immigration

It’s business as usual for President Trump’s deportation offensive despite the Republican wipeout in the midterm elections.

In Los Angeles, masked immigration officers in body armor blocked a hospital emergency room driveway in a heavily Latino neighborhood early Saturday. In central Alabama, twin 19-year-old brothers from Venezuela were arrested while driving back to college a day after the election.

Advocates reported arrests from California to Michigan to Massachusetts. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not released numbers.

After Democrats trounced the GOP and won control of the next Congress, Trump said his immigration crackdown may have been “too tough” and suggested it was time to sit down with the rival party.

“I’d love to do something on immigration,” he said in an interview with CBS “60 Minutes” recorded Friday.

Hours later, he named Stephen Miller, the architect of his hard-line immigration agenda, as his new chief of staff. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, meanwhile, said his orders had not changed.

“Deportations will continue,” Mullin wrote in an online post the day after the election, warning that ICE takes no days off and that “this includes on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Election Day.”

María Bilbao, a campaign coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee in Miami, said she has received at least one call a day from someone detained in South Florida since the election.

“Everything remains exactly the same. The arrests have not ceased at all,” Bilbao said.

Florida Highway Patrol officers and ICE agents have detained people in their cars, as well as places including supermarkets, pharmacies and gas stations. Immigrants under supervision have also been arrested when they showed up at ICE’s Miami office for their appointments.

Officers assembled outside a Los Angeles hospital

Erick Gasca, 31, got home Friday night after an evening playing board games with friends. He lives near Adventist Health White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles.

An “unprecedented” number of vehicles with tinted windows and no license plates were parked near the hospital’s emergency room entrance, he said.

“I thought they were going to raid the hospital or something,” he recalled.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to explain the officers’ presence there, though Bill Essayli, the top Justice Department prosecutor in Los Angeles, said they were bringing a detainee for medical treatment. Essayli said two people were arrested for assaulting federal agents.

“ICE does not target hospitals, schools, or churches,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

The agents’ presence attracted some 30 residents and passersby. Footage shot by Gasca’s cousin, Michelle Rivera, shows protesters shouting and officers pinning someone down.

The hospital said it wasn’t involved.

“White Memorial does not participate in immigration enforcement,” hospital president Daniel Fontoura said in a statement, adding it would not let such activities “compromise our commitment to patient care and safety.”

A couple is arrested at the Phoenix airport

A married couple from Orlando, Fla., was arrested Saturday at the airport in Phoenix while traveling to a funeral.

Gustavo Romanello and Agustin Baccega, both from Argentina, have work permits while they seek asylum after entering the United States about six years ago, according to Jonathan Batchelor, a family friend.

Batchelor was on the phone with them at the time. A mutual friend died Friday and the couple was visiting for the funeral Saturday. As the couple left the airport, two casually dressed officers asked if one was Agustin Baccega. Batchelor heard the officer say, “Asylum seekers are not in the United States legally.”

Batchelor said he could hear Romanello walking alongside his husband during the arrest and asking the officers how to collect his things. Batchelor said they then asked what his name was, “and then the guard said, ‘Oh, do you have another set of handcuffs? This is another one.’”

The voices grew distant, and the call then ended.

Both men remain in detention centers. They worked as acrobats in Florida and had no criminal record, Batchelor said.

“This is just taking good people who have been following the rules out of their lives and out of the lives of those who rely upon them and care about them,” Batchelor said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the arrests.

Twin brothers seized while driving back to college

The brothers were headed back to college after visiting their parents when they were stopped in a small city in central Alabama.

Luis and Carlos Orta-Santoro, 19-year-olds born in Venezuela and living in the U.S. for four years, are soccer players at Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, Ala.

Relatives say they have pending asylum applications, valid work permits, and no criminal records. Both are now in an immigration detention facility.

“Our family is devastated,” said their aunt, Carolina Orta.

Homeland Security said that while they had entered the country legally, they had “overstayed in defiance of our laws,” and their case would be heard by an immigration judge. It said pending asylum applications do not confer legal status in the U.S.

The school said in a statement, “Both young men are valued members of the Wallace State community, and our thoughts are with them during this difficult time. We sincerely hope for a positive resolution to their situation.”

A Haitian boy is taken into custody, drawing protests in San Diego

An 8-year-old Haitian boy had been living with his uncle in San Diego since his father was deported last year. The uncle, who is not a legal guardian, took him to an ICE office when the boy was summoned Nov. 4 and taken into custody.

That left the boy “without the support of their family, community and their school,” according to a letter to top administration officials from San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Fabi Bagula and school board members.

“Children should not lose access to education simply because of circumstances unfolding around them,” they wrote.

ICE has defended its actions.

Johny Oxeda, pastor of the Fairmount Haitian Community Church, which helped get legal representation for the boy, said he’ll ultimately benefit by going through legal channels.

Activists, though, were furious.

“This is not child protection,” said Guerline Jozef of Haitian Bridge Alliance, adding, “this is state-inflicted trauma.”

Gonzalez and Sullivan write for the Associated Press. AP reporters Gisela Salomon in Miami and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

After initially congratulating Democrats on their midterm wins, which he said he was “absolutely willing to accept,” President Trump posted a baseless missive to social media about not trusting early ballot totals or voting machines.

“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong???” he wrote.

The post was a return to the unsubstantiated election denial that has animated his political career since its inception. It was also the latest swing in public messaging from the president and his administration since Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress and key governorships across the country last week.

Trump — notoriously hard to pin down and prone to meandering tangents — has waffled for nearly a week now on several key policy positions. Other leaders in his administration have split on the same issues, further confusing the public.

On Friday, Trump named Stephen Miller — chief architect of his administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown — as his new chief of staff, which many took as an unambiguous sign that Trump intends to double down on those policies through the second half of his term.

In a “60 Minutes” interview taped the same day and aired Sunday, Trump said that some of those same policies were “too tough,” and that he was open to working with Democrats to find a pathway for undocumented but law-abiding immigrants to remain in the country legally.

On Monday, Trump said he hadn’t told Miller to change his approach, that his administration has a “very strong deportation policy” and that there would be “no amnesty, no anything” for undocumented immigrants, though the administration will be focusing on “the worst of the worst.”

“My policy hasn’t changed,” he said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted, “If you are here illegally, we will find you, arrest you, and DEPORT you.”

After Vice President JD Vance last week blamed the party’s stunning losses squarely on the Iran war, Trump acknowledged that the war — and the spiking gas prices it caused — probably hurt his party at the polls.

But he has since dismissed growing calls from both sides of the aisle for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to be fired, claimed the war has already been “won,” and suggested Americans’ displeasure with the economy was based on little more than bad messaging on the nation’s economic “numbers,” which he claimed are strong.

Hegseth said he wasn’t going to get into a “finger pointing exercise” over Vance’s remarks, but that the war “doesn’t have to be necessarily popular” to be necessary.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s shifting postelection messaging.

Leading Democrats, smelling political blood and preparing to take control in Washington, have seized on Trump’s vacillations and doubling down on unpopular positions to paint him as badly out of touch and stubbornly resistant to the will of the American people.

After his Friday appointment of Miller, for example, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote, “The American people just delivered Donald Trump a historic rejection. So naturally, he hands keys to the architect of his most cruel and inhumane policies. Absolutely disgraceful.”

After Trump’s post Monday about voting machines, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote, “Donald Trump’s pathetic return to election denialism was inevitable. He can whine all he wants, but nothing will stop this inescapable truth: For the last two years of his presidency, Trump will face the largest Democratic congressional majorities in decades, all because he has been an unprecedented failure.”

Experts who have long studied the president’s rhetoric said it should come as no surprise, as it is perfectly in line with his mantra of never admitting defeat, never accepting blame and never showing weakness — even in the face of an overwhelming defeat.

“He is caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Robert C. Rowland, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Kansas and author of “The Rhetoric of Donald Trump: Nationalist Populism and American Democracy.” “He’s seen the anger of the country, but he’s trying desperately to blame someone else — when all of the data says that this was mostly about him and the results or failures of his policies.”

After Republicans suffered substantial midterm losses in 2006, President George W. Bush acknowledged his party got a “thumping” and immediately fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was closely tied to the unpopular Iraq war. After Democrats suffered losses in 2010, President Obama acknowledged what he called a “shellacking” and also recalibrated, becoming less “post-partisan” in his messaging and more pragmatic, Rowland said.

Trump’s message about working with Democrats on certain issues could be seen as his own attempt to pivot, if only slightly, Rowland said, but it has been completely undermined by his moves to elevate Miller and reject accountability from Hegseth and others tied to the Iran war.

More than anything, Rowland said Trump’s baseline instinct is to project masculine power and deny culpability for any political failings, in part to hold on to his MAGA base, which is “pretty much all he has left,” and in part to resist any move by Republican moderates to reclaim power in the party.

“He doesn’t want to send any messages of weakness that would allow the remaining Reagan Republicans to kind of stick their heads back up and try to become involved again in conservative politics,” and is loath to “fire any of the men who screw up for him” lest he undercut his message of masculine power, Rowland said.

Trump is ultimately desperate to leave a mark — as evidenced by his ballroom and other vanity projects in Washington — and cares less about substantial policy accomplishments than “his name being in lights in historical terms,” Rowland said.

In his “60 Minutes” interview Sunday, Trump repeatedly avoided accepting blame. Instead, he suggested those who disagreed with him were wrong or misunderstand the reality before them.

He said the American people’s displeasure with the economy, for instance, was due to “bad messaging,” which he blamed in part on the press not covering “positive news for Republicans.”

Others in his administration have also dug in on pre-midterm messaging about the Trump administration being on the side of the American people, ignoring the fact that the electorate clearly and resoundingly rejected its policies last week.

Miller took an immediately combative tone after his promotion to chief of staff was announced, writing on X that Trump has saved the nation “from those who would destroy it,” and that the “mission now is more clear than ever: Fight with all of our soul to support our President and defend this magnificent Republic.”

On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote on X, “While Americans enjoyed their weekend, the patriots of [ICE] worked around the clock to arrest and remove dangerous criminals from our communities, including murderers, pedophiles, and sexual predators.”

Over the weekend, Hegseth posted a video to U.S. military troops, telling them, “Don’t blink. Ignore the noise. Never hesitate.”

“You see, all this is politics. You do real things. 
You stay the course. And as always, President Trump leads the way. And I’ll assure you, we have only just begun to fight,” Hegseth said.

Whether such bravado will hold is unclear.

On Monday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) filed articles of impeachment against Hegseth, calling for his ouster on eight charges, including for “waging the Iran war despite no declaration of war, statutory authorization, attack on the United States, or imminent threat”; for launching “extrajudicial killings” against alleged drug smugglers in offshore boats; and for the “kidnapping of a sovereign foreign leader,” a reference to the U.S. capture of now-former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

About the same time, Trump posted an AI-generated video of Ultimate Fighting Championship Chief Executive Dana White serving as White House press secretary, telling reporters to “sit down and shut up.”

Hours later, he and White were actually in the White House briefing room — where Trump defended the Iran war as “won” by the U.S., called Massie a “loser” and said he will “stand by” Hegseth even if he’s impeached.

“He won two wars,” Trump said.

WASHINGTON — As it became clear on election day that Republicans would lose the House of Representatives, House Homeland Security Committee Democrats posted a three-word message on social media to Markwayne Mullin, who leads the agency: “clear your calendar.”

The next day, Mullin posted a three-word message of his own: “Deportations will continue.”

After affordability and the Iran war, immigration was a defining issue in the midterm elections, and now that Democrats won majorities in the House and Senate, they plan to increase agency oversight and attempt to rein in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies.

Come January, Democrats will control every House seat along the U.S.-Mexico border. But while they will have wider leeway to investigate alleged wrongdoings of the last two years, how much they can advance their immigration agenda will likely depend on how much Republicans will collaborate with them. Any advances would also require the approval of President Trump, who on Friday appointed Stephen Miller, the architect of many of his administration’s most stringent immigration policies, as his new chief of staff.

Democrats have already started outlining their goals for next year and preparing to staff up. Job listings posted last week seek investigators, lawyers and law clerks whose duties would include immigration.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), who is poised to lead the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said one of his major focus areas would be the Department of Homeland Security and abuses by immigration agents. Garcia specifically named former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her advisor Corey Lewandowski, saying they would face accountability and justice.

“When people are being kidnapped and detained, thrown to the ground, arms broken, people snatched up on their way to immigration appointments that we the government gave them, that’s inhumane, it’s wrong, and I think the American public — regardless of party — are sick of it,” Garcia said Wednesday at a news conference in Huntington Beach.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to Mullin the same day demanding that his department preserve all documents, including emails and contracts, and prepare to hand them over.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the investigations subcommittee of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, made a similar request. Blumenthal said he has written Homeland Security leaders more than a dozen times and received no records.

But that was when Republicans controlled the subcommittee. Last week, he wrote, “Please also note that failure to voluntarily produce the requested records and information by January 4, 2027, will leave the Subcommittee with no choice but to consider alternative measures to obtain compliance.”

Republicans, too, have begun preparing for the coming power shift. House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) told GOP committee chairs to identify possible targets of Democratic scrutiny and to consider how recent Supreme Court decisions will factor into oversight moving forward.

“They will use their oversight authorities to harass the President, his family, cabinet officials, and they will seek to destroy our allies,” Scalise said in a letter Thursday. “You will all be a key line of defense in this fight, and we must maximize our remaining days in power to prepare for what is coming.”

Planning by companies that operate immigrant detention facilities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement is already factoring in Democratic control of Congress. During a call with investors on Thursday, Lucibeth Mayberry, the chief executive of CoreCivic, was asked whether election results will affect future sales of privately run detention facilities to Homeland Security.

“We would urge the ICE administration to move quickly,” she said, adding that “there’s no reason to wait.”

Asked if the election results would affect ICE activity, Mayberry did not anticipate any immediate change, noting that ICE has already increased enforcement and expanded the number of detainees, currently around 69,000.

While immigration enforcement is unlikely to change, the administration signaled an openness to modifying some tactics. In a statement on social media the day after the election, Vice President JD Vance said he’s “open to the idea that we should change enforcement — by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance.”

Trump, speaking to reporters Friday in Florida, said that immigration is one Democratic-led initiative he could get behind.

But in tapping Miller as his chief of staff, Trump signals a desire to continue the aggressive tactics of the last two years, said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

“Voters demand lower costs, an end to the chaos, and a government that works for them,” he wrote in a statement Friday. “I know Trump heard them, but sadly and predictably, he’s choosing to double down, handing the keys of the West Wing to the man most responsible for this Administration’s failures and most harmful policies.”

A majority of voters support a path to citizenship for longtime immigrants, banning immigration agents from wearing masks, mandating use of body cameras and limiting use of force, according to a poll by the Los Angeles-based analytics firm BSP Research of more than 10,000 midterm voters.

Most poll respondents also support redirecting billions of dollars appropriated by Congress for immigration enforcement to other government programs.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement, acknowledged Trump may not sign a comprehensive immigration reform bill. But she said Trump would be going against the will of American voters.

“Especially now that Stephen Miller has become the chief of staff, we will have to pass our comprehensive reforms on immigration and send it to Trump’s desk,” she said. “If he and Stephen Miller want to veto it and continue their cruel sweep, we can hold them accountable, not give them any money for it and show them what a real solution looks like.”

Blumenthal said the investigations subcommittee will focus not just on enforcement, but alleged corruption, such as the airplanes reportedly purchased at inflated prices from a political donor to Noem when she was Homeland Security secretary.

Blumenthal said he’s hopeful that a handful of Republican senators up for reelection in 2028 will work with Democrats on legislation that would require immigration agents to wear badges and identify themselves, bar them from wearing masks, and hold them to account when they kill people.

“We don’t have 60 Democratic votes,” he said, referring to the threshold needed to stop a filibuster, “but I’m hopeful Republicans will insist on decency and humanity.”

Chris Tausanovitch, a political science professor who studies Congress and the federal government, said it’s very unlikely Democrats can overcome a presidential veto, which requires two-thirds votes in both chambers.

That leaves the budget process as their main vehicle for change, Tausanovitch said. Trump could veto a budget passed through a simple majority, but he’d face the prospect of a government shutdown.

Similar budget negotiations have taken place in the second half of the second term of recent presidents, he said. The party that won the midterms usually got something they wanted by making a narrow change in the budget. But Trump is unlikely to give ground on immigration.

“Part of the problem is that, unlike before the Biden administration, when there were a lot of proposals to pair citizenship for undocumented people with border security in some sort of grand compromise, the Republicans have gotten a lot of what they wanted on immigration,” he said. “There’s not an opportunity for a bargain like that, because the enforcement part of the bargain is already done.”

Instead, Tausanovitch said, Democrats will probably focus their political capital on healthcare and affordability — issues where they have the greatest popularity and can create a winning message for 2028.

Trump concedes some voters were unhappy with his administration’s controversial deportation drive.

United States President Donald Trump has said his immigration policy may have been too extreme for voters, conceding that his deportation policy had damaged his Republican Party’s performance in the last week’s midterm elections.

During his first television interview since his party lost control of the US House of Representatives and the Senate last week, Trump said some voters were unhappy with his administration’s controversial deportation drive, which led to widespread protests.

“I think it might be too tough,” he told CBS’s 60 Minutes programme, which aired on Sunday.

He said he may be able to work with the new Democratic-controlled Congress on some kind of immigration agreement.

“The deal would be we would work something out,” he said, adding, “I think that’s something that’s actually doable.”

The interview was aired after he appointed Stephen Miller, the chief architect of his hardline immigration policy, to replace Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, prompting questions about the direction of his immigration policy.

In a post on X, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said, “Trump says his immigration crackdown went too far”, adding, “Apparently, his solution was to put the man responsible for it in charge of the White House. That’s not a course correction. That’s a promotion.”

Trump had promised an immigration crackdown during his campaign to return to office, blaming undocumented migrant “killers” and “drug dealers” for soaring crime.

Extensive operations to detain and deport immigrants were launched in multiple US cities, causing arrests to soar.

Two US citizens – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – were killed by federal officers during protests against the operations.

Democrats have said oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security is a priority for the new Congress.

During his interview, Trump said a moderate immigration deal would still deport criminals, but allow “good people” who had lived and worked in the country “paying taxes” to stay.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s new White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, is behind many of the administration’s signature domestic policy initiatives, especially its sweeping crackdown on immigration.

An outspoken defender of Trump’s most far-reaching goals to remake government going back to his 2016 run for president, Miller is known for his harsh language and unrelenting bombast, attracting outsize attention from supporters and critics alike. His record is likely to be scrutinized by Democrats in his powerful new role as he leads Trump’s White House through a lame-duck period after the Republican Party lost both houses of Congress in overwhelming fashion.

Here are some memorable things Miller has said through the years:

On immigration

During a surge in illegal border crossings during the Biden administration, Miller described migrants as invaders, even though many were escaping poverty and violence in their home countries.

“We are being conquered,” he told Fox News in December 2023. “We have millions of people coming in from different cultures and different ways of living and different belief systems.”

Miller also warned that “a generation from now,” people “will not know the country that they are living in. These consequences are permanent. Unless there’s massive large-scale deportations by the millions, it will be irrevocable.”

On federal agents’ killing of Alex Pretti

After federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti during protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in January, Miller posted on social media that the 37-year-old Minneapolis resident was a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin” who had “tried to murder federal agents.”

Later, Miller said in a statement that the federal officers in Minneapolis “may not have been following” protocol.

On Venezuela and Greenland

In January, after a U.S. military invasion captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Miller used a lengthy post on X to decry “reverse colonization” in which he suggested that Western nations were sacrificing too much for the developing world and that such a practice “has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.”

In another post, he defended the right of the U.S. to take over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, writing: “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”

He defended Trump’s assertion that the U.S. was now running Venezuela, by telling CNN’s Jake Tapper: “You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”

In the same interview, Miller also argued that the U.S. could seize Greenland by military force from NATO ally Denmark. “Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States,” he said.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller said.

On deportations

In May of 2025, Miller suggested that the Trump administration was looking for ways to expand its power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, he said, officials were “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus — the constitutional right for people to legally challenge their detention by the government.

“The Constitution is clear — and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said. “So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

In the nearly 18 months since, the idea has not been publicly pursued by the Trump administration.

On family separation

During Trump’s first term, Miller championed a strict immigration deterrence policy that previous administrations had been hesitant to adopt: family separation. It called for routinely having federal agents separate children from their parents if families were apprehended illegally crossing the border.

Miller defended the policy to the New York Times in 2018, saying it “was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero-tolerance policy for illegal entry, period.”

“The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law,” he added.

The tactic sparked widespread outcry, and the Trump administration did not revive it in its second term. Still, Miller has helped promote mass deportation of people already living illegally in the U.S. that has divided families according to legal status.

On the Statue of Liberty

During Trump’s first term in 2017, Miller appeared in the White House briefing room to detail for reporters plans to cut back on the number of green cards issued, while prioritizing English speakers and skilled workers.

Asked if doing so might violate the spirit of the poem on the Statue of Liberty, that reads in part, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Miller responded, “I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here.” He then did just that.

“The poem that you’re referring to, that was added later, is not actually a part of the original Statue of Liberty,” Miller said.

On birthright citizenship

When the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to throw out birthright citizenship — which grants citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil — Miller said immigrants and their children pose an existential threat to the nation.

“This is absolutely a deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic,” he told Fox News in June. “If your ruling requires you to suicide your civilization, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.”

On vaccines

Miller is one of many members of the administration who has expressed skepticism about childhood vaccines. In August, he praised the president for signing an executive order aimed at curtailing the vaccine schedule for children.

“Millions and millions of parents feel they’ve been pressured when their children are just weeks out of the hospital to take five shots, six shots, seven shots all at once,” said Miller, a father of four, including an infant born in June. “Nobody has studied it. Nobody’s looked at it. Nobody’s thought about it.”

His comments contradict what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said, which is that research shows getting several vaccines simultaneously “does not cause any chronic health problems.”

On the Democratic Party

In August 2025, Miller appeared on Fox News to respond to criticism from Democrats over Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington and other U.S. cities — brushing aside concerns that the presence of troops was frightening residents, while having only a questionable impact on crime.

Miller used the occasion to take aim at Democrats more broadly.

“The Democrat Party does not fight for, care about or represent American citizens,” he said. “It is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gang bangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists.”

Miller added: “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

Weissert and Balingit write for the Associated Press.

President Trump’s appointment of Stephen Miller — the architect of the administration’s extreme crackdown on immigration — to White House chief of staff is sparking alarm among immigrant advocates and politicians across California.

But this week’s sweeping Democratic victories are giving immigrant communities hope that control of Congress will give them more tools to fight Miller’s policies.

Miller grew up in Santa Monica but has become a relentless critic of California, specifically its immigration policies, protections and, in many ways, identity. Southern California was the first city targeted by widespread immigration raids last year, upending the region in ways that continue to reverberate, particularly for immigrant communities.

Miller’s promotion, announced Friday, is seen by many as an indication that the president has no intention of backing away from some of his most polarizing policies during his last two years in office, despite devastating midterm losses for Republicans across the country. Many viewed the nationwide Democratic swing — in South Carolina, Texas, California’s Central Valley and across the Midwest — as a rebuke of the administration’s first two years, particularly the major immigration crackdown that went far beyond Trump’s promise to focus on the “worst of the worst,” instead arresting thousands without criminal convictions, many of whom had lived in the country for decades.

“We’re concerned that this means the president may be doubling down on his domestic agenda of ICE crackdowns and on deportations if Stephen Miller is at the helm,” said Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council. “He thinks that every problem starts with the immigrant community — and that getting rid of them is the solution.”

Abdi worries that Miller’s latest promotion will further anti-immigrant policies, which have long painted Iranians and other immigrant communities as threats. He is hopeful Miller will help end the military’s war in Iran but fears that may mean more focus domestically on immigrants, especially Iranians, who have been demonized amid hostilities. The diaspora is highly concentrated in Los Angeles, which is home to the largest group of people of Iranian descent outside of Iran.

“We are definitely not out of the woods, and it seems like maybe the president might do less damage abroad but will really focus energy domestically,” Abdi said.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said seeing more power in the hands of Miller — who she said was behind the Trump administration’s strategies that included “warrantless arrest, racial profiling, excessive use of force, medical neglect in detention centers, people deported illegally” — is threatening.

“Now he’s the chief of staff, and so that means that he has access to every single Cabinet secretary to unleash his reign of terror on our people,” Salas said. During the midterm elections, she said her team was aware of an influx of Department of Homeland Security sightings and activity in the Southland.

“We saw people arrested the day after the election in a massive way and it almost feels very vengeful,” she said. “Almost [like saying], ‘You know you can’t stop us.’”

Now, she and other immigration advocates are preparing themselves for “even more abuse from this administration,” Salas said.

But Ahilan Arulanantham, faculty co-director of UCLA’s Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said Miller’s promotion doesn’t change anything for him.

“He’s been adopting the most extreme authoritarian and racist views and espousing it publicly … for the entire two years of this administration,” Arulanantham said. “Whether he does it as the deputy chief of staff or chief of staff … I don’t have a view of the difference.”

Despite widespread backlash to the immigration raids last year, particularly after federal agents killed two civilians in Minnesota, the administration did pull back some of its most aggressive tactics. But Miller has remained intensely focused on his goal to limit immigration dramatically and deport undocumented migrants.

Miller’s new role will come as the administration prepares to face a Democratic-led House of Representatives and Senate, which could provide the strongest check yet on the executive branch since Trump began his second term.

“Congress has tremendous opportunity to constrain what the federal government can do in the form of abusive immigration practices,” Arulanantham said. “Congress has a huge amount of leverage that it could choose to use to force the administration to change its conduct — in the way that voters have clearly demanded.”

He hopes Congress will pass laws that limit how the Department of Homeland Security enforces immigration laws, including how agents use warrants — or don’t, what they wear while on duty and what factors they can consider when stopping someone.

Members of Congress appeared to agree with that approach.

“Stephen Miller should lawyer up,” U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), who is set to lead the House Oversight Committee once the next Congress is sworn in, wrote in a statement Friday. He and his colleagues are committed to fighting “against his hateful policies in Congress and the courts.”

“Just days after the American people rejected his corrupt and lawless presidency, Donald Trump is doubling down,” Garcia said. “Stephen Miller is the architect of the unconstitutional ICE raids that have terrorized our communities and kidnapped and killed American citizens and immigrant families.”

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) characterized Miller as the man most responsible for “the cruelest immigration policies this country has seen in modern times: family separations, detainment of babies and children, militarized raids, arbitrary arrest quotas, and the horror unleashed in communities across the country,” Padilla said.

“We will use every tool at our disposal — oversight, investigations, subpoenas, and our leverage over federal funding — to expose this Administration’s abuse of power and hold those responsible accountable.”

Standing up to the administration was a similar response for lawmakers in Los Angeles. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose district was targeted by some of the most extreme immigration sweeps last year, called Miller’s appointment an act of desperation by Trump.

The councilmember said it won’t deter her office or the community from resisting harsh immigration policies and continued activity in L.A.

“We’re going to fight back,” Hernandez said. “Even when we were on the losing side, when we didn’t have the majority in the Senate or the House, many of us were still fighting against those raids, fighting for our communities, fighting to make sure people are fed and housed.”

How would the late Anthony Bourdain have responded to our political climate in the United States with less than a week before the midterm elections of Donald Trump’s second term?

This speculative thought bubble emerged for me as I watched the last of two Los Angeles episodes Bourdain did through 12 seasons of his CNN food and travel series “Parts Unknown.” It aired just over a year before his death by suicide in France on June 8, 2018.

Set in our Pacific immigrant metropolis, the program predicts Season 2 of Trumpism, if you will. In another way, Bourdain’s ode to L.A. suggests a framework on how to think about the state of our nation as we head to the polls on Tuesday.

The universal glee of getting tacos

Customers line up at Ave 26 Tacos stand in a parking lot next to the Little Tokyo Galleria in 2024.

(Silvia Razgova)

Picture the moment when a taquero hands you a warm paper plate heaping with warm tortillas and meats on a street in Los Angeles. Do you also get that giddy, kid-like feeling for half a second? There’s nothing like it, right?

Halfway through the Season 9 opener of “Parts Unknown,” Bourdain experiences just that. In a moment you might miss without looking closely, that familiar look flashes on his face, an unbridled glee, as a taquero in downtown L.A. hands him tacos. In that moment he’s not some mythical man known to his best friends as “Tony.” He’s just a guy getting tacos. It’s super cute.

I came upon this episode recently, and it struck me as potently relevant for today, just before the midterm elections. Bourdain’s taco happiness reminded me that even when some sectors of U.S. society are calling for an effective de-browning of this country, everyone everywhere still really loves Mexican food.

Trump does. ICE agents likely do. Even the white ethnonationlists in the government and those cheering on the ICE surge happening right now across L.A. and California, all love to eat tacos, the unofficial culinary emblem of Los Angeles.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m not a Bourdain superfan. I’ve not seen every episode of TV he made. I didn’t read “Kitchen Confidential” until this year. But lately I’ve been studying him. In the past month I finally watched the biopic “Tony” about his coming of age, and I’ve started reading the entertaining memoir “Care and Feeding” by Laurie Woolever, Bourdain’s former long-term assistant and co-author.

I’m catching up on Bourdain because I’ve noticed that as we pass eight years since his death, the author’s cultural influence upon chefs, cooks and food lovers in general does not seem to be waning. It might even be growing.

“He taught me that being a rebel lets you enjoy life,” said Evil Cooks chef and co-owner Alex Garcia, who has an image of Anthony Bourdain tattooed on his leg.

(Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times)

A multitude of chefs or cooks in L.A. have a depiction of Bourdain hanging somewhere in their restaurants, kitchens or homes. Some even on their skin. At least six portraits of Bourdain are on display along the black-clad walls of restaurant Evil Cooks in El Sereno, for example. Chef Alex Garcia has a Bourdain tattoo on his lower leg.

“I love Anthony Bourdain for his rebellious way of being, but also for his love for Mexicanos because he worked for many years with people from Puebla,” Garcia told me after I had dinner there Tuesday night. “He taught me that being a rebel lets you enjoy life, because the end of the day, being yourself, being happy, is the purpose of this journey that we call life.”

This enduring passion for Bourdain also springs from what so much of his television and writing do: Demonstrate an unflagging empathy for almost anyone he met anywhere in the world. Well, almost anyone — he said pretty clearly he’d never share a meal with Donald Trump.

His 2017 episode “Los Angeles” (currently streaming on HBO Max) proves it more than most. It was filmed in 2016, just before the election that took Trump to the White House. It is worth a rewatch before you cast your ballot anywhere.

The program delves into cultural identity, racism, police abuse and corruption and gentrification. Its whole thesis points to the fallacy of being anti-immigrant or anti-Mexican in 21st century America. “Los Angeles, like much of California, used to be part of Mexico,” Bourdain says in the intro. “Now, Mexico, or a whole lot of Mexicans, are a vital part of … us.”

The episode follows Bourdain dining at Indigenous mole specialists Gish Bac with UCLA professor Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda; going for mulitas with photographer Estevan Oriol and tattoo artist Mister Cartoon at the former diner La Reyna (which later became Guerrilla Tacos) on 7th Street downtown; tasting the taquitos at Cielito Lindo on Olvera Street with comedian Al Madrigal and Times columnist Gustavo Arellano; visiting Danny Trejo at Trejo’s Tacos; going to Mariscos El Chente in Inglewood with the Stockton-raised Diaz brothers, and sharing in street tacos with runners from the Boyle Heights Run Club.

“This show will air long after the election,” Bourdain tells Hinojosa-Ojeda at Gish Bac. “There is actually a national conversation now, unthinkable in my lifetime, where the notion of rounding up however many millions of undocumented workers in this country all at once … and then kicking them out. I mean, it seems unthinkable. But, you know, they said that in Europe in the ‘30s.”

In his characteristic tone, grumpy yet hopeful, Bourdain showed he believed in a shared human dignity that superceded all ethnic, national, religious or ideological boundaries.

Listening to him, the prospect of total MAGA Republican rule in all branches of government becomes something like a nightmare that we’ve seen play out in real life. It is a long list of gross constitutional violations targeting immigrants and brown-skinned people, and their supporters like slain U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti of Minneapolis, on a daily basis in this country.

People gather at a memorial for Alex Pretti and Renée Good, both shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis.

(Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)

Loving immigrants

On Tuesday, voters nationwide are expected to be thinking first of their pocketbooks and of corruption in Washington when they vote. On another level, this election along with the 2016 and 2024 results are also about litigating by the ballot box what it means to “be” an American.

Sandra Zweig, one of the executive producers on the show, told me Bourdain set out to highlight Latino Los Angeles from the very beginning in 2016. In March of that year, she recalled in an interview, he sent producers the initial list of the cities he was thinking of for Season 9, to start the production conversation.

From that first brainstorming session, Zweig found these notes about a second episode in L.A.: “All-Mexico edition.”

“This time we pretend nobody lives in L.A. who isn’t Latino,” the notes continued. “We live, play in that world without leaving it, we will explore Mexican and Central American immigration, how vital this population is to the SoCal economy.”

Those notes show Bourdain wanted to avoid a recycling of the pastoral mainstream modern narrative on L.A., which isn’t inaccurate but can sometimes feel stale: hyping its multicultural, polycentric, polyethnic etcetera identity. No. This time would be all brown.

“He worked in kitchens and restaurants for so long, he knew as well as anyone that a huge portion of that work staff were immigrants from Mexico and Central America,” Zweig told me. “He also knew that being an immigrant wasn’t a bad thing, to use the word pejoratively was just anathema to him.”

Pop figures like Bourdain and Trejo, despite his recent stumble (he was cast in a film by alt-right extremist Ben Shapiro’s film company), have arguably done a lot more to shape Americans’ perceptions of immigrants and Mexicans than any political leader.

“He would always say, ‘Travel allows you to see people, where they live, and understand where they’re coming from, and reducing that fear for the other.’ For the audience, you’re opening up a world that they may not be able to travel to yourself,” Zweig said. “In 2016, there were things being said about immigrants and immigration that he felt strongly about, and this was one way to discuss that.”

Zweig added: “I can’t predict exactly what he’d say, but it’s clear to me that’d be appalled by the whole sort of immigration enforcement and ICE tactics that’s happening now. That’s not a leap to assume that.”

When I look at the audacity and cruelty of the MAGA right’s stance on immigration, the killings of citizens and immigrants at the hands of ICE agents, I always turn back and remind myself how out-of-step with the nation it is to be anti-immigrant.

Alfonso Lira, 61, a dishwasher and busser from Michoacan, Mexico, sweeps the entrance at Chapter One restaurant in downtown Santa Ana during a double shift in 2024.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Gallup polling is a reliable benchmark on weighing Americans’ views on immigration. At its highest point just last year, the trend line showed 79% of Americans believe immigration is a good thing overall to the country by far. Currently that figure is 73%. Only 21% of Americans believe immigration is a bad thing, its second lowest point since 2002.

Polls and sentiments vary widely from there on how to reform and manage the immigration system — although certainly most people in the U.S. are against current ICE raids, roughly by 2-to-1 — but the basic truth is sitting there before us: The country loves and appreciates immigrants. For most of us, it’s always been about welcoming the stranger, honoring hard work, and contributing to the pursuit of social harmony.

Most of us believe anyone can join the party. There just has to be a better process for it. Political leaders therefore must offer a clear plan not for “mass deportations” but for normalizing people who are here and contributing to society, the economy and the tax base. And more than anything, offer as many people as possible a pathway to citizenship.

If anyone ever tells you they are opposed to any version of this notion, remind them that they are in the minority. Americans favor immigrants by 7-out-of-10, Gallup says. And remind them that as his last love letter to L.A. shows, Anthony Bourdain would have tried to snap them out of it if he’d ever gotten the chance.

Details of more than 41,000 personnel working for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including thousands involved in immigration enforcement, have been leaked to the public.

The leak includes names, work addresses and phone numbers of DHS staff, including agents working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection, along with descriptions of the work they do for each agency.

Wednesday’s leak marks the third time in recent weeks that a government agency has been targeted by leaks or hacks.

A DHS spokesperson said the agency is “aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively.”

“We take all security threats against our employees and officers seriously and will work to ensure all are properly protected,” the spokesperson added.

“We will update the public when more information is available.”

The seemingly unprecedented breach of employee information was made public online. A group called the Department of Peace accessed the information from DHS, while journalist and cybersecurity researcher maia crimew alongside the website Distributed Denial of Secrets put it online.

The information was put in a database named Icepick.

Most of the agents included, more than 21,000 of them, work for CBP, according to the data. Nearly 6,600 work for ICE.

Other records show agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Protective Service and even people working for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The leaked information also included dozens of previously unknown operation names, the agents that led and worked on those operations, and some of the technology they used in their work, including tech provided by Cellbrite and Palantir.

The groups wrote in an online statement that the the leak was not meant to be a directory of every DHS agent. Rather the aim was to replace “anonymity with accountability”, according to Emma Best, a co founder of DDoSecrets.

“The leak is extraordinary but deceptive in it’s simplicity as it identifies the officials responsible for overseeing covert and undercover operations, the government’s hunt for leakers and the failed BlueLeaks investigation – along with key personnel in DHS’s ever-escalating rendition and deportation programs,” Best added.

BlueLeaks refers to a massive leak of US police data in 2020, data from which DDoSecrets also hosted.

A spokesperson for the Department of Peace pointed directly at actions by ICE agents for the groups work to hack DHS records.

“On July 17th, Markwayne Mullin said he was ‘turning up the heat’. This is what happens to ICE when you do that,” the spokesperson wrote on Wednesday.

Mullin in March became Secretary of Homeland Security.

The Department of Peace said it accessed the DHS agent profiles through a single sign-on service called Okta.

Okta is a popular online security tool that organisations use to ensure that only people with access to internal platforms are logging on to them.

A spokeswoman for Okta said the company is aware of the claims being made, but said: “Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised.”

Last month, the FBI was hacked by a group called ShinyHunters, which took personal information about thousands of agents.

In recent days, the Federal Election Commission, which makes public political campaign donation data, was taken offline because of a suspected hacking attempt.

Public backlash to US immigration enforcement has been building as the Trump Administration has pushed a huge increase in arrests and deportations of people suspected of being in the country illegally.

Immigration operations this year have repeatedly turned violent, external, with ICE agents shooting at more than two dozen people and killing at least nine people.

Those killings include the high profile deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both of whom were shot and killed by ICE agents this year in Minnesota, despite not being the targets of arrests.

Often, ICE agents carry out enforcement actions while their faces are covered by masks and sunglasses. Immigration agents rarely identify themselves, despite being required by law to do so, and US politicians have publicly demanded, external DHS enforces the requirement.

Since President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, the US has enacted nearly 1 million deportations, external, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute. More than 70% of the deportations have been of people with no criminal record.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration is on track to deport about 660,000 people over the past year, a new report released Thursday shows, as arrests ramp up across the country fueled by billions of dollars meant to supercharge his immigration agenda.

The report by the Migration Policy Institute shows deportations increased from 620,000 during the first year of Trump’s second administration. The numbers fall short of previous highs in the early 2000s and fail to meet the Trump administration’s promise, made when it received the billions from Congress, that the money would allow for 1 million deportations annually.

The report, based on publicly available data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, comes after the Trump administration in January 2025 stopped publicly releasing similar figures compiled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump, a Republican, returned to power last year promising to stanch crossings at the southern border and crack down on immigration. His administration has pushed through restrictions on both legal and illegal immigration and launched high-profile arrest operations in its bid to force migrants out.

More people being deported, but not at all-time highs

The analysis found that the Department of Homeland Security carried out 980,000 deportations during the first 18 months of the second Trump administration.

During the last fiscal year — when the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement mechanisms were shifting into high gear — an estimated 660,000 people were deported.

According to MPI’s analysis, that’s a 26% increase from the yearly average from 2021 to 2024 during the administration of President Biden, a Democrat, but well below the 1.86 million deportations recorded in 2000, under President Clinton, another Democrat.

Despite the surging arrests, the report details some of the challenges to the Trump administration reaching its deportation targets.

Historically, many immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization were from Mexico and didn’t often seek asylum. But in recent years, migrants have come to the U.S. from a wide range of countries, which can make it more complicated to deport them. And immigration courts, which ultimately decide whether someone can be removed from the country, face more significant case backlogs.

Voluntary departures are increasing as are interior arrests

The report said voluntary departures — when people give up their cases in immigration court and agree to leave the country — were at an “all-time high,” with 170,000 choosing to do so since Trump returned to office in January 2025. People who choose voluntary departure could one day return to the U.S. But some immigrant advocates and lawyers say that people give up their court fight and agree to leave simply to get out of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detention.

The Trump administration was also increasingly deporting people it arrested in the country’s interior, the report said, reflecting how it was stepping up enforcement against migrants who have been in the country for a long time. In 2025, about 28% of the people deported were arrested inside the country, but by July of this year that had risen to 39%.

Migrants arrested at the southern border still make up a large number of deportations, the report said — 69% of all deportations between Jan. 20, 2025, and July 31, 2026, were of people initially intercepted at the border.

People in the country longer may have more opportunities to contest their removal while the government typically has greater authority to fast-track deportations for people arrested at the border.

The analysis said most people deported have never been convicted of a crime, despite the Trump administration claiming to be targeting the “worst of the worst.” Previous data has showed the same.

In response to the MPI report, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said: “President Trump has delivered the largest reduction in illegal immigration in modern history.”

Trump administration no longer regularly releases immigration data

Homeland Security stopped releasing similar data when Trump took office, making it difficult to track one of his key campaign promises. Figures the Trump administration has released are inconsistent and unverifiable.

The administration says it is transparent. On Tuesday, it released some of its own figures as part of a document boasting of its achievements on immigration, including that 1.2 million migrants have been deported or removed during Trump’s second term. The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled.

In the absence of regular data, analysts and activists interested in immigration trends have relied on information obtained through lawsuits or limited and sporadic information released by federal agencies to track deportation data.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

A sweeping campaign by federal immigration agents to identify voter fraud by noncitizens through door knocks, street stops and other field interviews in California and eight other states must be reined in ahead of the Nov. 3 election, after a federal judge in Northern California ruled it has intimidated U.S. citizens and interfered with the work of voting rights groups.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin said in a ruling Wednesday that limiting the Department of Homeland Security’s surging operations in those states — which she wrote “sweep in U.S. citizens for investigation” — does not prevent the Trump administration from “exercising their authority to investigate voter fraud by lawful means.”

A Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency is “laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote,” and has “no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”

The ruling was the latest to come out of an unprecedented legal war playing out between the Trump administration and California in recent days, in which an array of election cases are working their way through the federal courts at breakneck speed.

There is, for example, the lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department filed against California and state and local elections officials last week, demanding that they set aside any ballots from a list of 20,000 individuals identified by immigration officials as “likely noncitizens.”

There are also two cases out of Washington, D.C., in which a coalition of Democratic leaders, immigrant rights groups, voting rights experts and naturalized citizens in California are challenging the Trump administration’s use of Homeland Security data to target voters.

The litigation is playing out amid an intense political debate about election security at the national level — driven in part by President Trump, a longtime election denier — and a sweeping campaign by his administration to root out and parade examples of alleged voter fraud in the final days before the election.

White House, Homeland Security and Justice Department officials have all defended the administration’s efforts as necessary to ensure that noncitizens are not illegally diluting the votes of U.S. citizens. First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, has claimed to have “overwhelming evidence” that tens of thousands of noncitizens are doing so in California.

‘That is not normal’

Democratic leaders and prominent elections experts, meanwhile, have cast the administration’s claims as baseless and intentionally exaggerated to stoke uncertainty about election security and ultimately challenge midterm results the president doesn’t like, and the Justice Department’s legal arguments as fundamentally flawed and wildly out of line with long-established department policy to stay out of elections in the lead up to voting.

“That is not normal. We have literally never experienced that in American history. Not once,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former Justice Department elections attorney. “The fact that the administration appears poised for the first time to act as an adversary to the states and counties who have [the] undisputed constitutional authority to run elections? That is unusual.”

At the same time, Becker and other experts stressed that those efforts to date have failed, and state and local elections have largely proceeded in recent weeks without incident, with millions of Americans having already cast their ballots.

“California voters need to know that they’re in good hands, that we have leaders at the state and local levels who are protecting our ballots and are ensuring that these attempts by the federal government to root out supposed noncitizen voting are not going to prevent Californians from casting our ballots,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “Part of the strategy here is to distract people and scare people and raise fears, and the important thing is to continue to stay focused on … making a plan to vote.”

Status of cases

Federal courts have already rejected multiple Trump executive orders seeking to enforce nationwide voter ID and citizenship requirements. The Supreme Court blocked an administration plan for the U.S. Postal Service to vet mail ballots. The Justice Department has compiled a stunning record of losses in its 30 lawsuits demanding state voter rolls — with 26 of those cases, including the one in California, so far dismissed.

And election experts said they expect the Trump administration to rack up more losses in coming days — including in the Justice Department’s case challenging California officials’ refusal to segregate the ballots of some 20,000 voters based on the administration’s unsubstantiated claims they are noncitizens.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, shown in 2023, is overseeing a lawsuit in which the Department of Justice says 20,000 California ballots may have been sent to “likely noncitizens.”

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

That case was taken up — and scheduled for a Tuesday hearing — by Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of President Clinton who in January rejected the administration’s demand for California’s voter rolls, calling it a clear federal overreach that would have a “chilling effect” on voters and threaten American democracy.

California has called for the case to be dismissed outright, on the grounds that the administration has zero authority to make such demands, and that the demands are unlawful. The Trump administration has asked Carter to immediately rule in the matter.

“Every minute of [ballot] processing that occurs without segregating the ballots of suspected non-eligible voters causes untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution of the votes of United States citizens,” wrote Julie Hamill, an assistant U.S. attorney in Essayli’s office.

In D.C. federal court, Judge James E. Boasberg set an Oct. 30 hearing in a case in which UCLA Voting Rights Project attorneys, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo are challenging the administration’s use of unproven federal databases to allege California voters aren’t citizens.

Carl Bergquist, an attorney for CHIRLA, said he looked forward to bringing a host of recent Trump administration actions to the court’s attention — including the administration’s lawsuit against California, the charging this week of 28 legal permanent residents in California with election-related crimes, and Trump’s threats to arrest California elections officials who don’t comply with his administration’s demands.

“The events of the last few days, from threats to state and local officials, increased general immigration operations, the random knocking on doors by federal agents and the recent arrests are causing a chill in the community,” Bergquist said. “People, including naturalized citizens, are making their plans to vote and the Federal Government is doing its utmost to quash their attempts to exercise this fundamental right that they have lawfully acquired.”

The argument that naturalized citizens are being intimidated also features prominently in a second lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court Tuesday, in which top Democrats in Congress joined Nevada party officials and a California immigrant named Erick Jose Jimenez to challenge the Trump administration’s unprecedented voter fraud probes.

That lawsuit, also assigned to Boasberg, says Jimenez, a naturalized citizen since 2006, fears being “unlawfully targeted for voting and disenfranchised (or worse).”

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said there is “so much noise” around the election right now, in part because the administration has been making wild legal arguments about its authority over elections.

But he said “none of the federal government’s attempts to assert power that they do not have are working,” and voting “for 99.999% of the public” will remain “wonderfully normal.”

McALLEN, Texas — On a quiet corner of downtown McAllen, past shops selling quinceañera gowns and perfumes, about 30 people trickled into a small brewery on Wednesday evening to watch James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, take questions from voters in a CNN town hall.

With beers and tacos, they gathered in front of a large projector screen. Karyme Segura, 18, sat at the front, listening closely as Talarico said federal immigration agents should be going after violent criminals, not “terrorizing our communities” and breaking up families.

Segura clapped. The message was personal to her. A day earlier, her stepfather had been deported to Mexico. Since his detention, her mother has been afraid to leave the house, she said. Now Segura has turned to politics, hoping to change the conditions that have left her family fractured and rattled.

“I just have to do something,” Segura said. “I am hoping that after the election my mom will feel more secure. That if Texas turns blue, Trump will feel threatened.”

Segura is the kind of voter Democrats are counting on as Talarico, a state representative from Austin, tries to defeat Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, to become the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas since 1994. The race could decide control of the Senate, and has become one of the most high-profile and bitterly fought contests this year.

Talarico, a former teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, has courted voters with a populist economic pitch blended with an overlay of Christian messaging to “love thy neighbor.” Paxton, an ally of President Trump, has focused on rallying his party’s base by portraying Talarico as too progressive for Texas, including his past opposition to transgender sports restrictions.

Since late June, Talarico has led narrowly in most polls, alarming Republicans who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into ads meant to boost Paxton. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person with significant operations in Texas, has helped buoy that GOP political rescue mission by dropping nearly $190 million into the race, according to federal campaign finance records filed Thursday.

Alyssa Cantu and Antonio Reyna, owners of the Gremlin Bar at their club Thursday in McAllen, Texas.

(Delcia Lopez / For The Times)

Democrats have spent heavily, too. In total, ad spending in the race has surpassed $500 million, according AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm, making it one of the most expensive non-presidential contests in U.S. history.

The Wednesday town hall amounted to free national airtime for Talarico too, who showed up on stage alone despite Paxton —who had so far refused to commit to any debate — being invited. In McAllen, the owners of the brewery, Tony Reyna and Alyssa Cantu, said they bought a projector screen just for the event.

“Any information we can bring out to the community, we try to make it happen,” Reyna said. “And if there is not going to be a debate, we are showing the town hall.”

In recent weeks, conspiracy theories, leaks and attacks have been constant in the lead-up to the election.

When Talarico spent a week away from the campaign trail, conservatives promoted a story that he had been at a mental health facility in Ohio (a rumor that was later debunked). Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House in 2023, has led a campaign beset by scandal, including a report that he partied in Dubai with fugitives wanted on federal fraud charges. One of the fugitives donated to Paxton’s campaign.

Both campaigns are courting independents and right-leaning voters, including Latinos who swung sharply toward Trump in 2024. But Trump’s unpopularity has complicated Paxton’s task. The latest polls show Trump’s approval rating at 32%, the lowest of his political career, as voters struggle with rising prices tied to tariffs and the war in Iran.

In Texas, about half of likely voters in a recent Fox News poll said they worried Paxton was too close to the president; nearly as many were concerned Talarico was too liberal.

Mario Guerrero, a 33-year-old home builder and executive director of the South Texas Builders Assn.

(Delcia Lopez / For The Times)

Along the border in the Rio Grande Valley, an overwhelmingly Latino region, there are signs that voters who backed Trump two years ago are now open to voting for Talarico — and Democrats as a whole. In interviews with more than a dozen voters across the region, many described the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement as inhumane and morally wrong, as well as detrimental to the local economy.

“I didn’t think he was going to do what he is doing now. I don’t think anybody thought it would be like this,” said Mario Guerrero, chief executive of the South Texas Builders Assn. “I think they have gone too far.”

Guerrero voted for Trump all three times. Now he is voting for Democrats, he said.

Residents talked about how in July, a local nun from Nigeria was detained by federal immigration agents after walking from her home on her way to Mass. They talk about their small businesses hurting because people are afraid to be out in public shopping. Others say it is impossible to find workers in the region.

A candidate’s campaign sign marked with graffiti in McAllen, Texas.

(Delcia Lopez / For The Times)

Ariel Salinas, 50, a longtime builder in McAllen, said he has voted for Trump all three times he has been on the ballot. Now, he is voting for Democrats because he is furious at this administration’s approach to immigration, which he says has hurt the entire region’s economy.

“Everyone is hurting right now. Builders, the subcontractors, their families and their friends,” he said. “It’s a trickle effect down. If there are no homes being built, nobody gets paid and in turn no one goes to spend money at local groceries, at mom-and-pop shops, and so forth.”

On Thursday morning, at a housing development on the north edge of McAllen, about 10 homes stood unfinished, and there were no workers in sight. A house that once took four and a half months to build now takes a year, Salinas said. Laborers, whether undocumented or with work permits, have stopped showing up, afraid of being questioned by immigration agents.

“This shouldn’t be reality,” Salinas said. “It is a nightmare.”

Salinas still does not consider himself a Democrat, but said he plans to cast his ballot for them this year because he is so angered by how Republicans and Trump have handled immigration and mistreated hard-working people, many of whom are his neighbors.

“That doesn’t mean that in two years, we are going to vote Democrat again,” he noted. “We are going to vote for them and watch if they keep their promises to us.”

President Trump listens as Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate for Senate, speaks at a campaign rally in San Antonio this month.

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

Opinions on the race are “pretty baked in” by now, so the heavy spending in the final stretch may be hitting diminishing returns, said Brendan Steinhauser, a longtime Texas GOP strategist who previously worked for Sen. John Cornyn, whom Paxton defeated in the GOP primary.

“There are a few undecideds, but not many,” Steinhauser said. “And if they are undecided, the longer they go, I am guessing they are going to break away from the GOP.”

Most Texans appear to have made up their minds.

A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll released Wednesday showed 83% of Talarico’s supporters and 69% of Paxton’s said they were unlikely to change their minds. The poll also showed 72% of Democrats were extremely or very enthusiastic about voting, 10 points more than Republicans. In that poll, Talarico led among Latinos, women, suburban and urban voters, while Paxton had the edge with men and rural voters.

Fernando Salinas, 54, the owner of eight dress shops in McAllen, has always voted for Democrats, and after seeing how immigration raids have affected the local community, he believes this year will bring what many in the Valley call a “voto de castigo,” a punishment vote for the party in power.

“I think Texas is going to turn blue,” he said. “People are that upset.”

Republicans are already bracing for a possible loss. In a social media post Thursday, Trump blamed fellow Republicans for the struggles Paxton is facing in the race. He said Cornyn and GOP strategist Karl Rove were doing “everything possible to make it hard” for Paxton to win.

“They are hurting Texas and, more importantly, hurting the United States of America!” Trump wrote. “If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career.”

In a September discussion during the Texas Tribune Festival, Rove said the contest “would be over” if Cornyn had defeated Paxton in the primary. Trump, who endorsed Paxton, has campaigned in Texas in recent weeks to rally the Republican base and urge them to vote. Vice President JD Vance has also stumped in the red state.

Texas state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks Thursday at a campaign event in San Marcos.

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

In those campaign rallies, Trump has attacked Talarico — whom he calls “Talafreako” — for being a vegan, which Talarico say he is not. Vance has also jokingly questioned Talarico’s sexuality, a comment the campaign has dismissed as irrelevant to the issues that matter to Texans.

But in the Rio Grande Valley, some voters say they feel forgotten by Republicans.

Aaron Garza, 56, a business associate of Salinas, has watched immigration raids hurt business and the community. He has voted for Trump every time he has been on the ballot. But with early voting set to begin Monday, he has not decided whom to support yet.

Garza said he feels no loyalty to either party and wishes there were a third party that showed it actually cared about Latinos and their interests. Still, one thing has him leaning toward Democrats this year: They have shown up.

“The Republicans haven’t been here,” Garza said. “How come you are not here talking to us?”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals nixed a trailblazing California law on Wednesday, permanently barring the state’s efforts to force federal immigration agents to display identification while on duty.

“As before, we conclude … the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions,” Judge Mark J. Bennett wrote for the panel. “No set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid.”

The U.S. Justice Department first sued to block the ID requirement alongside a related law attempting to ban masks for federal agents and local police in the fall of 2025.

The joint case hit Los Angeles federal court at the beginning of this year amid a surge of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis that led to the shootings of civilians Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

By then, more than a dozen other states were pursuing similar statutes in an effort to rein in what many saw as lawlessness in President Trump’s sprawling deportation force.

Judge Christina A. Snyder ultimately blocked California’s law prohibiting the use of masks by law enforcement, on the grounds that it unfairly carved out an exception for state peace officers, but allowed the ID requirement for ICE agents and others to go forward, agreeing with the state that it was more akin to a speed limit on the highway than a direct regulation of the federal government.

The 9th Circuit quickly disagreed.

“If a state law directly regulates the governmental conduct of the United States without congressional authorization, it is void irrespective of whether the regulated activities are essential to federal functions or operations, and irrespective of the degree to which the state law interferes with such functions or operations,” Bennett wrote.

The decision comes as ICE is quietly shedding many of the 12,000 new recruits it hired last year. Although public outrage over Trump’s militarized mass deportation efforts has diminished somewhat since the winter, it remains a potent election issue.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll from September showed more than 40% of Americans strongly disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration. Meanwhile, the share who fret over unauthorized immigration is nearly identical to the proportion who worry about the unchecked spread of measles — anxieties that pale in comparison with stress over the cost of living, the proliferation of data centers and the war with Iran, data show.