immigration

President Trump’s administration can continue to detain immigrants without bond, marking a major legal victory for the federal immigration agenda and countering a slew of recent lower court decisions across the country that argued the practice is illegal.

A panel of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday evening that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country is consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law.

Specifically, Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act by asserting that “unadmitted aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States are ineligible for release on bond, regardless of how long they have resided inside the United States.”

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

“That prior Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority under” the law “does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.

The plaintiffs in the two separate cases filed last year against the Trump administration were both Mexican nationals who had lived in the United States for more than 10 years and weren’t flight risks, their attorneys argued. Neither man had a criminal record, and both were jailed for months last year before a lower Texas court granted them bond in October.

The Trump White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention in July, reversing almost 30 years of precedent under both Democrat and Republican administrations.

Friday’s ruling also bucks a November district court decision in California, which granted detained immigrants with no criminal history the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in detention nationwide.

Circuit Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the lone dissent in Friday’s decision.

The elected members of Congress who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people,” Douglas wrote, adding that many of the people detained are “the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”

She went on to argue that the federal government was overriding the lawmaking process with the Department of Homeland Security’s new immigration detention policy that denies detained immigrants bond.

“Because I would reject the government’s invitation to rubber stamp its proposed legislation by executive fiat, I dissent,” Douglas wrote.

Douglas’ opinion echoed widespread tensions between the Trump administration and federal judges around the country, who have increasingly accused the administration of flouting court orders.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi celebrated the decision as “a significant blow against activist judges who have been undermining our efforts to make America safe again at every turn.”

“We will continue vindicating President Trump’s law and order agenda in courtrooms across the country,” Bondi wrote on the social media platform X.

Riddle writes for the Associated Press.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is facing the possibility it could run out of funding next week, as Democrats press for reforms to its immigration enforcement tactics.

But Republican leaders on Thursday pushed back against the Democratic proposals, rejecting them as moot.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for instance, called the demands “unrealistic and unserious”.

“This is not a blank check situation where Republicans just do agree to a list of Democrat demands,” Thune said, adding that the two parties appeared to be at an impasse.

“We aren’t anywhere close to having any sort of an agreement.”

Congress needs to pass funding legislation for the DHS by February 13, or else its programmes could be temporarily shuttered.

Ten demands from Democrats

Currently, Democrats are focused on changes to DHS’s immigration operations, particularly through programmes like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

But any funding shortfall stands to affect other Homeland Security functions as well, including the services offered by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which conducts security screenings at airports.

Top Democrats, however, have argued that a Homeland Security shutdown is necessary, given the abuses that have unfolded under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Just last month, two US citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, were killed at the hands of immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in incidents that were caught on bystander video.

Their shooting deaths have since gone viral, prompting international outrage. Other footage shows masked agents deploying chemical agents and beating civilians who were documenting their activities or protesting – activities protected under the US Constitution.

To protect civil liberties and avoid further bloodshed, Democrats on Wednesday night released a series of 10 demands.

Many pertain to agent transparency. One of the demands was a ban on immigration agents wearing face masks, and another would require them to prominently display their identification number and agency.

Body cameras would also be mandated, though the Democrats clarified that the footage obtained through such devices should only be used for accountability, not to track protesters.

Other proposed rules would codify use-of-force policies in the Homeland Security Department and prohibit entry into households without a judicial warrant, as has been common practice under US law. They would also outlaw racial profiling as a metric for conducting immigration stops and arrests.

Political battle over funding

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was “astounded to hear” that Republicans considered the demands to be unreasonable.

“It’s about people’s basic rights. It’s about people’s safety,” Schumer said. He called on Republicans to “explain why” they objected to such standards.

In a joint statement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer appealed to members of both parties to coalesce around what he described as common-sense guardrails.

“Federal immigration agents cannot continue to cause chaos in our cities while using taxpayer money that should be used to make life more affordable for working families,” Schumer and Jeffries wrote.

“It is critical that we come together to impose common sense reforms and accountability measures that the American people are demanding.”

Already, Democrats succeeded in separating Homeland Security funding from a spending bill passed on Tuesday to prevent a partial government shutdown.

Some Democrats and Republicans have pushed for a second split in order to vote on funding for ICE and CBP separately from FEMA and TSA spending.

But Republican leaders have opposed holding separate votes on those agencies, with Thune arguing it would amount to giving Democrats the ability to “defund law enforcement”.

Thune added that he would encourage Democrats to submit their reforms in legislation separate from Homeland Security funding.

It remains to be seen whether the two parties can agree to a compromise before the February 13 deadline. Democrats, meanwhile, have continued to push for other measures, including the removal of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

COLLINGSWOOD, N.J. — The shawarma, falafel wraps and baklava at Jersey Kebab are great, but many of its patrons are also there these days for a side of protest.

A New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia has rallied around the restaurant’s Turkish owners since federal officers detained the couple last February because they say their visas had expired.

In fact, business has been so good since Celal and Emine Emanet were picked up early in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that they have moved to a bigger space in the next town over. Their regulars don’t seem to mind.

The family came to the U.S. seeking freedom

Celal Emanet, 52, first came to the U.S. in 2000 to learn English while he pursued his doctorate in Islamic history at a Turkish university. He returned in 2008 to serve as an imam at a southern New Jersey mosque, bringing Emine and their first two children came, too. Two more would be born in the U.S.

Before long, Celal had an additional business of delivering bread to diners. They applied for permanent residency and believed they were on their way to receiving green cards.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began and the delivery trucks were idled, Celal and Emine, who had both worked in restaurants in Turkey, opened Jersey Kebab in Haddon Township. Business was strong from the start.

It all changed in a moment

On Feb. 25, U.S. marshals and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested the couple at the restaurant. Celal was sent home with an ankle monitor, but Emine, now 47, was moved to a detention facility more than an hour’s drive away and held there for 15 days.

With its main cook in detention and the family in crisis, the shop closed temporarily.

Although the area is heavily Democratic, the arrests of the Emanets signaled to many locals that immigration enforcement during President Trump’s second term wouldn’t stop at going after people with criminal backgrounds who are in the U.S. illegally.

“They were not dangerous people — not the type of people we were told on TV they were looking to remove from our country,” Haddon Township Mayor Randy Teague said.

Supporters organized a vigil and raised $300,000 that kept the family and business afloat while the shop was closed — and paid legal bills. Members of Congress helped, and hundreds of customers wrote letters of support.

Space for a crowd

As news of the family’s ordeal spread, customers new and old began packing the restaurant. The family moved it late last year to a bigger space down busy Haddon Avenue in Collingswood.

They added a breakfast menu and for the first time needed to hire servers besides their son Muhammed.

The location changed, but the restaurant still features a sign in the window offering free meals to people in need. That’s honoring a Muslim value, to care for “anybody who has less than us,” Muhammed said.

Judy Kubit and Linda Rey, two friends from the nearby communities of Medford and Columbus, respectively, said they came to Haddon Township last year for an anti-Trump “No Kings” rally and ate a post-protest lunch at the kebab shop.

“We thought, we have to go in just to show our solidarity for the whole issue,” Kubit said.

Last month, with the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis dominating the headlines, they were at the new location for lunch.

The legal battle hasn’t ended

The Emanets desperately want to stay in the U.S., where they’ve built a life and raised their family.

Celal has a deportation hearing in March, and Emine and Muhammed will also have hearings eventually.

Celal said moving back to Turkey would be bad for his younger children. They don’t speak Turkish, and one is autistic and needs the help available in the U.S.

Also, he’d be worried about his own safety because of his academic articles. “I am in opposition to the Turkish government,” he said. “If they deport me, I am going to get very big problems.”

The groundswell of support has shown the family they’re not alone.

“We’re kind of fighting for our right to stay the country,” Muhammed Emanet said, “while still having amazing support from the community behind us. So we’re all in it together.”

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press.

Brits with dual-citizenships have been told they could be refused entry back into the UK from February 25, 2026, under new ETA rules if they travel abroad without the correct documents

British passport holders could find themselves barred from re-entering the UK from February 25, 2026, under stringent new travel regulations that require additional documentation for entry into the country.

From later this month, the UK will get stricter with its Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) scheme for all visitors, including those from the EU, USA, and other visa-exempt countries, meaning they’ll need digital clearance before arrival. The system will apply across all modes of transport – aeroplanes, ferries, and Eurostar services – with strict carrier inspections in place. Whilst the average British citizen won’t be impacted by these measures, dual nationals holding multiple passports could face significant complications.

While residents under the EU Settlement scheme or Leave to Remain arrangements are exempt, as their foreign passports contain evidence of their approved UK residency, those with dual citizenship and multiple passports have been cautioned they may struggle to return back to the UK if they overlook one crucial detail.

With the Government recently announcing tougher enforcement of Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) and eVisa verification at border control, an immigration solicitor has issued an urgent reminder to British dual nationals to carry out one essential check before jetting off on holiday. A UK immigration lawyer and legal expert has issued an urgent warning to Brits on social media, particularly those holding dual citizenship who could face serious travel disruptions.

Skylar McKeith, who has amassed thousands of followers by demystifying British immigration laws and providing guidance on various scenarios including travel, has raised the alarm about upcoming changes that could see some British citizens refused entry to their own country.

“British citizens could be refused entry to the UK,” she cautioned in her video, before detailing how the new ETA regulations could impact British nationals.

“From the 25th February, the UK will fully enforce its ETA system,” Skylar revealed. “British citizens cannot apply for an ETA, so if you are a dual citizen and you travel on your non-UK foreign passport, you may be refused boarding.”

From 25 February 2026, visitors from 85 countries, including the United States, Canada, and France, who previously didn’t require a visa will be unable to legally enter the UK without obtaining an ETA.

The enforcement of these new rules means that everyone wishing to enter the UK must secure digital permission through either an ETA or an eVisa, with carriers conducting checks before passengers travel.

Whilst this may seem complicated, it simply means that British citizens holding multiple different citizenships need to carefully consider which passport they use when travelling. Skylar went on to to share her essential advice on navigating this situation.

“The solution is simple,” Skylar advised. “Travel on your British passport, or a foreign passport with a certificate of entitlement.”

A Certificate of Entitlement (CoE) is an official endorsement, usually a vignette in a foreign passport, that confirms a person’s right of abode in the UK, granting them unrestricted living and working rights. Those eligible can apply for these documents via the government’s website at a cost of £589.

For those juggling multiple passports, it’s generally suggested to carry all of them while travelling as it provides more options for visa-free entry. It’s also recommended to use your home country’s passport when entering or returning to that country.

Since the introduction of ETA in October 2023, over 13.3 million travellers have successfully applied, enjoying quicker and smoother journeys. ETA has become an essential aspect of travel, including for passengers taking connecting flights and passing through UK passport control.

WASHINGTON — A government lawyer who told a judge that her job “sucks” during a court hearing stemming from the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota has been removed from her Justice Department post, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Julie Le had been working for the Justice Department on a detail, but the U.S. attorney in Minnesota ended her assignment after her comments in court on Tuesday, the person said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter. She had been working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before the temporary assignment.

At a hearing Tuesday in St. Paul, Minn., for several immigration cases, Le told U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell that she wishes he could hold her in contempt of court “so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep.”

“What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need,” Le said, according to a transcript.

Le’s extraordinary remarks reflect the intense strain that has been placed on the federal court system since President Trump returned to the White House a year ago with a promise to carry out mass deportations. ICE officials have said the surge in Minnesota has become its largest-ever immigration operation since ramping up in early January.

Several prosecutors have left the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota amid frustration with the immigration enforcement surge and the Justice Department’s response to fatal shootings of two civilians by federal agents. Le was assigned at least 88 cases in less than a month, according to online court records.

Blackwell told Le that the volume of cases isn’t an excuse for disregarding court orders. He expressed concern that people arrested in immigration enforcement operations are routinely jailed for days after judges have ordered their release from custody.

“And I hear the concerns about all the energy that this is causing the DOJ to expend, but, with respect, some of it is of your own making by not complying with orders,” the judge told Le.

Le said she was working for the Department of Homeland Security as an ICE attorney in immigration court before she “stupidly” volunteered to work the detail in Minnesota. Le told the judge that she wasn’t properly trained for the assignment. She said she wanted to resign from the job but couldn’t get a replacement.

“Fixing a system, a broken system, I don’t have a magic button to do it. I don’t have the power or the voice to do it,” she said.

Le and spokespeople for DHS, ICE and the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Kira Kelley, an attorney who represented two petitioners at the hearing, said the flood of immigration petitions is necessary because of “so many people being detained without any semblance of a lawful basis.”

“And there’s no indication here that any new systems or bolded e-mails or any instructions to ICE are going to fix any of this,” she added.

Kunzelman and Richer write for the Associated Press.

United States border security chief Tom Homan has announced that the administration of President Donald Trump will “draw down” 700 immigration enforcement personnel from Minnesota while promising to continue operations in the northern state.

The update on Wednesday was the latest indication of the Trump administration pivoting on its enforcement surge in the state following the killing of two US citizens by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January.

Homan, who is officially called Trump’s “border czar”, said the decision came amid new cooperation agreements with local authorities, particularly related to detaining individuals at county jails. Details of those agreements were not immediately available.

About 3,000 immigration enforcement agents are currently believed to be in Minnesota as part of Trump’s enforcement operations.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced, effective immediately, we will draw down 700 people effective today – 700 law enforcement personnel,” Homan said.

The announcement comes after Homan was sent to Minnesota at the end of January in response to widespread protests over immigration enforcement and the killing of Renee Nicole Good on January 7 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent and Alex Pretti on January 24 by a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, both in Minneapolis.

Homan said reforms made since his arrival have included consolidating ICE and CBP under a single chain of command.

He said Trump “fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration, and immigration enforcement actions will continue every day throughout this country”.

Immigration rights observers have said the administration’s mass deportation approach has seen agents use increasingly “dragnet” tactics to meet large detention quotas, including randomly stopping individuals and asking for their papers. The administration has increasingly detained undocumented individuals with no criminal records, even US citizens and people who have legal status to live in the US.

Homan said agents would prioritise who they considered to be “public safety threats” but added, “Just because you prioritise public safety threats, don’t mean we forget about everybody else. We will continue to enforce the immigration laws in this country.”

The “drawdown”, he added, would not apply to what he described as “personnel providing security for our officers”.

“We will not draw down on personnel providing security and responding to hostile incidents until we see a change,” he said.

Critics have accused immigration enforcement officers, who do not receive the same level of crowd control training as most local police forces, of using excessive violence in responding to protesters and individuals legally monitoring their actions.

Trump administration officials have regularly blamed unrest on “agitators”. They accused both Good and Pretti of threatening officers before their killings although video evidence of the exchanges has contradicted that characterisation.

Last week, the administration announced it was opening a federal civil rights investigation into the killing of Pretti, who was fatally shot while he was pinned to the ground by immigration agents. That came moments after an agent removed a gun from Pretti’s body, which the 37-year-old had not drawn and was legally carrying.

Federal authorities have not opened a civil rights investigation into the killing of Good, who they have maintained sought to run over an ICE agent before she was fatally shot. Video evidence appeared to show Good trying to turn away from the agent.

On Friday, thousands of people took to the streets of Minneapolis and other US cities amid calls for a federal strike in protest against the Trump administration’s deportation drive.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and other state and local officials have also challenged the immigration enforcement surge in the state, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and the CBP, has been violating constitutional protections.

A federal judge last week said she will not halt the operations as a lawsuit progresses in court. Department of Justice lawyers have dismissed the suit as “legally frivolous”.

On Wednesday, a poll released by the Marquette Law School found wide-ranging disquiet over ICE’s approach, with 60 percent of US adults nationwide saying they disapproved of how the agency was conducting itself. The poll was conducted from January 21 to January 28, with many of the surveys conducted before Pretti’s killing.

The poll still found widespread support for ICE among Republicans, with about 80 percent approving of its work. Just 5 percent of Democrats voiced similar approval.

Perhaps most worryingly for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms in November, just 23 percent of independents – potential swing voters in the upcoming vote – approved of ICE’s actions.

MINNEAPOLIS — The Trump administration is reducing the number of immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota after state and local officials agreed to cooperate by turning over arrested immigrants, border policy advisor Tom Homan said Wednesday.

About 700 of the roughly 3,000 federal officers deployed around Minnesota will be withdrawn, Homan said. The immigration operations have upended the Twin Cities and escalated protests, especially since the killing of protester Alex Pretti, the second fatal shooting by federal officers in Minneapolis.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less public safety officers to do this work and a safer environment, I am announcing, effective immediately, we’ll draw down 700 people effective today — 700 law enforcement personnel,” Homan said during a news conference.

Homan said last week that federal officials could reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota, but only if state and local officials cooperate. His comments came after President Donald Trump seemed to signal a willingness to ease tensions in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area.

Homan pushed for jails to alert ICE to inmates who could be deported, saying transferring such inmates to the agency is safer because it means fewer officers have to be out looking for people in the country illegally.

The White House has long blamed problems arresting criminal immigrants on places known as sanctuary jurisdictions, a term generally applied to state and local governments that limit law enforcement cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.

When questioned, Homan said he thinks the ICE operation in Minnesota has been a success.

“Yeah, I just listed a bunch of people we took off the streets of the Twin Cities, so I think it’s very effective as far as public safety goes,” Homan said. “Was it a perfect operation? No. No. We created one unified chain of command to make sure everybody is on the same page. And make sure we follow the rules. I don’t think anybody, purposely, didn’t do something they should have done.”

Associated Press reporter Corey Williams in Detroit contributed.

WASHINGTON — One of the brothers of Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother of three who was shot and killed by an immigration agent in Minneapolis, told congressional Democrats on Tuesday that he needed their help.

Luke Ganger said their family had taken some consolation in the thought that his sister’s death might spark a change.

“It has not,” he said.

That is why Ganger and people who had been violently detained by immigration agents gathered to share their experiences with ICE and to ask the government to rein in an agency they described as lawless and out of control.

Tuesday’s forum — not an official hearing because Republicans did not agree to it — was led by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), the top Democrat of the House Oversight Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the top Democrat of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It was held not in the Capitol, but a nearby Senate office building.

Garcia and Blumenthal convened the forum to gather testimony “on the violent tactics and disproportionate use of force by agents of the Department of Homeland Security.”

All of the incidents referenced in the forum were captured on video.

Democrats heard from three U.S. citizens who are residents of San Bernardino, Chicago and Minneapolis. Also present were Good’s two brothers and an attorney representing their family.

Good’s killing on Jan. 7 has led to a wave of national protests — further inflamed after agents fatally shot ICU nurse Alex Pretti, 37, two weeks later. Protesters have called on federal agents to stop using violence in pursuit of the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.

From left, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Luke Ganger and Brent Ganger arrive to a public forum on violent use of force by Department of Homeland Security personnel.

(Win McNamee / Getty Images)

“Let’s be very clear: these stories are not just about Minneapolis,” Blumenthal said. “These stories span the country.”

Blumenthal called for a “complete overhaul, a rebuilding” of the Department of Homeland Security and its sub-agencies. Such an overhaul, he said, would require body-worn cameras, that officers wear identification and rigorous use-of-force training and policies; acts of violence would require full investigations under the supervision of an independent monitor. Without those reforms, he said he wouldn’t support more funding for DHS.

Ganger said the “surreal scenes” taking place in Minneapolis and beyond are not isolated and are changing many lives.

“The deep distress our family feels because of Renee’s loss in such a violent and unnecessary way is complicated by feelings of disbelief, distress and desperation for change,” he said.

Ganger said his family is “a very American blend” that votes differently and rarely agrees fully on the details of what it means to be a citizen of the U.S. Despite those differences, he said, they have always treated each other with love and respect.

“We’ve gotten even closer during this very divided time in our country,” he said. “We hope that our family can be even a small example to others not to let political ideals divide us.”

The panel heard from Martin Daniel Rascon, of San Bernardino, and three others who described harrowing experiences with immigration agents. Rascon was in a truck with two family members last August when they were stopped by more than a dozen federal agents who pointed rifles at them, shattered a window and then shot at the car multiple times.

Francisco Longoria, the man driving the truck and Rascon’s father-in-law, was later arrested and charged by federal authorities, who alleged he had assaulted immigration officers with his truck during the incident. Longoria’s attorneys said he drove off because he feared for his safety. The charges were dropped a month later.

Marimar Martinez, 30, of Chicago, was shot five times by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and then labeled a domestic terrorist and charged with assaulting the agents who shot her. Those charges were also later dropped.

“I’m angry on your behalf, Miss Martinez,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont). “Tell me, what do you want this government to do to apologize to you?”

“I’m sorry. You’re not a domestic terrorist,” she said. “That’s it. For them to admit that they were wrong about everything that they said about me. I just want accountability.”

Aliya Rahman, of Minneapolis, was dragged from her car on the way to a doctor’s appointment and detained by ICE agents after telling them she has a disability. Rahman has autism and is recovering from a traumatic brain injury.

DHS said Rahman was arrested because she ignored multiple commands. Rahman said it takes time for her to understand auditory commands.

Rahman said agents yelled threats and conflicting instructions that she couldn’t process while watching for pedestrians. As she hit the ground face first, she said, she felt shooting pain as agents leaned on her back. She thought of George Floyd, who was killed four blocks away.

Rahman said she was never told she was under arrest or charged with a crime. The agents taking her to the federal Whipple Building referred to detainees as “bodies.” She said she received no medical screening, phone call or access to a lawyer, and was denied a communication navigator when her speech began to slur.

Eventually, she became unable to speak.

“The last sounds I remember before I blacked out on the cell floor were my cellmate banging on the door, pleading for a medic and a voice outside saying, ‘We don’t want to step on ICE’s toes,’” she said.

Rahman said she later woke up at a hospital, where doctors told her she had suffered a concussion.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) speaks during a public forum on violent use of force by Department of Homeland Security personnel.

(Win McNamee / Getty Images)

Garcia called the forum a step toward accountability because Congress has the right to step in when constitutional rights are violated. He said Democrats have tracked at least 186 incidents of problematic uses of force by federal immigration agents.

“It’s important for the public to recognize that this administration has lied, has defamed and has smeared people that have been peacefully protesting,” he said.

Antonio Romanucci, the attorney representing Good’s family, and who also represented the family of George Floyd, said that while he has handled excessive force cases for decades, “this is an unprecedented and deeply unsettling time.” Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

“The occupation by ICE and CBP in our cities is way beyond their mission, leading to unnecessary provocation that causes needless harm and death,” he said. “These operations in multiple states have routinely and consistently included violations of the Constitution.”

The current path to hold federal officers accountable is narrow, he said. Congress could pass legislation to add language making it easier for people to file civil lawsuits in cases such as Good’s.

MINNEAPOLIS — Immigration officers with guns drawn arrested activists who were trailing their vehicles on Tuesday in Minneapolis, a sign that tensions have not eased since the departure last week of a high-profile commander.

At least one person who had an anti-ICE message on their clothing was handcuffed while face down on the ground. An Associated Press photographer witnessed the arrests.

Federal agents in the Twin Cities lately have been conducting more targeted immigration arrests at homes and neighborhoods, rather than staging in parking lots. The convoys have been harder to find and less aggressive. Alerts in activist group chats have been more about sightings than immigration-related detainments.

Several cars followed officers through south Minneapolis after there were reports of them knocking at homes. Officers stopped their vehicles and ordered activists out of a car at gunpoint. Agents told reporters at the scene to stay back and threatened to use pepper spray.

There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A federal judge last month put limits on how officers treat motorists who are following them but not obstructing their operations. Safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” the judge said. An appeals court, however, set the order aside.

Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, who was leading an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and other big U.S. cities, left town last week, shortly after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, the second local killing of a U.S. citizen in January.

Trump administration border czar Tom Homan was dispatched to Minnesota instead. He warned that protesters could face consequences if they interfere with officers.

Grand jury seeks communications, records

Meanwhile, Tuesday was the deadline for Minneapolis to produce information for a federal grand jury. It’s part of a U.S. Justice Department request for records of any effort to stifle the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Officials have denounced it as a bullying tactic.

“We have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, but when the federal government weaponizes the criminal justice system against political opponents, it’s important to stand up and fight back,” said Ally Peters, spokesperson for Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat.

She said the city was complying, but she didn’t elaborate. Other state and local offices run by Democrats were given subpoenas, though it’s not known whether they had the same deadline. People familiar with the matter have told the AP that the subpoenas are related to an investigation into whether Minnesota officials obstructed enforcement through public statements.

No bond for man in Omar incident

Elsewhere, a man charged with squirting apple cider vinegar on Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar will remain in jail. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Schultz granted a federal prosecutor’s request to deny bond to Anthony Kazmierczak.

“We simply cannot have protesters and people — whatever side of the aisle they’re on — running up to representatives who are conducting official business, and holding town halls, and assaulting them,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Bejar said Tuesday.

Defense attorney John Fossum said the vinegar posed a low risk to Omar. He said Kazmierczak’s health problems weren’t being properly addressed in jail and that his release would be appropriate.

Murphy, Raza and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. Raza reported from Sioux Falls, S.D. AP reporters Ed White in Detroit and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father have been released from a US immigration detention facility, following an order by a judge who accused ICE agents of traumatising children as they pursue the Trump administration’s deportation quotas.

Jan. 31 (UPI) — Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul lost their bid to have a federal court order the Department of Homeland Security to end its immigration enforcement effort in the state.

U.S. District Court of Minnesota Judge Katherine Menendez on Saturday denied a motion to enjoin the federal government from continuing its immigration law enforcement surge in the Twin Cities.

“Even if the likelihood of success on the merits and the balance of harms each weighed more clearly in favor of plaintiffs, the court would still likely be unable to grant the relief requested: An injunction suspending Operation Metro Surge,” Menendez wrote in her 30-page ruling.

She cited a recent federal appellate court ruling that affirmed the federal government has the right to enforce federal laws over the objections of others.

“The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals recently vacated a much more circumscribed injunction, which limited one aspect of the ongoing operation, namely the way immigration officers interacted with protesters and observers,” Menedez said.

“The injunction in that case was not only much narrower than the one proposed here, but it was based on more settled precedent than that which underlies the claims now before the court,” she explained.

“Nonetheless, the court of appeals determined that the injunction would cause irreparable harm to the government because it would hamper their efforts to enforce federal law,” Menendez continued.

“If that injunction went too far, then the one at issue here — halting the entire operation — certainly would,” she concluded.

Menendez said her ruling does not address the merits of the case filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on behalf of the state and two cities, which are named as the lawsuit’s three plaintiffs.

Those claims remain to be argued and largely focus on Ellison’s claim that the federal government is undertaking an illegal operation that is intended to force state and local officials to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

Menendez said Ellison has not proven his claim, which largely relies on a 2013 ruling by the Supreme Court in a case brought by Shelby County, Ala., officials who challenged the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The act placed additional restrictions on some states based on “their histories of racially discriminatory election administration,” Menendez said.

The Supreme Court ruled a “departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” requires the federal government to show that geographically driven laws are “sufficiently related to the problem that it targets” to be lawful, she wrote.

Ellison says that the ruling “teaches that the federal government cannot single out states for disparate treatment without strong and narrowly tailored justification,” according to Menendez.

But he does not show any other examples of a legal authority applying the “equal sovereignty ‘test'” and does not show how it would apply to a presidential administration’s decision on where to deploy federal law enforcement to “enforce duly enacted federal laws,” she said.

“There is no precedent for a court to micromanage such decisions,” and she can ‘readily imagine scenarios where the federal executive must legitimately vary its use of law enforcement resources from one state to the next,” Menendez explained.

Because there is no likelihood of success in claims based on equal sovereignty, she said Ellison did not show there is a likelihood that plaintiffs will succeed in their federal lawsuit, so the motion to preliminarily enjoin the federal government from continuing Operation Metro Surge is denied.

Former President Joe Biden appointed Menendez to the federal bench in 2021.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Saturday that he has instructed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to tell agents not to intervene in protests occurring in cities led by Democrats unless local authorities ask for federal help amid mounting criticism of his administration’s immigration crackdown.

On his social media site, Trump posted that “under no circumstances are we going to participate in various poorly run Democrat Cities with regard to their Protests and/or Riots unless, and until, they ask us for help.”

He provided no details on how his order would affect operations by Customs and Border Protection personnel or that of other federal agencies, but added: “We will, however, guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.”

Trump said that, in addition to his instructions to Noem, he had directed “ICE and/or Border Patrol to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property.”

The Trump administration has already deployed the National Guard or federal law enforcement officials in a number of Democratic-led cities, including Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Ore. But Saturday’s order comes as opposition to such tactics has grown, particularly in Minnesota’s Twin Cities region.

Minnesota Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul have challenged a federal immigration enforcement surge in those cities, arguing that Homeland Security is violating constitutional protections.

A federal judge ruled Saturday that she won’t halt enforcement operations as the lawsuit proceeds. State and local officials had sought a quick order to halt the enforcement action or limit its scope. Justice Department lawyers have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous.”

The state, and particularly Minneapolis, has been on edge after federal officers fatally shot two people in the city: Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24. Thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the federal immigration presence in Minnesota and across the country.

Trump’s border advisor, Tom Homan, has suggested the administration could reduce the number of immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota — but only if state and local officials “cooperate.” Trump sent Homan to Minneapolis following the killings of Good and Pretti, seeming to signal a willingness to ease tensions in Minnesota.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

A judge in the United States has declined to order President Donald Trump’s administration to halt its immigration crackdown in Minnesota, amid mass protests over deadly shootings by federal agents in the US state.

US District Judge Kate Menendez on Saturday denied a preliminary injunction sought in a lawsuit filed this month by state Attorney General Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

She said state authorities made a strong showing that immigration agents’ tactics, including shootings and evidence of racial profiling, were having “profound and even heartbreaking consequences on the State of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and Minnesotans”.

But Menendez wrote in her ruling that, “ultimately, the Court finds that the balance of harms does not decisively favor an injunction”.

The lawsuit seeks to block or rein in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operation that sent thousands of immigration agents to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, sparking mass protests and leading to the killings of two US citizens by federal agents.

Tensions have soared since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good in her car on January 7.

Federal border agents also killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti in the city on January 24, stoking more public anger and calls for accountability.

Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called “border czar”, told reporters earlier this week that the administration was working to make the immigration operation “safer, more efficient [and] by the book”.

But that has not stopped the demonstrations, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets of Minneapolis on Friday amid a nationwide strike to denounce the Trump administration’s crackdown.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from a memorial rally in Saint Paul on Saturday, city councillor Cheniqua Johnson said, “It feels more like the federal government is here to [lay] siege [to] Minnesota than to protect us.”

She said residents have said they are afraid to leave their homes to get groceries. “I’m receiving calls … from community members are struggling just to be able to do [everyday] things,” Johnson said.

“That’s why you’re seeing folks being willing to stand in Minnesota, in negative-degree weather, thousands of folks marching … in opposition to the injustice that we are seeing when law and order is not being upheld.”

Racial profiling accusations

In their lawsuit, Minnesota state and local officials have argued that the immigration crackdown amounts to retaliation after Washington’s initial attempts to withhold federal funding to try to force immigration cooperation failed.

They maintain that the surge has amounted to an unconstitutional drain on state and local resources, noting that schools and businesses have been shuttered in the wake of what local officials say are aggressive, poorly trained and armed federal officers.

Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, also has accused federal agents of racially profiling citizens, unlawfully detaining lawful residents for hours, and stoking fear with their heavy-handed tactics.

The Trump administration has said its operation is aimed at enforcing federal immigration laws as part of the president’s push to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history.

On Saturday, Menendez, the district court judge, said she was not making a final judgement on the state’s overall case in her decision not to issue a temporary restraining order, something that would follow arguments in court.

She also made no determination on whether the immigration crackdown in Minnesota had broken the law.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi called the judge’s decision a “HUGE” win for the Department of Justice.

“Neither sanctuary policies nor meritless litigation will stop the Trump Administration from enforcing federal law in Minnesota,” she wrote on X.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he was disappointed by the ruling.

“This decision doesn’t change what people here have lived through — fear, disruption, and harm caused by a federal operation that never belonged in Minneapolis in the first place,” Frey said in a statement.

“This operation has not brought public safety. It’s brought the opposite and has detracted from the order we need for a working city. It’s an invasion, and it needs to stop.”

MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge says she won’t halt the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota as a lawsuit over it proceeds.

Judge Katherine M. Menendez on Saturday denied a preliminary injunction sought in a lawsuit filed this month by state Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

It argued that the Department of Homeland Security is violating constitutional protections. The lawsuit sought a quick order to halt the enforcement action or limit its scope. Lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous.”

The ruling on the injunction focused on the argument by Minnesota officials that the federal government is violating the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which limits the federal government’s powers to infringe on the sovereignty of states. In her ruling, the judge relied heavily on whether that argument was likely to ultimately succeed in court.

The federal government argued that the surge, which it calls Operation Metro Surge, is necessary in its effort to take criminal immigrants off the streets and because federal efforts have been hindered by state and local “sanctuary laws and policies.” State and local officials argued that the surge is political retaliation after the federal government’s initial attempts to withhold federal funding to try to force immigration cooperation failed.

“Because there is evidence supporting both sides’ arguments as to motivation and the relative merits of each side’s competing positions are unclear, the Court is reluctant to find that the likelihood-of-success factor weighs sufficiently in favor of granting a preliminary injunction,” the judge said in the ruling.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi lauded the ruling Saturday on social media, calling it “another HUGE” legal win for the Justice Department.

Federal officers have fatally shot two people on the streets of Minneapolis, Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.

Luis Martinez was on his way to work on a frigid Minneapolis morning when federal agents suddenly boxed him in, forcing the SUV he was driving to a dead stop in the middle of the street.

Masked agents rapped on the window, demanding Martinez produce his ID. Then one held his cellphone inches from Martinez’s face and scanned his features, capturing the shape of his eyes, the curves of his lips, the exact quadrants of his cheeks.

All the while, the agent kept asking: Are you a U.S. citizen?

The encounter in a Minneapolis suburb this week captures the tactics on display in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which it describes as the largest of its kind and one that has drawn national scrutiny after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens this month.

Across Minnesota and other states where the Department of Homeland Security has surged personnel, officials say enforcement efforts are targeted and focused on serious offenders. But photographs, videos and internal documents paint a different picture, showing agents leaning heavily on biometric surveillance and vast, interconnected databases — highlighting how a sprawling digital surveillance apparatus has become central to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Civil liberties experts warn the expanding use of those systems risks sweeping up citizens and noncitizens alike, often with little transparency or meaningful oversight.

Over the past year, Homeland Security and other federal agencies have dramatically expanded their ability to collect, share and analyze people’s personal data, thanks to a web of agreements with local, state, federal and international agencies, plus contracts with technology companies and data brokers. The databases include immigration and travel records, facial images and information drawn from vehicle databases.

In Martinez’s case, the face scan didn’t find a match and it wasn’t until he produced his U.S. passport, which he said he carried for fear of such an encounter, that federal agents let him go.

“I had been telling people that here in Minnesota it’s like a paradise for everybody, all the cultures are free here,” he said. “But now people are running out of the state because of everything that is happening. It’s terrifying. It’s not safe anymore.”

Together with other government surveillance data and systems, federal authorities can now monitor American cities at a scale that would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago, advocates say. Agents can identify people on the street through facial recognition, trace their movements through license-plate readers and, in some cases, use commercially available phone-location data to reconstruct daily routines and associations.

When asked by the Associated Press about its expanding use of surveillance tools, the Department of Homeland Security said it would not disclose law enforcement sensitive methods.

“Employing various forms of technology in support of investigations and law enforcement activities aids in the arrest of criminal gang members, child sex offenders, murderers, drug dealers, identity thieves and more, all while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests,” it said.

Dan Herman, a former Customs and Border Protection senior advisor in the Biden administration who now works at the Center for American Progress, said the government’s access to facial recognition, other personal data and surveillance systems poses a threat to people’s privacy rights and civil liberties without adequate checks.

“They have access to a tremendous amount of trade, travel, immigration and screening data. That’s a significant and valuable national security asset, but there’s a concern about the potential for abuse,” Herman said. “Everyone should be very concerned about the potential that this data could be weaponized for improper purposes.”

Facial recognition

On Wednesday, Homeland Security disclosed online that it has been using a facial recognition app, Mobile Fortify, that it said uses “trusted source photos” to compare scans of people’s faces that agents take to verify their identity. The app, which Customs and Border Protection said is made by the vendor NEC, uses facial comparison or fingerprint-matching systems.

The app was in operation for CBP and ICE before the immigration crackdown in the Los Angeles area in June, when website 404Media first reported its existence.

In interactions observed by reporters and videos posted online, federal agents are rarely seen asking for consent before holding their cellphones to people’s faces, and in some clips they continue scanning even after someone objects.

In two instances seen by an AP journalist near Columbia Heights, Minn., where immigration officials recently detained a 5-year-old boy and his father, masked agents held their phones a foot away from people’s faces to capture their biometric details.

The technology resembles facial recognition systems used at airports, but unlike airport screenings, where travelers are typically notified and can sometimes opt out, Martinez said he was given no choice.

According to a lawsuit filed against the department by the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago this month, Homeland Security has used Mobile Fortify in the field more than 100,000 times. The Department of Homeland Security told AP that Mobile Fortify supports “accurate identity and immigration-status verification during enforcement operations. It operates with a deliberately high-matching threshold,” and uses only some immigration data.

Without federal guidelines for the use of facial recognition tools, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights warned in a September 2024 report their deployment raises concerns about accuracy, oversight, transparency, discrimination and access to justice.

Body-camera footage

Last year, the Trump administration scaled back a program to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials body cameras, but administration officials said some agents tied to the fatal shooting of Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti were wearing them and that footage is now being reviewed.

Gregory Bovino, who was the administration’s top Border Patrol official charged with the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis until Monday, began wearing a bodycam in response to a judge’s order late last year.

Body-camera video could help clarify events surrounding federal agents’ killing of Pretti, who was filming immigration agents with his cellphone when they shot him in the back.

Administration officials shifted their tone after independent video footage emerged raising serious questions about some Trump officials’ accusations that Pretti intended to harm agents.

Emerging technologies

Homeland Security and affiliated agencies are piloting and deploying more than 100 artificial intelligence systems, including some used in law enforcement activities, according to the department’s disclosure Wednesday.

Congress last year authorized U.S. Customs and Border Protection to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems and add in AI and other emerging technologies.

In recent weeks, Homeland Security requested more information from private industry on how technology companies and data providers can support their investigations and help identify people.

Meanwhile, longtime government contractor Palantir was paid $30 million to extend a contract to build a system designed to locate people flagged for deportation. On Wednesday, the Trump administration disclosed it’s using Palantir’s AI models to sift through immigration enforcement tips submitted to its tip line.

Homeland Security has also been exploring partnerships with license-plate reader companies like Flock Safety to expand their tracking capabilities.

Rachel Levinson-Waldman, who directs the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, said more funding for government surveillance tools changes the landscape.

“We are developing these technologies for immigrant enforcement,” she said. “Are we also going to expand it or wield it against U.S. citizens who are engaging in entirely lawful or protest activity?”

Burke and Tau write for the Associated Press. AP freelance photojournalist Adam Gray contributed to this report from Minneapolis.

Actor John Leguizamo, a longtime vocal critic of President Trump and his administration, says he’s showing a section of his social media following the door amid the federal government’s relentless crackdown on immigration.

The “Romeo + Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge!” acting veteran, who is Latino, on Wednesday issued a brief and blunt Instagram video message to followers who also support the immigration agency. “If you follow ICE, unfollow me,” he said in his post.

“Don’t come to my shows, don’t watch my movies,” he added. Leguizamo, an Emmy winner, captioned his post: “Abolish ice!”

The actor-comedian, also known for the “Ice Age” films and cult classic “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar,” is among the Hollywood stars vehemently speaking out against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents amid recent killings. An ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good earlier this month in Minneapolis, where Border Patrol agents on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti. An off-duty federal immigration agent fatally shot Keith Porter Jr. in Northridge on Dec. 31. They are among the 20-plus people who have died in a wave of aggressive immigration operations launched by the Trump administration last year.

Fellow actors also using social media to speak out against ICE and other federal immigration agents are Pedro Pascal, Mark Ruffalo and Ayo Edebiri. Musicians including Olivia Rodrigo, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Billie Eilishand Tyler, the Creator have also condemned federal officers.

White House border policy advisor Tom Homan said Thursday during a press conference that street operations in Minneapolis would wind down if agents were allowed into local jails instead and asserted the federal government was not backing down on its aggressive immigration agenda.

“We are not surrendering our mission at all,” he said. “We are not surrendering the president’s mission of immigration enforcement: Let’s make that clear.”

Staff writers Malia Mendez and Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.

California Democrats have assumed leading roles in their party’s counter-offensive to the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown — seizing on a growing sense, shared by some Republicans, that the campaign has gotten so out of hand that the political winds have shifted heavily in their favor.

They stalled Department of Homeland Security funding in the Senate and pushed the impeachment of Secretary Kristi Noem in the House. They strategized against a threatened move by President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and challenged administration policies and street tactics in federal court. And they have shown up in Minneapolis to express outrage and demanded Department of Justice records following two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens there.

The push comes at an extremely tense moment, as Minneapolis and the nation reel from the fatal weekend shooting of Alex Pretti, and served as an impetus for a spending deal reached late Thursday between Senate Democrats and the White House to avert another partial government shutdown. The compromise would allow lawmakers to fund large parts of the federal government while giving them more time to negotiate new restrictions for immigration agents.

“This is probably one of the few windows on immigration specifically where Democrats find themselves on offense,” said Mike Madrid, a California Republican political consultant. “It is a rare and extraordinary moment.”

Both of the state’s Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, came out in staunch opposition to the latest Homeland Security funding measure in Congress, vowing to block it unless the administration scales back its street operations and reins in masked agents who have killed Americans in multiple shootings, clashed with protestors and provoked communities with aggressive tactics.

Under the agreement reached Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security will be funded for two weeks — a period of time that in theory will allow lawmakers to negotiate guardrails for the federal agency. The measure still will need to be approved by the House, though it is not clear when they will hold a vote — meaning a short shutdown still could occur even if the Senate deal is accepted.

Padilla negotiated with the White House to separate the controversial measures in question — to provide $64.4 billion for Homeland Security and $10 billion specifically for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — from a broader spending package that also funds the Pentagon, the State Department and health, education and transportation agencies.

Senate Democrats vowed to not give more money to federal immigration agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, unless Republicans agree to require agents to wear body cameras, take off masks during operations and stop making arrests and searching homes without judicial warrants. All Senate Democrats and seven Senate Republicans blocked passage of the broader spending package earlier Thursday.

“Anything short of meaningful, enforceable reforms for Trump’s out-of-control ICE and CBP is a non-starter,” Padilla said in a statement after the earlier vote. “We need real oversight, accountability and enforcement for both the agents on the ground and the leaders giving them their orders. I will not vote for anything less.”

Neither Padilla nor Schiff immediately responded to requests for comment on the deal late Thursday.

Even if Democrats block Homeland Security funding after the two-week deal expires, immigration operations would not stop. That’s because ICE received $75 billion under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year — part of an unprecedented $178 billion provided to Homeland Security through the mega-bill.

Trump said Thursday he was working “in a very bipartisan way” to reach a compromise on the funding package. “Hopefully we won’t have a shutdown, we are working on that right now,” he said. “I think we are getting close. I don’t think Democrats want to see it either.”

The administration has eased its tone and admitted mistakes in its immigration enforcement campaign since Pretti’s killing, but hasn’t backed down completely or paused operations in Minneapolis, as critics demanded.

This week Padilla and Schiff joined other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in calling on the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis. In a letter addressed to Assistant Atty. Gen. for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, they questioned her office’s decision to forgo an investigation, saying it reflected a trend of “ignoring the enforcement of civil rights laws in favor of carrying out President Trump’s political agenda.”

Dhillon did not respond to a request for comment. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said there is “currently no basis” for such an investigation.

Schiff also has been busy preparing his party for any move by Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would give the president broad authority to deploy military troops into American cities. Trump has threatened to take that move, which would mark a dramatic escalation of his immigration campaign.

A spokesperson confirmed to The Times that Schiff briefed fellow Democrats during a caucus lunch Wednesday on potential strategies for combating such a move.

“President Trump and his allies have been clear and intentional in laying the groundwork to invoke the Insurrection Act without justification and could exploit the very chaos that he has fueled in places like Minneapolis as the pretext to do so,” Schiff said in a statement. “Whether he does so in connection with immigration enforcement or to intimidate voters during the midterm elections, we must not be caught flat-footed if he takes such an extreme step to deploy troops to police our streets.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, announced he will serve as one of three Democrats leading an impeachment inquiry into Noem, whom Democrats have blasted for allowing and excusing violence by agents in Minneapolis and other cities.

Garcia called the shootings of Good and Pretti “horrific and shocking,” so much so that even some Republicans are acknowledging the “severity of what happened” — creating an opening for Noem’s impeachment.

“It’s unacceptable what’s happening right now, and Noem is at the top of this agency that’s completely rogue,” he said Thursday. “People are being killed on the streets.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) went to Minneapolis this week to talk to residents and protesters about the administration’s presence in their city, which he denounced as unconstitutional and violent.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has gone after a slew of Trump immigration policies both in California and across the country — including by backing a lawsuit challenging immigration deployments in the Twin Cities, and joining in a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi denouncing the administration’s attempts to “exploit the situation in Minnesota” by demanding local leaders turn over state voter data in exchange for federal agents leaving.

California’s leaders are far from alone in pressing hard for big changes.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the head of the Archdiocese of Newark (N.J.) and a top ally of Pope Leo XIV, sharply criticized immigration enforcement this week, calling ICE a “lawless organization” and backing the interruption of funding to the agency. On Thursday the NAACP and other prominent civil rights organizations sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) arguing that ICE should be “fully dissolved” and that Homeland Security funding should be blocked until a slate of “immediate and enforceable restrictions” are placed on its operations.

Madrid, the Republican consultant, said California’s leaders have a clear reason to push for policies that protect immigrants, given the state is home to 1 in 4 foreign-born Americans and immigration is “tied into the fabric of California.”

And at a moment when Trump and other administration officials clearly realize “how far out of touch and how damaging” their immigration policies have become politically, he said, California’s leaders have a real opportunity to push their own agenda forward — especially if it includes clear, concrete solutions to end the recent “egregious, extra-constitutional violation of rights” that many Americans find so objectionable.

However, Madrid warned that Democrats wasted a similar opportunity after the unrest around the killing of George Floyd by calling to “defund the police,” which was politically unpopular, and could fall into a similar pitfall if they push for abolishing ICE.

“You’ve got a moment here where you can either fix [ICE], or lean into the political moment and say ‘abolish it,’” he said. “The question becomes, can Democrats run offense? Or will they do what they too often have done with this issue, which is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?”

Jan. 29 (UPI) — White House border czar Tom Homan says federal agents will continue so-called targeted operations in Minneapolis during a news conference on Thursday.

Homan added that the focus of these targeted operations will be “criminal aliens” and threats to public and national safety. He has also directed federal agents to prepare a drawdown plan for Minneapolis but clarified that the administration will not stop with detainments and deportations.

Homan added that decreasing the number of federal agents on Minneapolis’ streets will require the local government and law enforcement entities to cooperate with the federal government to identify and detain immigrants.

“We will conduct targeted enforcement operations. What we’ve done for decades,” Homan said. “With a prioritization on public safety threats. We are not surrendering the president’s mission on immigration enforcement. Prioritization of criminal aliens does not mean we forget about everybody else. That’s just ridiculous.”

Homan took the reins of President Donald Trump‘s Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minneapolis earlier this week. Before his arrival, federal agents had detained several children from an area school district.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison have met with Homan this week.

Homan said he “did not agree with everything” the local officials have said, but they did acknowledge ICE is a congressionally approved agency.

“What we did agree on is the community’s safety is paramount,” Homan said. “What we did agree upon is not to release public safety risks back into the community when they could be lawfully transferred to ICE.”

The Minnesota Department of Corrections has been working with ICE to identify and remove immigrants with criminal records, Homan added. He went on to clarify that he was referring to people who were already detained in the Minnesota prison system.

In regards to the fatal shootings of two Minneapolis-area residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 years old, Homan said he will not comment or share his personal opinion. He only acknowledged that the federal operation in the city has not been “perfect” and he and Trump “have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made.”

Homan referred to anti-ICE protesters as “agitators,” and asked local officials to “tone down the dangerous rhetoric” and work with federal agents who are “performing their duties in a challenging environment.”

“They’re trying to do it with professionalism,” Homan said. “If they don’t, they’ll be dealt with. Like any other federal agency, we have standards of conduct.”

Homan later blamed the increase of federal agents in Minneapolis on “rhetoric” directed towards agents and the immigration operation.

“I said in March if the rhetoric didn’t stop there was going to be bloodshed,” Homan said. “And there has been. I wish I wasn’t right.”

Frey on Thursday acknowledged participating in “good and productive meetings” with President Donald Trump and Homan, but cautioned that “I will believe it when I see it” regarding improvements in immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis.

“They have talked about drawing down the numbers in terms of federal agents — ICE and Border Patrol — in Minneapolis, and that is essential,” Frey told media.

“The reality is we need Operation Metro Surge to end,” he said, adding that the operation did not make the city safer or reduce chaos.

He called the federal law enforcement effort an “invasion” of the city and said that he expects the “conduct to immediately change,” but did not address the conduct of protesters.

At a recent training session for 300 immigration activists in Los Angeles, the main topic was Minnesota and the changes to federal immigration tactics.

For the last few months, federal law enforcement officers have intensified their efforts to locate and deport immigrants suspected of living in the country illegally. They have used children as bait, gone door-to-door and at times forcibly stormed into people’s homes without judicial warrants.

But it was the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens protesting immigration raids in Minnesota, that sparked a growing backlash of the federal government’s aggressive actions and caused activists to reconsider their own approach when monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“One quick note about de-escalation,” Joseline Garcia, the community defense director for City Council District 1, told a crowd at St. Paul’s Commons in Echo Park. “What we would do when it came to de-escalation is we’d tell people their rights, try to get their information and try to reason with the ICE agents and pressure them to leave.”

“Things have changed a ton in the past two months, so that’s not something we’re willing to put you all at risk to do,” she added. “There is risk here and we are always encouraging people to stay safe and please constantly be assessing the risks.”

The immigration crackdown began in Los Angeles last summer but has continued in the region even after the national focus shifted to Chicago and now Minneapolis. The last month has seen a new series of arrests and actions that have left local communities on edge.

While the scope of the sweeps and the number of arrests in Los Angeles appear to be down overall compared with last summer, daily immigration operations are being documented across the city, from street corners in Boyle Heights to downtown L.A.’s Fashion District.

Federal agents carry less-lethal projectile weapons in Los Angeles in June.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Times’ requests for comment. In a previous statement the department said Border Patrol agents were continuing to operate in the city to “arrest and remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”

Earlier this month, renewed fears spread among shoppers in the Fashion District after federal agents conducted an immigration sweep that shut down local commerce to check vendors’ proof of citizenship. Days later a federal agent opened fire at a suspect, who the Department of Homeland Security said rammed agents with his vehicle while attempting to evade arrest, during a targeted operation in South Los Angeles.

Local immigration activists say they have noticed a change in immigration agents’ tactics. The change has forced activists to also adjust their tactics.

“What we’re seeing now are large numbers of officers to grab anywhere from one to five people, not necessarily questioning them, and then moving out as quickly as possible,” said Juan Pablo Orjuela-Parra, a labor justice organizer with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Maribel C., associate director of Órale, a Long Beach-based immigrant advocacy group that was established in 2006, said rapid response volunteers in Long Beach have reported similar tactics by immigration agents.

“In as fast as 30 seconds” a target can be “literally taken off the streets” by federal agents, leaving no time for a rapid response volunteer to relay “know your rights” information or get the detainee’s name, said Maribel, who is not providing her full name to protect her safety.

Immigrant rights advocates say one thing that has not changed is federal officials continue to detain immigrants with no criminal history.

On Jan. 20, exactly one year into the Trump administration’s second term, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said about 70% of people whom the agency has arrested have been convicted or charged with a crime in the United States.

In the first nine months of the administration’s immigration crackdown, from Jan. 1 to Oct. 15, a Times analysis of nationwide ICE arrests found that percentage to be about the same.

In Los Angeles, the same analyses found that of the more than 10,000 Los Angeles residents who were arrested in immigration operations, about 45% were charged with a criminal conviction and an additional 14% had pending charges.

Between June and October of last year, the number of arrests has fluctuated significantly.

The arrests peaked in June with 2,500 people who were apprehended — including those who have pending criminal charges or were charged with immigration violations — but the following month the number fell to slightly more than 2,000. After further drops, a small spike in arrests occurred in September, with more than 1,000 arrested and then dramatically dropped in October with fewer than 500 arrests.

Officials have not released detailed data since then.

“I think what’s happened in Minnesota is terrifying for everyone in the country because those tactics that are being implemented in Minnesota are going to be the same tactics that are going to be implemented elsewhere,” Maribel said.

After a second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal officers, the Trump administration is moving to scale back its presence in Minneapolis and in the process bumping Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino out of the state, with border advisor Tom Homan taking his place.

Bovino led and participated in highly visible immigration operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., and Minneapolis, sparking outrage and mass demonstrations.

At the training event in Echo Park, organizers said the recent events in Minnesota are jarring and forcing them to reconsider the safety of activists who protest or document immigration raids. Those activities will continue, they said, but with a focus on safety.

“Over the past two weeks, we saw that they’re escalating to the point of killing people that are exercising their rights,” Garcia said.

For months, Gregory Bovino has been the public face of President Trump’s sweeping immigration raids across U.S. cities.

When the brash Border Patrol commander charged into Los Angeles last summer with the stated mission of arresting thousands of immigrants, he was unapologetic as agents smashed car windows, concealed their identities with masks, seized brown-skinned Angelenos off the streets, and descended on MacArthur Park on horseback.

In Minneapolis, when a federal officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good on Jan. 7, Bovino’s response to Fox News’ Sean Hannity was, “Hats off to that ICE agent.”

And when a Border Patrol agent shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, on Saturday, Bovino again defended the killing. Pretti, he said, looked like someone who “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

But as public outrage has swelled against the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics, Bovino’s future is in limbo. On Monday, Trump deployed border advisor Tom Homan to Minnesota, with Bovino reportedly set to depart the region.

Now, the question remains: will Bovino’s departure really change the Trump playbook?

Ariel G. Ruiz Soto — a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank — said Bovino’s exit, if true, could represent a pivotal moment in immigration enforcement in the nation’s interior.

“I think it signals that the tensions have risen so significantly that there’s beginning to be ruptures and fragments within the Trump administration to try to figure out how to do this enforcement more efficiently, but also with more accountability,” Ruiz Soto said.

Other immigration experts, however, question the significance of sidelining Bovino.

“I think it’s a grave mistake to think the change in the personnel on the ground constitutes a change in policy,” said Lucas Guttentag, a professor of law at Stanford University who specializes in immigration. “Because the policy remains the same: to terrorize immigrant communities and intimidate peaceful protesters.”

Even if Bovino is ousted or given a lesser role, Guttentag said, national immigration policy is still shaped by Stephen Miller — the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor who has embraced hardline enforcement tactics.

“They’re still threatening to use military action,” Guttentag said. “They still want to keep the National Guard on call. All of those fundamental policies, as well as deporting people who had legal status, sending people to third world countries without any due process, adopting detention rules that deprive people of hearings to be eligible for release, all of that’s continuing.”

“Simply changing from Bovino to Homan,” he added, “doesn’t signal anything significant in terms of policy.”

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So far, the Department of Homeland Security has remained publicly tight-lipped about what’s next for Bovino, and did not respond this week to inquiries from The Times.

However, the Associated Press reported Monday that Bovino and some federal agents were expected to leave Minneapolis as early as Tuesday. The Atlantic, citing DHS sources, reported that Bovino had been demoted from his role of Border Patrol commander at large and would return to his former job in El Centro, Calif.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin disputed that Monday, saying on X that Bovino “has NOT been relieved of his duties.” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt described him as a “wonderful person” and “a great professional” who would “continue to lead Customs and Border Patrol throughout and across the country.”

There has been mounting criticism of and public protest against the administration’s activities since the launch of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota last month. Trump said he sent Homan to Minnesota “to de-escalate a little bit.”

“Bovino is very good, but he’s a pretty out-there kind of a guy,” Trump said Tuesday during an interview on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show.” “And in some cases that’s good. Maybe it wasn’t good here.”

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A pugnacious 55-year-old who was born in California but raised in North Carolina, Bovino’s muscle-bound physique, green military greatcoat and gel-spiked hair seemed straight out of MAGA central casting.

Barreling into Los Angeles in June to command the Trump administration’s mass immigration raids, he seemed to relish confrontation as protests erupted and troops were deployed across the city.
“All over … the Los Angeles region, we’re going to turn and burn to that next target and the next and the next and the next, and we’re not going to stop,” Bovino told the Associated Press last summer. “We’re not going to stop until there’s not a problem here.”

When Bovino met legal setbacks, he was defiant.

In August, an appeals court upheld a temporary restraining order blocking his agents from targeting people in Southern and Central California based on race, language or vocation without reasonable suspicion they are in the U.S. illegally.

Bovino responded by posting a video on X that first showed L.A. Mayor Karen Bass telling reporters that “this experiment that was practiced on the city of Los Angeles failed” before cutting to himself grinning. As a frenetic mix of drums and bass kicked in, the video transitioned to footage of federal agents jumping out of a van to chase people down.

“When you’re faced with opposition to law and order, what do you do?” Bovino wrote. “Improvise, adapt, and overcome!”

After Bovino led agents in Los Angeles, he pivoted to Chicago to serve as the commander of Operation Midway Blitz. Then, he went to New Orleans before heading to Minnesota to lead what officials called Homeland Security’s “largest immigration operation ever.”

The fatal shootings of Good and Pretti by federal agents this month sparked outrage and protests, both in Minneapolis and around the nation.

Ruiz Soto said that the controversy over the Trump immigration policy was no longer just about immigrants.

“It’s about constitutional rights and it’s about U.S. citizens,” Ruiz Soto said. “For the broader public, it’s now much more immersive. It’s now much more in their face.”

After Border Patrol agents tackled Pretti to the ground and shot him, many Americans were outraged to hear Bovino and other senior Trump administration officials make false statements regarding the incident.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Pretti approached federal officers on the street with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun and “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him.

But according to videos taken on the scene, Pretti was holding a phone, not a handgun, when he stepped in front of a federal agent who had shoved a woman to the ground. The agent shoved and pepper-sprayed him and then multiple agents forced him to the ground. In the middle of the scrum, an agent secured a handgun. Less than a second later, the first shot was fired.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asserted without evidence that Pretti had committed “an act of domestic terrorism,” and said her agency would lead the investigation into his killing.

Federal officials also denied Minnesota state investigators access to the shooting scene in south Minneapolis, prompting local and state officials to accuse the Homeland Security agency of mishandling evidence.

In the days since the shooting, Democrats in Congress have called for Noem to be removed from office.

“The country is disgusted by what the Department of Homeland Security has done,” Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday in a joint statement. “Kristi Noem should be fired immediately or we will commence impeachment proceedings in the House.”

When asked by reporters Tuesday whether Noem would step down, Trump said: “No.”

By sidelining Bovino, Ruiz Soto said the Trump administration appears to be sending a larger message.

“They’re going to try to restrict or home in the Border Patrol’s authority or at least the way they participate in operations and are going to now go back,” he said. “Or at least try to emulate more of the prior ICE model.”

Guttentag, however, said that while the public is seeing a tactical retreat on the part of the Trump administration, the problems went beyond Bovino’s leadership.

“So it’s not just the leadership, it’s the lack of training,” Guttentag said. “It’s the message that we’re getting from the very top, the statements from the vice president and others, that they have legal immunity. It’s the instructions to be as aggressive as they can be, and it’s also the lack of quality in the hiring and training process. All of that continues regardless of who the person on the ground is.”

ORLANDO, Fla. — President Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nealry 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.

Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. The census report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people, and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.

Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.

The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration’s crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tenn.; and Minneapolis, Minn..

The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.

“They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureau’s staffers appear to have been “doing this work as usual without interference.”

“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out,” Frey said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.