DHS

Aug. 14 (UPI) — Department of Homeland Security investigators took part in a wide-ranging probe of progressive groups and labor unions as part of a crackdown on dissent during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, according to court filings.

Documents filed in Minneapolis on Thursday by lawyers defending 15 Minnesotans against federal conspiracy charges showed DHS agents secretly obtained financial records from labor unions and recorded meetings of social justice groups at private buildings, public parks and churches as they organized against the large-scale Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency crackdown in the Twin Cities earlier this year.

The documents also showed that DHS agents collected the license plate numbers of people attending an anti-ICE meeting at a suburban church in order to obtain the names of those inside, then produced dossiers on the attendees including their names, photos, addresses, vehicle registrations, family and employment information.

The filings were made as part of the conspiracy case against the “Minnesota 15,” in which federal prosecutors in June charged 15 anti-ICE protesters identified as members of a loosely organized coalition called Direct Action MN with being “antifa” domestic terrorists who illegally sought to impede ICE during Operation Metro Surge.

The Trump administration’s ICE surge in Minnesota drew widespread protests and pushback, including volunteer “rapid response” and “ICE watch” patrols. ICE agents killed two protestors, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during the surge.

Kevin Riach, a defense attorney for defendant Isaac Sant, obtained the documents from DHS as part of the discovery process for the case and filed them Thursday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

In the filing he argued that the federal government used administrative subpoenas, rather than court orders, to illegally obtain private information, including financial information from unions such as the Service Employees International Union and Communications Workers of America, as well as private groups.

“This broad collection of financial records of labor and social justice advocacy organizations, done in secret and with no articulable criminal predicate, violates both the First Amendment and these organizations’ right to financial privacy,” Riach wrote.

One DHS document included in the filing showed the surveillance efforts, dubbed “Operation Puppet Master” and “Operation Whipple Shield,” operated under a diagram purporting to show criminal connections between Direct Action MN and the AFL-CIO, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Democratic Socialists of America and Minnesota Association of Professional Employees — the union representing Minnesota state workers.

The documents drew outrage from a broad coalition of labor and civil society groups on Thursday, who said they have issued “a call to unity in the face of reports that the Trump administration’s Department of Justice may have investigated without reason and engaged in surveillance of community and labor groups who helped organize tens of thousands of Minnesotans to peacefully defend their neighbors and constitutional rights during the lawless, chaotic ICE and CBP operation that terrorized countless Minnesotans.”

“We know the truth, and we will not be intimidated,” they wrote in a statement. “When self-serving politicians are losing, they lie and attempt political repression, trying to silence the voices of those who bravely stand up to them.

“Minnesotans will not be intimidated or divided by sham accusations or investigations of some of the countless groups and community members who organized, acted, and stood up together to protect their neighbors during Operation Metro Surge.”

McALLEN, Texas — A Texas mother deported to Mexico despite having legal permission to stay in the U.S. has filed a lawsuit against the federal government after it notified her it would be terminating her permission because of “unauthorized travel” stemming from her deportation.

Jessica Treviño, 34, filed a lawsuit through her attorney this week asking a federal judge to intervene.

Treviño and her husband were arrested in December after federal agents followed them and two of their daughters into a Home Depot parking lot in South Texas. Both were deported and are living in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas. Their three children, all U.S. citizens, are living with family on the U.S. side near the border.

After being brought to the country as a child at the age of 7, Treviño subsequently received legal permission at 20 to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Introduced in 2012, DACA does not confer legal status but has allowed hundreds of thousands of people who had come to the U.S. as children to temporarily remain and obtain work permits.

As a DACA recipient, she must maintain a clean criminal record and is not allowed to travel outside the United States.

Her attorney, David Rozas, filed the lawsuit. He noted her status and work permit were most recently authorized until April 2027.

Notice to terminate DACA cites ‘unauthorized travel’

Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent her a notice of intent to terminate her status for “unauthorized travel outside of the United States on or about March 25, 2026,” the same day she was deported from the country by the Department of Homeland Security.

In a statement, DHS said Treviño’s husband was in the country without permission and driving at the time of the arrest. After a collision between the couple’s vehicle and an unmarked Homeland Security Investigations vehicle, the couple was arrested. DHS claimed she “knowingly accepted voluntary departure and waived appeal. She left the U.S. on March 25, 2026, and will NOT return.”

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Treviño said she did not sign any forms at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility and did not want to be deported.

Lawsuit seeks restitution of status

Rozas filed a petition asking a federal judge in Brownsville to declare the woman’s expulsion was unlawful, order the government to facilitate Treviño’s return to the U.S. and allow her DACA status to remain valid.

“The government had no lawful basis to remove her, and we filed this petition to demand she be brought back home,” her attorney added.

An immigration judge under the Justice Department had issued a voluntary departure order for Treviño in February while she was in ICE custody, but a valid DACA status prevents the Department of Homeland Security from deporting her.

“I would be so blessed to be able to go back home, because that’s what I long for most right now. I’m really desperate. It’s been seven months since I’ve been home,” Treviño said Thursday. Her three children are set to start school next month and Treviño said she would like to be there.

The current Trump administration has deported 86 DACA recipients and arrested 241 others, according to a DHS letter sent in February to Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois.

Advocates for DACA recipients say Treviño’s deportation is part of a pattern.

“This is what a deliberate, systematic effort to destroy DACA looks like in practice: target recipients one by one, manufacture justifications after the fact and leave their children to grow up without them,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a policy organization defending immigration rights.

Gonzalez writes for the Associated Press.

July 17 (UPI) — The Department of Homeland Security on Friday ramped up the Trump administration’s efforts to address what the president claims are lapses in election security, threatening state officials with prison time if they don’t comply with federal demands.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters in Washington he would apply “maximum pressure” against states that refuse to work with his department.

The Trump administration has focused on noncitizens allegedly casting ballots, which experts say is extremely rare, and the possibility that voting machines can be hacked — although they are, by design, never connected to the internet.

“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin told reporters.

Mullin’s remarks come a day after President Donald Trump, in a primetime address, enumerated a series of debunked claims that the U.S. elections are rigged or have been influenced by foreign governments.

“Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost,” Trump said Thursday. “This cannot be allowed to continue.”

Mullin said DHS has found more than 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in four states — California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — and sent letters to their respective secretaries of state seeking answers.

“Before and after the election, we will scrub all election records looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted yet they were deceased,” Mullin said. “If you’re illegal and attempted to vote, or you tried to vote illegally for someone else, we will find you and we will charge you.”

In its letters, DHS did not accuse any of the noncitizens of having actually voted.

“We will pursue maximum pressure on this,” Mullin told reporters. “To let you know, we will be proactively looking at early voting, and then after post-election, we will continue to scrub all those that did vote.”

Al Schmidt, the Republican secretary of state in Pennsylvania, said, “All evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country,” including in his state.

“In Pennsylvania, every voter must take steps to verify their identity before they cast a ballot, including providing proper identification every time they register to vote, vote by mail, or vote at a new polling place,” Schmidt told The Hill.

In Nevada, Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said the administration’s efforts are intended to undermine elections.

“The administration lacks a fundamental understanding of how elections work,” Aguilar said in a statement. “They just want to cause chaos and doubt ahead of the midterms.”

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security bought two of the largest immigrant detention facilities in California for $1.5 billion, according to the private prison company that sold them.

The purchase comes as the department — flush with cash after Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act infused the agency with $170 billion — has moved to scale up its capacity to detain immigrants without relying as heavily on private prison corporations.

In announcement Monday, the Tennessee-based CoreCivic said the sale of the 2,560-bed California City Detention Facility and the 1,994-bed Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego closed on July 2.

The company said it expects net proceeds of about $1.1 billion after income taxes and transaction expenses.

Ryan Gustin, public affairs director for CoreCivic, said such sales are not uncommon and that “the process was marked with rigor and integrity.” He added that the valuations were established through the federal government’s required appraisal process, using independent appraisers, who determined objective fair market value.

The sale doesn’t immediately change anything at the facilities — CoreCivic expects to continue managing them under existing contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the company and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But the terms of those contracts could be modified given the change in ownership, the filing states. The California City facility contract expires in August 2027 and the Otay Mesa facility contract expires in December 2029, with the option to extend for another five years.

“We are pleased with the sales of these two mission-critical facilities for the Company’s government partner, which demonstrates the value of the Company’s underlying real estate portfolio, while reflecting our role as a long-term, flexible solutions provider to government,” CoreCivic CEO Patrick Swindle said in the announcement.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During a quarterly earnings call in May, George Zoley, CEO of the GEO Group, another major private prison corporation, said that the company had been in discussions with ICE “regarding the potential sale of multiple facilities.”

Critics of the purchases of detention facilities say the Trump administration is simply looking to avoid state and local oversight by bringing them under federal ownership. That issue was raised during the GEO Group earnings call when a participant later asked why the federal government wants to own the facilities instead of contracting with third parties.

If the facilities are federally owned, Zoley replied, there are “more protections from unwarranted litigation that infringes upon the activities of the ICE processing centers.”

Zoley said federal ownership would bolster the legal defense of the facilities and the argument that “states can only have very limited involvement.”

“There’s been litigation regarding overseeing medical services, food services, general cleanliness, etc.,” Zoley continued. “It’s really unprecedented and I believe it’s fundamentally unconstitutional. As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities.”

California tried to kick private detention operators out of the state, but the 2020 law was overturned in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Since then, state leaders have established oversight mechanisms through laws that allow for monitoring and investigation of detention centers by the California Department of Justice and local health authorities.

Asked to comment about the sale, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said his congressional oversight visits to facilities operated by CoreCivic have shown that immigrants who pose no public safety threat are being held in “unacceptable conditions.”

“Whether these facilities are operated by a private contractor or owned by the federal government, my expectations remain the same,” he said. “I will continue demanding transparency, accountability, and humane conditions that respect the dignity and rights of every person in immigration detention.”

Eight ICE detention facilities now operate in California, with a combined capacity to hold nearly 9,000 people.

The California City and Otay Mesa facilities have both been the subject of lawsuits by detainees alleging detainee mistreatment. CoreCivic calls such allegations unfounded and says it complies with all regulations concerning the treatment of detainees.

In its announcement on Monday, CoreCivic said the company is in discussions with ICE about potentially selling additional detention facilities, though it said those talks are in various stages and it’s unclear whether the sales will go through.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration may end the Temporary Protected Status granted to more than 350,000 Haitians and Syrians whose home countries remain unsafe.

In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority said Congress gave the administration, not judges, the power to cancel or renew this temporary protection for non-citizens who are living and working here.

In a second win Thursday for the Trump administration, the court also upheld the administration’s policy of blocking asylum seekers at the southern border.

By the same 6-3 vote, the court said migrants do not have a right to apply for asylum if they are not already in the United States.

The decision on Temporary Protected Status could affect up to 1.3 million non-citizens who are in the country.

In 1990, Congress authorized this emergency humanitarian relief for non-citizens whose home countries were wracked by armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary disruptions.

Under the law, the Department of Homeland Security may grant this protection for 6, 12 or 18 months and either renew or extend it for a similar period.

But this legal authority has been under dispute since Trump returned to the White House last year and targeted the 1.3 million people with TPS from 17 countries who were living in the United States.

Trump’s lawyers said the law made clear there was “no judicial review” of the government’s decision to cancel the grant of temporary protection.

However, immigrant rights lawyers argued the government failed in its duty to consult the State Department and assess whether it was safe for migrants to return home.

Repeatedly, U.S. district judges agreed with the challengers and ruled the administration’s decisions were “arbitrary” and unreasonable. But in nearly every case, the Supreme Court granted emergency appeals from the administration and set aside those orders.

Since TPS was created, the government has ended the protected designation for citizens of 18 countries.

DHS under then-Secretary Kristi Noem ended TPS for Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Venezuela. A spokesperson for the agency previously said the Haiti designation became “a de facto amnesty program” and that allowing Syrians to remain is contrary to national interest.

Advocates for the immigrants argue that the administration failed to conduct the required process to properly evaluate each country’s conditions and instead acted on political grounds driven by racial animus.

State Department travel advisories for both countries warn people against traveling to either because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence. But Federal Register notices announcing the terminations said country conditions had improved enough.

Recently released internal documents show that DHS decided to terminate protections for Haitians without any input from the State Department.

Citing the documents, which were obtained by the National TPS Alliance in a separate lawsuit, lawyers for the Haitians asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the case and send it back to lower courts. They argued that the justices should first consider the communications before issuing a decision.

Internal emails show that homeland security officials sought a recommendation from the State Department in May 2025, ahead of Noem’s early June deadline on whether to extend protections for Haiti. But by the time Noem signed what appears to be a final decision memo, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had not received input from the State Department, the emails show.

“State recommendation for Haiti TPS has not come in despite of many outreach,” a homeland security deputy assistant secretary wrote in a June 2, 2025, email. A recommendation “would be helpful to have,” the person added.

Eleven days later, a USCIS project manager wrote in an email that Noem “recently elected to terminate Haiti without country conditions from DOS.”

USCIS initially recommended automatically extending protections before Homeland Security decided to terminate them, earlier versions of the memo indicate.

The June decision was blocked by a federal judge. In November, DHS issued another notice terminating TPS protections for Haitians.

That time, according a previously publicized email, a homeland security senior counselor asked a State Department official for the agency’s views on the country conditions in Haiti. The official, Spencer Chretien, didn’t address the country conditions but responded that “there would be no foreign policy concerns.”

Lawyers for the Haitians argued that response didn’t meet the legal standard for a sufficient consultation, though the Trump administration disagreed.

WASHINGTON — Cameron Hamilton, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency, pledged to senators Wednesday to be “fair and reasonable” in assessing requests for disaster aid as he seeks to run an agency roiled by the administration’s threats to dismantle it.

Hamilton appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs at a hearing where lawmakers assessed a group of 10 nominees for administration posts.

“My focus will be to ensure that FEMA is objective, is fair and reasonable, follows the law, and is consistent” in how it reviews disaster declaration requests, Hamilton told Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the committee. Peters had asked about partisanship in granting major disaster declarations.

Hamilton had a brief tenure as FEMA’s temporary leader early last year but was ousted after defending the agency’s existence. At a House hearing in May 2025, he said he did not “believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate” FEMA. He was fired the next day.

His nomination comes as the Republican administration has increasingly signaled it is backing away from promises to dismantle an agency that the president has heavily criticized.

If confirmed, he would be FEMA’s first permanent administrator in Trump’s second term. He will need to lead FEMA through what is expected to be a busy summer disaster season, while answering to Trump, who is likely to expect major changes after a council he appointed recommended sweeping moves at the agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Hamilton distanced himself from some FEMA controversies

Nominees did not give opening statements, but Hamilton received the bulk of lawmakers’ questions while appearing with four others in the first half of the hearing.

His answers suggested a departure from some of the more aggressive policies considered and enacted during Kristi Noem’s turbulent leadership at DHS. FEMA’s workforce has been worn down by mass staff departures, policies that hamstrung operations and a protracted DHS shutdown.

Hamilton expressed faith in the FEMA staff and praised the recent opening of 350 positions to counteract some of the cuts. He said that if confirmed by the Senate, he would do what he could to speed up disaster declaration decisions and reimbursements to states, tribes and territories.

“We owe you answers, I think, much faster,” he told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo), adding that many FEMA processes needed to be simplified.

Hamilton disavowed a recommendation he included in an April 2025 memo to quadruple the threshold of financial damages a state needed to prove to receive FEMA public assistance. He also noted the importance of resilience funding, despite halting billions in resilience grants during his previous tenure.

Republican and Democratic senators at the hearing expressed support for FEMA’s mission, despite Trump’s early threats to eliminate it. “I think what your agency does is hugely important,” Hawley told Hamilton.

But multiple Democrats echoed Peters’ concern that Trump was approving far more disaster declaration requests from Republican states than Democratic ones.

Of the state disaster declaration requests Trump answered through the end of May, he approved about 82% from states that voted for him in the last election and 44% from states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris, according to an analysis of public FEMA data by Andrew Rumbach, senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Urban Institute.

Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, has never worked as a state or local emergency manager and has publicly criticized FEMA in the past. He has held positions at DHS and the State Department related to emergency response.

No senator questioned Hamilton’s suitability for the position.

Federal law requires the FEMA administrator to have “a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security” and at least five years of “executive leadership and management experience.”

Criticism over hearing format

Peters criticized the committee chairman, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for scheduling so many nominees at once, saying that made it more difficult for senators to properly screen them.

“The lineup today severely limits our ability to have transparency for the American public,” Peters said. He noted that Hamilton was among two nominees whose FBI background investigations were not yet complete, and that two others had not submitted their financial disclosure reports.

Others who appeared included Trump’s pick for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Hal Duncan, and administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, David Cummins.

Paul said the committee would only vote on the nominees when their financial and background checks were complete.