u. s. immigration

HARRISBURG, Pa. — When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security publicized the arrest of a Nigerian man for indecent exposure this week, it included a political attack that’s drawing complaints from Democrats and a nonpartisan government watchdog.

The department’s news release alleges that the man worked for a Democratic congressional candidate in a Pennsylvania battleground district, an unusual reference to a high-profile midterm contest.

“It’s unbelievable that Janelle Stelson would employ an illegal alien to work on a congressional campaign, let alone a pervert who exposed himself in public,” Charles Wall, deputy director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in the news release.

A police report said the man had fliers for Stelson in his vehicle. Stelson denied that the man was a campaign employee.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about how it established the man worked for Stelson. Its news release cited a news report quoting a conservative activist who asserted the connection.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint Thursday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, calling the department’s attack on Stelson a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from using their official positions to influence elections.

Donald Sherman, who leads CREW, said he’d never seen anything like the department’s statement, where a law enforcement agency “goes out of its way” to reference a campaign affiliation in a news release that has nothing to do with election-related crimes.

The news release is “consistent with the message that the administration and that the president has sent from the top that ICE is to be involved in elections, regardless of what the law says,” Sherman said.

Stelson, a former local television personality, is running for the second time against Republican Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District. It’s expected to be one of the races that determines control of the U.S. House in the November midterms.

“If he is an illegal immigrant who committed a crime he should be deported,” Stelson’s campaign said. “We never heard of him prior to the news of his arrest. We are grateful to law enforcement for acting swiftly to arrest him.”

President Trump’s administration is already under scrutiny for using federal resources for political purposes. The Department of Homeland Security has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on advertisements glorifying Trump and promoting his campaign messaging, drawing a pair of lawsuits and bipartisan backlash.

According to a police report obtained by the Associated Press, Chimaobim Adedayo Igbojekwe was arrested by an East Pennsboro Township police officer on Sept. 27 after a report of a suspicious vehicle parked next to a public park on a residential street in the Harrisburg suburb.

The officer wrote that, when Igbojekwe opened the door to talk to the officer, he noticed that Igbojekwe’s “genitals were exposed.”

Igbojekwe told the officer he was “in the neighborhood for work and that he was waiting to hand out [fliers] for Janelle Stelson’s political campaign,” according to the report. Igbojekwe produced a stack of fliers, the officer wrote.

It’s not clear whether the man was working as a paid canvasser for another organization.

Igbojekwe was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, courts records say, and later was arrested by ICE.

Homeland Security said Igbojekwe entered the country legally in 2017 but remained past his “authorized period.” He was granted deferred action in 2021.

Igbojekwe’s public defender did not return a call about the case.

Levy writes for the Associated Press.

CHICAGO — The U.S. can deport the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque — an outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights — on the grounds that he is a threat to national security, an immigration judge ruled Wednesday.

Salah Sarsour was detained in Milwaukee in March by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. A federal judge ordered Sarsour’s release in June, saying he raised a “substantial” claim that the Trump administration was targeting him for speaking out against Israel and advocating for Palestinian rights.

Sarsour called the ruling “deeply disappointing,” but said he intends to appeal.

“I will continue fighting to defend the right to free speech and to stay in the country I have called home for more than three decades,” Sarsour said in a statement.

Government attorneys say Sarsour’s decades-old convictions in Israel make him a threat to national security and accuse him of lying on his green card application. Judge Jayme Salinardi, with the Chicago Immigration Court, found him removable on foreign-policy grounds but tossed out the government’s claim that Sarsour lied to immigration authorities.

Sarsour says he fears for his life if he is deported to the West Bank

Sarsour, who was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was imprisoned in Israel in 1988 after confessing to throwing a Molotov cocktail and stones at Israeli military personnel. In 1995, he was convicted of attempting to possess weapons. Sarsour denies committing those crimes. His attorneys say he was tortured and coerced into confessing in both instances.

Sarsour, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, does not have a criminal record in the U.S., where he has lived since 1993. His attorneys say the U.S. government has known about Sarsour’s convictions in Israel since he arrived.

Deportation to the West Bank “means the end of my life,” Sarsour told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

One of his attorneys, Patrick Taurel, told the AP that Sarsour’s earlier treatment by Israeli authorities is “probably a good indicator of what awaits him” if he is deported.

At a status hearing Wednesday, Taurel pressed the judge to specify that Sarsour can only be deported to Israel or the Palestinian territories. Jordan, a country to which Sarsour has no connection, is listed as a possible destination on the order of removal.

Sarsour was instructed by immigration officers to list Jordan as his home country on an immigration form because his preferred entry — “Palestine” — is not a fully independent, unified state. But he “has no right to reside in Jordan,” Taurel said.

Salinardi declined, calling it an issue to be addressed on appeal.

Attorney says Sarsour will fight deportation

Taurel said Wednesday that Sarsour is being unfairly targeted.

“If Salah can be deported for his speech in support of Palestinian rights, anyone can face the same fate,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo in June 2025 invoking a rarely used immigration provision saying Sarsour could be deported on the same grounds as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both advocates for Palestinian rights whom the Trump administration has tried to expel, according to court documents.

Before the judge’s ruling, Taurel said Sarsour would need to demonstrate on appeal that he could be tortured again if he were deported.

“It’s a very high bar, although I think we can meet it in this case, given what Salah has already experienced, and given the government of Israel’s treatment” of others like him, Taurel said.

A notice of appeal is due within 30 days. Salinardi did not schedule a new hearing and announced he is retiring and that Judge Craig Defoe will oversee the case going forward.

Sarsour says he was tortured and coerced into confessions

Jawad Boulos, who represented Sarsour when he was convicted in Israel, testified in August that Sarsour was coerced into confessing and that he wasn’t convicted of any charge tying him to a terrorist organization. He said Sarsour was tortured by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.

The Department of Homeland Security challenged Boulos about the torture allegations, questioning how he could know it was true.

Sarsour’s current defense team has asked why U.S. authorities waited until this year to detain him. Taurel said the government has known about Sarsour’s imprisonment in Israel for decades and that he has not concealed that from immigration authorities.

Experts on forced confessions and the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons also testified in Sarsour’s defense. Israeli military courts have faced repeated scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and the high conviction rate of Palestinians. Israel rejects the claims.

In June, U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered Sarsour released from ICE custody saying he could have a case arguing the U.S. government detained him in retaliation for protected speech. Further, Hanlon said, government attorneys had not explained why Sarsour was suddenly considered a threat after decades as a lawful permanent resident.

The Trump administration has appealed Hanlon’s ruling.

Sarsour, who has Type 2 diabetes, lost more than 30 pounds while detained by ICE, and his blood sugar levels were checked only once a month, putting him at risk of organ failure or death, his attorneys said.

An investigation by KFF Health News and the Associated Press found that hundreds of detainees in at least 33 states have filed federal lawsuits with similar allegations of medical neglect.

Mayes-Osterman writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 21, 2026 12:45 PM PT

AUSTIN, Texas — A Venezuelan man shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was in custody Monday at an ICE detention center in Texas after he was released from a hospital with a bullet still lodged in his back, according to a spokesperson for the man’s attorney.

Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, was making a DoorDash delivery in Austin, the state capital, on Sunday before he was shot during a traffic stop, said Fabiana Meléndez Ruiz, a spokesperson for immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch.

Ruiz said Perez called his wife around 12:30 p.m. Sunday to tell her that he had been shot. She said Perez’s wife hasn’t spoken with him since then.

Perez was being detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, about 130 miles southwest of Austin, Ruiz told the Associated Press. She said Lincoln-Goldfinch spoke by phone with Perez, who told her that he was being interrogated while a bullet remained in his back. Perez also said he had no pain medication, according to Ruiz.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has released little information and has not said what prompted the shooting. In a statement early Monday, the department said it was investigating the shooting of a Venezuelan man in the U.S. illegally who “had a final order of removal.”

Perez is an asylum seeker and entered the United States through a parole program, and he has no criminal history, Ruiz said.

“Regardless of his status, the use of force was unwarranted,” Ruiz said. “As far as we understand, he was here legally.”

The shooting occurred amid a surge in ICE enforcement across the U.S. during President Trump’s second term. During the summer, it reported more than 50,000 monthly arrests in July and August — a first for the agency.

Immigration officers have come under intense scrutiny amid a series of shootings during the crackdown. At least four people have been fatally shot by federal officers during immigration enforcement operations this year.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis told reporters Sunday that the shooting occurred after a traffic stop. She said local police were not involved. Local officials said the man was shot once in the torso and had been hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

Perez’s wife and attorney were unable to get information on his condition from the hospital Sunday until hospital attorneys told them about 6 p.m. that he had been discharged 90 minutes earlier, Ruiz said.

She said ICE had not confirmed any information to Lincoln-Goldfinch, who used legal databases and other means to discover where he was being detained.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said Sunday he wants local police to have a role in investigating the shooting. Watson said it wouldn’t be appropriate for ICE to investigate on its own.

At the scene of the shooting, a dark blue Toyota Corolla was parked under an overpass with damage to its passenger-side door and what appeared to be bullet holes before it was towed away Sunday evening.

About 100 anti-ICE protesters gathered Sunday in the shooting’s aftermath.

Wilder and Bedayn write for the Associated Press. AP writer Russ Bynum in Savannah, Ga., contributed to this report.