immigrants

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week over whether the Trump administration may revoke temporary protected status for about 350,000 Haitian and 6,100 Syrian immigrants.

TPS allows people who are already in the United States to legally reside and work here if they are unable to safely return to their home country because of a sudden emergency such as war or a natural disaster. The humanitarian program, enacted by Congress in 1990, has since been used by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Since President Trump returned to office last year, his administration has terminated such protections for immigrants from 13 countries. Court challenges on behalf of Haitians and Syrians have been consolidated into a single case, Mullin vs. Doe, which the justices will hear Wednesday.

The high court’s ruling could eventually have sweeping repercussions for all 1.3 million immigrants from the 17 countries that were designated for TPS at the start of this administration. That’s because the federal government is arguing that decisions regarding the program are almost entirely immune from review by courts.

“Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not provide their name, wrote in response to a request for comment.

Lower courts have repeatedly deemed the administration’s actions improper.

“We’re seeing clear gamesmanship from government to insulate all TPS decision-making from any oversight,” said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who is counsel in the case for Syrians and in other cases challenging five of the terminations. “They’ve created a farce of a process to justify the ends that they sought, which was to strip humanitarian protections from over a million people.”

In the Trump administration’s appeal, Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end the temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.

He pointed to a provision that says: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.”

Citing this hands-off provision, Trump’s lawyers won brief emergency orders last year that allowed the administration to strip legal protections from about 600,000 Venezuelans. In that case, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had quickly reversed an extension granted by the Biden administration three days before Trump was sworn in.

The circumstances surrounding the Syria and Haiti cases are different. Advocates for the immigrants argue that the administration failed to conduct the required process to properly evaluate each country’s conditions.

They point to emails in July from a Homeland Security official to a State Department official. The Homeland Security official listed TPS designations coming up for review — Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. In response, the State Department official wrote: “I confirm that State has no foreign policy concerns with ending these TPS designations.”

State Department travel advisories for both countries warn people against traveling to either because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence. U.S. citizens are advised to prepare a will.

For Syria, the advisory cites active armed conflict since 2011. For Haiti, it says the country has been under a national state of emergency since March 2024.

But Federal Register notices announcing the terminations said country conditions had sufficiently improved. The notice for Syria, for example, says “the Secretary has determined that, while some sporadic and episodic violence occurs in Syria, the situation no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals.”

If the government loses, Homeland Security officials would have to reevaluate the TPS decisions in consultation with the State Department and make a decision based entirely on the country conditions themselves.

The government could start over, in that case, and still find that TPS is no longer warranted — if the process bears that out.

In a friend-of-the-court brief led by immigration law scholars at Georgetown and Temple universities, they explained that before TPS existed, similar forms of humanitarian relief were determined by the executive branch “without reference to any statutory criteria or constraints, and with little if any explanation for why nationals of certain countries received protection while others did not.”

With TPS in 1990, Congress sought to end that “unfettered discretion,” they wrote. Instead, the statute requires the Homeland Security secretary to terminate TPS if the review finds that conditions justifying the designation no longer exist. Otherwise, the law states, it “is extended.”

“The point of the TPS statute was to depoliticize humanitarian decisions,” said MacLean, the ACLU attorney. “Secretary Noem in all of her TPS decisions has completely undermined that fundamental goal.”

Ahilan Arulanantham, who is arguing for the Syria case on Wednesday, added that if the government wins, “it also means they could probably grant TPS to countries that don’t deserve it.” Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, has represented the National TPS Alliance in separate litigation during this administration and Trump’s first.

Top Homeland Security and State Department officials from the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations filed a brief arguing that the Trump administration’s terminations of TPS for Syria and Haiti were “not based on evidence and sharply departed from past inter-agency practices.”

Haiti was originally designated for TPS in 2010 after a massive earthquake devastated the country and redesignated because of subsequent natural disasters and gang violence. In November, Noem announced that she would terminate TPS for Haiti, effective Feb. 3. She wrote in the Federal Register that “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti” that prevent Haitians from safely returning.

But even if there were, she continued, “termination of Temporary Protected Status of Haiti is still required because it is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”

The Homeland Security spokesperson said TPS for Haiti “was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades.”

Syria, meanwhile, “has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades,” the spokesperson wrote, “and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country.”

In the Federal Register notice for Syria, Noem added that maintaining its TPS designation would “complicate the administration’s broader diplomatic engagement with Syria’s transitional government” by undermining peace-building efforts.

The Supreme Court will take up the question of whether the Homeland Security secretary can use national interest as a reason to revoke TPS. Attorneys for the TPS holders believe any decision to revoke TPS must come down to the country conditions alone.

Syria and Haiti are among the countries for which the Trump administration has also paused processing all immigration benefits. If their TPS protections expire, those immigrants would become vulnerable to detention and deportation even if they are eligible for other forms of relief.

U.S. Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end the temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.

(Aaron Schwartz / Getty Images)

Attorneys for the TPS holders say the terminations were also driven by racial animus. They point to various statements by Trump over the years, including his false claim that Haitians were eating the pets of people in Springfield, Ohio, that they “probably have AIDS” and that Haiti is among the “shithole countries” from which he would permanently pause migration.

Among those affected is a 35-year-old Haitian woman who has lived in the U.S. since 2000 and is raising her four U.S. citizen children in a Southern state. The woman requested to be identified by her middle and last initials, B.B., out of concern for her immigration case.

After graduating high school, B.B. got into nursing school but couldn’t attend because she didn’t qualify for financial aid. She said later getting TPS allowed her to become a certified nursing assistant, and she now works as a medical coordinator while owning a nail salon and three real estate properties.

Though B.B.’s TPS remains active because of the court proceedings, her driver’s license expired Feb. 3 and she has since had to rely on friends and rideshares to get around while repeatedly requesting a renewal.

She said she worries most about her children. If she were deported back to Haiti, she said, she would leave them in the U.S. for their own safety.

“It’s like planning your death,” she said. “I’m 35 and I already have a will — not because I’m going to die but because of the situation.”

On a call with reporters, attorneys and advocates, a Syrian man said he earned his master’s degree in the U.S. and now works in the healthcare industry. The man, who was identified by a pseudonym, said he and his wife are afraid of what their future will look like.

“TPS gave us something we had not had in years: a place to settle and a moment to grieve,” he said, later adding that “telling Syrians to go back right now is not a policy — it’s abandonment.”

Among the public, there is broad support for TPS and other humanitarian programs. According to a poll conducted last month by the firm Equis Research, 68% of Latino and 65% of non-Latino voters support fighting to give back legal protection to those who have lost their temporary protected status or asylum protections as a result of the current administration’s actions.

Earlier this month, the House voted in favor of a bill that would require new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to redesignate Haiti for TPS. Among those who crossed the political aisle to support it were 10 Republicans and Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent from Rocklin, Calif., who caucuses with Republicans. The measure faces an uphill battle in the Senate.

In an interview with The Times, Kiley said his vote was about common sense and being humane.

“It’s particularly dangerous for people that would be returning where the gangs that are ravaging the country are just lying in wait outside the airport in Port-au-Prince,” he said, referring to the Haitian capital.

And because most won’t return willingly, Kiley added, “really all you’d be doing is removing work authorization from 350,000-some people who are going to mostly remain in the country, who will not be able to work anymore and may end up being more reliant on public assistance in states where they’re eligible.”

At the same time, Kiley said, the TPS system hasn’t worked as intended because most so-called temporary designations drag on.

“The system needs to be reformed,” he said. “But that’s all separate and apart from what we do with the folks who were already given this designation.”

Times staff writer David G. Savage in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — In a rare bipartisan moment, the House passed legislation Thursday that would extend temporary protections for Haitian immigrants, a long-shot effort fighting back against President Trump’s attempts to end the program.

The bill, pushed forward by House Democrats with a group of Republicans over the objections of the GOP leadership, would require a three-year extension of temporary protected status for Haitians by the Trump administration. That would allow hundreds of thousands of qualifying immigrants to remain in the United States without fear of deportation.

The vote was 224-204, drawing applause in the chamber. But it faces uncertainty in the Senate, and the Republican president would almost certainly seek to veto it.

“I know firsthand how important our Haitian neighbors are to our communities, to our civic life, to our culture, to our workforce, to our economy,” said Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who is co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus and represents one of the largest Haitian communities in the country.

During the debate, she recounted the number of Haitian immigrants working in healthcare, housing construction and other industries. Haitians with temporary legal status “are not the problem, quite the contrary, they are part of the solution,” she said.

Pressley has said deporting Haitians back to the troubled Caribbean country would be a “death sentence,” given the effects of natural disasters and gang violence. “Congress can do the right thing,” she said.

Ten Republicans, many from districts with large numbers of Haitian residents, joined all Democrats and one independent in voting for passage.

Congress tries to act before the Supreme Court does

The effort to help 350,000 Haitians living lawfully in the United States comes as the administration is working to end the temporary legal status for several groups, exposing them to deportation.

In less than two weeks, the Supreme Court is prepared to consider a fast-track case that would end the protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants in a challenge widely seen as threatening the broader program. The administration filed emergency appeals after lower courts stopped the immediate end of the program.

It is part of the administration’s efforts to strip certain immigrant groups of legal status as the White House works to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise of conducting the largest mass deportation operation in history. Some 1.3 million people fleeing countries around the world have been granted temporary protected status in the U.S.

The protections for Haiti, first approved after a devastating 2010 earthquake, have been extended multiple times. The State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest.”

Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy organization, fought back tears as she described the fear of deportations coursing through the community.

“We are asking, where will you be? On the right side of history?” she said at a news conference outside the Capitol. “Or continuing to cause trauma to people who are asking for nothing other than safety and protection?”

Trump has described migrants from poorer countries in vulgar terms, and he has falsely accused Haitian migrants in Ohio of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.

The conservative majority court has allowed the end of temporary legal status for a total of 600,000 people from Venezuela while lawsuits play out, leaving them to face potential deportation.

Lawmakers debate whether to help Haitians or stick with Trump

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) whose district includes Long Island’s Haitian community, said she promised constituents she would work to protect their status. She introduced the legislation with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York as soon as she took office last year.

“It’s cruel to expect Haitians to be forced to return to these deadly, dangerous conditions,” she said at a news conference. “Human lives are at risk.”

Lawler said there are differences of opinion on immigration policy, but that Haitian immigrants have become vital to his community and forcing them out would be unjust and unwise.

“They are small business owners, they are nurses, they are caregivers, they participate in our economy and take care of American citizens,” he said. “Congress has a responsibility to act.”

But Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) decried the number of immigrants, including Haitians, who have entered the U.S., and cited Democratic efforts to halt funding for enforcement and deportation efforts.

“Make temporary permanent,” he said, “that’s their plan.”

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) said the program was “backdoor amnesty” for foreigners.

To Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), the temporary status first granted under the Obama administration has become “an open-ended invitation” for immigrants to enter the country, including some illegally, and remain.

“The Trump administration has heeded the cries of the American people,” he said.

Using a discharge petition to force votes

The vote was the latest effort by House Democrats to maneuver past the Republican majority using a discharge petition — once a rare tool, but now used increasingly to form bipartisan coalitions.

The discharge petition process forces the bill to the House floor for consideration, powering past House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP leaders. It was used to help pass legislation that required the Justice Department to release the files of the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.

Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and are typically able to swat back such efforts from Democrats. But Democrats and Republicans have formed bipartisan alliances to reach the majority needed on the discharge petitions.

Pressley’s effort to discharge the bill won support from four Republicans on the initial petition, and several more once it came to the floor vote.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

The Afghan man had fled the Taliban for refuge in upstate New York when U.S. immigration authorities ordered him deported to Uganda. The Cuban woman was working at a Texas Chick-fil-A when she was arrested after a minor traffic accident and told she was being sent to Ecuador.

There’s the Mauritanian man living in Michigan told he’d have to go to Uganda, the Venezuelan mother in Ohio told she’d be sent to Ecuador and the Bolivians, Ecuadorians and so many others across the country ordered sent to Honduras.

They are among more than 13,000 immigrants who were living legally in the U.S., waiting for rulings on asylum claims, when they suddenly faced so-called third-country deportation orders, destined for countries where most had no ties, according to the nonprofit group Mobile Pathways, which pushes for transparency in immigration proceedings.

Yet few have been deported, even as the White House pushes for ever more immigrant expulsions. Thanks to unexplained changes in U.S. policy, many are now mired in immigration limbo, unable to argue their asylum claims in court and unsure if they’ll be shackled and put on a deportation flight to a country they’ve never seen.

Some are in detention, though it’s unclear how many. All have lost permission to work legally, a right most had while pursuing their asylum claims, compounding the worry and dread that has rippled through immigrant communities.

And that may be the point.

“This administration’s goal is to instill fear into people. That’s the primary thing,” said Cassandra Charles, a senior staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, which has been fighting the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. The fear of being deported to an unknown country could, advocates believe, drive migrants to abandon their immigration cases and decide to return to their home countries.

Things may be changing.

In mid-March, top Immigration and Customs Enforcement legal officials told field attorneys with the Department of Homeland Security in an email to stop filing new motions for third-country deportations tied to asylum cases. The email, which has been seen by the Associated Press, did not give a reason. It has not been publicly released, and Homeland Security did not respond to requests to explain if the halt was permanent.

But the earlier deportation cases? Those are continuing.

An asylum seeker says she’s in panic over possibly being sent to a country she doesn’t know

In 2024, a Guatemalan woman who says she had been held captive and repeatedly sexually assaulted by members of a powerful gang arrived with her 4-year-old daughter at the U.S.-Mexico border and asked for asylum. She later discovered she was pregnant with another child, conceived during a rape.

In December, she sat in a San Francisco immigration courtroom and listened as an ICE attorney sought to have her deported.

The ICE attorney didn’t ask the judge that she be sent back to Guatemala. Instead, the attorney said, the woman from the Indigenous Guatemalan highlands would go to one of three countries: Ecuador, Honduras or across the globe to Uganda.

Until that moment, she’d never heard of Ecuador or Uganda.

“When I arrived in this country, I was filled with hope again and I thanked God for being alive,” the woman said after the hearing, her eyes filling with tears. “When I think about having to go to those other countries, I panic because I hear they are violent and dangerous.” She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from U.S. immigration authorities or the Guatemalan gang network.

There have been more than 13,000 removal orders for asylum seekers

ICE attorneys, the de facto prosecutors in immigration courts, were first instructed last summer to file motions known as “pretermissions” that end migrants’ asylum claims and allow them to be deported.

“They’re not saying the person doesn’t have a claim,” said Sarah Mehta, who tracks immigration issues at the American Civil Liberties Union. “They’re just saying, ‘We’re kicking this case completely out of court and we’re going to send that person to another country.’”

The pace of deportation orders picked up in October after a ruling from the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, which sets legal precedent inside the byzantine immigration court system.

The ruling from the three judges — two appointed by former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and the third a holdover from the first Trump administration — cleared the way for migrants seeking asylum to be removed to any third country where the U.S. State Department determines they won’t face persecution or torture.

After the ruling, the government aggressively expanded the practice of ending asylum claims.

More than 13,000 migrants have been ordered deported to so-called “safe third countries” after their asylum cases were canceled, according to data from San Francisco-based Mobile Pathways. More than half the orders were for Honduras, Ecuador or Uganda, with the rest scattered among nearly three dozen other countries.

Deported migrants are free, at least theoretically, to pursue asylum and stay in those third countries, even if some have barely functioning asylum systems.

Deportations have been far more complicated than the government expected

Immigration authorities have released little information about the third-country agreements, known as Asylum Cooperative Agreements, or the deportees, and it’s unclear exactly how many have been deported to third countries as part of asylum removals.

According to Third Country Deportation Watch, a tracker run by the groups Refugees International and Human Rights First, fewer than 100 of them are thought to have been deported.

In a statement, Homeland Security called the agreements “lawful bilateral arrangements that allow illegal aliens seeking asylum in the United States to pursue protection in a partner country that has agreed to fairly adjudicate their claims.”

“DHS is using every lawful tool available to address the backlog and abuse of the asylum system,” said the statement, which was attributed only to a spokesperson. There are roughly 2 million backlogged asylum cases in the immigration system.

But deportations clearly turned out to be far more complicated than the government expected, restricted by a variety of legal challenges, the scope of the international agreements and a limited number of airplanes.

Mobile Pathways data, for example, shows that thousands of people have been ordered deported to Honduras — despite a diplomatic agreement that allows the country to take a total of just 10 such deportees per month for 24 months. Dozens of people ordered to Honduras in recent months did not speak Spanish as their primary language, but were native speakers of English, Uzbek and French, among other languages.

And while hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants have been ordered sent to Uganda, a top Ugandan official said none have arrived. U.S. authorities may be “doing a cost analysis” and trying to avoid dispatching flights with only a few people on board, Okello Oryem, the Ugandan minister of state for foreign affairs, told the Associated Press.

“You can’t be doing one, two people” at a time,” Oryem said. “Planeloads — that is the most effective way.”

Many immigration lawyers suspect that the March email ordering a halt in new asylum pretermissions could indicate a shift toward other forms of third-country deportations.

“Right now they haven’t been able to remove that many people,” said the ACLU’s Mehta. “I do think that will change.”

“They’re in a hiring spree right now. They will have more planes. If they get more agreements, they’ll be able to send more people to more countries.”

Sullivan writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Garance Burke in San Francisco, Joshua Goodman in Miami, Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Molly A. Wallace in Chicago contributed to this report.

ATLANTA — Over the past three decades, the collection of DNA from convicted criminals has become standard in the U.S. justice system, and many states now also swab people arrested for serious crimes.

Legislation awaiting a final vote in Georgia would take that a step further by collecting DNA from people charged with less serious misdemeanors — but only if federal immigration authorities want them detained. That could include immigrants not ultimately deported.

If enacted, Georgia’s measure would make it the third state to single out immigrants believed to be in the U.S. illegally for the collection of genetic material that wouldn’t be taken from others. Florida passed a similar law in 2023. And Oklahoma in 2009 authorized DNA collection from immigrants in the U.S. illegally, though it remains subject to funding.

The new legislation comes as President Trump’s administration seeks to expand its use of DNA and biometrics in immigration enforcement as it carries out a plan to deport millions of people from the U.S.

“It is one example of something we are seeing across the landscape, which is government actors at all levels vacuuming up DNA in all available contexts,” said Stevie Glaberson, director of research and advocacy at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University law school.

Immigrant DNA collection has grown in recent years

The FBI launched the National DNA Index System in 1998 to compile DNA samples submitted by federal, state and local authorities. It’s grown in size and scope and now contains more than 26 million DNA profiles, many from people convicted of crimes.

A federal law enacted 20 years ago allowed the attorney general to expand DNA collection to people arrested and to noncitizens detained under federal authority. But because of exceptions authorized by federal officials, few immigrants had their DNA collected.

That changed in 2020, during Trump’s first term, when a new Department of Justice rule took away much of that discretion. Over the next five years, the Department of Homeland Security added the DNA profiles of more than 2.6 million detainees to the national database, according to an analysis by the Center on Privacy and Technology.

The department did not answer questions from the Associated Press about the percentage of detained immigrants whose DNA has been collected during Trump’s second term.

But the department is looking to expand its authority. A proposed rule would allow it to collect DNA, including from U.S. citizens, to determine family relationships in immigrant benefit cases.

States don’t typically collect DNA for misdemeanor arrests

Though many states collect DNA from people arrested for felonies, just 10 states collect it from people arrested for certain misdemeanors, such as sex offenses, and none collect it for all misdemeanor arrests, according to an AP analysis of data compiled by the Boise State University Department of Criminal Justice.

But under the Florida and Oklahoma laws, any arrest could lead to DNA collection for immigrants subject to federal detainer requests. Officials in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation did not respond to questions about whether those laws are being used.

The Georgia legislation would require DNA collection from immigrants facing any misdemeanor or felony charges if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued a detainer request but has not picked up the person within 48 hours.

Georgia state Sen. Tim Bearden, a Republican sponsoring the bill, described the measure as a means of solving crimes.

“Technology is changing quickly, and DNA is one of those things that help us tremendously when we’re trying to make sure to bring justice to victims in this state and across this country,” Bearden said at a March hearing.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that “partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country.”

Could a broken tail light lead to a DNA swab?

A 2024 Georgia law mandates that local law enforcement cooperate with federal authorities to identify and detain immigrants in the U.S. illegally, or else lose state funding. This year’s legislation would build upon that.

Some legal experts say it could result in DNA collections from immigrants taken into custody for minor violations. Traffic offenses that are penalized as civil violations in some states are considered misdemeanors in Georgia, making them subject to the new law, said Mazie Lynn Guertin, executive director and policy advocate with the Georgia Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

“We don’t think that swabbing a person who’s committed a traffic violation is a boon for public safety,” Guertin said. “The correlation between a broken tail light and a crime that’s solvable with DNA is pretty attenuated in most cases.”

People subject to federal immigration detainer requests aren’t necessarily undocumented or deportable, because they may later prove their legal presence, said Kyle Gomez-Leineweber, director of policy for Common Cause Georgia. But such people could have their DNA collected under the Georgia legislation.

“What this really does is it creates a two-tiered system where some of the DNA would be collected based off of the perception of an individual’s immigration status,” said Gomez-Leineweber.

Legal experts raise questions about constitutional rights

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 upheld a Maryland law allowing DNA to be collected from people charged — but not yet convicted — of certain serious crimes. That law allows DNA to be added to a database after it’s determined there is probable cause to detain someone, provided it’s deleted if the person is not ultimately convicted.

The Maryland case often is cited as justification for an expansion of DNA collection. But some immigrant advocates question whether civil immigration detainers meet the probable cause threshold to make DNA collection acceptable under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

“There doesn’t appear to be any kind of meaningful justification for states to step in to require the collection of DNA — of genetic material — from noncitizens in their custody who have merely been accused of a crime, even a low-level crime,” said Jorge Loweree, managing director of the American Immigration Council. “It seems like this is just an effort to increase the surveillance of noncitizens.”

Kramon and Lieb write for the Associated Press. Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Mo.

The U.S. can continue to detain immigrants without bond, an appeals court ruled on Wednesday, handing a victory to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

The opinion from a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis overturned a lower court ruling that required that a native of Mexico arrested for lacking legal documents be given a bond hearing before an immigration judge.

It’s the second appeals court to rule in favor of the administration on this issue. The 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled last month that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country was consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law.

Both appeals court opinions counter recent lower court decisions across the country that argued the practice is illegal.

In November, a district court decision in California granted detained immigrants with no criminal history the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in detention nationwide.

Under past administrations, most noncitizens with no criminal record who were arrested away from the border had an opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases wound through immigration court. Historically, bond was often granted to those without criminal convictions who were not flight risks, and mandatory detention was limited to recent border crossers.

In the case before the 8th Circuit, Joaquin Herrera Avila of Mexico was apprehended in Minneapolis in August 2025 for lacking legal documents authorizing his admission into the United States. The Department of Homeland Security detained Avila without bond and began deportation proceedings.

He filed a petition seeking immediate release or a bond hearing. A federal judge in Minnesota granted the petition, saying the law authorized detention without bond when a person seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to being admitted. The judge found this was not the case for Avila because he had lived in the country for years without seeking naturalization, asylum or refugee status and thus wasn’t “seeking admission.”

Circuit Court Judge Bobby E. Shepherd wrote for the majority in a 2-1 opinion that the law was “clear that an ‘applicant for admission’ is also an alien who is ‘seeking admission,’” and so Avila couldn’t petition on these grounds.

Circuit Court Judge Ralph R. Erickson dissented, saying that Avila would have been entitled to a bond hearing during his deportation hearings if he had been arrested during the past 29 years. Now, he wrote, the Circuit Court has ruled that Avila and millions of others would be subject to mandatory detention under a novel interpretation of “alien seeking admission” that hasn’t been used by the courts or five previous presidential administrations.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Avila, didn’t immediately return an email message seeking comment.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi hailed the ruling, writing in a social media post: “MASSIVE COURT VICTORY against activist judges and for President Trump’s law and order agenda!”

At question is the issue of whether the government is required to ask a neutral judge to to determine whether it is legal to imprison someone.

It’s based on the habeas corpus, which is a Latin legal term referring to the constitutional right for people to legally challenge their detention by the government.

Immigrants have filed more than 30,000 habeas corpus petitions in federal court alleging illegal detention since Trump took office, according to a tally by the Associated Press. Many have succeeded.

McAvoy writes for the Associated Press.

Nearly 600 immigrant children were held in a Texas family detention center in recent months without enough food, medical care or mental health services, as their time inside stretched beyond court-mandated limits, according to court documents.

Children and families held at the detention facility in Dilley, where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were sent this year, also faced virus outbreaks and lasting lockdowns in December and January, although the total number of children held there has fallen in recent weeks, according to the attorney reports and site visits.

The case of Liam, a preschooler who was wearing a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack when he was picked up in Minnesota by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, stoked protests over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, including among detainees who gathered and held up signs in the yard behind the Dilley facility’s chain-link fences.

Last week about 85 children remained detained at the Dilley facility, but concerning conditions continued, said Mishan Wroe, directing attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, who visited in mid-March. In early February, a legal advocate for the children observed about 280 children.

The filings Friday cited numerous poignant cases, including that of a 13-year-old girl held at Dilley who tried to take her own life after staff withheld prescribed antidepressants and denied her request to join her mother, as reported by the Associated Press. The government reported there had been “no placements on suicide watch,” according to the filing. The AP obtained Dilley facility discharge documents that described a “suicide attempt by cutting of wrist” and “self-harm.”

The filings were submitted in a lawsuit launched in 1985 that led to the creation in 1997 of court-ordered supervision of standards and eventually established a 20-day limit in custody. The Trump administration seeks to end the Flores settlement, as it is known.

“For years, the Flores consent decree has been a tool of the left that is antithetical to the law and wastes valuable U.S. taxpayer funded resources,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “Being in detention is a choice.”

Attorneys for detainees highlighted the government’s data showing longer custody times for immigrant children, and also cited worms in food and poor access to medical care or sufficient legal counsel as reported by families and monitors at federal facilities.

“Dilley remains a hellhole,” said Leecia Welch, the chief legal director at Children’s Rights, who visits the center regularly to ensure compliance. “Although the number of children has decreased, the suffering remains the same.”

The Homeland Security spokesperson said the Dilley facility is retrofitted for families, who receive basic necessities including adequate food and water while in detention, and the Trump administration is working to quickly deport detainees.

A report from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed that about 595 immigrant children were held in custody for more than the 20-day limit in December and January, with some stretching into months, per the court filings.

“Approximately 265 of these children were detained for more than 50 days and a shocking 55 children were detained more than 100 days,” the filings state.

That is up from a previous government disclosure late last year that showed that from August to September, 400 children had been held at the Dilley facility beyond the 20-day limit. Homeland Security did not respond to questions seeking comment on the data.

Chief U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California is scheduled to hold a hearing on the case later this month.

Burke writes for the Associated Press.

BOSTON — A U.S. court ruling in Massachusetts has temporarily paused the looming termination of Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Somalia.

U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs’ ruling Friday said there would be “weighty” consequences if Somalia’s TPS designation were allowed to expire Tuesday. Advocates filed an emergency motion in federal court seeking to pause the termination after the Trump administration promised to end the designation last month during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where many Somalis live.

“Over one thousand people will face ‘a myriad of grave risks,’ including detention and deportation, physical violence if removed to Somalia, and forced separation from family members,” the ruling said.

Burroughs said implementing an administrative stay and deferring ruling on the postponement gives both sides time to file briefs on the emergency motion.

“While the stay is in effect, the termination shall be null, void, and of no legal effect,” the ruling said, noting that those with TPS status or pending applications will retain rights including eligibility for work authorization and protection against deportation and detention.

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the ruling is the latest example of a judge preventing Trump from “restoring integrity” to the U.S. immigration system.

“Temporary means temporary,” the statement said. “Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status. Allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. The Trump administration is putting Americans first.”

Representatives of the plaintiffs fighting the termination said in a statement that even though the order is temporary and “many battles lie ahead,” they are “heartened by the interim protection today’s order affords all Somali people in the U.S. who have TPS or pending TPS applications.”

TOPEKA, Kan. — A Kansas town known for its prisons is allowing a shuttered private prison to reopen and house immigrants detained for living in the U.S. illegally after a nearly yearlong legal fight amid a massive national push for new detention centers.

The City Commission in Leavenworth on Tuesday approved a permit to private prison operator CoreCivic. Members voted 4 to 1 to approve a three-year permit with conditions that set minimum staffing levels, ban the housing of minors and provide for a city oversight committee.

“If they don’t follow those guidelines, we can pull the permit,” Mayor Nancy Bauder said before the vote.

The 1,104-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center is 10 miles west of the Kansas City International Airport. CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest private prison operators, said the center will generate $60 million annually once it’s fully open.

Leavenworth, Kan., sued CoreCivic after it tried to reopen the shuttered prison without city officials signing off on the deal.

The legal battle played out in state and federal courts, with the Department of Justice siding with CoreCivic in legal filings. The department argued that the city was engaged in an “aggressive and unlawful effort” to “interfere with federal immigration enforcement.”

It appears to be the only such legal battle nationally to delay a private prison from opening amid President Trump’s push for mass deportations. The city argued that requiring a permit would prevent future problems, while CoreCivic maintained that it didn’t need a permit and the process would take too long.

Leavenworth was an unlikely foe because the GOP-leaning city’s name alone evokes a shorthand for serving hard time. Prisons employ hundreds of workers locally at two military facilities, the nation’s first federal penitentiary, a Kansas correctional facility and a county jail, all within six miles of City Hall.

CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service in its Leavenworth facility in 2021 after then-President Joe Biden called on the Justice Department to curb the use of private prisons. The American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders said inmates’ rights had been violated and there were stabbings, suicides and even one homicide.

The city’s lawsuit described detainees locked in showers as punishment and accused CoreCivic of impeding city police force investigations of sexual assaults and other violent crimes.

Almost four dozen people spoke in opposition to the permit before the commission’s vote. Bauder admonished the crowd several times for being too noisy, and police removed a protester who yelled vulgar comments.

“We, we the people of Leavenworth, are not fooled and we don’t care about their money,” David Benitez, a city resident, told the commission.

Some backers of the permit cited the potential boost to the local economy. Two CoreCivic employees argued for approval, and one of them, Charles Johnson, of Kansas City, Kan., said his job gave him purpose and allowed his family to get off of state assistance.

“The people I work alongside are caring, professional and committed to doing things the right way,” he said, his comments drawing boos from critics outside the commission’s meeting room.

City Commissioner Holly Pittman said because the city “stood firm,” it could negotiate conditions on the permit. She said denying it would risk a potentially expensive lawsuit.

“I will not gamble the financial stability of this city,” she said before voting yes. “Let me be clear: Approval does not mean endorsement.”

Hollingsworth and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kan.