immigration

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is suspending a requirement that foreign visitors from countries that have qualified for the World Cup and have bought tickets for the soccer tournament pay as much as $15,000 in bonds to enter the United States, the State Department said Wednesday.

The department imposed the bond requirement last year for countries that it said had high rates of people overstaying their visas and other security issues as part of the Republican administration’s broader crackdown on immigration.

Travelers to the United States from 50 countries are required to pay the new bond, and five of those countries have qualified for the World Cup — Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia.

Citizens from those five countries who have purchased tickets from FIFA are now exempt from the visa bond requirement. World Cup team players, coaches and some staff already had been exempt from the bond requirement as part of the administration’s orders to prioritize the processing of visas for the tournament.

“The United States is excited to organize the biggest and best FIFA World Cup in history,” Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar said. “We are waiving visa bonds for qualified fans who bought World Cup tickets” and opted in to the “FIFA Pass” system that allows expedited visa appointments as of April 15.

The waiver is a rare loosening of immigration requirements under the administration and will ease travel burdens for at least some visitors to the U.S. for the World Cup, which begins June 11 and is co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The administration has taken dramatic steps to restrict immigration in ways that critics say are incongruous with the type of unifying message that a global sporting event such as the World Cup is supposed to project.

For instance, the administration has barred travelers from Iran and Haiti, though World Cup players, coaches and other support personnel are exempt. Travelers from Ivory Coast and Senegal face partial restrictions under an expanded version of that travel ban, even without the visa bond exemption.

Foreign travelers also are facing new requirements to submit their social media histories, while the administration had deployed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at airports recently when Transportation Security Administration personnel were not being paid.

Those measures prompted Amnesty International and dozens of U.S. civil and human rights groups to issue a “World Cup travel advisory” that warns travelers about the climate in the U.S.

In a report this month, the main advocacy group for U.S. hotels blamed visa barriers and other geopolitical issues for “significantly suppressing international demand,” leading to hotel bookings for the soccer tournament that are far below what had initially been anticipated.

The American Hotel & Lodging Assn. said travelers are concerned about potentially lengthy visa wait times and increased fees, along with uncertainty about how they’re being processed to enter the U.S.

The bond requirements are part of the administration’s larger effort to clamp down on migrants who travel to the U.S. on temporary visas but then overstay them. Visa applicants from the affected countries are required to pay $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 in bonds, which will be refunded if the traveler complies with the terms of the visa or if the visa application is denied.

As of early April, the number of World Cup fans affected by the bond requirement was believed to be relatively small, perhaps only about 250 people, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. But they said that number was changing rapidly as more people buy tickets and some with tickets opt against traveling.

FIFA had requested the waiver, which had to be approved by the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, and was the topic of discussion at multiple meetings at the White House and elsewhere in Washington for several months, the officials said.

Kim and Lee write for the Associated Press.

TUCSON — Tucson migrant advocates have designed a new tool to help track immigration-related enforcement in and around the city as arrests surge under President Trump’s mass deportation initiative.

Tucson Migra Map allows people to document and visualize enforcement activities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies. While revealing patterns, the tool also raises questions about safety, transparency and the limits of public tracking tools.

“It indicates the level of chaos and how disruptive it is to our community,” activist Lucia Vindiola said in a statement. Vindiola launched the mutual aid group La Bodega to provide groceries and other help to people affected by increased enforcement.

“We are seeing firsthand the impact on families, limiting them from shopping for groceries and supplies,” Vindiola said.

Since Trump took office, immigration-related detentions have more than tripled in fiscal year 2025 — surging from fewer than 200 in late 2024 to more than 800 by June 2025. The response in communities nationwide has been swift, with groups such as the Tucson Rapid Response network organizing to monitor and track federal immigration action on the street.

Geographer Dugan Meyer, one of the map’s creators, is a PhD student at the University of Arizona who volunteers with Tucson Rapid Response and related organizations.

“This project came out of the documentation work that Rapid Response is doing, but also around the city,” Meyer said. “It is a community research project, community mapping project.”

The data are pulled from spreadsheets maintained since January 2025 that tracks and documents federal enforcement actions in greater Tucson such as raids, vehicle stops and aerial surveillance.

Included is the December raid at one of several targeted Taco Giro locations where Democratic U.S. House Rep. Adelita Grijalva was pepper-sprayed by federal agents.

Incidents on the map are vetted and classified as “confirmed” or “credible but unconfirmed” based on the level of evidence.

“If we have photographs of, say, an agent wearing a tactical vest that says ‘ICE,’ that’s confirmed,” Meyer said. “Credible unconfirmed, we’re very confident something happened.”

Meyer said a trained Rapid Response observer witnessing an event, even if they had not photographed it, would be an example of a credible unconfirmed event.

“Their testimony about that would be enough for us,” he said.

Hundreds of people, including noncitizens, have contributed their eyewitness accounts of immigration enforcement to the map and the database it draws from, according to the Tucson Migrant Map website. Information from the local news is included, along with reports collected by Rapid Response and other neighborhood networks such as Migra Watch, and information shared on social media and in WhatsApp groups.

Rapid Response member Steven Davis has documented five incidents, including one in which he was pepper-sprayed by law enforcement. He says having these incidents recorded and published furthers his efforts to better show people what ICE is doing in their community.

“The value of the observation is that we take this out of the shadows and get it out into the public,” Davis said. “The Migra Map is a public-facing map that makes visible this activity that is mostly behind the scenes.”

Davis said knowing the data he collects will be used for Migra Map makes it more important for him to document diligently.

“There’s the saying, garbage in, garbage out. I want to make sure that the information that I’m providing is the most accurate information that I can possibly provide,” Davis said.

Meyer said that as of late April, the team had reviewed around 562 incidents, with about 300 meeting the threshold to be included. The goal is to review reported incidents within a week, then add qualifying cases.

“We know that the map is an undercount by any estimation,” Meyer said.

The map also includes police facilities and immigration detention facilities, along with flight paths of various federal agencies’ surveillance flights.

The accuracy of the reporting has been confirmed as more data is gathered, said Meyer. For example, repeated vehicle reports often confirm instances of surveillance.

Meyer said he hopes that the map will ultimately become a platform for information accessible to the public.

He said he thinks the map “can show in a way that people may know intuitively already.”

“It really helps us think about directly when we can see these things in relation to each other,” he added.

Meyer said that makes it easier to identify trends and point out hotspots like El Super grocery store on Tucson’s south side, which is frequented by mostly Latino customers and has seen a high concentration of enforcement.

“It’s used as a hunting ground for that, but there are others as well,” Meyer said, such as specific apartment complexes targeted by ICE or other agencies.

The Tucson Migra Map was not the first of its kind.

Last year, an initiative called People over Papers was used nationally to track immigration enforcement before being shut down by its host site, Padlet, for violations of its content policy.

Federal officials have said such tracking puts officers at risk, and other tracking sites, including ICEBlock, were previously taken offline after the Trump administration called for their removal.

Meyer said that he hopes the Constitution’s protection of free speech will protect Migra Map from a similar fate, and that people in other places will be encouraged to launch their own initiatives.

Davis, the observer, said that unlike the earlier trackers, the Migra Map doesn’t attempt to alert people to events occurring in real time, but reports enforcement actions after the fact.

“It doesn’t tell you where ICE is active right now. It tells you where ICE has been active in the last months,” Davis said. “You could file a Freedom of Information Act for the Tucson District Office and get the exact same information that we’re providing on the map.”

Meyer also noted that he and the other developers have been public about the project.

“It’s not a crime to collect this information and share this information,” said Meyer.

Nonetheless, some contributors opt to report anonymously out of fear.

“I think that anyone paying attention is at the very least concerned” about the current administration, Meyer said. He said he feels privileged he can publicly associate with the project.

But he allowed that Migra Map is far from perfect.

“The important thing is that it doesn’t tell us a lot,” Meyer said. “While many people would like it to be a real-time alert system, this map can’t be that.”

Cuellar writes for Arizona Luminaria, where this story was originally published. It was distributed through a partnership with the Associated Press.

A large scale immigration enforcement operation launched under Donald Trump in Minneapolis significantly disrupted federal crime fighting efforts in the region, according to a review of court records and interviews with law enforcement officials.

The operation brought thousands of immigration agents into Minnesota beginning in December as part of a broader crackdown targeting undocumented immigrants and alleged criminal networks.

While the administration described the campaign as a public safety initiative focused on violent offenders, officials and legal records suggest the crackdown diverted federal resources away from investigations into serious crimes including gun trafficking, drug offenses, gang activity, and sex trafficking.

Federal Criminal Prosecutions Dropped Sharply

Court records reviewed by Reuters showed a steep decline in federal prosecutions during the first four months of the year.

Between January and April, federal prosecutors charged only eight individuals with gun or drug crimes compared with seventy seven during the same period last year.

Overall felony prosecutions also fell sharply, with ninety felony cases filed compared with nearly double that number a year earlier.

A significant portion of those cases involved immigration related offenses or arrests linked to protests against the crackdown itself rather than traditional violent crime investigations.

Prosecutors and Agents Were Reassigned

Officials said many federal agents who had previously worked on drug task forces and gang investigations were reassigned to immigration enforcement duties.

Some investigators reportedly became unavailable for ongoing criminal investigations because they were focused on immigration operations.

The crackdown also triggered major staffing problems inside the Minnesota office of the United States Attorney.

Several prosecutors reportedly resigned after being ordered to investigate the widow of a protester who was fatally shot during the immigration operation.

Sources familiar with the office said staffing levels dropped to roughly half of their normal strength, leaving prosecutors struggling to manage existing cases.

Local Authorities Say Public Safety Was Affected

Mary Moriarty, the top prosecutor in Hennepin County, said federal investigators had begun bringing complex criminal cases to local authorities because federal prosecutors lacked the resources to handle them.

She argued that the diversion of resources toward immigration enforcement weakened efforts to address serious crimes such as drug trafficking and sex trafficking.

Former federal prosecutor John Marti warned that reduced federal involvement could leave dangerous criminals operating without effective intervention.

Officials also expressed concern that the long term impact on federal and local cooperation could continue even after the immigration operation ends.

Immigration Crackdown Sparked National Controversy

The operation became one of the most controversial domestic security actions of Trump’s presidency.

Federal agents conducted large scale raids, detentions, and deportation efforts across Minneapolis, leading to protests and confrontations with demonstrators.

Two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were fatally shot during the unrest, intensifying public outrage and increasing political pressure on the administration.

The crackdown eventually prompted a partial retreat by federal authorities amid growing criticism over aggressive policing tactics.

Cases Delayed and Dismissed

The shortage of prosecutors and staff disruptions also affected ongoing criminal cases.

In one example, a federal judge dismissed a firearms case against Tavon Timberlake after prosecutors repeatedly missed deadlines, with staffing shortages cited as one factor.

Federal prosecutors also sought to drop a major carjacking case involving multiple deaths so that local prosecutors could take over.

At the same time, authorities continued pursuing charges against dozens of protesters linked to demonstrations against the immigration operation, although many of those cases were later dismissed.

Analysis

The Minneapolis operation highlights the broader national debate over balancing immigration enforcement with traditional public safety priorities.

Supporters of the crackdown argue that stronger immigration controls are necessary to combat crime and restore law and order. Critics contend that redirecting federal resources toward mass immigration enforcement weakens efforts to investigate violent crime and organised criminal activity.

The situation in Minnesota also illustrates how large scale political priorities can reshape the functioning of federal law enforcement agencies at the local level.

Analysts say the long term consequences may include weakened cooperation between federal and local authorities, reduced capacity for complex investigations, and growing concerns over whether public safety resources are being allocated effectively.

With information from Reuters.

WASHINGTON — Most U.S. adults say the United States is no longer a great place for immigrants, according to a new AP-NORC poll, as about one-third of Americans report knowing someone impacted by the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

A new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research of more than 2,500 U.S. adults finds about 6 in 10 say the country used to be a great place for immigrants but is not anymore. About one-third of U.S. adults — and more than half of Hispanic adults — say that over the last year they, or someone they know, have started carrying proof of their immigration status or U.S. citizenship, been detained or deported, changed travel plans, or significantly changed routines, such as avoiding work, school or leaving the house, because of their immigration status.

The poll comes as the Supreme Court is considering whether the Trump administration should be allowed to restrict birthright citizenship, as well as following months of sweeping immigration enforcement and mass deportations of immigrants.

Missouri retiree Reid Gibson, an independent, is furious about the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants. He hopes America eventually becomes more welcoming to immigrants again, but he worries “it may take many years to reverse the damage that the Trump administration has inflicted” with its policies.

The poll finds that many Americans know someone who has been affected by Trump’s approach. That includes Gibson’s stepdaughter, who he says started carrying her passport because of concerns that her darker skin would make her a target in immigration crackdowns.

“It’s just plain wrong,” Gibson, 72, added. “This is not a good country for immigrants anymore.”

Americans’ personal connections to immigration enforcement

Many U.S. adults have adapted their lives to heightened immigration enforcement over the last year, as Trump increased detentions and sought to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history.

Democrats are more likely than independents or Republicans to know someone affected, and those with a personal connection are more likely to say the U.S. is no longer a great place for immigrants.

Kathy Bailey, a 79-year-old Illinois Democrat, has seen the administration’s immigration policies seep into the small-town swim class she regularly attends. She said two women in the class — both naturalized U.S. citizens — have begun carrying their passports when they leave home. Bailey says one of the women, who is from Latin America, has been especially worried about sticking out in an overwhelmingly white community.

“She’s an American citizen now, but she’s so scared that she has to carry her passport,” said Bailey. “She’s just another sweet old grandmother swimming at 5 in the morning.”

About 6 in 10 Hispanic adults say they or someone they know has been impacted by immigration enforcement in this way, much higher than among Black or white adults.

“This is terrible for these women!” Bailey said. “I’m just stunned at what we are coming to.”

Most believe the U.S. used to be a great place for immigrants

Nick Grivas, a 40-year-old from Massachusetts, said his own grandfather’s immigration to the U.S. from Greece has made him feel the impact of the president’s policies. It’s part of why he believes the U.S. stopped being a promising place for people seeking a new life.

“We can see how we’re treating children and the children of the immigrants, and we’re not viewing them as potential future Americans,” Grivas said.

Roughly 3 in 10 U.S. adults say the U.S. is a great place for immigrants, according to the poll, while about 1 in 10 say it never was. The belief that America is no longer great for immigrants is more common among Democrats and independents, as well as among those born outside the U.S.

Grivas, a Democrat, worries that federal policies against immigration could stunt the country by discouraging new arrivals from investing in their local communities, especially if they don’t believe they will be allowed to remain.

“You’re less willing to commit to the project if you don’t think that you’re gonna be able to stay,” he said.

Most support birthright citizenship, but also hold nuanced views

The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in President Trump’s efforts to restrict birthright citizenship by declaring that children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults in the poll say automatic citizenship should be granted to all children born in the country, a view that most Democrats and independents back. Republicans are more doubtful: just 44% support birthright citizenship. The poll also shows that some people are conflicted, saying in general that they support birthright citizenship but also that they oppose it in some specific circumstances.

Among those who object to automatic citizenship is Linda Steele, a 70-year-old from Florida, who believes that only children born to American citizens should be granted citizenship. Steele, a Republican, does not believe foreigners living legally in the U.S. — whether for work or other reasons — should be able to have a child who automatically becomes a U.S. citizen.

“That shouldn’t be allowed,” she said. “They’re just here visiting or going to school.”

When asked about some specific circumstances, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they support birthright citizenship for children born to parents on legal U.S. tourist visas, while only about half support it for those born to parents who are in the country illegally. An even higher share, 75%, support automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country legally on work visas, with much of that increased support coming from Republicans saying this was an acceptable situation.

Kevin Craig, a 57-year-old from Wilmington, North Carolina, does not believe citizenship should be automatically granted. Craig, who leans conservative, believes there should be “at least some opportunity for intervention by a human being who can make some sort of a judgment.”

But he added: “I think my personal opinion is that I can’t think of a situation where it would not be granted.”

Sanders, Sullivan and Catalini write for the Associated Press. Sullivan reported from Minneapolis. Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pa. The AP-NORC poll of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

WASHINGTON — When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was questioned by senators during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his department off the front pages of the news.

To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.

The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it is not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.

“Clearly they’ve stepped back from the, for want of a better word, the Bovinoist tactics of before,” said Mark Krikorian, the president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. “But it’s not clear this means they’re actually stepping back from immigration.”

The Trump administration launched a series of immigration enforcement operations last year in mostly Democratic-led cities, which drove up arrests in large-scale sweeps. The crackdown sparked clashes between protesters and enforcement officers and led to the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two U.S. citizens.

Since then, the president’s hard-line anti-immigration agenda has lost popularity with voters and there have been no new high-profile city-based operations launched, raising questions about the administration’s strategy.

“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegals that shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a more quiet way,” Mullin said in an interview April 16 with CNBC.

Immigration arrests have dropped, but deportation goals remain

ICE arrests have fallen in recent months, and the number of people in immigration detention has dropped from a high of roughly 72,000 in January to 58,000 this week, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.

But in a sign of its continued determination, ICE in budget documents says it plans to remove 1 million people this fiscal year and the next compared with roughly 442,000 people last year. The agency also has plenty of money to carry out its mission, with Congress granting the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion for Trump’s immigration agenda last year.

The administration aims to have enough space to detain roughly 100,000 people this fiscal year, which would more than double the average daily number held in ICE detention last year. The administration has already expanded its detention capacity with the purchase of 11 warehouses across the country.

“They are working on really building a juggernaut of a system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, during President Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said there had been no change to Trump’s strategy.

“President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.

ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Stripping away legal protections to ramp up deportations

Advocates for immigrants are bracing for the Trump administration to turn its attention more intently to stripping away protections for migrants with temporary legal status to remain in the U.S. while their cases are being adjudicated.

In one example of this, the number of green cards approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dropped by half over the course of a year under the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which supports immigration into the U.S. Humanitarian visas for refugees or people who qualified for asylum saw the biggest declines.

USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the drop was due to increased vetting of applicants by the administration.

The Trump administration has also pushed to strip Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of people, with a key case weighing whether it’s overstepped its power to do so being heard at the Supreme Court this week.

Advocates see it as a way to send a chilling message to immigrant communities and make more people vulnerable to deportation. It also enables the department to operate without the public spectacle of workplace raids or home arrests.

ICE has also focused over the past year on creating agreements with jurisdictions around the country that allow local and state law enforcement to carry out an expanding array of immigration enforcement tasks, ranging from checking the immigration status of people in their jails to incorporating immigration checks during routine traffic stops.

These agreements, known as 287g, have grown from 135 in 20 states before Trump took office to more than 1,400 in 41 states and territories now.

Some states, most noticeably Florida and Texas, have mandated various forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.

Meissner, from MPI, said Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is likely to prioritize further discussions about how cities and states can cooperate with ICE.

“At the end of the day, some of this may very well succeed in increasing the numbers,” Meissner said.

Calls to enforce work restrictions

Conservatives who want more deportations say the only way to truly crack down on illegal immigration is to make it so difficult for the migrants to work that they’ll leave on their own.

The Trump administration has already taken steps to make life harder for people in the country illegally including limiting who can live in public housing by immigration status, sharing Medicaid information with ICE and requiring people in the country illegally to register with the federal government.

Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Social Security Administration could send out letters alerting employers when an employee’s name doesn’t match their Social Security number. Authorities could repeatedly and consistently carry out audits of I-9 forms, which companies are supposed to fill out and submit to the federal government showing that new hires are legally able to work. And they could require banks to collect citizenship information on customers.

Whatever the strategy going forward, the administration is facing heavy pressure not to back away from its goals.

“The numbers are too low,” said Mike Howell, part of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for how the administration can actually get to a million deportations a year by using tactics such as worksite enforcement.

“The deportation numbers are just too low,” Howell said, “and they need to be much higher, and they can be much higher.”

Santana writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The White House is warning Congress that funding to pay Department of Homeland Security personnel will “soon run out,” sparking new threats of airport disruptions and national security concerns as the House slow-walks legislation to end what has been the longest-ever lapse in agency funding.

In a memo late Tuesday to lawmakers, the Office of Management and Budget said money that President Trump tapped to pay Transportation Security Administration and other workers through executive actions will be exhausted by May. It called on the House to quickly approve the budget resolution senators approved in an all-night session last week that would pave the way for full funding for the department.

“DHS will soon run out of critical operating funds, placing essential personnel and operations at risk,” the memo said.

The pressure from the Trump administration could help House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose narrow Republican majority has been stalled out, tangled in internal party disputes on a range of pending issues, including the Homeland Security funding. They have left the chamber at a virtual standstill.

The House was expected to vote as soon as Wednesday on the Senate budget resolution that is designed to unlock a multistep process to eventually fund the department. But by midday, House action again screeched to a halt. The administration has warned GOP lawmakers off making changes that could prolong passage.

“Restoring funding for the Department of Homeland Security has never been more urgent, as demonstrated by recent events,” the memo said, a nod to the situation over the weekend when a man armed with guns and knives tried to storm the annual White House correspondents’ dinner that Trump, the vice president and top Cabinet officials were attending.

Homeland Security shutdown is longest ever

Homeland Security has been operating without regular funds for more than two months after Democrats refused to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without changes to those operations after the deaths of Americans protesting Trump’s deportation agenda.

While immigration enforcement workers have largely been paid through the flush of new cash — some $170 billion — that Congress approved as part of Trump’s tax cuts bill last year, others, including TSA, have had to rely on Trump’s intervention through executive action to ensure their paychecks.

But with salaries topping $1.6 billion every two weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said recently, those funds are drying up.

More than 1,000 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began, according to Airlines for America, the U.S. airlines trade group that called Wednesday on Congress to fully fund the agency.

“The urgency to provide predictable and stable funding for TSA is growing stronger by the day,” the group said in a statement. “Time and time again, our nation’s aviation workers and customers have been the victim of Congress’ failure to do their jobs.”

Complicated budget strategy ahead

House and Senate Republicans have embarked on a go-it-alone strategy, attempting to approve funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without Democrats. They want to provide $70 billion for those immigration operations for the remainder of Trump’s term to ensure no further interruptions.

It’s a cumbersome process, the same that was used last year to approve Trump’s tax cuts bill, that will play out over several weeks.

The Senate launched the process last week, and is now waiting on the House to act. Once that budget resolution is approved, both the House and Senate are expected to draft the actual funding bill, a process that can take weeks.

In the meantime, Johnson is next expected to quickly turn this week to legislation that would fund the other parts of Homeland Security, including TSA, the Coast Guard and other agencies.

That bipartisan bill has support from Democrats and already passed the Senate a month ago, when Republicans reluctantly agreed to carve out the immigration-related funds that Democrats had opposed. But it has been stalled out in the House, as Republicans in that chamber disagreed with the Senate’s approach.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

In a 3-0 ruling, court says Trump administration misread a decades-old immigration law to justify mandatory detention.

A United States federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration’s practice of subjecting most people arrested in its immigration crackdown to mandatory detention without the opportunity to seek release on bond.

In a 3-0 ruling on Tuesday, a panel of the New York-based US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the administration relied on a novel but incorrect interpretation of a decades-old immigration law to justify the policy.

Writing for the panel, US Circuit Judge Joseph F Bianco, a Trump appointee, warned that the government’s reading “would send a seismic shock through our immigration detention system and society”, straining already overcrowded facilities, separating families and disrupting communities.

Lawyers for the Trump administration say the mandatory detention policy is legal under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, passed in 1996.

But Bianco said the government had made “an attempt to muddy” the law’s “textually clear waters”, arguing that the administration’s interpretation “defies the statute’s context, structure, history, and purpose” and contradicts “longstanding executive branch practice”.

Under the Trump administration policy, the Department of Homeland Security last year took the position that non-citizens already living in the US, not just those arriving at the border, qualify as “applicants for admission” and are subject to mandatory detention.

Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” to the US are detained while their cases proceed in immigration courts and are ineligible for bond hearings.

The Department of Homeland Security has been denying bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country, including those who have been living in the US for years without any criminal history, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reports.

That is a departure from the practice under previous US administrations, when most non-citizens with no criminal record who were arrested away from the border were given the opportunity to request a bond while their cases moved through immigration court, according to AP.

In such cases, bonds were often granted to people who were deemed not to be flight risks, and mandatory detention was limited to those who had just entered the country.

Amy Belsher, director of immigrants rights’ litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the appeals court ruling affirmed “that the Trump administration’s policy of detaining immigrants without any process is unlawful and cannot stand”.

“The government cannot mandatorily detain millions of noncitizens, many of whom have lived here for decades, without an opportunity to seek release. It defies the Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and basic human decency,” Belsher said in a statement.

Conflicting rulings set stage for Supreme Court review

The New York court’s decision comes after two other appeals courts ruled in favour of the Trump administration’s policy.

Acknowledging the opposing rulings, Judge Bianco said the panel was parting ways with them and instead aligning with more than 370 lower-court judges nationwide who have rejected the administration’s position as a misreading of the law.

The split among the courts increases the likelihood that the US Supreme Court will weigh in.

The latest ruling also upheld an order by a New York judge that led to the release of Brazilian national Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, who was arrested by immigration officials last year while driving to work after living in the US for more than 20 years.

“The court was right to conclude the Trump administration can’t just ⁠reinterpret the law at its own whim,” Michael Tan, a lawyer for Barbosa at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

The Department of Justice, which is defending the mandatory detention policy in court, did not respond to a request for comment.

At the peak of the crackdown, carloads of masked immigration officers were a common sight in the streets of Minneapolis, while thousands of people were being arrested every week in Texas, Florida and California.

“Turn and burn,” top Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino called the strategy, with relentless displays of force and teams of agents descending on restaurant kitchens, bus stops and Home Depot parking lots.

In December, arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents peaked at nearly 40,000 nationwide and were nearly as high the next month, according to data provided to UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Associated Press.

In late January, the killings in Minneapolis of two American citizens by immigration officers and growing concerns over the government’s heavy-handed tactics led to a shake-up of top immigration officials. In the weeks that followed, ICE arrests across the country dropped on average by nearly 12%.

Polling has found the public felt the immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota went too far, a factor that may have contributed to the abrupt firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in early March.

The numbers don’t follow the same pattern everywhere

Bovino, who swaggered through raid scenes in tactical gear and was the public face of the Trump administration crackdown, was pushed aside following the killings in Minneapolis of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Border advisor Tom Homan was then sent to the Twin Cities to chart a new course for immigration enforcement, and he announced the drawdown of immigration agents in the state on Feb. 4.

An AP analysis of ICE arrest records show the department averaged 7,369 weekly arrests nationwide in the five weeks after Homan’s drawdown announcement, , the most recent period for which data is available, down from 8,347 per week in the previous five weeks. Those arrest numbers were still higher on average than during much of the first year of President Trump’s second term, and were dramatically higher than during the Biden administration.

The numbers were not, however, uniform across the country.

ICE arrests rose significantly in Kentucky, Indiana, North Carolina and Florida during those five weeks, in some cases hitting their highest weekly count since the start of Trump’s second term.. In Kentucky alone, weekly arrests more than doubled, reaching 86 by early March.

Those increases were offset by steep drops in a handful of large states, including Minnesota and Texas.

Many arrested were not Trump’s ‘worst of the worst’

The Trump administration insists it is targeting the most vicious criminals living illegally in the U.S., and the president has referred to them as “ the worst of the worst.”

In some cases the description is accurate, but the reality is complicated.

Many of the toughest criminals taken into ICE custody were already in prison, but many others who were arrested have no criminal history.

Nationally, some 46% of the people ICE arrested in the five weeks before Feb. 4 had no criminal charges or convictions, dropping to 41% in the five weeks that followed.

Yet that’s still above the 35% weekly average for the time since Trump returned to office. And in a number of states, even after Feb. 4, the share of noncriminals being arrested went up, not down.

Has there been a change in approach?

Across the country, thousands of federal court filings offer an imperfect window into how the Trump administration’s deportation tactics remain in high gear, even if activity has waned.

Like the 21-year-old Honduran man with no criminal record who has filed a petition for release after being arrested Feb. 22 in a suburban San Diego traffic stop. The father of three U.S. citizen children — ages 5, 3 and 10 months — had been under ICE surveillance, the petition says, before officers in tactical gear pulled him over.

Or the 33-year-old Venezuelan woman, a well-known south Texas doctor who worked in a region designated as medically underserved, who was arrested earlier this month with her 5-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, on her way to her husband’s asylum hearing.

She was arrested, officials said, for overstaying her visa.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the research and advocacy group the American Immigration Council, says he sees signs of change in lower arrest and detention numbers but warns it’s too early to know if those shifts are permanent.

“The Trump administration says: ‘We’re not slowing down,’ ‘Nothing has changed,’” in immigration enforcement, he said. “But it’s very clear that they have pulled back from some of the tactics of Operation Metro Surge,” the crackdown that swept Minneapolis.

Kessler and Sullivan write for the Associated Press. Kessler reported from Washington and Sullivan from Minneapolis. AP reporters Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report.

Lawyers say El Gamal family detained by Trump administration hours after returning home from 10-month detention.

A United States federal court has blocked the administration of United States President Donald Trump from deporting a woman and her five children following their release from immigration detention.

Hayam El Gamal and her five children, ranging in age from five to 18 years old, had been held for 10 months prior to their release earlier this week following a judge’s order. They had been held in detention for the longest of any known family during Trump’s second term in office,

But just days after returning to their home in Colorado, immigration authorities again detained the family on Saturday and sought to swiftly deport them, according to their lawyer.

“The Trump administration has kidnapped the El Gamal family in violation of a federal court order from the Western District of Texas, which ordered them Thursday not to detain or remove the family from the United States,” a statement from the family lawyers, shared by lawyer Eric Lee, said.

“The attempt to remove the El Gamal family is in violation of a federal court order and must be halted immediately,” it adds.

Lee said shortly after that US District Judge Fred Biery, who ordered the family’s initial release on Thursday, had granted an emergency order on Saturday barring their removal.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The Trump administration has at times flouted court orders barring it from deporting people from the US, pushing a hardline approach that critics say has defied legal constraints.

That has come amid a wider campaign to restrict immigration, legal and illegal, particularly from non-Western countries.

Hayam El Gamal and her children were detained by the Trump administration after her former husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, attacked a group of people in Boulder, Colorado, as they gathered in support of Israeli captives held by the Palestinian armed group Hamas in June 2025.

An 82-year-old woman later died from injuries sustained during the incident.

Soliman’s family condemned the attack and denied any knowledge that it was going to take place, with NBC News reporting that El Gamal divorced her husband soon after his arrest.

An FBI agent also testified under oath that there was no evidence that the family, who have not been charged with any crimes, was aware of the father’s plan.

Their nearly yearlong detention by the Trump administration has been described by the family’s lawyers and several lawmakers as an illegal and cruel effort to punish the family for an act they did not commit.

Following Soliman’s arrest, the White House, in a post on X, said it would seek to immediately expel the family, whose lawyers have said are in the process of applying for asylum after coming to the US on tourist visas from Egypt.

“Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon,” the White House post said.

The family has experienced deteriorating health and been denied proper medical care while in detention, according to their lawyers. Earlier in April, El Gamal was hospitalised due to a medical emergency related to an untreated growth on her chest, they said.

Immigration rights groups have noted that it is typically illegal to detain children for extended periods of time.

In a statement earlier this week, US Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, said the Trump administration’s motives would be clear if they sought to re-detain the family despite the judge’s order to release them.

“If, despite the judge’s recommendation, the Department of Homeland Security still objects to the release of an innocent woman and her five children, we know exactly why that is the case,” Durbin said.

“It is not because they present any danger to the community or a flight risk. It is because they are immigrants – Arab Muslim immigrants at that.”

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Millions more Americans might qualify for dual Canadian citizenship under a recent change to Canada’s requirements that has led to a surge in applications from its southern neighbor.

For people like Zack Loud of Farmington, Minn., it was a surprise to learn that under a new law, Canada already considered him and his siblings citizens because their grandmother is Canadian.

“My wife and I were already talking about potentially looking at jobs outside the country, but citizenship pushed Canada way up on our list,” he said.

Since the new law took effect Dec. 15, immigration lawyers in the United States and Canada say they have been overwhelmed by clients seeking help submitting proof of citizenship applications. Driven by politics, family heritage, job opportunities and other factors, thousands of Americans are exploring whether the easier process makes now the right time to gain dual citizenship.

Nicholas Berning, an immigration attorney at Boundary Bay Law in Bellingham, Wash., said his practice is “pretty much flooded with this.”

“We’ve kind of shifted a lot of other work away in order to push these cases through,” he said.

Immigration attorney Amandeep Hayer said his Vancouver, British Columbia-area practice went from about 200 citizenship cases a year to more than 20 consultations per day.

How the new law works

Canada has been changing its citizenship laws for decades, whether to update historic interpretations of law or to address discrimination issues.

Previously, Canadian citizenship by descent could only be passed down to one generation, from a parent to a child. But the new law opened up citizenship to anyone born before that date who could prove they have a direct Canadian ancestor — a grandparent, great-grandparent or even more distant ancestor.

Those born on or after Dec. 15 need to show that their Canadian parent lived in Canada for 1,095 days.

Under the new law, descendants of Canadians are already considered citizens but must provide proof to obtain a certificate of citizenship. Hayer estimated that there are millions of Americans who are Canadian descendants.

“You are Canadian, and you’re considered to be one your whole life,” said Hayer, who advocated for the new law in parliament. “That’s really what you’re applying for, the recognition of a right you already have vested.”

“The best way I can put it is like, if a baby’s born tomorrow in Canada, the baby’s Canadian even though they don’t have the birth certificate,” he said.

Americans interested in dual citizenship

American applicants have different motivations, but many say President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and other topics have led them to seek dual citizenship.

Michelle Cunha, of Bedford, Mass., said she decided to move to Canada after reflecting on decades of political activism and deciding she had “nothing left to give.”

“I put in my best effort for 30 years. I have done everything that I possibly can to make the United States what it promises the world to be, a place of freedom, a place of equality,” Cunha said. “But clearly we’re not there and we’re not going to get there anytime soon.”

Troy Hicks, who had a great-grandfather born in Canada, said he was spurred by an international trip.

“I recently went to Australia and you know, first words out of the first person I talked to in Australia was basically an expletive about Trump and the U.S.,” said Hicks, of Pahrump, Nev. “It was just like, whoa, I walked off a 20-hour flight and literally the first words of somebody’s mouth to me were that. … So the idea of doing that with a Canadian passport just seemed easier, better, more palatable.”

Maureen Sullivan, of Naples, Fla., said she was motivated by the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which hit home when her teenage nephew encountered federal officers near his high school in St. Paul. Sullivan, whose grandmother was Canadian, said she sees citizenship in Canada as an option in case things in the U.S. “really go south.”

“When I first heard about the bill, I couldn’t believe it. It was like this little gift that fell in my lap,” Sullivan said. “There was kind of this collective excitement amongst the (family) who just felt like, we wanted to feel like we were doing something to take care of our security in the future if needed.”

How much will Canadian citizenship cost?

For those with documentation ready at hand, the proof of citizenship application fee is a relatively inexpensive 75 Canadian dollars ($55).

But costs will climb for those seeking help from an attorney or genealogist to locate records like birth, death and marriage certificates that can establish the lineage to a Canadian ancestor.

Cunha said she used an attorney and estimates the cost will be about $6,500.

However, Mary Mangan, of Somerville, Mass., filed her application in January using advice from online forums.

“There are some situations where a lawyer might be the right thing, but for many people, I would guess 90% of people can probably do this on their own,” Mangan said.

The website for the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada office, which processes applications, says processing times for a certificate is around 10 months, with more 56,000 people awaiting a decision.

The agency said that from Dec. 15 to Jan. 31, it confirmed citizenship by descent for 1,480 people, though not all were Americans. Last year, 24,500 Americans gained dual U.S.-Canada citizenship.

What’s the reaction in Canada?

Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, said Canadians are generally a “welcoming people.”

Hampson said some also worry a surge of interest from Americans could delay efforts by refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing vulnerable situations.

“I think where people start looking askance is someone who’s never been to Canada, who has very thin ties. They can get a passport, becoming Canadians of convenience. People don’t like that,” he said.

Raza writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons, a key executor of President Trump’s mass deportations agenda, will resign at the end of May, federal officials announced Thursday.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Lyons’ departure, calling him a great leader of ICE who helped to make American communities safer. Mullin said Lyons’ last day will be May 31.

“We wish him luck on his next opportunity in the private sector,” Mullin said in a statement. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email from the Associated Press asking why he is resigning.

Lyons, who was named acting director in March 2025, led the agency at the center of President Trump’s plans to reshape immigration to the U.S.

Under his leadership, the agency was granted a massive infusion of cash through Congress, which it used to expand hiring and detention capabilities, and it ramped up arrests to meet demand from the administration.

ICE was also central to a series of high-profile immigration enforcement operations in American cities, including Chicago and Minneapolis, a deployment that ended after backlash erupted over the deaths of two American protesters at the hands of federal immigration officers.

Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff and the main architect of his immigration policy, called Lyons a “dedicated leader.”

“His courageous work at ICE has saved countless thousands of American lives and helped deliver safety and tranquility to millions of Americans,” Miller said in a statement.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson described Lyons in a post on X as “an American patriot who made our country safer.”

It’s not clear who might replace Lyons. But whoever does will take over an agency flush with cash while still a flashpoint for controversy. ICE is at the center of a battle in Congress, with Democratic lawmakers demanding restraints on immigration officers before agreeing to restore routine funding for DHS.

On Thursday, Lyons, along with two other top immigration officials, appeared before a House subcommittee to argue for his agency’s budget and faced continued scrutiny from lawmakers of ICE’s actions.

Lyons’ departure also comes as DHS is under new leadership after Trump fired former Secretary Kristi Noem, who led the department through the administration’s major immigration policy changes.

Mullin, who took over as secretary last month, is likely to continue to advance the president’s agenda but has struck a softer tone on some of the administration’s most contentious policies.

Public perceptions of ICE during Lyons’ tenure were low. In a February AP-NORC poll, most U.S. adults, including independents, said they have an unfavorable view of the agency.

Lyons faced questions in Congress over the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and was asked if he would apologize for the way some Trump administration officials characterized Good as an agitator. He declined to do so.

“I welcome the opportunity to speak to the family in private. But I’m not going to comment on any active investigation,” Lyons said.

Lyons said he had seen video that captured Pretti’s shooting but said he could not comment, citing an active investigation.

Lyons, who joined ICE in 2007 as an immigration enforcement agent in Texas, signed off on a memo, first obtained by the Associated Press, that granted federal immigration officers sweeping powers to forcibly enter homes and make arrests without a judge’s warrant.

Trump’s border advisor Tom Homan described Lyons as serving selflessly and “a highly respected and effective acting Director of ICE.”

Goldenberg and Golden write for the Associated Press. Golden reported from Seattle.