, 45-year-old Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, allegedly wounded more than a dozen people attending a weekly Boulder, Colo., event in support of Jewish hostages held by Hamas using a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails.

One of the wounded, 82-year-old Karen Diamond, died of her injuries, prosecutors announced Monday.

The family has been fighting deportation since their detention, believing their removal process was being expedited, which is not permitted under the Immigration and Nationality Act, as they have been in the country for more than two years.

They received temporary restraining orders preventing their removal as the judge reviewed the case.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia dismissed their lawsuit without prejudice, finding that despite the confusion over whether their deportation was being expedited, they were, in fact, placed into ordinary removal proceedings and would appear before an immigration judge where they could seek protection from removal.

“Accordingly, to the extent that petitioners seek to enjoin their removal on an expedited basis, this request is moot,” Garcia said in her ruling. “And to the extent that petitioners seek to enjoin their being subjected to ordinary, or ‘full,’ removal proceedings, such relief is not available to them.”

The confusion over their removal proceedings arose from Trump administration statements published the day they were detained.

The White House posted a statement to X claiming that “six one-way tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and five kids” had been arranged and that “final boarding call coming soon.” The tweet ended with an emoji of an airplane.

A second tweet from the White House said “THEY COULD BE DEPORTED AS EARLY AS TONIGHT.”

The statements prompted the family to file a lawsuit seeking to halt their expedited removal.

Garcia highlighted the confusion caused by the White House messaging in her ruling, but said the government has since clarified that this is not the case.

“The court hastens to remind petitioners that they still have an avenue for seeking their release from detention while their removal proceedings continue,” said Garcia, a President Bill Clinton appointee.

The Department of Homeland Security celebrated the ruling without acknowledging the confusion caused by the White House’s messaging.

“This is a proper end to an absurd legal effort on the plaintiff’s part,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin at the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

“Just like her terrorist husband, she and her children are here illegally and are rightfully in ICE custody for removal as a result.”

DHS has previously argued that the Soliman family is in the United States illegally.

According to an earlier statement from DHS, Soliman, his wife and their five children first came to the United States on Aug. 27, 2022, and filed for asylum about a month later. They were granted entry until Feb. 26, 2023, and had apparently overstayed their visas since.

Soliman has pleaded not guilty to 12 federal hate crime counts.

OCHOPEE, Fla. — President Trump will turn a new immigration detention center in a remote area of the Florida Everglades into a symbol of his border crackdown when he visits on Tuesday.

The facility, assembled on a remote airstrip with tents and trailers that are normally used after a natural disaster, has been given the nickname “Alligator Alcatraz,” a moniker that has alarmed immigrant activists but appeals to the Republican president’s aggressive approach to deportations.

“This is not a nice business,” Trump said while leaving the White House in the morning. Then he joked that “we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison.”

“Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,” he said, as he moved his hand in a zigzag motion. “And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.”

That doesn’t seem to be sound advice, though. It’s best to dash in one direction in the rare situation when an alligator gives chase, according to a website run by the University of Florida.

Ahead of Trump’s arrival, local authorities were positioned by the entrance of the airstrip. Media vans and other vehicles were parked along the highway lined by cypress trees.

Protestors have often gathered near the facility, which is about 50 miles west of Miami and could house 5,000 detainees. They’ve criticized the potential impact on a delicate ecosystem and say Trump is trying to send a cruel message to immigrants — while some Native American leaders have also opposed construction, saying the land is sacred.

“I have a lot of immigrants I have been working with. They are fine people. They do not deserve to be incarcerated here,” said Phyllis Andrews, a retired teacher who drove from Naples, Florida, to protest Trump’s visit on Tuesday. “It’s terrible that there’s a bounty on their head.”

The president’s supporters showed up as well. One wore a hat saying, “Trump was right about everything.”

A key selling point for the Trump administration is the site’s remoteness — and the fact that it is in swampland filled with mosquitoes, pythons and alligators. The White House hopes that conveys a message to detainees and the rest of the world that repercussions will be severe if the immigration laws of the United States are not followed.

“There’s only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “It is isolated, and it is surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain.”

Crackdowns on the U.S.-Mexico border and harsh immigration policies have long been a centerpiece of Trump’s political brand.

During his first term in 2019, Trump denied reports that he floated the idea of building a moat filled with alligators at the southern border. “I may be tough on Border Security, but not that tough,” he said at the time.

In his second term, Trump has suggested that his administration could move to reopen Alcatraz, the notorious and hard-to-reach island prison off San Francisco. The White House has similarly promoted the political shock value of sending some immigrants awaiting deportation from the U.S. to a detention lockup in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and others to a megaprison in El Salvador.

Some of the ideas have been impractical. For example, transforming Alcatraz from a tourist attraction into a prison would be very costly, and Guantánamo Bay is being used less often than administration officials originally envisioned.

However, the new detention center in the Everglades came together very quickly. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently told the Associated Press that she felt some contractors were charging the government too much to run facilities, “so I went directly to states and to ask them if they could do a better job providing this service.”

Florida officials “were willing to build it and do it much quicker than what some of the other vendors were,” she said. “And it was a real solution that we’ll be able to utilize if we need to.”

Former U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Florida, a former Republican who is now running for governor as a Democrat, called the facility a “callous political stunt.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees are generally held for reasons like entering the country illegally or overstaying a visa. They are either waiting for ICE to put them on the next flight or bus ride home, or they’re fighting their removal in immigration court.

If an immigrant is accused of or has committed a violent crime, he or she is tried and held in state or federal criminal jurisdiction, separate from the immigration system. In those cases, they may be transferred to ICE for deportation after completing their criminal sentences.

State officials are spearheading construction of the Florida facility, but much of the cost is being covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is best known for responding to hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, whom Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has credited as the architect of the Everglades plan, first debuted the proposal with a slickly produced video, complete with custom graphics featuring red-eyed alligators and a hard rock soundtrack.

The Department of Homeland Security posted an image of alligators wearing ICE hats and sitting in front of a fenced-in compound ringed with barbed wire.

The Florida Republican Party has fundraised off the facility, selling branded T-shirts and beverage container sleeves. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested Monday that the facility would be open and “ready for business” by the time Trump arrives.

The governor, who challenged Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has also played up the fact that the site will be hard to escape from.

“They ain’t going anywhere once they’re there, unless you want them to go somewhere, because good luck getting to civilization,” DeSantis said. “So the security is amazing.”

Licon and Weissert write for the Associated Press. Weissert reported from Washington. AP writers Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Fla., Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

‘DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.’ Donald Trump said he would ‘take a look’ at the possibility of Elon Musk being deported. Musk has criticised Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ for what he called ‘insane spending’ and renewed his call for a new political party.

Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian lived in the United States for 47 years, married a U.S. citizen and raised their daughter. She was gardening in the yard of her New Orleans home when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers handcuffed and took her away, her family said.

Kashanian arrived in 1978 on a student visa and applied for asylum, fearing retaliation for her father’s support of the U.S.-backed shah. She lost her bid, but she was allowed to remain with her husband and child if she checked in regularly with immigration officials, her husband and daughter said. She complied, once checking in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina. She is now being held at an immigration detention center in Basile, La., while her family tries to get information.

Other Iranians are also getting arrested by immigration authorities after decades in the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security won’t say how many people they’ve arrested, but U.S. military strikes on Iran have fueled fears that there is more to come.

“Some level of vigilance, of course, makes sense, but what it seems like ICE has done is basically give out an order to round up as many Iranians as you can, whether or not they’re linked to any threat and then arrest them and deport them, which is very concerning,” said Ryan Costello, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group.

Homeland Security did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on Kashanian’s case but have been touting arrests of Iranians. The department announced the arrests of at least 11 Iranians on immigration violations a week ago, during the weekend of the U.S. missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said, without elaborating, that it arrested seven Iranians at a Los Angeles-area address that “has been repeatedly used to harbor illegal entrants linked to terrorism.”

The department “has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said of the 11 arrests. She didn’t offer any evidence of terrorist or extremist ties. Her comment on parole programs referred to former President Biden’s expanded legal pathways to entry, which President Trump shut down.

Russell Milne, Kashanian’s husband, said his wife is not a threat. Her appeal for asylum was complicated because of “events in her early life,” he explained. A court found an earlier marriage of hers to be fraudulent.

But over four decades, Kashanian, 64, built a life in Louisiana. The couple met when she was bartending as a student in the late 1980s. They married and had a daughter. She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, filmed Persian cooking tutorials on YouTube and was a grandmother figure to the children next door.

The fear of deportation always hung over the family, Milne said, but he said his wife did everything that was being asked of her.

“She’s meeting her obligations,” Milne said. “She’s retirement age. She’s not a threat. Who picks up a grandmother?”

While Iranians have been crossing the border illegally for years, especially since 2021, they have faced little risk of being deported to their home countries due to severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. That seems to no longer be the case.

The Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, including Iranians, to countries other than their own in an attempt to circumvent diplomatic hurdles with governments that won’t take their people back. During Trump’s second term, countries including El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama have taken back noncitizens from the U.S.

The administration has asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for several deportations to South Sudan, a war-ravaged country with which it has no ties, after the justices allowed deportations to countries other than those that noncitizens came from.

The U.S. Border Patrol arrested Iranians 1,700 times at the Mexican border from October 2021 through November 2024, according to the most recent public data available. The Homeland Security Department reported that about 600 Iranians overstayed visas as business or exchange visitors, tourists and students in the 12-month period through September 2023, the most recent report shows.

Iran was one of 12 countries subject to a U.S. travel ban imposed by Trump that took effect this month. Some fear ICE’s growing deportation arrests will be another blow.

In Oregon, an Iranian man was detained by immigration agents this past week while driving to the gym. He was picked up roughly two weeks before he was scheduled for a check-in at ICE offices in Portland, according to court documents filed by his attorney, Michael Purcell.

The man, identified in court filings as S.F., has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, and his wife and two children are U.S. citizens.

S.F. applied for asylum in the U.S. in the early 2000s, but his application was denied in 2002. His appeal failed, but the government did not deport him and he continued to live in the country for decades, according to court documents.

Due to “changed conditions” in Iran, S.F. would face “a vastly increased danger of persecution” if he were to be deported, Purcell wrote in his petition. “These circumstances relate to the recent bombing by the United States of Iranian nuclear facilities, thus creating a de facto state of war between the United States and Iran.”

S.F.’s long residency in the U.S., his conversion to Christianity and the fact that his wife and children are U.S. citizens “sharply increase the possibility of his imprisonment in Iran, or torture or execution,” he said.

Similarly, Kashanian’s daughter said she is worried what will happen to her mother.

“She tried to do everything right,” Kaitlynn Milne said.

Chandler, Rush and Spagat write for the Associated Press.

An Army veteran who grew up in Van Nuys and was awarded a Purple Heart self-deported to South Korea this week as he was threatened with being detained and deported by federal immigration forces.

On Monday, veteran Sae Joon Park, who legally immigrated from South Korea when he was seven years old, grew up in Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley and held a green card, flew back to his homeland under threat of deportation at the age of 55. He said he is being forced to leave because of drug convictions nearly two decades ago that he said were a response to the PTSD he suffered after being shot during military action in Panama.

“It’s unbelievable. I’m still in disbelief that this has actually happened,” Park said in a phone interview from Incheon early Wednesday morning. “I know I made my mistakes … but it’s not like I was a violent criminal. It’s not like I’m going around robbing people at gunpoint or hurting anyone. It was self-induced because of the problems I had.”

Sae Joon Park, an Army veteran with a Purple Heart.

(From Sae Joon Park)

Asked to comment on Park, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Park has an “extensive criminal history” and has been given a final removal order, with the option to self-deport.

Park said he suffered from PTSD and addiction in the aftermath of being wounded when he was part of the U.S. forces that invaded Panama in 1989 to depose the nation’s de facto leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

But now Park, a legal immigrant, is targeted by federal authorities in President Trump’s recent immigration raids that have prompted widespread protests in Los Angeles and across the nation. Federal authorities have arrested more than 1,600 immigrants for deportation in Southern California between June 6 and 22, according to DHS.

A noncitizen is eligible for naturalization if they served honorably in the U.S. military for at least a year. Park served less than a year before he was wounded and honorably discharged.

Since 2002, over 158,000 immigrant service members have become U.S. citizens.

As of 2021, the Department of Veteran Affairs and DHS are responsible for tracking deported veterans to make sure they still have access to VA benefits.

Park’s parents divorced when he was a toddler, and his mother immigrated from South Korea to the United States. He followed her a year later. They first lived in Koreatown, moved to Panorama City and then Van Nuys. He graduated from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks in 1988.

Struggling at first to learn English and acclimate with his classmates, he eventually became part of the Southern California skateboarding and surfing scene of the 1980s, which is when television editor Josh Belson met him. They have been close friends ever since.

“He’s always got a smile, a very kind of vivacious energy about him,” said Belson, who attended a nearby high school when they met. “He was the kind of person you wanted to be around.”

After graduating, Park said he wasn’t ready to attend college, so he joined the military.

“The Army provided not only turning me into a man, but also providing me with the GI Bill, so you can go to college later, and they’ll pay for it. And the fact that I did believe in the country, the United States,” he said. “So I felt like I was doing something honorable. I was very proud when I joined the military.”

Park’s platoon was deployed to Panama in late 1989, where he said they experienced a firefight the first night there. The following day, he said he was carrying an M-16 when they raided the house of one of the “witches” Noriega allegedly followed. He said they saw a voodoo worship room with body parts and a cross painted in blood on the floor.

While there, he heard gunfire from the backyard and returned fire. He was shot twice, in his spine and lower left back. The bullet to his spine was partially deflected by his dog tag, which Park believes is the reason he wasn’t paralyzed. A military ambulance was delayed because of the firefight, but a Vietnam veteran who lived nearby rescued him, Park said.

“I just remember I’m just lying in my own pool of blood and just leaking out badly. So he actually went home, got his pickup truck, put me in the back of his pickup truck with two soldiers, and drove me to the hospital,” Park said.

He was then evacuated to an Army hospital in San Antonio. A four-star general awarded him a Purple Heart at his bedside. Then-President George W. Bush visited wounded soldiers there.

Park spent about two weeks there, and then went home for a month or so, until he could walk. His experience resulted in mental issues he didn’t recognize, he said.

“My biggest issue at the time, more than my injuries, was — I didn’t know what it was at the time, nobody did, because there was no such thing as PTSD at the time,” he said. Eventually, “I realized I was suffering from PTSD badly, nightmares every night, severe. I couldn’t hear loud noises, and at that time in L.A., you would hear gunshots every night you left the house, so I was paranoid at all times. And being a man and being a tough guy, I couldn’t share this with anyone.”

Park started self-medicating with marijuana, which he said helped him sleep. But he started doing harder drugs, eventually crack cocaine. He moved to Hawaii after his mother and stepfather’s L.A. store burned during the 1992 riots, and married. After Park and his wife separated, he moved to New York City, where his addiction worsened.

“It got really bad. It just got out of control — every day, every night, all day — just smoking, everything,” Park said.

One night, in the late 2000s, he was meeting his drug dealer at a Taco Bell in Queens when police surrounded his car, and the dealer fled while leaving a large quantity of crack in his glove compartment, Park said.

A judge sent Park to rehab twice, but he said he was not ready to get sober.

“I just couldn’t. I was an addict. It was so hard for me to stay clean. I’d be good for 30 days and relapse,” he said. “I’d be good for 20 days and relapse. It was such a struggle. Finally, the judge told me, ‘Mr. Park, the next time you come into my courtroom with the dirty urine, you’re gonna go to prison.’ So I got scared.”

So Park didn’t return to court, drove to Los Angeles and then returned to Hawaii, skipping bail, which is an aggravated felony.

“I did not know at the time jumping bail was an aggravated felony charge, and combined with my drug use, that’s deportable for someone like me with my green card,” he said.

U.S. Marshals were sent looking for Park, and he said once he heard about this, he turned himself in in August 2009, because he didn’t want to be arrested in front of his two children.

He served two years in prison and said immigration officials detained him for six months after he was released as he fought deportation orders. He was eventually released under “deferred action,” an act of prosecutorial discretion by DHS to put off deportation.

Every year since, Park was required to check in with federal officials and show that he was employed and sober. Meanwhile, he had sole custody of his two children, who are now 28 and 25. He was also caring for his 85-year-old mother, who is in the early stages of dementia.

During his most recent check-in, Park was about to be handcuffed and detained, but immigration agents placed an ankle monitor on him and gave him three weeks to get his affairs in order and self-deport. He is not allowed to return to the United States for 10 years. He worries he will miss his mother’s passing and his daughter’s wedding.

“That’s the biggest part. But … it could be a lot worse too. I look at it that way also,” Park said. “So I’m grateful I made it out of the United States, I guess, without getting detained.”

“I always just assumed a green card, legal residency, is just like having citizenship,” he added. “I just never felt like I had to go get citizenship. And that’s just being honest. As a kid growing up in the United States, I’ve always just thought, hey, I’m a green card holder, a legal resident, I’m just like a citizen.”

His condition has spiraled since then.

“Alright. I’m losing it. Can’t stop crying. I think PTSD kicking in strong,” Park texted Belson on Thursday. “Just want to get back to my family and take care of my mother … I’m a mess.”

Times staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report.

June 27 (UPI) — Just under a quarter of those surveyed worry they or someone they know in the United States could be deported, according to a new poll published Friday.

The Pew Research Center poll found 23% of American adults worried about the issue, up from 19% during the firm’s last survey in March.

That fear of deportation is stronger among immigrants polled rather than people born in the United States.

The survey found 43% of adult immigrants are worried about deportations, up from 33% in the March poll, while 34% of U.S.-born citizens feel the same way, an increase from 17% three months ago. American citizens polled in that category have at least one parent who is a first-generation immigrant to the United state.

The Washington, D.C.-based non-profit research center conducted the survey between June 2 and 8.

Overall, more people who identified as Democrats (32%), both U.S. citizens and immigrants were worried about someone they know being deported than Republicans (8%), according to the poll.

Fears about deportations have been stoked since President Donald Trump in March gave the green light to large-scale raids and detentions carried out by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it will allow the Trump administration to deport convicted criminals to “third countries,” even without a connection to that nation.

Among racial and ethnic groups, more Latino respondents to the survey were worried about being affected by deportation than any other group.

Around half (47%) of those surveyed expressed concerns about themselves, a close friend or a family member being deported. The figure is up from 42% in March.

English-speaking Asian adults (29%) and Black adults (26%) were the next largest groups of people with the same concern.

NASHVILLE — Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia asked a federal judge in Tennessee on Friday to delay his release from jail because of “contradictory statements” by President Trump’s administration over whether he’ll be deported upon release.

A federal judge in Nashville has been preparing to release Abrego Garcia to await trial on human smuggling charges. But she’s been holding off over concerns that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would swiftly detain him and try to deport him again.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are now asking the judge to continue to detain him following statements by Trump administration officials “because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by” the Justice Department.

“The irony of this request is not lost on anyone,” the attorneys wrote.

Abrego Garcia, a construction worker who had been living in Maryland, became a flashpoint over Trump’s hard-line immigration policies when he was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March. Facing mounting pressure and a Supreme Court order, Trump’s Republican administration returned him this month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called “preposterous.”

In a response to the request by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys on Friday, acting U.S. Atty. Rob McGuire agreed to delaying Abrego Garcia’s release. He reiterated his stance that Abrego Garcia should remain in jail before trial and that he lacks jurisdiction over ICE, stating that he has no way to prevent Abrego Garcia’s deportation.

Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin told the Associated Press on Thursday that the department intends to try Abrego Garcia on the smuggling charges before it moves to deport him, stating that Abrego Garcia “has been charged with horrific crimes, including trafficking children, and will not walk free in our country again.”

Hours earlier, Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn told a federal judge in Maryland that the U.S. government plans to deport Abrego Garcia to a “third country” that isn’t El Salvador. Guynn said there was no timeline for the deportation plans.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote in their filing on Friday that Guynn’s statements were the “first time the government has represented, to anyone, that it intended not to deport Mr. Abrego back to El Salvador following a trial on these charges, but to deport him to a third country immediately.”

The filing by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers also cited a post on X on Thursday from White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson: “Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face trial for the egregious charges against him,” Jackson stated. “He will face the full force of the American justice system — including serving time in American prison for the crimes he’s committed.”

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote Friday the Trump administration brought Abrego Garcia back “only to convict him in the court of public opinion.”

“In a just world, he would not seek to prolong his detention further,” his attorneys wrote. “And yet the government — a government that has, at all levels, told the American people that it is bringing Mr. Abrego back home to the United States to face ‘American justice’ — apparently has little interest in actually bringing this case to trial.”

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have asked the judge to delay his release until a July 16 court hearing, which will consider a request by prosecutors to revoke Abrego Garcia’s release order while he awaits trial.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty on June 13 to smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify his mistaken expulsion to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

When the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia in March, it violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that barred his expulsion to his native country. The immigration judge had found that Abrego Garcia faced a credible threat from gangs that had terrorized him and his family.

The human smuggling charges pending against Abrego Garcia stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee, during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers without luggage.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville wrote in a ruling Sunday that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community.

During a court hearing Wednesday, 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 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting him.

Finley and Loller write for the Associated Press. Finley reported from Norfolk, Va.

As federal immigration raids continue to upend life in Los Angeles, Asian American leaders are rallying their communities to raise their voices in support of Latinos, who have been the primary targets of the enforcement sweeps, warning that neighborhoods frequented by Asian immigrants could be next.

Organizers say many Asian immigrants have already been affected by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants working in the country without documentation. Dozens of Southeast Asian immigrants in Los Angeles and Orange counties whose deportation orders had been on indefinite hold have been detained after showing up for routine check-ins at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, according to immigration attorneys and advocacy groups.

In recent months, a number of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants whose deportation orders had been stayed — in some cases for decades — have been told that those orders will now be enforced.

The Asian immigrants being targeted are generally people who were convicted of a crime after arriving in the U.S., making them subject to deportation after their release from jail or prison. In most cases, ICE never followed through because the immigrants had lived in the U.S. long enough that their home countries no longer recognized them as citizens.

“Our community is much more silent, but we are being detained in really high numbers,” said Connie Chung Joe, chief executive of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California. “There’s such a stigma and fear that, unlike the Latinx community that wants to fight and speak out about the injustices, our community’s first reaction is to go down and get more and more hidden.”

On Thursday, more than a half-dozen leaders representing Thai, Japanese and South Asian communities held a news conference in Little Tokyo urging community members to stand together and denounce the federal action as an overreach.

President Trump came into office in January vowing to target violent criminals for deportation. But amid pressure to raise deportation numbers, administration officials in recent months have shifted their focus to farmworkers, landscapers, street vendors and other day laborers, many of whom have been working in the country for decades.

While an estimated 79% of undocumented residents in L.A. County are natives of Mexico and Central America, Asian immigrants make up the second-largest group, constituting 16% of people in the county without legal authorization, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Across the U.S., Indians make up the third-largest group of undocumented residents, behind Mexicans and Salvadorans.

According to the Pew Research Center, the L.A. metropolitan area is home to the largest populations of Cambodian, Korean, Indonesian, Filipino, Thai and Vietnamese people in the U.S.

So far, the highest-profile raids in Southern California have centered on Latino neighborhoods, targeting car washes, restaurants, home improvement stores, churches and other locales where undocumented residents gather and work.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and Peter Gee of the Little Tokyo Service Center were among the speakers who denounced ICE raids during a news conference Thursday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

But Asian businesses have not been immune. A raid outside a Home Depot in Hollywood happened near Thai Town, where organizers have seen ICE agents patrolling the streets. In late May, Department of Homeland Security agents raided a Los Angeles-area nightclub, arresting 36 people they said were Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants in the country without authorization.

In Little Bangladesh, immigration agents recently detained 16 people outside a grocery store, said Manjusha P. Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 community-based organizations.

“They will come for us even more in the coming days and weeks,” Kulkarni said. “So we are only protected when we’re in solidarity with our fellow Angelenos.”

From June 1 to 10, at the start of the federal sweeps, ICE data show that 722 people were arrested in the Los Angeles region. The figures were obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a repository of enforcement data at UC Berkeley Law.

A Times analysis found that 69% of those arrested during that period had no criminal convictions. Nearly 48% were Mexican, 16% were from Guatemala and 8% from El Salvador.

Forty-seven of the 722 individuals detained — or about 6% — were from Asian countries.

“We know the fear is widespread and it is deep,” said Assemblymember Mike Fong, a Democrat whose district takes in Monterey Park and west San Gabriel Valley, areas with large Asian immigrant populations.

Los Angeles City Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Ysabel Jurado spoke of the repercussions the raids were having on immigrant communities. Raman is Indian American, and Jurado is Filipino American.

Jurado said undocumented Filipinos make up a sizable portion of the region’s caregivers, tending to elderly people and young children.

“Their work reflects the deepest values of our communities: compassion, service and interdependence,” Jurado said. “Their labor is essential, and their humanity must be honored.”

Jurado and Raman called on the federal government to end the raids.

“This is such an important moment to speak out and to ensure that the Latino community does not feel alone,” Raman said. “I also want to make it clear to every single person who is Asian American, these aren’t just raids on others. They’re raids on us.”

Staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

A Central American asylum applicant arrested outside an L.A. immigration court is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security and the Trump administration for her immediate release and that of her two children, including her 6-year-old son stricken with cancer.

The Honduran woman, not named in court documents, filed a petition for writs of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility. She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras, as her children cry and pray nightly to be released from a Texas holding facility, according to court documents.

She and her two children, including a 9-year-old daughter, are facing two removal proceedings concurrently: a previous removal proceeding involving their asylum request and this recent expedited removal process.

The woman claims the government violated many of their rights, including the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.

Her attorneys noted that DHS determined she was not a flight risk when she was paroled into the country and that her detention was unjustified.

The woman’s lawyers also argued that she was not given an opportunity to contest her family’s detention in front of a neutral adjudicator.

They also argue that the family’s 4th Amendment right to not be unlawfully arrested were violated.

The Honduran mother is being represented by several groups, including attorney Kate Gibson Kumar of the Texas Civil Rights Project, the San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service and the immigrant advocacy group Raices Texas.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio on Tuesday.

An after-hours email to the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately answered.

One of the focal points of the lawsuit is the fate of the woman’s son.

The youth was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 3 and has undergone chemotherapy treatments, including injecting chemotherapeutic agents into his cerebrospinal fluid, according to court documents.

He began treatment in Honduras and completed two years of chemotherapy, at which point the mother believes he no longer has leukemia cells in his blood, according to court documents.

The son, however, needs regular monitoring and medical care for his condition, according to court documents.

Last year, the family fled to the United States to “seek safety” after they were subject to “imminent, menacing death threats” in Honduras, according to court documents.

They applied for entrance while waiting in Mexico and received a CBP One app appointment in October to apply for asylum. They presented themselves at an undisclosed border entry, were processed and were paroled in the U.S., according to court documents.

They were scheduled to appear before a Los Angeles immigration court and moved to the area to live with family.

Both children enrolled in local public schools, attended Sunday church and were learning English, according to court documents.

The trio arrived at court May 29 for a hearing for their asylum request and were caught off guard when a Homeland Security lawyer asked for their case to be dismissed, according to court documents.

The woman told an immigration judge “we wish to continue [with our cases],” according to court documents.

The judge granted the dismissal and the Honduran mother and two children were immediately arrested by plainclothes ICE agents upon leaving the courtroom in the hallway, according to court documents. The woman had a June 5 medical appointment scheduled for her son’s cancer diagnosis, which he couldn’t attend because of the arrest.

The family was detained for hours on the first floor before being taken to an undisclosed immigration center in the city, according to court documents.

All three “cried in fear” and the young boy urinated on himself and remained in wet clothing “for hours,” according to court documents.

The trio were placed on a flight to San Antonio along with several other families. The date of the flight was not available.

After landing, the family was transported to a detention center in Dilley, Texas, where they have since resided.

The children have cried each night and prayed “for God to take them out of the detention center,” according to court documents.

The mother claims that the federal government did nothing to monitor her son’s leukemia for days.

Her lawyers have also sought the boy’s release for medical treatment, a request that was not fulfilled.

The nation’s federal judges — including appointees of presidents of both parties, Donald Trump’s among them — have been the bulwark against Trump’s reign of lawlessness on deportations, spending, federal appointments and more. Repeatedly, lower courts have been standing up for the Constitution and federal law, trying to constrain a president contemptuous of both, at demonstrable danger to themselves. But too often, the administration disregards their orders.

You’d think the Supreme Court — in particular Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the overseer of the judicial branch — would have the lower courts’ backs. But no, as the high court’s conservative majority shamefully showed in a ruling on Monday.

That decision in one of many deportation challenges wasn’t the court’s first such display of deference to a president who doesn’t reciprocate. And, safe bet, it won’t be the last.

The court allowed the Trump administration to at least temporarily continue deporting migrants to countries not their own, unsafe ones at that, with little or no notice and no chance to legally argue that they could face torture or worse. No matter that lives are at stake — the justices blithely lifted an injunction by Judge Brian E. Murphy, of the U.S. District Court in Boston, that had blocked the administration’s slapdash deportations while legal challenges wend through the courts.

In a blistering 19-page dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, marshaled legal arguments, damning examples of Trump administration dissembling and defiance of lower courts, and warnings of more defiance of federal courts from an emboldened president.

In contrast, the ruling from the Supreme Court majority was just one paragraph — unsigned legal mumbo-jumbo, its decision wholly unexplained, as is typical in the cases that the court takes all too frequently on an emergency basis, the aptly named “shadow docket.” (In two other shadow docket rulings in May, Trump was allowed to revoke the legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians, many of whom were here under programs created to protect refugees from violent, impoverished and repressive countries. Why? Who knows?)

What’s all the more maddening about the Supreme Court’s opacity in overriding both Judge Murphy and an appeals court that backed him is that its preliminary support for Trump in this case contradicts the plain language of the justices’ unanimous ruling in April that people subject to deportation “are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”

“Fire up the deportation planes,” crowed a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department.

Such callous gloating surely didn’t surprise Sotomayor. Her dissent began, “In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach.” And so did her conservative colleagues.

As Sotomayor wrote, historically the Supreme Court stays a lower court order only “under extraordinary circumstances.” Typically it doesn’t grant relief when, as in this case, both district and appeals courts opposed it. And certainly it doesn’t give the government a W when the record in the case, like this one, is replete with evidence of its misconduct, including openly flouting court orders.

Examples: A judge agreed a Guatemalan gay man would face torture in his home country, yet the man was deported there anyway. The administration violated Judge Murphy’s order when it put six men on a plane to civil-war-torn South Sudan, which the U.S. considers so unsafe that only its most critical personnel remain there. And in a third case, a group was unlawfully bound to Libya before a federal judge was able to halt the flight.

Thus, Sotomayor said, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration “relief from an order it has repeatedly defied” — an order that didn’t prohibit deportations but only required due process in advance.

As she put it, the decision to stay the order was a “gross” abuse of the justices’ discretion. It undermines the rule of law as fully as the Trump administration’s lawlessness, especially given that Americans look to the nation’s highest court as the last word on the law.

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” Sotomayor said. As if on cue, the Supreme Court’s decision was followed on Tuesday by news that underscored just how dangerously misplaced the conservative justices’ deference toward Trump is.

A former Justice Department official, who was fired for truthfully testifying in court that Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia had been wrongly deported to El Salvador, blew the whistle on his former colleagues — all Trump appointees — confirming in a 27-page document that they’d connived to defy court orders. Emil Bove, Trump’s former defense lawyer and now his nominee for a federal appeals court seat, allegedly advised a group of DOJ lawyers in March to tell the courts “f— you” if — when — they tried to stop Trump’s deportations. Bove on Wednesday told the Senate he had “no recollection” of saying that; he might have denied it, as a DOJ associate did to the media, but Bove was under oath.

And the alleged phrase captures the administration’s attitude toward the judiciary, a coequal branch of government, though you’d hardly know it by the justices’ kowtowing to the executive branch. The message, while more profane, matches Trump’s own take on lower-court judges. “The Judges are absolutely out of control,” he posted in May. “Hopefully, the Supreme Court of the United States will put an END to the quagmire.”

For the sake of courageous judges who follow the law, and the rest of us, we can hope otherwise — even if the justices’ early record is mixed at best.

@Jackiekcalmes @jackiecalmes.bsky.social @jkcalmes

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a man who was deported to El Salvador roughly 30 minutes after the court suspended an order to remove him from the U.S.

The ruling in Jordin Alexander Melgar-Salmeron’s case marks at least the fourth time this year that President Trump’s administration has been ordered to facilitate the return of somebody mistakenly deported.

The government said “a confluence of administrative errors” led to Melgar-Salmeron’s deportation on May 8, according to the decision by a three-judge panel from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The panel said administration officials must facilitate his return to the U.S. “as soon as possible.” The judges gave them a week to identify his current physical location and custodial status and to specify what steps they will take to facilitate his return.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation in March became a flashpoint in Trump’s immigration crackdown, was returned from El Salvador this month to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee.

In April, a Trump-nominated judge in Maryland ordered his administration to facilitate the return of a man who was deported to El Salvador in March despite having a pending asylum application. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled that the government violated a 2019 settlement agreement when it deported the 20-year-old man, a Venezuelan native identified only as Cristian in court papers.

And in May, another judge ordered the administration to facilitate the return of a Guatemalan man whom it deported to Mexico despite his fears of being harmed there. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy found that the removal of the man, who is gay, likely “lacked any semblance of due process.”

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

NASHVILLE — Kilmar Abrego Garcia will remain in jail for at least a few more days while attorneys in the federal smuggling case against him spar over whether lawyers have the ability to prevent Abrego Garcia’s deportation if he is released to await trial.

The Salvadoran national whose mistaken deportation became a tinderbox in the fight over President Trump’s immigration policies has been in jail since he was returned to the U.S. on June 7, facing two counts of human smuggling.

Although a federal judge has ruled that he has a right to be released and even set specific conditions for his release, his attorneys expressed concern that it would lead to immediate detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deportation.

On Sunday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ruled that Abrego Garcia does not have to remain in jail before that trial. On Wednesday afternoon, she will set his conditions of his release and allow him to go, according to her order. However, his defense attorneys and prosecutors have said they expect him to be taken into custody by ICE as soon as he is released on the criminal charges.

Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said during a news conference before Wednesday’s scheduled court hearing that it’s been 106 days since he “was abducted by the Trump administration and separated from our family.” She noted that he has missed family birthdays, graduations and Father’s Day, while “today he misses our wedding anniversary.”

Vasquez Sura said their love, their faith in God and an abundance of community support have helped them persevere.

“Kilmar should never have been taken away from us,” she said. “This fight has been the hardest thing in my life.”

Federal prosecutors are appealing Holmes’ release order. Among other things, they expressed concern in a motion filed Sunday that Abrego Garcia could be deported before he faces trial. Holmes has said that she won’t step between the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security — it is up to them to decide whether they want to deport Abrego Garcia or prosecute him.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty June 13 to smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify his mistaken deportation in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Those charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. At his detention hearing, Homeland Security special agent Peter Joseph testified that he did not begin investigating Abrego Garcia until April this year.

Holmes said in her Sunday ruling that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community. He has lived for more than a decade in Maryland, where he and his American wife are raising three children.

However, Holmes referred to her ruling as “little more than an academic exercise,” noting that ICE plans to detain him. It is less clear what will happen after that. Although Abrego Garcia can’t be deported to El Salvador — where an immigration judge found he faces a credible threat from gangs — he is still deportable to a third country as long as that country agrees to not send him to El Salvador.

Loller writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Between June 6 and June 22, immigration enforcement teams arrested 1,618 immigrants for deportation in Los Angeles and surrounding regions of Southern California, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS did not respond to requests for information on how many of those arrested had criminal histories and a breakdown of those convictions.

As immigration arrests have occurred across Southern California, demonstrators have protested the federal government’s actions and bystanders have sometimes confronted immigration officers or videotaped their actions. Between June 6 and June 22, 787 people have been arrested for assault, obstruction and unlawful assembly, a DHS spokesperson said.

Figures about the Los Angeles operation released by the White House on June 11 indicated that about one third of those arrested up until that point had prior criminal convictions.

The “area of responsibility” for the Los Angeles field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the Central Coast, as well as Orange County to the south, Riverside County to the east and up the coast to San Luis Obispo County.

Data from the first days of the Los Angeles enforcement operation show that a majority of those arrested had never been charged with or convicted of a crime.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Monday that 75% of nationwide arrests under the Trump administration have been of immigrants with criminal convictions or pending charges. But data published by Immigration and Customs Enforcement show that figure is lower in recent weeks.

Nationally, the number of people arrested without criminal convictions has jumped significantly and many of those are nonviolent offenders, according to nonpublic data obtained by the Cato Institute that covers the period from last Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year, to June 15. The most frequent crimes are immigration and traffic offenses.

Serious violent offenders account for just 7% of those in custody, according to Cato.

Immigration enforcement officers have recently intensified efforts to deliver on President Trump’s promise of mass deportations. In California, that has meant arrests of people in courthouses, on farms and in Home Depot parking lots.

But, with a daily goal of 3,000 arrests nationwide, administration officials still complain that agents are failing to arrest enough immigrants.

Democrats and immigrant community leaders argue that agents are targeting people indiscriminately. Despite the chaotic nature of the raids and protests in Los Angeles, 1,618 arrests by DHS in southern California over more than two weeks is about 101 arrests per day — a relatively small contribution to the daily nationwide goal.

Perhaps the bigger achievement than the arrests themselves, advocates say, is the fear that those actions have stoked.

Times staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.