immigrant

In response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids that have roiled Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed a package of bills aimed at protecting immigrants in schools, hospitals and other areas targeted by federal agents.

Speaking at Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in Los Angeles, Newsom said President Trump had turned the country into a “dystopian sci-fi movie” with scenes of masked agents hustling immigrants without legal status into unmarked cars.

“We’re not North Korea,” Newsom said.

Newsom framed the pieces of legislation as pushback against what he called the “secret police” of Trump and Stephen Miller, the White House advisor who has driven the second Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement in Democrat-led cities.

SB 98, authored by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra), will require school administrators to notify families and students if federal agents conduct immigration operations on a K-12 or college campus.

Assembly Bill 49, drafted by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates), will bar immigration agents from nonpublic areas of a school without a judicial warrant or court order. It will also prohibit school districts from providing information about pupils, their families, teachers and school employees to immigration authorities without a warrant.

Sen. Jesse Arreguín’s (D-Berkeley) Senate Bill 81 will prohibit healthcare officials from disclosing a patient’s immigration status or birthplace — or giving access to nonpublic spaces in hospitals and clinics — to immigration authorities without a search warrant or court order.

Senate Bill 627 by Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley) targets masked federal immigration officers who began detaining migrants at Home Depots and car washes in California earlier this year.

Wiener has said the presence of anonymous, masked officers marks a turn toward authoritarianism and erodes trust between law enforcement and citizens. The law would apply to local and federal officers, but for reasons that Weiner hasn’t publicly explained, it would exempt state police such as California Highway Patrol officers.

Trump’s immigration leaders argue that masks are necessary to protect the identities and safety of immigration officers. The Department of Homeland Security on Monday called on Newsom to veto Wiener’s legislation, which will almost certainly be challenged by the federal government.

“Sen. Scott Wiener’s legislation banning our federal law enforcement from wearing masks and his rhetoric comparing them to ‘secret police’ — likening them to the gestapo — is despicable,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

The package of bills has already caused friction between state and federal officials. Hours before signing the bills, Newsom’s office wrote on X that “Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today. You’re welcome, America.”

Bill Essayli, the acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, fired back on X accusing the governor of threatening Noem.

“We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials,” Essayli wrote in response, adding he’d requested a “full threat assessment” by the U.S. Secret Service.

The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law, leading some legal experts to question whether California could enforce legislation aimed at federal immigration officials.

Essayli noted in another statement on X that California has no jurisdiction over the federal government and he’s directed federal agencies not to change their operations.

“If Newsom wants to regulate our agents, he must go through Congress,” he wrote.

California has failed to block federal officers from arresting immigrants based on their appearance, language and location. An appellate court paused the raids, which California officials alleged were clear examples of racial profiling, but the U.S. Supreme Court overrode the decision and allowed the detentions to resume.

During the news conference on Saturday, Newsom pointed to an arrest made last month when immigration officers appeared in Little Tokyo while the governor was announcing a campaign for new congressional districts. Masked agents showed up to intimidate people who attended the event, Newsom said, but they also arrested an undocumented man who happened to be delivering strawberries nearby.

“That’s Trump’s America,” Newsom said.

Other states are also looking at similar measures to unmask federal agents. Connecticut on Tuesday banned law enforcement officers from wearing masks inside state courthouses unless medically necessary, according to news reports.

Newsom on Saturday also signed Senate Bill 805, a measure by Pérez that targets immigration officers who are in plainclothes but don’t identify themselves.

The law requires law enforcement officers in plainclothes to display their agency, as well as either a badge number or name, with some exemptions.

“Ensuring that officers are clearly identified, while providing sensible exceptions, helps protect both the public and law enforcement personnel,” said Jason P. Houser, a former DHS official who supported the bills signed by Newsom.

When I wrote last week about how immigration raids are targeting far more laborers than criminals, and whacking the California economy at a cost to all of us, I was surprised by the number of readers who wrote to say it’s high time for immigration reform.

The cynic in me had an immediate response, which essentially was, yeah, sure.

Bipartisan attempts failed in 2006 and 2014, so there’s a fat chance of getting anywhere in this political climate.

But the more I thought about it, nobody has done more to make clear how badly we need to rewrite federal immigration law than guess who.

President Trump.

Raids, the threat of more raids, and the promise to deport 3,000 people a day, are sabotaging Trump’s economic agenda and eroding his support among Latinos. Restaurants have suffered, construction has slowed and fruit has rotted on vines as the promised crackdown on violent offenders — which would have had much more public support — instead turned into a heartless, destructive and costly eradication.

I wouldn’t bet a nickel on Trump or his congressional lackeys to publicly admit to any of that. But there have been signs that the emperor is beginning to soften hard-line positions on deportations of working immigrants and student visas, sending his MAGA posse into convulsions.

“His heart isn’t in the nativist purge the way the rest of his administration’s heart is into it,” the Cato Institute’s director of immigration studies, David J. Bier, told the New York Times. Despite the tough talk, Bier said, Trump has “always had a soft spot for the economic needs from a business perspective.”

So too, apparently, do some California GOP legislators.

In June, six Republican lawmakers led by state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) sent Trump a letter urging him to ease up on the raids and get to work on immigration reform.

“Focus deportations on criminals,” Martinez Valladares wrote, “and support legal immigration and visa policies that will build a strong economy, secure our borders and protect our communities.”

Then in July, a bipartisan group of California lawmakers led by State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa), followed suit.

Ochoa Bogh urged “immediate federal action … to issue expedited work permits to the millions of undocumented immigrants who are considered essential workers, such as farmworkers who provide critical services. These workers support many industries that keep our country afloat and, regardless of immigration status, we must not overlook the value of their economic, academic, and cultural contributions to the United States.”

State Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) sent President Trump a letter urging him to ease up on raids and focus on immigration reform.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Ochoa Bogh told me she heard from constituents in agriculture and hospitality who complained about the impact of raids. She said her aunt, a citizen, “is afraid to go out and carries a passport with her now because she’s afraid they might stop her.”

The senator said she blames both Democrats and Republicans for the failure to deliver sensible immigration reform over the years, and she told me her own family experience guides her thinking on what could be a way forward.

Her grandfather was a Mexican guest worker in the Bracero Program of the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, ended up being sponsored for legal status, and eventually moved his entire family north. Since then, children and grandchildren have gone to school, worked, prospered and contributed.

If Trump were to respond to her letter and visit her district, Ochoa Bogh said, “I would absolutely have him visit my family.”

Her relatives include restaurateurs, the owners of a tailoring business, a county employee and a priest.

“We don’t want undocumented people in our country. … But we need a work permit process” that serves the needs of employers and workers, Ochoa Bogh said.

Public opinion polls reflect similar attitudes. Views are mixed, largely along party lines, but a Pew study in June found 42% approval and 47% disapproval of Trump’s overall approach on immigration.

A July Gallup poll found increasing support for immigration in general, with 85% in favor of a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors, and 60% support among Republicans for legal status of all undocumented people if certain requirements are met.

State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, shown with Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk in 2022, says constituents in agriculture and hospitality have complained about the impact of raids.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

So it’s not entirely surprising that a bipartisan congressional immigration reform bill, the Dignity Act of 2025, was introduced in July by a Florida Republican and a Texas Democrat. It would allow legal status for those who have lived in the U.S. for five years, are working and paying taxes, and have no criminal record.

Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, isn’t optimistic, given political realities. But he’s been advocating for immigration reform for decades and said “we need to continue the fight because there will be a time of reckoning” in which the U.S. will “have to rely on immigrant workers to assure economic survival.”

“Germany had to resort to guest worker programs when birth rates declined,” said Kevin Johnson, a former UC Davis law school dean. “We may be begging for workers from other nations in the not too distant future.”

“No side wants to give the other a victory, but there have got to be ways to close that gap,” said Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA immigration scholar whose new book, “Borders and Belonging: Toward A Fair Immigration Policy,” examines the history and causes of immigration, as well as the complexities of arguments for and against.

“Practically and politically, there’s potential” for reform, Motomura said, and he sees a better chance for rational conversations at the local level than in the heat of national debate. “You’re more likely to hear stories of mixed families … and that kind of thing humanizes the situation instead of turning it into a lot of abstract statistics.”

Ochoa Bogh told me that when she wrote her letter to Trump, the feedback from constituents included both support and criticism. She said she met with her critics, who told her she should be focused on jobs for citizens rather than for undocumented immigrants.

She said she told them she is all for “American people doing American jobs.” But “we have a workforce shortage in the state in various industries,” and a U.S.-born population that is not stepping up to do certain kinds of work.

“I said to them, ‘You can’t keep your eyes closed and say this is what it should be, when there are certain realities we have to navigate.”

So what are the chances of progress on immigration reform?

Not great at the moment.

But as readers suggested, a better question is this:

Why not?

[email protected]

WASHINGTON — Use of solitary confinement in immigration detention is soaring under the Trump administration, according to a report published Wednesday by Physicians for Human Rights using federal data and records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed at least 10,588 people in solitary confinement from April 2024 to May 2025, the report found. Contributors also included experts from Harvard University’s Peeler Immigration Lab and Harvard Law School.

The use of solitary confinement during the first four months of the current Trump administration increased each month, on average, at twice the rate found between 2018 and 2023, researchers found, and more than six times the rate during the last several months of 2024.

“Every month from February through May, which are the full calendar months of the new administration, the number of people placed in solitary in ICE [custody] increased by 6.5%,” said Dr. Katherine Peeler, medical advisor for Physicians for Human Rights, and assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “That was really dismaying.”

Solitary confinement, in which detainees are held alone for at least 22 hours a day, is used in ICE detention facilities as a form of punishment or to protect certain at-risk immigrants.

In a statement Thursday, assistant Homeland Security secretary Tricia McLaughlin said ICE prioritizes the safety and security of people in its custody.

Detainees are placed into disciplinary segregation “only after they are found guilty by a disciplinary hearing panel,” she said.

Any detainee scheduled for removal, release, or transfer is also placed into administrative segregation for 24 hours, she added. According to ICE’s National Detention Standards, “such segregation may be ordered for security reasons or for the orderly operation of the facility.”

The United Nations has called solitary confinement longer than 15 consecutive days a form of torture.

ICE defines vulnerable detainees as those with serious medical or mental health conditions, disabilities, and those who are elderly, pregnant or nursing, at risk of harm due to sexual orientation or gender identity, or victims of abuse.

Among those categorized as vulnerable, the report states that solitary confinement lasted twice as long, on average, during the first three months of 2025 compared with the first fiscal quarter of 2022, when the agency started reporting those statistics.

This year, vulnerable detainees spent an average of 38 consecutive days in isolation, compared with 14 days in late 2021, according to the report.

The report notes that use of solitary confinement in immigration detention has risen “at an alarming rate” over the last decade, and that billions of dollars authorized earlier this year by Congress to expand detention will likely exacerbate the issue. It calls on the federal government to end the practice against immigrants who are detained for civil deportation proceedings, and for states and members of Congress to exercise oversight.

Nearly 59,000 immigrants were held in ICE custody as of Sept. 7, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan data research organization.

The researchers at Physicians for Human Rights analyzed individual cases in New England and found “systemic use of solitary confinement for arbitrary and retaliatory purposes,” such as requesting showers, sharing food or reporting sexual assault.

In California, detainees were placed in solitary confinement 2,546 times from September 2018 to September 2023, said Arevik Avedian, a lecturer and director of empirical research services at Harvard Law School.

Last year, ICE changed the way it reports that data. Instead of placements, in which the same person could be counted multiple times for different stints in solitary confinement, ICE now reports the number of individuals.

In California, ICE reported that 596 people were placed in solitary confinement from April 2024 to May 2025, she said.

During the period of 2018-2023, two California facilities ranked in the top five with the highest number of solitary confinement placements, she said — the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, and the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.

This year, the data reflect ICE’s investment in Republican-led states. According to the report, facilities with the most solitary confinement stints included Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, Montgomery Processing Center in Texas, Buffalo Service Processing Center in New York, South Texas ICE Processing Center, and Eloy Detention Center in Arizona tied with Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center.

A previous report by the same authors found that ICE had used solitary confinement more than 14,000 times between 2018 and 2023, including one Otay Mesa detainee who was held for 759 days.

The Trump administration moved again Wednesday to make it harder to gain U.S. citizenship, announcing a slate of changes to the core civics test that immigrants must pass to be naturalized.

The changes would expand the number of questions immigrants need to be prepared to answer, and increase the number of questions they must answer correctly in order to pass.

The changes, announced as pending in the Federal Register, would largely revert the test to a similarly longer and harder version that was introduced in 2020 during President Trump’s first term, but was swiftly rolled back under President Biden in 2021.

The shift follows other Trump administration changes to the process by which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials determine whether prospective citizens are qualified, including enhanced assessments of their “moral character” and whether they ascribe to any “anti-American” beliefs, and intense checks into their community ties and social media networks.

It also comes amid a broader crackdown on undocumented immigration, and what Trump has said will be the largest “mass deportation” in U.S. history. That effort has been heavily centered in the Los Angeles region, to the consternation of many Democratic leaders and immigration advocacy organizations.

The new naturalization test, like the short-lived 2020 version, would draw from 128 possible questions and require prospective citizens to answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly in order to pass. Under the current test, which dates to 2008, there are 100 possible questions, and prospective citizens must answer six out of 10 correctly.

Trump administration officials said the new test “will better assess an alien’s understanding of U.S. history, government, and English language,” and is part of a “multi-step overhaul” of the citizenship process that will ensure traditional American culture and values are protected.

“We are doing everything in our power to make sure that anyone who is offered the privilege of becoming an American citizen fulfills their obligation to their new country,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Immigration advocates cast the change as an attempt by the administration to further impede the legal pathway to citizenship for hardworking immigrants already deeply rooted in the U.S. They say it is part of a broader, authoritarian campaign by Trump and his administration to vet potential new citizens and other legal immigrants for conservative ideology and loyalty to him — all while the administration aggressively targets people for deportation based on little more than the color of their skin and the work that they do.

“The Trump administration lauding the privileges of becoming a U.S. citizen — while making it harder to obtain it — rings hollow when you consider that it is also arguing before the Supreme Court that law enforcement can racially profile Latines,” said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center. “All this does is make it harder for longtime residents who contribute to this country every day to finally achieve the permanent protections that only U.S. citizenship can offer.”

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled in a case challenging immigration raids in California that immigration agents may stop and detain people they suspect are in the U.S. illegally based on little more than the color of their skin, their speaking Spanish and their working in fields or locations with large immigrant workforces.

Last month, USCIS announced that it was ramping up its vetting of immigrants’ social media activity and looking for “anti-American ideologies or activities,” including “antisemitic ideologies.” That announcement followed months of enforcement against pro-Palestinian student activists and other U.S. visa and green card holders that raised alarms among constitutional scholars and free speech advocates.

Trump administration officials have rejected such concerns, and others about raids sweeping up people without criminal records and racial profiling being used to target them, as part of a misguided effort by liberals and progressives to protect even dangerous, undocumented immigrants for political reasons.

In announcing the latest change to the naturalization test, Homeland Security said it would make the test more difficult, and in the process ensure that “only those who are truly committed to the American way of life are admitted as citizens.”

The department also lauded its recent moves to more deeply vet prospective citizens, saying the new process “includes reinstating neighborhood interviews of potential new citizens, considering whether aliens have made positive contributions to their communities, determining good moral character, and verifying they have never unlawfully registered to vote or unlawfully attempted to vote in an American election.”

In rolling back the first Trump administration’s test — which is very similar to the newly proposed one — USCIS officials under the Biden administration said that it “may inadvertently create potential barriers to the naturalization process.”

By contrast, the agency under Biden said the 2008 test — the one Trump is now replacing again — was “thoroughly developed over a multi-year period with the input of more than 150 organizations, which included English as a second language experts, educators, and historians, and was piloted before its implementation.”

Ever since a massive immigration raid on a Hyundai manufacturing site swept up nearly 500 workers in southeast Georgia this month, Rosie Harrison said her organization’s phones have been ringing nonstop with panicked families in need of help.

“We have individuals returning calls every day, but the list doesn’t end,” Harrison said. She runs a nonprofit called Grow Initiative that connects low-income families — immigrant and nonimmigrant alike — with food, housing and educational resources.

Since the raid, Harrison said, “families are experiencing a new level of crisis.”

A majority of the 475 people who were detained in the workplace raid — which U.S. officials have called the largest in two decades — were Korean and have returned to South Korea. But lawyers and social workers say many of the non-Korean immigrants ensnared in the crackdown remain in legal limbo or are otherwise unaccounted for.

As the raid began the morning of Sept. 4, workers almost immediately started calling Migrant Equity Southeast, a local nonprofit that connects immigrants with legal and financial resources. The small organization of approximately 15 employees fielded calls regarding people from Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela, spokesperson Vanessa Contreras said.

Throughout the day, people described federal agents taking cellphones from workers and putting them in long lines, Contreras said. Some workers hid for hours to avoid capture in air ducts or remote areas of the sprawling property. The Department of Justice said some hid in a nearby sewage pond.

People off-site called the organization frantically seeking the whereabouts of loved ones who worked at the plant and were suddenly unreachable.

Like many of the Koreans who were working there, advocates and lawyers representing the non-Korean workers caught up in the raid say that some who were detained had legal authorization to work in the United States.

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to emailed requests for comment Friday. It is not clear how many people detained during the raid remain in custody.

Atlanta-based attorney Charles Kuck, who represents both Korean and non-Korean workers who were detained, said two of his clients were legally working under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which was created under President Obama. One had been released and “should have never been arrested,” he said, while the other was still being held because he was recently charged with driving under the influence.

Another of Kuck’s clients was in the process of seeking asylum, he said, and had the same documents and job as her husband, who was not arrested.

Some even had valid Georgia driver’s licenses, which aren’t available to people in the country illegally, said Rosario Palacios, who has been assisting Migrant Equity Southeast. Some families who called the organization were left without access to transportation because the person who had been detained was the only one who could drive.

“It’s hard to say how they chose who they were going to release and who they were going to take into custody,” Palacios said, adding that some who were arrested didn’t have a so-called alien identification number and were still unaccounted for.

Kuck said the raid is an indication of how far reaching the Trump administration crackdown is, which officials claim is targeting only criminals.

“The redefinition of the word ‘criminal’ to include everybody who is not a citizen, and even some that are, is the problem here,” Kuck said.

Many of the families who called Harrison’s initiative said their detained relatives were the sole breadwinners in the household, leaving them desperate for basics like baby formula and food.

The financial impact of the raid at the construction site for a battery factory that will be operated by HL-GA Battery Co. was compounded by the fact that another large employer in the area — International Paper Co. — is closing at the end of the month, laying off 800 more workers, Harrison said.

Growth Initiative doesn’t check immigration status, Harrison said, but almost all families who have reached out to her have said that their detained loved ones had legal authorization to work in the United States, leaving many confused about why their relative was taken into custody.

“The worst phone calls are the ones where you have children crying, screaming, ‘Where is my mom?’” Harrison said.

Riddle writes for the Associated Press. R

OMAHA — No formal agreement has been signed to convert a remote state prison in Nebraska into the latest immigration detention center for President Trump’s sweeping crackdown, more than three weeks since the governor announced the plan and as lawmakers and nearby residents grow increasingly skeptical.

Corrections officials insist the facility could start housing hundreds of male detainees next month, with classrooms and other spaces at the McCook Work Ethic Camp retrofitted for beds. However, lawmakers briefed last week by state officials said they got few concrete answers about cost, staffing and oversight.

“There was more unanswered questions than answered questions in terms of what they know,” state Sen. Wendy DeBoer said.

Officials in the city of McCook were caught off guard in mid-August when Republican Gov. Jim Pillen announced that the minimum-security prison in rural southwest Nebraska would serve as a Midwest hub for immigration detainees. Pillen and federal officials dubbed it the “Cornhusker Clink,” in line with other alliterative detention center names such as “ Alligator Alcatraz ” in Florida and the “Speedway Slammer ” in Indiana.

“City leaders were given absolutely no choice in the matter,” said Mike O’Dell, publisher of the local newspaper, the McCook Gazette.

McCook is the seat of Red Willow County, where voters favored Trump in the 2024 election by nearly 80%. Most of them likely support the president’s immigration crackdown, O’Dell said. However, the city of around 7,000 has also grown accustomed to the camp’s low-level offenders working on roads, in parks, county and city offices and even local schools.

“People here have gotten to know them in many cases,” O’Dell said. “I think there is a feeling here that people want to know where these folks are going to end up and that they’ll be OK.”

The Work Ethic Camp first opened in 2001 and currently houses around 155 inmates who participate in education, treatment and work programs to help them transition to life outside prison. State leaders often praise it as a success story for reducing prisoner recidivism.

Some lawmakers have complained that Pillen acted rashly in offering up the facility, noting that the state’s prison system is already one of the nation’s most overcrowded and perpetually understaffed. The governor’s office and state prison officials met with members of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee last week to answer questions about the transfer.

What the lawmakers got, several said, were estimates and speculation.

Lawmakers were told it was the governor’s office that approached federal officials with the offer after Trump “made a generalized, widespread call that we need more room or something for detainees,” said DeBoer, a Democrat in the officially nonpartisan Legislature.

Lawmakers were also told the facility — which was designed to house around 100 but is currently outfitted to hold twice that — would house between 200 and 300 detainees. The prison’s current staff of 97 is to be retrained and stay on.

The costs of the transition would be borne by the state, with the expectation that the federal government would reimburse that cost, DeBoer recalled.

A formal agreement between the state and federal agency had yet to be signed by Friday.

Asked how much the state is anticipated to spend on the conversion, the agency said “that number has not yet been determined,” but that any state expenditures would be reimbursed. The state plans to hire additional staffers for the center, the agency said.

A letter signed by 13 lawmakers called into question whether Pillen had the authority to unilaterally transfer use of a state prison to federal authorities without legislative approval.

To that end, state Sen. Terrell McKinney — chairman of the Legislature’s Urban Affairs Committee and a vocal critic of Nebraska’s overcrowded prison system — convened a public hearing Friday to seek answers from Pillen’s office and state corrections officials, citing concerns over building code violations that fall under the committee’s purview.

“How can you take a facility that was built for 125 people and take that to a capacity of 200 to 300 people without creating, you know, a security risk?” McKinney asked.

Pillen maintains state law gives him the authority to make the move, saying the Department of Correctional Services falls under the umbrella of the executive branch. He and state prison officials declined to show up at Friday’s hearing.

But dozens of Nebraska residents did attend, with most of them opposed the new ICE detention center.

Beck writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 8 (UPI) — State officials in Louisiana, Indiana and Nebraska are taking cues from Florida’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” to expand detention space for immigrants.

More than 61,000 immigrants are in detention in the United States as of the latest update on Aug. 24 by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center at Syracuse University. About 70% of detainees have no criminal convictions.

President Donald Trump has claimed through his campaign and into his current term in the White House that his immigration policy will focus on detaining and deporting criminals he deems “the worst of the worst.” According to TRAC Reports, only 1.55% of new deportation orders in fiscal year 2025 were based on alleged criminal activity.

After Florida’s pop-up detention facility in the Everglades, “Alligator Alcatraz,” garnered the attention and support of federal officials, including the president, officials in other states have proposed their own plans to detain immigrants.

ICE’s plan to expand detention

At stake for those states is a share of the $45 billion infusion of federal funds into detention and deportation efforts approved by Congress in its budget reconciliation package.

The funding aims to expand detention space for immigrants, adding 80,000 new beds.

“Maintaining current bedspace is critical for enforcing immigration law and removing illegal aliens form the United States,” a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told UPI. “As ICE arrests and removes criminal illegal aliens and public safety threats from the U.S., the agency has worked diligently to obtain greater necessary detention space while avoiding overcrowding.”

Being in the United States without authorization is a civil offense, not a crime.

The ICE spokesperson said ICE has the funding to bring more than 60 new detention facilities online for immigrant detention. It has already made arrangements for 18,000 additional detention beds, some of which are active and others are pending.

Names like “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska, or Indiana’s proposed “Speedway Slammer” downplay the conditions that detainees are dealing with, who largely have not committed a crime or who have already served their punishment for past crimes, critics say.

“We see this in other countries who have experienced mass atrocities,” Haddy Gassama, senior policy counsel in the ACLU’s National Policy Advocacy Department, told UPI. “It’s dehumanizing, making light of or sanitizing something so horrific. It is also worrisome in the sense that some of these states are seeing this as an opportunity to either attempt to get some federal revenue into their states at the risk of a whole bunch of other issues, or to be in this administration’s good graces.”

The Department of Homeland Security is embracing the idea of more new detention space. Last month it announced new partnerships with the states of Nebraska, Indiana and Louisiana. In its press releases announcing these partnerships, DHS credits “Alligator Alcatraz” as the inspiration for new detention spaces.

Unlike “Alligator Alcatraz,” these states are looking to existing facilities for expand detention space.

“Louisiana Lockup”

The Louisiana State Penitentiary is making 416 beds available for ICE detention. The prison, also known as Angola Prison, is the largest maximum security prison system in the United States.

The U.S. State Department’s 2023 report on the prison noted “significant human rights issues” that included arbitrary and unlawful killings, cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners and life-threatening prison conditions.

“Angola has a long and storied history,” Silky Shah, executive director of the Detention Watch Network, told UPI. “As somebody who started doing this work many years ago and growing up in Texas, the story of Angola and the people who had been put in solitary confinement for decades and the ‘Angola Three’ was such a central story to learning about this prison system and the harms of the prison system.”

Three Black men — Robert Hilary King, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace — became known as the Angola Three after spending more than 40 years in solitary confinement at Angola Prison. Woodfox was the last to be released from prison in 2016.

“Federal intervention has happened around Angola. Really one of the worst facilities in the world,” Shah said.

More than 4,000 inmates are detained at the Angola Prison. The average daily population between 2022 and 2023 was 4,716, according to a report by a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor.

The “Louisiana Lockup” detentions will take place in Camp J, a four-building section of the penitentiary that has been closed for several years. When it was in operation, it was referred to as the “Dungeon” due to much of its space being dedicated to solitary confinement.

“The question is are they going to put in the investment to bring it up to constitutional standards before they start putting people in there?” Joseph Margulies, professor of practice in the Department of Government at Cornell University. “In their zeal to be cruel to people, are they going to cut these corners around conditions?”

As an attorney, Margulies represented prisoners who were held at Guantanamo Bay after Sept. 11 in the first case brought against the administration of President George W. Bush regarding post-Sept. 11 detainments.

Eight Black inmates sued the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, the Louisiana State Penitentiary and the state’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections for alleged racist mistreatment while performing forced labor at the prison. They are suing on behalf of others who are similarly situated, according to court filings.

The men work on Farm Line 24/25, a work assignment that places inmates in the prison’s agriculture fields picking crops. The men allege they have been subject to racist epithets from guards, told to defecate out in the open fields and threatened to be hanged.

The lawsuit alleges that working on the Farm Line is an Eighth Amendment violation because it subjects inmates to cruel and unusual punishment, due to working in dangerous heat and overall poor conditions.

They also alleged it was a Thirteenth Amendment violation because it subjected them to involuntary servitude as punishment. A judge dismissed this claim.

Nebraska’s “Cornhusker Clink”

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen said in a statement on Aug. 19, announcing that the McCook Work Ethic Camp in McCook, Neb., will be converted into an immigrant detention facility. The camp is located on the outskirts of the community in rural Southern Nebraska.

McCook has a population of about 7,400 according to the 2020 census.

“I am pleased that our facility and team in McCook can be tasked with helping our federal partners protect our homeland by housing criminal illegal aliens roaming our country’s communities today,” Pillen said. “I am also proud that the Nebraska State Patrol and National Guard will be assisting ICE enforcement efforts, as well.”

A Nebraska legislative report on the McCook Work Ethic Camp, published in November, said it was once referred to as an incarceration work camp. It is meant to reduce prison overcrowding so there is space for violent offenders.

The facility began accepting probation offenders in 2001. It used to house male and female detainees but since 2013 it has only accepted males.

The McCook Work Ethic Camp has 200 beds. At the time of the November report, 197 people were housed there.

The press release from the Department of Homeland Security says it will expand to 280 beds for immigrant detainees.

Indiana’s “Speedway Slammer”

Indiana is adding 1,000 beds for immigrant detention at the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Ind. The facility is located about 3 miles southwest of the small, rural town.

Bunker Hill had a population of 888 people during the 2020 census.

Annie Goeller, chief communications officer for the Indiana Department of Correction, told UPI there is not yet a timeline for beginning to detain immigrants at the facility.

“We do not have a timeline yet and are determining details, including funding,” she said.

The facility is designed to hold 3,188 detainees at full capacity. According to a 2024 report by a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor there was an average daily population of 1,424 for the 12 months ending in September 2024.

There were 10 allegations of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse that resulted in criminal investigations at the facility. One was referred for prosecution and three more were ongoing at the time of the report.

The facility was determined to be compliant with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a federal zero-tolerance standard for sexual abuse and harassment in U.S. prisons. The auditor confirmed that inmates have multiple ways of reporting abuse, also meeting minimum standards.

The auditor noted that in at least one instance it was unclear if a victim was provided the opportunity to connect with a victim advocate. The victim was airlifted to a local hospital with serious injuries including likely head trauma. As corrective action, the facility’s staff must document whether or not an advocate is offered to victims of violence and sexual abuse.

The prison was also deemed to have met standards for access to emergency medical and mental health services and for accommodating detainees with disabilities and detainees who have limited English proficiency.

Some other year, under some other president, Republican Young Kim might have been a shoo-in to represent a majority-minority congressional district containing pieces of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

Kim’s profile is as compelling as it is rare for someone running under the GOP banner: an immigrant, an Asian American and, perhaps most important, a woman in a year when female voter enthusiasm is surging. If she wins, she would be the first Korean American woman elected to Congress.

All of these facets might help her navigate the demographic changes that have been eroding Republican support for decades in the 39th Congressional District, where roughly two-thirds of residents are either Asian or Latino and immigrants make up about a third of the population.

But in this year’s tough midterm election, likely to be a referendum on Donald Trump’s divisive presidency, Kim will be forced to stitch together a majority out of disparate factions: die-hard Trump supporters, Trump-averse minorities and affluent suburban women. Kim, 55, finds herself in a race that’s virtually tied in a district where retiring GOP incumbent Ed Royce won the last three elections by double digits.

Republicans face big risks in contested California races as Democrats fight for control of the House »

On the campaign trail, she says, she’s faced questions about the president — his tweets, his policies, his tone. Kim says that Trump’s rhetoric concerns her and that his disparaging remarks about immigrants and women can be frustrating.

“I try to tell them I’m not running to be his spokesperson or represent Donald Trump in the White House,” she says.

Many GOP House candidates — in similarly diverse districts from the Virginia exurbs outside Washington to the bedroom communities east of Denver — share her plight.

In Southern California, Republicans’ tactics for dealing with Trump range from avoidance, as with two-term Rep. Mimi Walters of Laguna Beach, to a full embrace by Diane Harkey, who is running for a seat left open by retiring Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista.

Kim’s 39th Congressional District includes Chino Hills, Fullerton, Yorba Linda — the birthplace of Richard Nixon — and Diamond Bar.

Here, a taqueria can share a parking lot with a Taiwanese cafe. Spanish, Korean, Mandarin and Tagalog can be heard along with English in the upscale ethnic supermarkets that dot the area.

Will California flip the House? The key races to watch »

As she travels the region, Kim has tried to drive home two major points: that people living here know her, and that she understands their stories. She’s spent decades in the public arena, first as a longtime district staffer to Royce and then as a one-term state assemblywoman. She was once a TV talk show host on Korean-language television.

Kim speaks with a knowing ease about the sacrifices immigrants make for a shot at prosperity.

She often shares memories of interpreting for her parents and picking up cans and bottles on the beaches of Guam — a way station between Seoul and Hawaii, where her family later settled — to help raise money for their church.

“My personal experience of being an immigrant, having gone through what this diverse immigrant community has gone through, struggling,” Kim said. “Those are real life experiences that really helped me understand … the district.”

Kim, who owns a government affairs consulting business, moved to Southern California 37 years ago to attend USC. She lives in Fullerton with her husband, Charles; they have four adult children.

One recent Saturday at a campaign office in Rowland Heights, Kim bowed and greeted supporters with “Annyeonghaseyo!” — “Hello!” in Korean — before Saga Conroy took the stage.

“President Trump is not on the ballot, but his agenda is totally in this midterm election,” said Conroy, trying to pump up volunteers. “If we lose the majority in Congress, everything he achieved could be lost.”

It was a departure from Kim’s attempts to cast herself as an independent voice who will call out the president when she disagrees but is willing to work with him on policies that help the district. Kim’s campaign manager, wincing at the remarks, felt compelled to point out that Conroy isn’t a staffer but a volunteer coordinator for the California Republican Party.

“Voters want somebody to stand up to Trump and put a check on him,” said Ben Tulchin, a veteran pollster helping strategize for Kim’s opponent, Democrat Gil Cisneros. “A Republican who worked for a Republican member of Congress is not the person they’re looking for.”

As supporters snacked on spicy Korean rice cakes and egg rolls at the campaign office, one young woman approached Kim with a contribution and an invitation to speak at the next Rotary Club meeting in Fullerton.

“There’s three rotary clubs in Fullerton, so which one?” Kim said without missing a beat. “The main one,” the woman replied.

Kim insists that her strategy of showing up to dozens of groundbreakings, cultural fairs and community events will insulate her from national politics in a way she couldn’t manage in 2016, when she sought reelection to her Assembly seat.

Her Democratic opponent plastered the district with mailers featuring Kim’s face alongside the polarizing GOP presidential nominee and even released an ad disguised as a music video featuring lyrics declaring “Young Kim is like Donald Trump.” It contributed to her loss in the swing district.

Back then, Kim tried to sidestep the issue, saying she’d never met Trump and calling the tactic “desperate.” This time, she’s drawing sharper distinctions between her views and the president’s.

In an interview, Kim maintained that her party has not been captured by one man. “There is no party of Trump,” she said, banging her hand on a table. She’s running, she said, “because I’ve been here, I’ve been working here, I’ve raised my family here, I know the district…. I’m not running for the party of Trump.”

Still, Trump so dominates political discussion these days Kim can’t help but be drawn into the conversation. Her strategy is to ignore the president and his serial controversies as best she can. Kim, for instance, declined this week to comment on Trump’s mocking of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Coverage of California politics »

Kim has sought to carve out her own identity on issues by opposing, for instance, Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents who crossed the border illegally, saying it “does not live up” to American values. She vows to fight for a pathway to citizenship for young people brought to the country illegally as children.

She also breaks with Trump by supporting what he refers to as “chain migration,” which allows citizens to sponsor family members to join them. Like many in her district, Kim’s family has benefited from the long-standing policy. Kim’s adult sister, who had married an American serviceman and joined the military herself, was able to sponsor her, both of her parents and four siblings.

But Kim echoes Trump in other ways.

She called California’s so-called sanctuary state law an “affront to law-abiding citizens and a threat to public safety.” She praised a decision by the Trump administration to weigh in on a lawsuit against Harvard that alleges the university’s admissions policies discriminate against Asian Americans.

One of her first campaign ads emphasized how her family came to the country legally “and not because we wanted handouts.”

Bernie Overland, left, speaks to Democratic congressional candidate Gil Cisneros, center, at his home in Fullerton.

(Christine Mai-Duc / Los Angeles Times)

Those positions may help Kim hold on to support from the Republican base, but they alienate others who want no part of Trump and his presidency. There are frequent reminders of the fine line she walks.

Bernie Overland, a 78-year-old Republican, opened his door in Fullerton one recent Saturday when Cisneros, the Democrat, came knocking. Cisneros was there to speak to Overland’s wife, who’s a Democrat, but he first asked Bernie what issues he cares about most.

“Well, Trump is certainly one,” he said with a laugh.

He’s angry about Trump’s plans to build a border wall (he called it “a waste”) and is incensed by the risk of ballooning national debt from recently passed tax cuts.

“I just think he is taking this country down the garden path to disaster,” Overland said in an interview later. Overland says that he wants to send a message to Trump in this midterm election and that nothing Kim does and says will change his mind.

His plan: Vote for any candidate who is not a Republican.

[email protected]

Twitter: @cmaiduc

SACRAMENTO — Responding to the Trump administration’s aggressive and unceasing immigration raids in Southern California, state lawmakers this week began strengthening protections for immigrants in schools, hospitals and other areas targeted by federal agents.

The Democratic-led California Legislature is considering nearly a dozen bills aimed at shielding immigrants who are in the country illegally, including helping children of families being ripped apart in the enforcement actions.

“Californians want smart, sensible solutions and we want safe communities,” said Assemblymember Christopher Ward (D-San Diego). “They do not want peaceful neighbors ripped out of schools, ripped out of hospitals, ripped out of their workplaces.”

Earlier this week, lawmakers passed two bills focused on protecting schoolchildren.

Senate Bill 98, authored by Sen. Sasha Renée Peréz (D-Alhambra), would require school administrators to notify families and students if federal agents conduct immigration operations on a K-12 or college campus.

Legislation introduced by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates), AB 49, would bar immigration agents from nonpublic areas of a school unless they had a judicial warrant or court order. It also would bar school districts from providing information about pupils, their families, teachers and school employees to immigration authorities without a warrant.

A separate bill by Sen. Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley), SB 81, would bar healthcare officials from disclosing a patient’s immigration status or birthplace, or giving access to nonpublic spaces in hospitals and clinics, to immigration authorities without a search warrant or court order.

All three bills now head to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his consideration. If signed into law, the legislation would take effect immediately.

The school-related bills, said L.A. school board member Rocio Rivas, provide “critical protections for students, parents and families, helping ensure schools remain safe spaces where every student can learn and thrive without fear.”

Federal immigration agents have recently detained several 18-year-old high school students, including Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero-Cruz, who was picked up last month while walking his dog a few days before he started his senior year at Reseda Charter High School.

Most Republican legislators voted against the bills, but Peréz’s measure received support from two Republican lawmakers, Assemblymember Juan Alanis (R-Modesto) and state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa). Muratsuchi’s had support from six Republicans.

“No person should be able to go into a school and take possession of another person’s child without properly identifying themselves,” Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) said before voting to support the bill.

The healthcare bill follows a surge in cancellations for health appointments as immigrants stay home, fearing that if they go to a doctor or to a clinic, they could be swept up in an immigration raid.

California Nurses Assn. President Sandy Reding said that federal agents’ recent raids have disregarded “traditional safe havens” such as clinics and hospitals, and that Newsom’s approval would ensure that people who need medical treatment can “safely receive care without fear or intimidation.”

Some Republicans pushed back against the package of bills, including outspoken conservative Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), who said that the raids that Democrats are “making such hay over” were triggered by the state’s “sanctuary” law passed in 2018.

The state law DeMaio attacked, SB 54, bars local law enforcement from helping enforce federal immigration laws, including arresting someone solely for having a deportation order, and from holding someone in jail for extra time so immigration agents can pick them up.

The law, criticized by President Trump and Republicans nationwide, does not prevent police from informing federal agents that someone who is in the country illegally is about to be released from custody.

“If you wanted a more orderly process for the enforcement of federal immigration rules, you’d back down from your utter failure of SB54,” DeMaio said.

Chino Valley Unified School Board President Sonja Shaw, a Trump supporter who is running for state superintendent of public instruction, said that the bills about school safety were “political theater that create fear where none is needed.”

“Schools already require proper judicial orders before allowing immigration enforcement on campus, so these bills don’t change anything,” Shaw said. “They are gaslighting families into believing that schools are unsafe, when in reality the system already protects students.”

But Muratsuchi, who is also running for superintendent, said the goal of the legislation is to ensure that districts everywhere, “including in more conservative areas,” protect their students against immigration enforcement.

A half-dozen other immigration bills are still pending in the Legislature. Lawmakers have until next Friday to send bills to Newsom’s desk before the 2025 session is adjourned.

Those include AB 495 by Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez (D-San Fernando), which would make it easier for parents to designate caregivers who are not blood relatives — including godparents and teachers — as short-term guardians for their children. An increasing number of immigrant parents have made emergency arrangements in the event they are deported.

The bill would allow nonrelatives to make decisions such as enrolling a child in school and consenting to some medical care.

Conservatives have criticized the bill as an attack on parental rights and have said that the law could be misused by estranged family members or even sexual predators — and that current guidelines for establishing family emergency plans are adequate.

Also still pending is AB 1261, by Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), which would establish a right to legal representation for unaccompanied children in federal immigration court proceedings; and SB 841 by Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), which would restrict access for immigration authorities at shelters for homeless people and survivors of rape, domestic violence and human trafficking.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out speedy deportations of undocumented migrants detained in the interior of the United States.

The move is a setback for President Trump’s efforts to expand the use of the federal expedited removal statute to quickly remove some undocumented migrants without appearing before a judge first.

Trump promised to engineer a massive deportation operation during his 2024 campaign if voters returned him to the White House. And he set a goal of carrying out 1 million deportations a year in his second term.

But U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb suggested the administration’s expanded use of the expedited removal of migrants is trampling on due process rights.

“In defending this skimpy process, the Government makes a truly startling argument: that those who entered the country illegally are entitled to no process under the Fifth Amendment, but instead must accept whatever grace Congress affords them,” Cobb wrote in a 48-page opinion issued Friday night. “Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk.”

The Department of Homeland Security announced shortly after Trump came to office in January that it was expanding the use of expedited removal, the fast-track deportation of undocumented migrants who have been in the U.S. less than two years.

The effort has triggered lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights groups.

Homeland Security said in a statement that Cobb’s “ruling ignores the President’s clear authorities under both Article II of the Constitution and the plain language of federal law.” It said Trump “has a mandate to arrest and deport the worst of the worst” and that ”we have the law, facts, and common sense on our side.”

Before the administration’s push to expand such speedy deportations, expedited removal was used only for migrants who were stopped within 100 miles of the border and who had been in the U.S. for less than 14 days.

Cobb, an appointee of President Biden, didn’t question the constitutionality of the expedited removal statute or its application at the border.

“It merely holds that in applying the statute to a huge group of people living in the interior of the country who have not previously been subject to expedited removal, the Government must afford them due process,” she wrote.

She added that “prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the Government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process.”

Cobb earlier this month agreed to temporarily block the administration’s efforts to expand fast-track deportations of immigrants who legally entered the U.S. under a process known as humanitarian parole. The ruling could benefit hundreds of thousands of people.

In that case the judge said Homeland Security exceeded its statutory authority in its effort to expand expedited removal for many immigrants. The judge said those immigrants are facing perils that outweigh any harm from “pressing pause” on the administration’s plans.

Since May, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have positioned themselves in hallways to arrest people after judges accept government requests to dismiss deportation cases. After the arrests, the government renews deportation proceedings but under fast-track authority.

Although fast-track deportations can be put on hold by filing an asylum claim, people may be unaware of that right and, even if they are, can be swiftly removed if they fail an initial screening.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

BALTIMORE — A federal judge on Tuesday threw out the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Maryland’s entire federal bench over an order by the chief judge that stopped the immediate deportation of migrants challenging their removals.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen granted a request by the judges to toss the case, saying to do otherwise “would run counter to overwhelming precedent, depart from longstanding constitutional tradition, and offend the rule of law.”

“In their wisdom, the Constitution’s framers joined three coordinate branches to establish a single sovereign,” Cullen wrote. “That structure may occasionally engender clashes between two branches and encroachment by one branch on another’s authority. But mediating those disputes must occur in a manner that respects the Judiciary’s constitutional role.”

The White House had no immediate comment.

Cullen was nominated to the federal bench by Trump in 2020. He serves in the Western District of Virginia, but he was tapped to oversee the case because all 15 of Maryland’s federal judges are named as defendants, a highly unusual circumstance that reflects the Republican administration’s harsh response to judges who slow or stop its policies.

Cullen expressed skepticism of the lawsuit during a hearing in August. He questioned why it was necessary for the Trump administration to sue all the judges as a means of challenging the order.

Signed by Chief Maryland District Judge George L. Russell III, the order prevents the Trump administration from immediately deporting any immigrants seeking review of their detention in Maryland district court. It blocks their removal until 4 p.m. on the second business day after their habeas corpus petition is filed.

The order says it aims to maintain existing conditions and the potential jurisdiction of the court, ensure immigrant petitioners are able to participate in court proceedings and access attorneys and give the government “fulsome opportunity to brief and present arguments in its defense.”

The Justice Department, which filed the suit in June, says the automatic pause violates a Supreme Court ruling and impedes the president’s authority to enforce immigration laws. The department has grown increasingly frustrated by rulings blocking Trump’s agenda, repeatedly accusing federal judges of improperly impeding his powers.

The lawsuit was an extraordinary legal maneuver, ratcheting up the administration’s fight with the federal judiciary.

Attorneys for the Maryland judges argued the lawsuit was intended to limit the power of the judiciary to review certain immigration proceedings while the Trump administration pursues a mass deportation agenda.

“The executive branch seeks to bring suit in the name of the United States against a co-equal branch of government,” attorney Paul Clement said during the hearing. “There really is no precursor for this suit”

Clement is a prominent conservative lawyer who served as solicitor general under Republican President George W. Bush. He listed several other avenues the administration could have taken to challenge the order, such as filing an appeal in an individual habeas case.

Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Themins Hedges said the government was simply seeking relief from a legal roadblock preventing effective immigration enforcement.

“The United States is a plaintiff here because the United States is being harmed,” she said.

In an amended order pausing deportations, Russell said the court had received an influx of habeas petitions after hours that “resulted in hurried and frustrating hearings in that obtaining clear and concrete information about the location and status of the petitioners is elusive.” Habeas petitions allow people to challenge their detention by the government.

Attorneys for the Trump administration accused the Maryland judges of prioritizing a regular schedule, writing in court documents that “a sense of frustration and a desire for greater convenience do not give Defendants license to flout the law.”

Among the judges named in the lawsuit is Paula Xinis, who found the Trump administration in March illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador — a case that quickly became a flashpoint in Trump’s immigration crackdown. Abrego Garcia was held in a notorious Salvadoran megaprison, where he claims to have been beaten and tortured.

Trump has railed against unfavorable judicial rulings, and in one case called for the impeachment of a federal judge in Washington who ordered planeloads of deported immigrants to be turned around. In July, the Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint against the judge.

Skene writes for the Associated Press.

For the first time in more than half a century, immigrants leaving the U.S. outnumber those arriving, a phenomenon that may signal President Trump’s historic mass deportation efforts are having the intended effect.

An analysis of census data released by Pew Research Center on Thursday noted that between January and June, the United States’ foreign-born population had declined by more than a million people.

Millions of people arrived at the border between 2021 and 2023 seeking refuge in America after the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, which ravaged many of their home countries. In 2023, California was home to 11.3 million immigrants, roughly 28.4% of the national total, according to Pew.

In January, 53.3 million immigrants lived in the U.S., the highest number recorded, but in the months that followed, those who left or were deported surpassed those arriving — the first drop since the 1960s. As of June, the number living in the U.S. had dropped to 51.9 million. Pew did not calculate how many immigrants are undocumented.

Trump and his supporters have applauded the exodus, with the president declaring “Promises Made. Promises Kept,” in a social media post this month.

“Seven months into his second term, it’s clear that the president has done what he said he’d do by reestablishing law and order at our southern border and by removing violent illegal immigrants from our nation,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in a USA Today column on Thursday. “Both actions were necessary for Americans’ peace and prosperity.”

But some experts caution that such declines will have negative economic effects on the United States if they continue, resulting in labor shortages as America’s birth rate continues to drop.

“Looking ahead in the future, we’re going to have to rely on immigrant workers to fulfill a lot of the jobs in this country,” said Victor Narro, project director at UCLA Labor Center. “Like it or not, the demographics are going to be changing in this country. It’s already changing, but it’s going to be more pronounced in the future, especially with the decline in native-born workers.”

The Pew analysis highlights several policy changes that have affected the number of immigrants in the country, beginning during then-President Biden’s term.

In June 2024, Biden signed a proclamation that bars migrants from seeking asylum along the U.S. border with Mexico at times when crossings are high, a change that was designed to make it harder for those who enter the country without prior authorization.

Trump, who campaigned on hard-line immigration policies, signed an executive order on the first day of his second term, declaring an “invasion” at the southern border. The move severely restricted entry into the country by barring people who arrive between ports of entry from seeking asylum or invoking other protections that would allow them to temporarily remain in the U.S.

Widespread immigration enforcement operations across Southern California began in June, prompting pushback from advocates and local leaders. The federal government responded by deploying thousands of Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. after the raids sparked scattered protests.

Homeland Security agents have arrested 4,481 undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area since June 6, the agency said this month.

Narro said the decrease in immigrants outlined in the study may not be as severe as the numbers suggest because of a reduction in response rates amid heightened enforcement.

“When you have the climate that you have today with fear of deportation, being arrested or detained by ICE — all the stuff that’s coming out of the Trump administration — people are going to be less willing to participate in the survey and documentation that goes into these reports,” Narro said.

Michael Capuano, research director at Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit that advocates for a reduction in immigration, said the numbers are trending in the right direction.

“We see it as a positive start,” Capuano said. “Obviously enforcement at the border is now working. The population is beginning to decrease. We’d like to see that trend continue because, ultimately, we think the policy of the last four years has been proven to be unsustainable.”

Capuano disagrees that the decrease in immigrants will cause problems for the country’s workforce.

“We don’t believe that ultimately there’s going to be this huge disruption,” he said. “There is no field that Americans won’t work in. Pew notes in its own study that American-born workers are the majority in every job field.”

In 2023, the last year with complete data, 33 million immigrants were part of the country’s workforce, including about 10 million undocumented individuals. Roughly 19% of workers were immigrants in 2023, up from 15% two decades earlier, according to Pew.

“Immigrants are a huge part of American society,” said Toby Higbie, a professor of history and labor studies at UCLA. “Those who are running the federal government right now imagine that they can remove all immigrants from this society, but it’s just not going to happen. It’s not going to happen because the children of immigrants will fight against it and because our country needs immigrant workers to make the economy work.”

The United States experienced a negative net immigration in the 1930s during the Great Depression when at least 400,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans left the country, often as a result of government pressure and repatriation programs. Not long after, the U.S. implemented the bracero program in 1942 in which the U.S. allowed millions of Mexican citizens to work in the country to address labor shortages during World War II.

Higbie predicts the decline in immigration won’t last long, particularly if prices on goods rise amid labor shortages.

“You could say that there’s a cycle here where we invite immigrants to work in our economy, and then there’s a political reaction by some in our country, and they kick them out, and then we invite them back,” he said. “I suspect that the Trump administration, after going through this process of brutally deporting people, will turn around and propose a guest worker program in order to maintain a docile immigrant workforce.”

From the outside, it appears that Ralph Barbosa has it all.

Aside from A-list comedian status hanging with superstars like Dave Chappelle, he’s known to show off his garage full of his favorite cars (even a few that actually run, he says), and he has a brand new comedy special on Hulu, “Planet Bosa,” that premiered earlier this month.

But following the release of his new hour, Barbosa claims he’s “broke.”

For comedians, specials aren’t just a celebration of your success, they’re also a funeral for your best material. Though he’s dubbed his latest trek across the country the Bean Without a Cause Tour, he’s also back to square one — a comic without new material, or at least not much of it. “I’ve got about 10 minutes [worth of jokes] to my name, I’m broke — comedy-wise, I’m broke,” he says with a sly grin. “It’s the funnest place to be.”

It’s a feeling most comics can relate to, though few in the last couple years have been on the ride Barbosa’s been on. Coming out of relative obscurity from the Dallas comedy scene, he garnered viral fame by being dissed and then apologized to by comedy legend George Lopez, who didn’t know who he was at the time despite Barbosa being at the forefront of the next wave of Latin comics, thanks in large part to a breakout set on Don’t Tell Comedy. Garnering nationwide buzz since his debut Netflix special “Cowabunga,” his latest hour on Hulu finds the 28-year-old reaching the top of his game.

Aside from getting more comfortable on stage, the spark of energy in this new phase of his career is a welcome surprise from a guy whose schedule barely leaves time for sleep. Yet somehow he’s still managed to squeeze in a second side career working on cars on his YouTube Channel Formula Bean. Recently, Barbosa spoke with The Times about finding his comfort zone in comedy and touring in honor of friend and fellow comedian Ken Flores, who was set to tour alongside Barbosa and comedian Rene Vaca before his tragic death earlier this year. He also discusses one of his more important challenges, writing cleverly authentic jokes about the shocking ICE raids that have led to widespread detention and deportation of immigrants. But it wasn’t just a laughing matter for Barbosa, who also helped people affected by the raids for a period of time by donating money to people who reached out to him directly through social media.

“I don’t like that people are getting separated from their families when they’re hardworking people,” the comedian said. “They’re people who go to a whole new country to learn the language and a whole new environment, in search of a better life, and it’s considered illegal.”

Usually when we do these interviews about comedy specials, they happen before the special is released. Now that “Planet Bosa” has been out on Hulu for almost two weeks, what’s it been like seeing the reaction to it and did it match what you were hoping for?

A lot of my fans have been watching it. There’s been a few people that reached out to me saying that they found me through [watching it], which feels really good — it’s what you want from a special. I feel like Spider-Man on “Spider-Man 3” when everybody’s cheering his name and he’s like, “They love me!” It feels good.

When I talked to you a couple years ago, it was right before your first special, “Cowabunga,” and I noticed with “Planet Bosa,” the energy just feels different. You’re more animated, you’re doing voices and stuff that I think people maybe weren’t used to seeing from you. How did you wanna change up your style or advance it this time around?

I think I just got more comfortable. When I did that first special with Netflix, I was really super nervous. I’d never shot a special before. Everything that’s been going on in my life, I feel like it came at me really fast. I feel I’m still very — especially compared to other comics — I’m very much like a rookie comic. Especially a rookie as in like a full-time comedian working in the industry. So like that first special, I was really nervous, I was very tense. I still had a lot of fun with it, don’t get me wrong, but I was really sticking to the script. By the time we taped this special, I’d been on the road so much, and my feet were a little more wet, so I was just more comfortable. So I think that one is me being myself more, this “Planet Bosa” is just like me being myself more.

What’s cool about what’s going on now in comedy with I feel is a very strong wave of Latin comedians like you, Rene Vaca, you had that obviously with the late comedian Ken Flores. What’s it like to be able to have that group around you of comedians?

I’ve always been a little introverted, though, especially with other comics, like I get kind of nervous. Rene helped me get out of that. Rene and Ken were always super close and they were always inviting me to stuff and I would always be too nervous to go. I used to be really intimidated by them. But once I met them and hung out with them a couple times, I realized that we’re a lot alike. Like we were the exact same age, the three of us. The three of us were all born in ‘96. I feel like we shared a lot of the same fears and anxieties, a lot the same stresses and family situations. I consider myself very lucky to be able to hang out with them. And I’m very lucky to still get to hang with Rene.That dude’s a fool, man — I love him.

“By the time we taped this special, I’d been on the road so much, and my feet were a little more wet, so I was just more comfortable,” Bosa says when talking about his latest hour on Hulu. “So I think that one is me being myself more, this ‘Planet Bosa’ is just like me being myself more.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Obviously, it was rough going on that tour with Rene because of the loss of Ken who was going on the road with you as well. But given what you guys had to go through emotionally and sort of mentally to press on, was it like looking back on completing that tour and doing things the way that Ken would have wanted?

I felt like that was our way of letting Ken get his proper rest. We found out Ken passed away on the day we were supposed to sign the paperwork to finalize all the tour details, which was heartbreaking. He passes away right before we’re supposed to start this tour together, the three of us. And now as we’re dealing with that within those same few days, we had to make a decision. They were pressuring us to make the decision do we still wanna do the tour or not. And so you don’t even wanna talk about that stuff. But I think me and Rene both knew that Ken would have wanted us to do it. Ken would’ve probably been really ashamed of us if we got all sad and just didn’t do it. Also I think it helped out his family a lot because we still gave his cut to his family. So I think we needed to do that for Ken. And I mean, it was still a fun tour. It was bittersweet, because every time we’d have a really fun night and we’re all laughing, we’d all have a moment where we knew it would be that much better if Ken was also here. But I know he was there in spirit, you know what I mean? I think Ken is anywhere Rene is. I think those two are inseparable. So anytime we’re with Rene, I still feel like Ken’s there too.

Why do you feel like the perspective you’re bringing along with Rene as the next generation of Latin comedians is important to be heard at a time in this country with so much going on politically with immigration?

I don’t necessarily think it’s important to get my voice out there but I do like making jokes about [ICE and immigration] because that’s like the only way I know how to bring attention to it. I’m not a big political dude or anything like that, but yeah, I’ve made jokes about things like immigration stuff, ICE stuff. But I guess that is my way of getting attention on that issue. I would like people to get attention on it. I feel like there’s certain topics, certain subjects that you can’t avoid after a certain point. We should talk about it, or we should at least put it in the faces of the people who aren’t gonna talk about it. Like if you’re not gonna talk about it that’s fine too, but you at least gotta hear about it.

“It was bittersweet, because every time we’d have a really fun night [on tour] and we’re all laughing, we’d all have a moment where we knew it would be that much better if Ken was also here,” Bosa says about missing his late friend and fellow comedian Ken Flores. “But I know he was there in spirit.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

One thing you mentioned that you were doing for a period of time was to help people affected by have family members detained during ICE raids by donating money to people who contacted you on Instagram asking for help to pay their bills. What inspired you to do that?

What I ended up doing is just sending hot dogs from Five Guys to all the families in need. I sent out over 180 hot dogs — I’m kidding. No, I sent out money. I hope it helped people out. I hope I wasn’t just getting scammed the whole time. I’m sure I got scammed by a good number of people. But I let people know that if they were affected by the ICE raids in any way and were behind on rent or groceries or if maybe the main provider in someone’s house was taken away or just going through something like that just to let me know and I’ll send what I can. I didn’t think I’d get as many messages as I got — I got a lot. I got to as many as I could and I sent out a lot of money before it started getting a little dangerously low on my end. Like, what’s the point of having money and having fans if like other people can’t enjoy it too? So I’m sorry for those of you that I wasn’t able to get to, and I hope the ones that I did get to were helped, even if it was just a bit. I don’t like that people are getting separated from their families when they’re hardworking people, they’re people who go to a whole new country to learn the language and a whole new environment, in search of a better life, and it’s considered illegal. Like I said, I don’t know about laws and government. I’m sure someone’s watching this thinking I’m just an ignorant idiot, but I don’t know, man. It just seems f—ed up to me.

“I don’t like that people are getting separated from their families when they’re hardworking people, they’re people who go to a whole new country to learn the language and a whole new environment, in search of a better life, and it’s considered illegal,” Barbosa says in regard to the recent ICE raids across the country.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

It’s also about being able to deal with the situation by laughing about it. And that even includes making jokes about not being considered “Mexican enough” by immigrants and getting fed up enough to say “Go home! Well, not to your home.”

I think I fall under that category, there’s a saying in Spanish — “ni de aquí, ni de allá.” It means “not from here or from there,” it’s like the middle ground… I feel like it’s given me perspective — I hope it has at least, I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t know when I’m being ignorant or not. That’s why I tell people don’t take me too serious, because I don’t really take myself too seriously.

I don’t know how you really can as a comedian. You gotta be able to laugh at yourself, right?

That’s what I’m saying. But people still get angry in my comments just cause I make stupid jokes — I don’t understand it.

Is there any key piece of advice you’ve gotten from a comedian that you’ve looked up to that has helped you in your career?

Yes and no. Because every comedian’s so different… So not everybody’s advice works. It could sometimes work for you. My favorite advice has probably been from [Dave] Chappelle, “You just gotta keep getting on stage. Just keep getting out on stage. Keep working on material.” You gotta get the reps. There’s no shortcuts to it.

Even though you’ve been doing it now so much, has there been a time on stage, more recently, where you’re nervous?

I’m always nervous, and I’m always messing up jokes. I don’t think the audience can always tell, but in my mind, I’m messing them up.

You’re very even keel on the surface, so the fact that you say that is also kind of surprising.

Nah, I’m up there freaking out, man. Well, in a good way, you know? It’s fun. I’m always nervous. But it’s part of what makes it fun.

And when you’re not on the road, I know you’re working a lot with cars. Can you talk about your YouTube channel Formula Bean that’s all about fixing up old cars?

Over a year ago, I started hanging out with an automotive content creator. His name’s Luis Cisneros, the dude’s crazy smart. He’s showing me how to work on my own cars and he would make car content about it. And I asked him if I could make content with him too. I feel like everybody’s a content creator nowadays. I feel content is key, whether it’s, whatever type it is. I have a lot of fun working on cars and recording us doing stupid things with cars. So we made a YouTube channel called the Formula Bean. And we named it that because Formula One is like the pinnacle of automotive racing, like top of the line cars, top of line drivers, top of the line engineers. But ours is more Formula Bean because it’s just a couple of Mexicans in a garage on some Facebook Marketplace projects. The stuff we do, I think it’s stuff that most people can watch and be like, “Oh, I can learn how to do that easy.” So I’m hoping that’s what is getting across.

Comedian Ralph Barbosa

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Do you feel like cars and comedy have some sort of correlation, like in terms of just working on them, or do you keep it like totally separate?

Nah, I keep it totally separate. I need something different than comedy so that I could continue to enjoy comedy. I get tired of stuff fast, man. If I’m really into one thing — I can hyper-focus on it. I’ll zone in on this one subject for a while, but I can’t keep it long-term. I need to do cars and zone in on cars for like a good month and a half, and then I need to go back into just straight up comedy mindset.

Never a combo? I was thinking like a Jerry Seinfeld like “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” type of thing?

I mean maybe if a comedian wants to come hang out, but I’m not gonna talk a whole lot of shop …

No “Comedians in Cars Getting Frustrated”?

Nah. I need cars to completely distract me from comedy so that I can come back to comedy with fresh eyes.

You mentioned that you only get about an hour and a half of sleep a night. When do you rest?

Whenever I just crash out, like randomly — and people get mad. Cuz they don’t know I guess but like I’ll be falling asleep at random events. I’ve never been the type of person like I can just put on my pajamas and lay down in the bed. I feel unproductive. I feel I need to go until I’m done thinking or until my brain just goes kaput. So even though we’re working on stuff, I feel like my mind is always thinking about other stuff when it can. I don’t really knock out until my body’s just like, “alright f— this, bro, I’m done.”

You’re on your second special on a major platform, you are selling out all over the country. Is there more that you feel like you still want to do?

I need a new hour, that’s all I know right now. I need a new hour of jokes. I got like 10 minutes to my name. Comedy-wise, I am broke. This is the funnest place to be, square one.

If a major hurricane approaches Central Florida this season, Maria knows it’s dangerous to stay inside her wooden, trailer-like home. In past storms, she evacuated to her sister’s sturdier house. If she couldn’t get there, a shelter set up at the local high school served as a refuge if needed.

But with accelerating detentions and deportations of immigrants across her community of Apopka, 20 miles northwest of Orlando, Maria, an agricultural worker from Mexico without permanent U.S. legal status, doesn’t know if those options are safe. All risk encountering immigration enforcement agents.

“They can go where they want,” said Maria, 50, who insisted the Associated Press not use her last name for fear of detention. “There is no limit.”

Natural disasters have long posed singular risks for people in the United States without permanent legal status. But with the arrival of peak Atlantic hurricane season, immigrants and their advocates say President Donald Trump’s robust immigration enforcement agenda has increased the danger.

Places considered neutral spaces by immigrants such as schools, hospitals and emergency management agencies are now suspect, and advocates say agreements by local law enforcement to collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement make them more vulnerable and compel a choice between being physically safe and avoiding detention.

“Am I going to risk the storm or risk endangering my family at the shelter?” said Dominique O’Connor, an organizer at the Farmworker Association of Florida. “You’re going to meet enforcement either way.”

For O’Connor and for many immigrants, it’s about storms. But people without permanent legal status could face these decisions anywhere that extreme heat, wildfires or other severe weather could necessitate evacuating, getting supplies or even seeking medical care.

Federal and state agencies have said little on whether immigration enforcement would be suspended in a disaster. It wouldn’t make much difference to Maria: “With all we’ve lived, we’ve lost trust.”

New policies deepen concerns

Efforts by Trump’s Republican administration to exponentially expand immigration enforcement capacity mean many of the agencies active in disaster response are increasingly entangled in immigration enforcement.

Since January, hundreds of law enforcement agencies have signed 287(g) agreements, allowing them to perform certain immigration enforcement actions. Most of the agreements are in hurricane-prone Florida and Texas.

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management oversees building the state’s new detention facilities, like the one called “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades. Federal Emergency Management Agency funds are being used to build additional detention centers around the country, and the Department of Homeland Security temporarily reassigned some FEMA staff to assist ICE.

The National Guard, often seen passing out food and water after disasters, has been activated to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations and help at detention centers.

These dual roles can make for an intimidating scene during a disaster. After floods in July, more than 2,100 personnel from 20 state agencies aided the far-reaching response effort in Central Texas, along with CBP officers. Police controlled entry into hard-hit areas. Texas Department of Public Safety and private security officers staffed entrances to disaster recovery centers set up by FEMA.

That unsettled even families with permanent legal status, said Rae Cardenas, executive director of Doyle Community Center in Kerrville, Texas. Cardenas helped coordinate with the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio to replace documents for people who lived behind police checkpoints.

“Some families are afraid to go get their mail because their legal documents were washed away,” Cardenas said.

In Florida, these policies could make people unwilling to drive evacuation roads. Traffic stops are a frequent tool of detention, and Florida passed a law in February criminalizing entry into the state by those without legal status, though a judge temporarily blocked it.

There may be fewer places to evacuate now that public shelters, often guarded by police or requiring ID to enter, are no longer considered “protected areas” by DHS. The agency in January rescinded a policy of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, to avoid enforcement in places like schools, medical facilities and emergency response sites.

The fears extend even into disaster recovery. On top of meeting law enforcement at FEMA recovery centers, mixed-status households that qualify for help from the agency might hesitate to apply for fear of their information being accessed by other agencies, said Esmeralda Ledezma, communications associate with the Houston-based nonprofit Woori Juntos. “Even if you have the right to federal aid, you’re afraid to be punished for it,” Ledezma said.

In past emergencies, DHS has put out messaging stating it would suspend immigration enforcement. The agency’s policy now is unclear.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an email that CBP had not issued any guidance “because there have been no natural disasters affecting border enforcement.” She did not address what directions were given during CBP’s activation in the Texas floods or whether ICE would be active during a disaster.

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management did not respond to questions related to its policies toward people without legal status. Texas’ Division of Emergency Management referred The Associated Press to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, which did not respond.

Building local resilience is a priority

In spite of the crackdown, local officials in some hurricane-prone areas are expanding outreach to immigrant populations. “We are trying to move forward with business as usual,” said Gracia Fernandez, language access coordinator for Alachua County in Central Florida.

The county launched a program last year to translate and distribute emergency communications in Spanish, Haitian Creole and other languages. Now staffers want to spread the word that county shelters won’t require IDs, but since they’re public spaces, Fernandez acknowledged there’s not much they can do if ICE comes.

“There is still a risk,” she said. “But we will try our best to help people feel safe.”

As immigrant communities are pushed deeper into the shadows, more responsibility falls on nonprofits, and communities themselves, to keep each other safe.

Hope Community Center in Apopka has pushed local officials to commit to not requiring IDs at shelters and sandbag distribution points. During an evacuation, the facility becomes an alternative shelter and a command center, from which staffers translate and send out emergency communications in multiple languages. For those who won’t leave their homes, staffers do door-to-door wellness checks, delivering food and water.

“It’s a very grassroots, underground operation,” said Felipe Sousa Lazaballet, the center’s executive director.

Preparing the community is challenging when it’s consumed by the daily crises wrought by detentions and deportations, Sousa Lazaballet said.

“All of us are in triage mode,” he said. “Every day there is an emergency, so the community is not necessarily thinking about hurricane season yet. That’s why we have to have a plan.”

Angueira writes for the Associated Press.

McALLEN, Texas — A federal judge ruled Friday to deny the Trump administration’s request to end a policy in place for nearly three decades that is meant to protect immigrant children in federal custody.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles issued her ruling a week after holding a hearing with the federal government and legal advocates representing immigrant children in custody.

Gee called last week’s hearing “deja vu” after reminding the court of the federal government’s attempt to terminate the Flores settlement agreement in 2019 under the first Trump administration. She repeated the sentiment in Friday’s order.

“There is nothing new under the sun regarding the facts or the law. The Court therefore could deny Defendants’ motion on that basis alone,” Gee wrote, referring to the government’s appeal to a law it argued kept the court from enforcing the agreement.

In the most recent attempt, the government argued it had made substantial changes since the agreement was formalized in 1997, creating standards and policies governing the custody of immigrant children that conform to legislation and the agreement.

Gee acknowledged that the government made some improved conditions of confinement, but wrote, “These improvements are direct evidence that the FSA is serving its intended purpose, but to suggest that the agreement should be abandoned because some progress has been made is nonsensical.”

Attorneys representing the federal government told the court the agreement gets in the way of their efforts to expand detention space for families, even though President Trump’s tax and spending bill provided billions to build new immigration facilities.

Tiberius Davis, one of the government attorneys, said the bill gives the government authority to hold families in detention indefinitely. “But currently under the Flores settlement agreement, that’s essentially void,” he said last week.

The Flores agreement, named for a teenage plaintiff, was the result of more than a decade of litigation between attorneys representing the rights of migrant children and the U.S. government over widespread allegations of mistreatment in the 1980s.

The agreement set standards for how licensed shelters must provide food, water, adult supervision, emergency medical services, toilets, sinks, temperature control and ventilation. It also limited how long U.S. Customs and Border Protection could detain child immigrants to 72 hours. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services then takes custody of the children.

The Biden administration successfully pushed to partially end the agreement last year. Gee ruled that special court supervision may end when Health and Human Services takes custody, but she carved out exceptions for certain types of facilities for children with more acute needs.

In arguing against the Trump administration’s effort to completely end the agreement, advocates said the government was holding children beyond the time limits. In May, CBP held 46 children for more than a week, including six children held for over two weeks and four children held for 19 days, according to data revealed in a court filing. In March and April, CPB reported that it had 213 children in custody for more than 72 hours. That included 14 children, including toddlers, who were held for over 20 days in April.

The federal government is looking to expand its immigration detention space, including by building more centers like one in Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where a lawsuit alleges detainees’ constitutional rights are being violated.

Gee still has not ruled on the request by legal advocates for the immigrant children to expand independent monitoring of the treatment of children held in U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities. Currently, the agreement allows for third-party inspections at facilities in the El Paso and Rio Grande Valley regions, but plaintiffs submitted evidence showing long detention times at border facilities that violate the agreement’s terms.

Gonzalez writes for the Associated Press.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is preparing to open a second immigration detention facility at a state prison in north Florida, as a federal judge decides the fate of the state’s holding center for immigrants at an isolated airstrip in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

DeSantis announced Thursday that the new facility is to be housed at the Baker Correctional Institution, a state prison about 43 miles west of Jacksonville. It is expected to hold 1,300 immigration detention beds, though that capacity could be expanded to 2,000, state officials said.

After opening the Everglades facility last month, DeSantis justified opening the second detention center, dubbed “Deportation Depot” by the state, by saying President Trump’s administration needs the additional capacity to hold and deport more immigrants.

“There is a demand for this,” DeSantis said. “I’m confident it will be filled.”

Payne writes for the Associated Press.

I sank into Randy Carter’s comfy couch, excited to see the Hollywood veteran’s magnum opus.

Around the first floor of his Glendale home were framed photos and posters of films the 77-year-old had worked on during his career. “Apocalypse Now.” “The Godfather II.” “The Conversation.”

What we were about to watch was nowhere near the caliber of those classics — and Carter didn’t care.

Footage of a school bus driving through dusty farmland began to play. The title of the nine-minute sizzle reel Carter produced in 1991 soon flashed: “Boy Wonders.”

The plot: White teenage boys in the 1960s gave up a summer of surfing to heed the federal government’s call. Their assignment: Pick crops in the California desert, replacing Mexican farmworkers.

“That’s the stupidest, dumbest, most harebrained scheme I’ve heard in my life,” a farmer complained to a government official in one scene, a sentiment studio executives echoed as they rejected Carter’s project as too far-fetched.

But it wasn’t: “Boy Wonders” was based on Carter’s life.

Randy Carter’s collection of historical photos and other memorabilia of A-TEAM, a 1965 program that sought to recruit high school athletes to pick crops during the summer.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

In 1965, the U.S. Department of Labor launched A-TEAM — Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower — with the goal of recruiting 20,000 high school athletes to harvest summer crops. The country was facing a dire farmworker shortage because the bracero program, which provided cheap legal labor from Mexico for decades, had ended the year before.

Sports legends such as Sandy Koufax, Rafer Johnson and Jim Brown urged teen jocks to join A-TEAM because “Farm Work Builds Men!” as one ad stated. But only about 3,000 made it to the fields. One of them was a 17-year-old Carter.

He and about 18 classmates from University of San Diego High spent six weeks picking cantaloupes in Blythe. The fine hairs on the fruits ripped through their gloves within hours. It was so hot that the bologna sandwiches the farmers fed their young workers for lunch toasted in the shade. They slept in rickety shacks, used communal bathrooms and showered in water that “was a very nice shade of brown,” Carter remembered with a laugh.

They were the rare crew that stuck it out. Teens quit or went on strike across the country to protest abysmal work conditions. A-TEAM was such a disaster that the federal government never tried it again, and the program was considered so ludicrous that it rarely made it into history books.

Then came MAGA.

Now, legislators in some red-leaning states are thinking about making it easier for teenagers to work in agricultural jobs, in anticipation of Trump’s deportation deluge.

“I used to joke that I’ve written a story for the ages, because we’ll never solve the problem of labor,” Carter said. “I could be dead, and my great-grandkids could easily shop it around.”

I wrote about Carter’s experience in 2018 for an NPR article that went viral. It still bubbles up on social media any time a politician suggests that farm laborers are easily replaceable — like last month, when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that “able-bodied adults on Medicaid” could pick crops, instead of immigrants.

From journalists to teachers, people are reaching out to Carter anew to hear his picaresque stories from 50 years ago — like the time he and his friends made a wrong turn in Blythe and drove into the barrio, where “everyone looked at us like we were specimens” but was nice about it.

“They are dying to see white kids tortured,” Carter cracked when I asked him why the saga fascinates the public. “They want to see these privileged teens work their asses off. Wouldn’t you?”

But he doesn’t see the A-TEAM as one giant joke — it’s one of the defining moments of his life.

An old photo belonging to Randy Carter shows, seated at bottom right, his boss at the time, Francis Ford Coppola. “Everyone in this photo won an Academy Award except me,” Carter said.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Carter moved to San Diego his sophomore year of high school. He always took summer jobs at the insistence of his working-class Irish mother. When the feds made their pitch in the spring of 1965, “there wasn’t exactly a rush to the sign-up table,” Carter recalled. What’s more, coaches at his school, known at University High, forbade their athletes to join. But he and his pals thought it would be the domestic version of the Peace Corps.

“You’re a teenager and think, ‘What the hell are we going to do this summer?’” he said. “Then, ‘What the hell. If nothing else, we’ll go into town every night. We’ll meet some girls. We’ll get cowboys to buy us beer.’” “

Carter paused for dramatic effect. “No.”

The University High crew was trained by a Mexican foreman “who in retrospect must have hated us because we were taking the jobs of his family.” They worked six days a week for minimum wage — $1.40 an hour at the time — and earned a nickel for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 cantaloupes.

“Within two days, we thought, ‘This is insane,’” he said. “By the third day, we wanted to leave. But we stayed, because it became a thing of honor.”

Nearly everyone returned to San Diego after the six-week stint, although a couple of guys went to Fresno and “became legendary in our group because they could stand to do some more. For the rest of us, we did it, and we vowed never to do anything like that as long as we live. Somehow, the beach seemed a little nicer that summer.”

Carter’s wife, Janice, walked in. I asked how important A-TEAM was to her husband.

She rolled her eyes the way only a wife of 53 years could.

“He talks about it almost every week,” she said as Randy beamed. “It’s like an endless loop.”

University High’s A-TEAM squad went on to successful careers as doctors, lawyers, businessmen. They regularly meet for reunions and talk about those tough days in Blythe, which Carter describes “as the intersection of hell and Earth.”

As the issue of immigrant labor became more heated in American politics, the guys realized they had inadvertently absorbed an important lesson all those decades ago.

Before A-TEAM, Carter said, his idea of how crops were picked was that “somehow it got done, and they [Mexican farmworkers] somehow disappeared.”

“But when we now thought about Mexicans, we realized we only had to do it for six weeks,” he continued. “These guys do it every day, and they support a family. We became sympathetic, to a man. When people say bad things about Mexicans, we always say, ‘Don’t even go there, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

Carter’s experience picking cantaloupes solidified his liberal leanings. So did the time he tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 1969 during Operation Intercept, a Nixon administration initiative that required the Border Patrol to search nearly every car.

The stated purpose was to crack down on marijuana smuggling. Instead, Carter said, it created an hours-long wait and “businesses on both sides of the border were furious.”

In college, Carter cheered the efforts of United Farm Workers and kept tabs on the fight to ban el cortito, the short-handled hoes that wore down the bodies of California farmworkers for generations until a state bill banned them in 1975.

By then, he was working as a “junior, junior, junior” assistant to Francis Ford Coppola. Once he built enough of a resume in Hollywood — where he would become a longtime first assistant director on “Seinfeld,” among many credits — Carter wrote his “Boy Wonders” script, which he described as “‘Dead Poets Society’ meets ‘Cool Hand Luke.’”

It was optioned twice. Henry Winkler’s production company was interested for a bit. So was Rhino Records’ film division, which explains why the soundtrack features boomer classics from the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Motown. But no one thought audiences would buy Carter’s straightforward premise.

One executive suggested it would be more believable if the high schoolers ran over someone on prom night and became crop pickers to hide from the cops. Another suggested exploding toilets to funny up the action.

“The mantra in Hollywood is, ‘Do something you know about,’” he said. “But that was the curse of it not getting made — because no one else knew about it!”

Colorado River water irrigates a farm field in Blythe in 2021.

(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)

Carter continues to share his experience, because “as a weak-kneed progressive, I always fancied we could change the situation … and that some sense of fair play could bubble up. I’m still walking up that road, but it seems more distant.”

A few weeks ago, federal immigration agents raided the car wash he frequents.

“You don’t even have to rewrite stories from years ago,” he said. “You could just reprint them, because nothing changes.”

I asked what he thought about MAGA’s push to replace migrant farmworkers with American citizens.

“It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to go to Dodger Stadium, grab someone from the third row of the mezzanine section, and they can play the violin at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.’ OK, you can do that, but it’s not going to work,” he said. “I don’t get why they don’t try to solve the problem of fair conditions and inadequate pay — why is that never an option?”

What about a reboot of A-TEAM?

“It could work,” Carter replied. “I was with a group of guys that did it!”

Then he considered how it might play out today.

“If Taylor Swift said it was great, you’d get people. Would they last? If they had decent accommodations and pay, maybe. But it would never happen with Trump. His solution is, ‘You don’t pay decent wages, you get desperate people.’”

He laughed again.

“Here’s a crazy program from the 1960s that’s not off the map in 2025. We’re still debating the issue. Am I crazy, or is the world crazy?”

If the Trump administration succeeds in barring undocumented immigrants from federally funded “public benefit” programs, vulnerable children and families across California would suffer greatly, losing access to emergency shelters, vital healthcare, early education and life-saving nutritional support, according to state and local officials who filed their opposition to the changes in federal court.

The new restrictions would harm undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens — including the U.S.-born children of immigrants and people suffering from mental illness and homelessness who lack documentation — and put intense stress on the state’s emergency healthcare system, the officials said.

Head Start, which provides tens of thousands of children in the state with early education, healthcare and nutritional support, may have to shutter some of its programs if the new rules barring immigrants withstand a lawsuit filed by California and other liberal-led states, officials said.

In a declaration filed as part of that litigation, Maria Guadalupe Jaime-Milehan, deputy director of the child care and developmental division of the California Department of Social Services, wrote that the restrictions would have an immediate “chilling effect” on immigrant and mixed-status families seeking support, but also cause broader “ripple effects” — especially in rural California communities that rely on such programs as “a critical safety net” for vulnerable residents, but also as major employers.

“Children would lose educational, nutritional, and healthcare services. Parents or guardians may be forced to cut spending on other critical needs to fill the gaps, and some may even be forced out of work so they can care for their children,” Jaime-Milehan said.

Rural communities would see programs shutter, and family providers lose their jobs, she wrote.

Tony Thurmond, California’s superintendent of public instruction, warned in a declaration that the “chilling effect” from such rules could potentially drive away talented educators who disagree with such policies and decide to “seek other employment that does not discriminate against children and families.”

Thurmond and Jaime-Milehan were among dozens of officials in 20 states and the District of Columbia who submitted declarations in support of those states’ lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s new rules. Six other officials from California also submitted declarations.

The lawsuit followed announcements last month from various federal agencies — including Health and Human Services, Labor, Education and Agriculture — that funding recipients would be required to begin screening out undocumented immigrants.

The announcements followed an executive order issued by President Trump in which he said his administration would “uphold the rule of law, defend against the waste of hard-earned taxpayer resources, and protect benefits for American citizens in need, including individuals with disabilities and veterans.”

Trump’s order cited the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, commonly known as welfare reform, as barring noncitizens from participating in federally funded benefits programs, and criticized past administrations for providing exemptions to that law for certain “life or safety” programs — including those now being targeted for new restrictions.

The order mandated that federal agencies restrict access to benefits programs for undocumented immigrants, in part to “prevent taxpayer resources from acting as a magnet and fueling illegal immigration to the United States.”

California and the other states sued July 21, alleging the new restrictions target working mothers and their children in violation of federal law.

“We’re not talking about waste, fraud, and abuse, we’re talking about programs that deliver essential childcare, healthcare, nutrition, and education assistance, programs that have for decades been open to all,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said.

In addition to programs like Head Start, Bonta said the new restrictions threatened access to short-term shelters for homeless people, survivors of domestic violence and at-risk youth; emergency shelters for people during extreme weather; soup kitchens, community food banks and food support services for the elderly; and healthcare for people with mental illness and substance abuse issues.

The declarations are part of a motion asking the federal judge overseeing the case to issue a preliminary injunction barring the changes from taking effect while the litigation plays out.

Beth Neary, assistant director of HIV health services at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, wrote in her declaration that the new restrictions would impede healthcare services for an array of San Francisco residents experiencing homelessness — including undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens.

“Individuals experiencing homelessness periodically lack identity and other documents that would be needed to verify their citizenship or immigration status due to frequent moves and greater risk of theft of their belongings,” she wrote.

Colleen Chawla, chief of San Mateo County Health, wrote that her organization — the county’s “safety-net” care provider — has worked for years to build up trust in immigrant communities.

“But if our clients worry that they will not be able to qualify for the care they need, or that they or members of their family face a risk of detention or deportation if they seek care, they will stop coming,” Chawla wrote. “This will exacerbate their health conditions.”

Greta S. Hansen, chief operating officer of Santa Clara County, wrote that more than 40% of her county’s residents are foreign-born and more than 60% of the county’s children have at least one foreign-born parent — among the highest rates anywhere in the country.

The administration’s changes would threaten all of them, but also everyone else in the county, she wrote.

“The cumulative effect of patients not receiving preventive care and necessary medications would likely be a strain on Santa Clara’s emergency services, which would result in increased costs to Santa Clara and could also lead to decreased capacity for emergency care across the community,” Hansen wrote.

The Trump administration has defended the new rules, including in court.

In response to the states’ motion for preliminary injunction, attorneys for the administration argued that the rule changes are squarely in line with the 1996 welfare reform law and the rights of federal agencies to enforce it.

They wrote that the notices announcing the new rules that were sent out by federal agencies “merely recognize that the breadth of benefits available to unqualified aliens is narrower than the agencies previously interpreted,” and “restore compliance with federal law and ensure that taxpayer-funded programs intended for the American people are not diverted to subsidize unqualified aliens.”

The judge presiding over the case has yet to rule on the preliminary injunction.