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american immigration council
The Trump Admin Is Building a Mass Detention System—What Will You Do About It?
What they have not told you is that the immigration detention system is not processing people, it is accumulating them. The math shows how fast; the history shows what comes next.
Feb 15, 2026
They told you.
Not once. Not quietly. Not in some obscure corner of the internet where plausible deniability can hide. They told you in court filings and local hearings, in affidavits and field reports, in newsroom investigations and academic papers. They told you in the patient language of law and the blunt language of organizing. And for years, the country found ways to argue with the messengers, or litigate the metaphors, or change the subject.
Now the evidence is arriving from so many directions at once that warning has become record, and record demands a response. The question is no longer whether someone warned you. The question is what you do when the warnings stop coming as claims and start coming as records.
In two weeks, the machinery of American immigration detention has been more thoroughly exposed than at any point in this country's history, not because the government opened the door, but because enough people forced it. Analysts at Syracuse have tracked the population shifts, reporters at Bloomberg and the Washington Post have mapped the warehouses, the American Immigration Council has documented the deadliest year in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention on record, Austin Kocher has shown that 92% of detention growth this fiscal year comes from people with no criminal convictions. Ninety-two percent. The Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley Law has shown that release within 60 days of arrest fell from 16% to 3%. Hundreds of journalists, researchers, lawyers, and organizers have built a shared factual floor while the ground itself is being shaken. They deserve recognition, not rivalry. Amplification, not a race for credit.
The historical record offers no example of a detention system with these structural features that reversed course without public rupture, legal compulsion, or political defeat.
And still, the rest of the story has not been told.
Everything published so far answers the first-phase questions. How big is the system. How fast is it growing. Who is inside it. History asks a harder one. Not how big the system is, but where it is going. Not how fast it is growing, but when growth changes what the system is. Not who is inside it today, but what happens to the people inside it when intake keeps running, court capacity keeps shrinking, and the exits keep narrowing until the word "exit" becomes an administrative fiction. Answering that question requires a lens most of the current analysis does not use. The missing lens is not moral outrage. It is structural diagnosis, how systems change character when inputs outrun exits.
That is the lens I study. I study irregular warfare and state detention systems. That is not the career I started with. I am a West Point graduate, trained in the ethics of command and the obligations of the oath I took. I came to this work because the patterns I had studied from a distance were no longer distant, and because the oath does not expire. I have published that work in peer-reviewed journals. And I am telling you plainly: I have seen this structure before. Not in identical form, and not with identical ends, but with the same mechanics.
It appeared in the early Nazi concentration camp system before administrative pressure transformed improvised holding into something durable and escalating. It appeared in US counterinsurgency detention abroad, from the Phoenix Program in Vietnam to Camp Bucca in Iraq, where intake outpaced processing and produced the same result every time. Populations accumulated. Confinement lengthened. Exits never caught up. The vocabulary lagged behind the math. It always does.
Until the math catches up to you. That is why the spreadsheet matters. ICE publishes a detention statistics spreadsheet on its own website not out of transparency, but because a previous Congress wrote a disclosure mandate into law. ICE has complied reluctantly, delayed updates, and published selectively. Kocher has warned that the window is closing. But while it remains cracked, what you can see through it is damning. The crossing from processing to warehousing has already begun.
Start with scale, because scale amplifies every friction point downstream. More than 70,000 people are in ICE detention right now, across 225 facilities. The population has grown 75% in 12 months. That is not a surge passing through. It is a system swelling in place.
Then look at who is being held, because composition tells you what kind of force the system is applying. Nearly half, 48.4%, have no criminal conviction and no pending charges. They are held for the civil offense of being present without authorization. That is the government's own classification for the people in its own custody. Now look at the direction, because direction tells you what tomorrow will resemble. This year's detention growth comes almost entirely from people with no criminal convictions. The system is not detaining more criminals. It is detaining more people who have committed no crime, faster than at any point in its history. When that is the composition and that is the trajectory, the word "enforcement" stops describing what the system does. The word that fits is control.
Now follow the arithmetic, because the arithmetic tells you whether the system is clearing cases or accumulating bodies. Every month of this fiscal year, more people have entered that system than have left it. Every month. Net growth averages 3,000 per month. There is no month in which the system shrank.
Net growth matters because it proves the system is accumulating, not cycling. And once a system accumulates, the only question becomes which exits still function. Bond-posted releases account for 3-6% of all exits. For every 1 person released pending a hearing, 14.3 are deported. The system removes. It does not release. Read that ratio again. The system was built to take people in. It was never built to let them out. That is not a flaw in the design. It is the design.
That ratio points to the choke point. The court is what seals the system closed. Seven in ten detainees are tethered to a court system with 3.38 million pending cases and a bench that has lost more than 100 judges in the past year. Intake feeds backlog. Backlog extends detention. Extended detention drives growth. One loop. Self-reinforcing. Average bond wait times climbed 32% in four months. The door is not just narrow. It is closing while you watch.
Now here is the number that should end the argument. There are 7,252 people detained for more than six months. Among them are asylum-seekers who passed the government's own credible-fear screening. The government itself determined they have a legitimate claim to protection. Their average detention stands at 183 days and climbed 25% in three months. When the people with the strongest legal claims are held longer and longer, the paperwork may still say "processing." The calendar says captivity.
The calendar also tells you what captivity does when it becomes a baseline. Captivity at that scale does not hold still. It builds. If current conditions hold, the detained population will approach or exceed 100,000 by the end of 2026. The $45 billion appropriated through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act funds 135,000 beds through fiscal year 2029. Enacted law. Signed contracts. Revenue streams with lobbyists already defending them. Concrete does not dissolve because a press office changes its language. When a system starts building for those numbers, it is not preparing for a temporary spike. It is constructing a new baseline. The only question is what the system becomes once it reaches that capacity, and for that you have to look past the spreadsheet, because the spreadsheet was built to make sure you never see what comes next.
And when a system builds for long-term capacity, its failures stop being episodic. They become routine, and routine produces a record.
What remains is whether the rest of us decide that what is happening behind those walls is our problem. Not someone else's. Ours.
Here is what comes next.
Victor Manuel Diaz was arrested in Minneapolis. Eight days later he was found dead in ICE detention, hanging from a bed sheet. ICE sent his body not to the county medical examiner but to a military facility that does not release autopsy reports. When a government routes its dead to institutions it controls, the aim is not truth. It is the containment of the story.
Geraldo Lunas Campos died at Camp East Montana on Fort Bliss, asphyxiated while being restrained by five guards. He had asked for his medication. He was 55, Cuban, legally admitted to this country in 1996. The El Paso County medical examiner classified his death as a homicide. Two detainees who told the Washington Post what they witnessed received deportation notices days later. And it was not only the adults.
At Dilley, the South Texas Family Residential Center, the detained population tripled in three months. An estimated 800 children are inside. A measles outbreak was confirmed February 1. Members of Congress who visited described a 5-year-old as lethargic and depressed. A 5-year-old. In a facility the spreadsheet records as a line of numbers.
In the spreadsheet's categories, every one of these people occupies the same column. A man restrained until he stopped breathing is recorded the same way as a man who posted bail. A lethargic child is a digit in a headcount. An exit is an exit. A death is a departure. The system was not built to distinguish. It was built to count, and counting is not seeing.
What you see when you look past the count is containment masquerading as adjudication. A slow lengthening of stays. A piling up of people the system cannot move and will not release. A conversion of law into force so gradual that each day looks like the day before it, until you look back and realize the thing you are living inside has no name you are willing to say out loud.
Say it. The historical record offers no example of a detention system with these structural features that reversed course without public rupture, legal compulsion, or political defeat. None. Not one. The comparison is structural, not identical, and that is what makes it diagnostic. Structure determines what becomes possible and what becomes routine, long before anyone names the destination.
That is why the convergence matters. Every credible voice that has examined this system is arriving at the same conclusion from different directions. The analysts, the historians, the reporters, and the lawyers are standing in the same light for the first time. We were right. It is here.
One of those voices was not a professor or a journalist or a lawyer. He was a resident of Surprise, Arizona, and he stood at a city council microphone and invoked Ohrdruf. He was not performing history. He was reading the structure being built in his community and recognizing it in his bones. A windowless warehouse. A population detained for administrative reasons. A legal system too slow to process them. A government that builds faster than accountability can follow. He spoke because he understood the timing. You establish the record while the building is still going up, not after the concrete has set and the system has learned to call itself normal.
The record is being built. The full analysis is published as "The War Brought Home: The Recalibration" on my Substack. Kocher's biweekly analyses are at austinkocher.substack.com. The facility-level tool built by Kocher and Sawyer is at detentionreports.com. The AIC report is at americanimmigrationcouncil.org. Read them. Share them. They are what you hand to the person at your table who still thinks this is temporary.
But proof without witness is just a filing cabinet, and the witness is already underway. Lawyers have filed more than 18,000 habeas petitions and won nearly every case that reached a decision. Members of Congress have sued to inspect facilities their own government sealed from view. Communities in Surprise, Kansas City, and Shakopee have stood at microphones and said, "No." These people are not waiting for permission. They are building the record in real time.
They are also still the few. The system does not survive on the cruelty of its architects alone. It survives on three kinds of silence. Those who see it and approve. Those who see enough to be uncomfortable but have decided that discomfort is not obligation. And the rest of us, reading this right now, feeling the weight of it, not yet decided what that weight requires.
That middle is where every mass detention system in history found its operating room. Not in the enthusiasm of supporters, but in the silence of people who could see the wall going up from their kitchen window and chose to close the blinds. Every historical account includes the same figure. Never the architect or the guard. Always the neighbor who knew, who had every means to see, and who later claimed they did not.
The math is done. The facilities are mapped. The petitions are filed. The communities have shown what resistance looks like. What remains is whether the rest of us decide that what is happening behind those walls is our problem. Not someone else's. Ours.
No one else is coming. There is no cavalry over the hill. There is only the public, and the public is us. We are standing here, today, right now, in whatever light we have, with whatever we know, and it is enough to begin. Because when this is over, the record will not be in doubt. Only the witness will be.
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New DHS Database Suggests That Less Than 5% of Those Arrested by ICE Are the ‘Worst of the Worst’
The database contains just 9,738 total people, a tiny fraction of the more than 220,000 ICE data says the agency arrested between January 21 and October 15.
Dec 10, 2025
In response to criticism of its aggressive and often lawless "mass deportation" campaign—which has entailed sweeping raids by masked agents, the use of squalid detention centers rife with torture, overt racial profiling, and the near-total abrogation of due process—the Trump administration has often fallen back on a familiar refrain: that the immigrants it targets are "the worst of the worst" dangerous criminals.
Immigration data published throughout the second Trump administration has already undermined this claim. Last month, David J. Bier of the Cato Institute published new data showing that between October 1 and November 15, only 5% of those booked into ICE detention had violent criminal convictions, while 73% had no convictions at all. It mirrored previous data published by Cato in June, which showed that 65% arrested had no criminal convictions of any kind, while 93% had no violent convictions.
Justice Department data published last month, meanwhile, showed that of the at least 614 people snatched up in the Operation Midway Blitz crackdown in Chicago, just 16 had criminal records of any kind.
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security published its own "Worst of the Worst" database seeking to reverse the narrative, but it seems to have done the opposite.
"DHS has launched WOW.DHS.GOV for Americans to see the criminal illegal aliens that we are arresting, what crimes they committed, and what communities we removed them from," read a post from the agency on social media.
The post leads to a website containing the names, photos, and nationalities of those arrested by ICE. It also lists alleged past criminal convictions. In many cases, the only documentation of the allegations, if any is provided at all, is a DHS press release rather than official court records.
"Under Secretary [Kristi] Noem's leadership, the hardworking men and women of DHS and ICE are fulfilling President Trump's promise and carrying out mass deportations—starting with the worst of the worst—including the illegal aliens you see here," a header on the website reads.
Among those listed are people who DHS says have been convicted of heinous crimes, ranging from attempted murder to child abduction to domestic battery.
But the database contains just 9,738 total people, a tiny fraction of the more than 220,000 ICE data says the agency arrested between January 21 and October 15.
"So DHS is implicitly admitting that less than 5% of the people it arrests are people they believe are 'the worst of the worst,'" said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
Moreover, even some of those listed among the "Worst of the Worst" have only nonviolent offenses to their name, like drug possession, shoplifting, or disorderly conduct.
Reichlin-Melnick also noted that while immigration law does not require a criminal conviction for a person to be removed, "it matters because the administration talks as if these cases are the majority."
"There are definitely bad people on there who deserve deportation, but plenty of others on the list have nothing worse than a misdemeanor," he said. “If the administration were to actually focus its resources on people who were serious public safety threats or fugitives, there would be less of an outcry. But data shows that the big focus has been on boosting numbers by going after people no previous administration, Republican or Democrat, prioritized.”
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Reagan-Appointed Judge Rips Into Trump Admin for Illegally Targeting Pro-Palestine Student Protesters
Politico's senior law reporter called it "the most scathing legal rebuke of the Trump era."
Sep 30, 2025
A federal judge issued an emphatic ruling Tuesday that the Trump administration acted illegally when it targeted pro-Palestinian student activists for deportation, describing it as part of an effort to "strike fear" into protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.
In the 161-page ruling, US District Judge William Young, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, concluded that the Trump administration undertook illegal efforts "unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech."
He also launched a broadside against the Trump administration's entire authoritarian ethos, describing President Donald Trump's "palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains."
Politico's senior law reporter Kyle Cheney described the ruling as "the most scathing legal rebuke of the Trump era." Young himself called it the most important he's ever issued in over 30 years on the bench.
The first page immediately captures this gravity, containing a scan of an anonymous postcard Young received in June as a prologue: "Trump has pardons and tanks... what do you have?" the sender asked.
Young included his response: "Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People ... have our magnificent Constitution. Here's how that works out in a specific case."
The case was launched following a lawsuit from the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, which represent hundreds of college professors around the US who testified that they felt intimidated by what they described as "ideological deportations" by the Trump administration of students who expressed pro-Palestinian views.
Often without warning, the State Department revoked nearly 1,700 visas from lawful immigrants before targeting many of them for deportation under an executive order by Trump that allegedly responds to "antisemitism," but in practice extends far out to encompass any expressions of solidarity with Palestinians or criticisms of Israel.
During the trial, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acknowledged that it determined who to target using an anonymously operated pro-Israel "doxxing" website known as the Canary Mission, which publishes dossiers on college students around the country who express unfavorable views about Israel.
One of those students was Mahmoud Khalil, an activist at Columbia who held a green card, who was whisked away from his address in the middle of the night by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and sent to a detention facility for months. As Young acknowledged in his ruling, Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary of homeland security, stated plainly in an interview that the effort to deport Khalil was because of "basically pro-Palestinian activity." After a federal judge ordered Khalil's release, the Trump administration began efforts to deport him to Algeria or Syria.
ICE agents also snatched Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts, off the street in broad daylight after she co-wrote an op-ed calling for her university to divest from companies participating in Israel's genocidal war in Gaza. Although the administration acknowledged that Öztürk, who had a legal student visa, committed no crime, she remained in an ICE detention facility for more than six weeks before a judge ordered her release.
Young said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials, such as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees ICE, "acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment-protected political speech."
He refuted the professors' contention that the administration had waged an "ideological deportation policy," which he said "could have raised a major outcry." Instead, Young said, their intentions were "more invidious—to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated noncitizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome."
To strip visas "solely on the basis of political speech, and with the intent of chilling such speech," Young said, "is not only unconstitutional, but a thing virtually unknown to our constitutional tradition." The First Amendment of that Constitution, he added, "does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens."
Young did not order any changes to Trump administration policy with his ruling, but only because Trump "poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech" as a whole, and further proceedings would be necessary in order to rein in those abuses more comprehensively.
He specifically identified the use of masks by ICE agents during arrests, which he described as "disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable."
"ICE goes masked for a single reason: to terrorize Americans into quiescence," Young said. "In all our history, we have never tolerated an armed, masked secret police."
The final 12 pages of the ruling, which American Immigration Council fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick described as "truly remarkable," focus on "the nature of our president himself," who Young said "simply ignores" rulings he dislikes.
Young concluded that the courts, which he described as one of the few remaining bulwarks to Trump's excesses, needed to do more than issue nonbinding cease-and-desist orders, but instead issue permanent injunctions that can result in contempt charges if the administration refuses to stop illegal policies.
Trump, he said, is not "entirely lawless," but "has learned that—at least on the civil side of our courts—neither our Constitution nor our laws enforce themselves and he can do most anything until an aggrieved person or entity will stand up to him and say 'Nay.'"
Young also put the responsibility of resistance on the institutions that have capitulated to Trump's demands.
"Our bastions of independent, unbiased free speech–those entities we once thought unassailable—have proven all too often to have only Quaker guns," he warned. "Behold, President Trump’s successes in limiting free speech—law firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the president, media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism."
"I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected," he wrote in conclusion. "Is he correct?"
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Legal Fight Underway as Trump Invokes Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for Deportations
"Today was a horrific day in the history of the nation," said the leader of one legal group, but "the rule of law prevailed."
Mar 15, 2025
Even before U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday publicly revealed that he was invoking the Alien Enemies Act, legal groups took action, which led to a federal judge temporarily blocking the administration from using the 1798 law for deportations.
Chief Judge James Boasberg of the District Court for the District of Columbia issued "a classwide, nationwide temporary restraining order, blocking removal of any noncitizens in U.S. custody who are subject to today's AEA order for the next 14 days," according to Law Dork's Chris Geidner. Earlier in the day, the judge had issued a TRO for the individual plaintiffs in this case.
Like Geidner, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick shared updates from the evening hearing on social media. He noted that the ACLU said at least two planes were en route to El Salvador and Honduras. The judge—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—ordered any planes in the air to turn around but said he could not take action for any aircraft that had landed.
With a few final matters, the hearing is now over. Great job by the ACLU and partners in getting this lawsuit filed so quickly, and on Judge Boasberg for understanding the urgency. We'll have to watch to see whether the planes are turned around in time, as at least one is in the air now.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 6:54 PM
The national and D.C. arms of the ACLU launched the lawsuit with Democracy Forward, whose president and CEO, Skye Perryman, stressed early Saturday that "the United States is not at war, nor has it been invaded. The president's anticipated invocation of wartime authority—which is not needed to conduct lawful immigration enforcement operations—is the latest step in an accelerating authoritarian playbook."
"From improperly apprehending American citizens, to violating the ability of communities to peacefully worship, to now improperly trying to invoke a law that is responsible for some of our nation's most shameful actions, this administration's immigration agenda is as lawless as it is harmful," Perryman added. The AEA was most recently used during World War II to force thousands of people of mostly German, Italian, and Japanese descent into internment camps.
Lee Gelernt, lead counsel and deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, called Trump's move "as unprecedented as it is lawless," and said that "it may be the administration's most extreme measure yet, and that is saying a lot."
After the initial TRO, Perryman said that "yet again, the judicial system is essential to protect our democracy. We collaborated through the night with our co-counsel to ensure that the president could not invoke wartime powers to deal with his policy challenges. We are gratified to see the judge's decision and will work on the next stages to ensure those impacted by this dangerous move to invoke wartime powers when the nation is not at war—and has not been invaded—are protected."
After the president’s unlawful and unprecedented invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a judge issued a nationwide temporary restraining order in Democracy Forward's case with our partners at @aclu.org & @aclu-dc.bsky.social. Full statement to follow.
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— Democracy Forward (@democracyforward.org) March 15, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Following Boasberg's final decision Saturday, the broader TRO, Perryman declared that "today was a horrific day in the history of the nation," but "the rule of law prevailed."
The legal battle stems from an effort to deport five Venezuelans accused of being involved with the gang Tren de Aragua (TdA), but based on Trump's comments on the campaign trail—and his recent designation of multiple cartels as terrorist groups—the president is expected to seek a wider use of the AEA to deliver on his promised mass deportations.
Trump's proclamation, dated Friday but released Saturday, says TdA "is a designated foreign terrorist organization with thousands of members, many of whom have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States. TdA operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human, drug, and weapons trafficking."
"TdA has engaged in and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming United States citizens, undermining public safety, and supporting the Maduro regime's goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States," Trump said. "I proclaim that all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies."
It is noteworthy that Trump's EO invoking the Alien Enemy Act to deport certain Venezuelans without recourse to the protections of immigration law was signed on March 14, but not made public until today (March 15). In other words, they started the organizing these deportations by secret order.
[image or embed]
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 6:51 PM
The legal fight is far from over. The next hearing before Boasberg is scheduled for Friday afternoon. The groups behind the lawsuit were not alone in sounding the alarm about Trump's invocation of the 18th-century law.
FWD.us president Todd Schulte said in a statement that "the Alien Enemies Act was last used to incarcerate 120,000 Japanese-Americans and tens of thousands of others during World War II. Its use was a mistake and a tragedy."
"There should be no effort to invoke this law today or in the future—against anyone, no matter their immigration status, be they an adult or child, as is proposed in today's declaration," he asserted. "Actions like this have no place in the immigration system or country we should seek to build."
Allison McManus, managing director for national security and foreign policy at the Center for American Progress, said that "invoking the Alien Enemies Act is a dangerous abuse of power intended to deprive people of their legal rights. This announcement comes just one day after the president threatened to use the Department of Justice against his critics, raising the likelihood that these powers will be exploited and put the safety of any American who speaks out against this administration at risk."
McManus added that "every American, regardless of their politics, should be concerned that the president is granting himself powers last invoked to detain thousands of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II—one of the most shameful times in U.S. history."
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'Corruption in Plain Sight': AOC Warns Laken Riley Act a Boon to Private Prison Industry
"Look at what members of Congress are invested in private prison companies," said Ocasio-Cortez.
Jan 22, 2025
"It's corruption in plain sight."
That's how U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) described congressional colleagues who support Republican-authored legislation that immigrant rights advocates warn is a right-wing power grab under the guise of public safety.
The Laken Riley Act—named after a young woman murdered last year by a Venezuelan man who, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), entered the United States illegally—was passed by a vote of 263-156 in the House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon. Forty-six Democrats and every Republican present voted "yes." That was a near-identical tally to the 264-159 vote on a previous version of the bill passed earlier this month.
Senate lawmakers passed the bill on Monday, with 12 Democrats joining 52 Republicans in voting for the measure, which, among other things, expands mandatory federal detention of undocumented immigrants who are accused of even relatively minor crimes. With the House's Wednesday vote, the Laken Riley Act is set to be the first bill signed into law since President Donald Trump returned to office.
Speaking on the House floor on Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez said:
I want the American people to know, with eyes wide open, what is inside this bill because we stand here just two days after President Trump gave unconditional pardons to violent criminals who attacked our nation's Capitol on January 6th, and these are the people who want you to believe, who want us to believe that they're trying to quote unquote "keep criminals off the streets," when they are opening the floodgates...
In this bill, if a person is so much as accused of a crime, if someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they will be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and... sent out for deportation without a day in court, without a moment to assert their right, and without a moment to assert the privilege of innocent until proven guilty without being found guilty of a crime they will be rounded up, that is what is inside this bill, a fundamental suspension of a core American value, and that is why I rise to oppose it.
"You may wonder why so many of our friends across the aisle who care so deeply about the rule of law happen to be so desperate to pass this bill," Ocasio-Cortez continued. "Look no further than the price tag of this bill, $83 billion. [Lawmakers] know that it can't be paid for. They know that the capacity is not there, and you know what will be there? Private prison companies are going to get flooded with money."
"Look at what members of Congress are invested in private prison companies who receive this kind of money and look at the votes on this bill," she added. "It is atrocious that people are lining their pockets with private prison profits in the name of a horrific tragedy and the victim of a crime. It is shameful. It is absolutely shameful."
The congresswoman's comments came two days after Trump reversed a 2021 executive order issued by former Democratic President Joe Biden meant to phase out U.S. Department of Justice contracts with private prisons. Despite Biden's order, more than 90% of people held by ICE in July 2023 were locked up in for-profit facilities, which are rife with serious human rights abuses, according to the ACLU and other advocacy groups.
Anthony Enriquez, vice president of U.S. advocacy and litigation at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and Hill opinion contributor, recently called the Laken Riley Act "a sweetheart deal for the private prison industry."
"Private prison executives look poised to pull off a multibillion-dollar cash grab at taxpayer expense via a cynical ploy to capitalize on the tragic death of a Georgia nursing student," he warned.
Shares in private prison stocks, which had been languishing for much of 2024, have soared since Trump's victory in November, with GeoGroup surging more than 127% since Election Day and competitor CoreCivic up over 63%.
Responding to reporting that ICE is preparing to more than double its detention capacity by opening 18 new facilities, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said on social media Wednesday: "That would likely mean tens of billions in taxpayer funds sent to private prison companies. They are salivating."
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Congressional Report Calls Trump Deportation Plan 'Catastrophic' for Economy
"All it will do is raise grocery prices, destroy jobs, and shrink the economy," JEC Chair Martin Heinrich said of the president-elect's plan to deport millions of immigrants.
Dec 12, 2024
Echoing recent warnings from economists, business leaders, news reporting, and immigrant rights groups, Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee detailed Thursday how President-elect Donald Trump's planned mass deportations "would deliver a catastrophic blow to the U.S. economy."
"Though the U.S. immigration system remains broken, immigrants are crucial to growing the labor force and supporting economic output," states the new report from JEC Democrats. "Immigrants have helped expand the labor supply, pay nearly $580 billion a year in taxes, possess a spending power of $1.6 trillion a year, and just last year contributed close to $50 billion each in personal income and consumer spending."
There are an estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and Trump—who is set to be sworn in next month—has even suggested he would deport children who are American citizens with their parents who are not and attempt to end birthright citizenship.
Citing recent research by the American Immigration Council and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the JEC report warns that depending on how many immigrants are forced out of the country, Trump's deportations could:
- Reduce real gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 7.4% by 2028;
- Reduce the supply of workers for key industries, including by up to 225,000 workers in agriculture and 1.5 million workers in construction;
- Push prices up to 9.1% higher by 2028; and
- Cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half a million immigrants who are removed from the labor force.
Highlighting how mass deportations would harm not only undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens, the report explains that construction worker losses would "make housing even harder to build, raising its cost," and "reduce the supply of farmworkers who keep Americans fed as well as the supply of home health aides at a time when more Americans are aging and requiring assistance."
In addition to reducing home care labor, Trump's deportation plan would specifically harm seniors by reducing money for key government benefits that only serve U.S. citizens. The report references estimates that it "would cut $23 billion in funds for Social Security and $6 billion from Medicare each year because these workers would no longer pay into these programs."
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who chairs the JEC, said Thursday that "as a son of an immigrant, I know how hard immigrants work, how much they believe in this country, and how much they're willing to give back. They are the backbone of our economy and the driving force behind our nation's growth and prosperity."
"Trump's plan to deport millions of immigrants does absolutely nothing to address the core problems driving our broken immigration system," Heinrich stressed. "Instead, all it will do is raise grocery prices, destroy jobs, and shrink the economy. His immigration policy is reckless and would cause irreparable harm to our economy."
Along with laying out the economic toll of Trump's promised deportations, the JEC report makes the case that "providing a pathway to citizenship is good economics. Immigrants are helping meet labor demand while also demonstrating that more legal pathways to working in the United States are needed to meet this demand."
"Additionally, research shows that expanding legal immigration pathways can reduce irregular border crossings, leading to more secure and regulated borders," the publication says. "This approach is vital for managing increased migration to the United States, especially as more people flee their home countries due to the continued risk of violence, persecution, economic conditions, natural disasters, and climate change."
The JEC report followed a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that explored how mass deportations would not only devastate the U.S. economy but also harm the armed forces and tear apart American families.
In a statement, Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, thanked Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) "for calling this important discussion together and shining a spotlight on the potential damage."
Cárdenas pointed out that her group has spent months warning about how Trump's plan would "cripple communities and spike inflation," plus cause "tremendous human suffering as American citizens are ripped from their families, as parents are separated from their children, or as American citizens are deported by their own government."
"Trump and his allies have said it will be 'bloody,' that 'nobody is off the table,' and that 'you have to send them all back,'" she noted, arguing that the Republican plan will "set us back on both border control and public safety."
Cárdenas concluded that "America needs a serious immigration reform proposal—with pathways to legal status and controlled and orderly legal immigration—which recognize[s] immigrants are essential for America's future."
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Trump Spokesperson Affirms Day 1 Plans for Nation's 'Largest Mass Deportation Operation'
"As always, we will go to court to challenge illegal policies, but it is equally essential that the public push back, as it did with family separation," one rights advocate said.
Nov 07, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump is set to begin his promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as soon as he takes office on January 20, 2025, even as rights groups are mobilizing to stop him.
Trump national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Wednesday morning that "the American people delivered a resounding victory for President Trump."
"It gives him a mandate to govern as he campaigned, to deliver on the promises that he made, which include, on Day 1, launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country," Leavitt said.
"We have a simple message for President-elect Trump or his deputies if they decide to make good on their despicable plans: We will see you in court."
Trump has pledged to conduct the largest deportation in U.S. history, with running mate and now Vice President-elect JD Vance promising 1 million deportations each year. The plan would likely rely on mobilizing federal agencies, the military, diplomats, and Republican-led states while using federal funds to pressure uncooperative states and cities into complying.
The stocks of private prison companies like GEOGroup and Core Civic rose significantly after Trump's win, and private contractors had already been discussing ahead of the election how to build enough detention space to accommodate Trump's plans.
A study released by the American Immigration Council in October found that a massive, one-time deportation program of the estimated 13.3 million migrants in the country without legal status would cost the government at least $315 billion while a 1-million-a-year approach would cost $88 billion a year for a total of $967.9 billion. It would also shrink the nation's gross domestic product by between 4.2 and 6.8%, not to mention the massive human cost to immigrant families, as around 5.1 million children who are U.S. citizens live with an undocumented family member.
The council also warned that such a program would likely threaten the well-being of all immigrants and increase vigilantism and hate crimes.
"As bad as the first Trump administration was for immigrants, we anticipate it will be much worse this time and are particularly concerned about the use of the military to round up immigrants," Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who fought the first Trump administration on family separation and other policies, told The Washington Post. "As always, we will go to court to challenge illegal policies, but it is equally essential that the public push back, as it did with family separation."
Exit polls show that 56% of U.S. voters favor offering immigrants already in the U.S. a pathway to citizenship, while Data for Progress found that survey respondents did not favor deportation for 7 out of 9 categories of people who might be caught up in a mass deportation scheme.
The ACLU has urged cities and states to take steps to protect their undocumented residents ahead of January 20.
"They should prepare for mass deportations because those will wreak havoc on the communities," Noreen Shah, director of government affairs at the ACLU's equality division, told Newsweek. "It will mean kids who go to school and their parents are gone and not there to pick them up at the end of the day."
In particular, legal groups are gearing up for Trump to potentially evoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which authorizes the country to deport noncitizens of a hostile nation. It has only been used three times, most recently to detain Japanese Americans during World War II.
"Many fear that a second Trump administration would seek to use this law to justify indefinite detention and remove people from the country swiftly and without judicial review," Shah told Reuters.
The Brennan Center for Justice has called on Congress to repeal the act.
"This law was shameful and dangerous back when it was created 200 years ago," the center's Marcelo Agudo wrote in October. "It's even more so today. It must be repealed or overturned."
Several other organizations pledged to continue defending immigrants and refugees after Trump declared victory.
"We have a simple message for President-elect Trump or his deputies if they decide to make good on their despicable plans: We will see you in court," Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, said in a statement. "And, we have a message of love to immigrant communities, we see you, we are you, and we will stand with you."
Calling Trump's win "one of the most dangerous moments in our country's history, National Immigration Law Center president Kica Matos said the organization had led a "movement-wide effort to plan for this moment."
"Trump and his allies told us what he plans to do: mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, ending the right to public education for immigrant children, internment camps, and using the military to hunt down immigrants. We should take him at his word," Matos said.
She continued: "One thing is certain: we cannot and will not retreat. For more than 40 years, NILC has been steadfast in our fight to defend the rights of low-income immigrants and their loved ones. We successfully fought Donald Trump before, and we will do it again."
The American Immigrant Lawyers Association (AILA) pledged to continue working for its clients.
"If implemented, the anti-immigrant policies avowed by candidate Trump will inflict lasting damage to the American economy, communities, and character," AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson said in a statement. "AILA and its more than 16,000 members will continue to defend the Constitution and stand against laws and policies that violate due process, undermine civil rights, or denigrate the contributions of immigrants. Our future prosperity depends on not giving up. We must stand together and work towards a brighter future."
Refugees International also promised to continue with its "shared commitment to rights and refuge for people forced from their homes."
"Amid historic levels of global displacement, the incoming Trump administration plans to enact an anti-refugee, anti-asylum agenda that will endanger millions of people—both those threatened by crises overseas and those who have been welcomed as neighbors into communities across the United States," the group's president, Jeremy Konyndyk, said in a message to supporters. "Yet we hold on to hope, even as we are clear-eyed about the daunting struggles ahead."
Knowndyk added: "As we do under any presidential administration, we will work tirelessly with all of you to defend and advance the rights, protection, and well-being of all people forced to flee their homes."
United We Dream, the largest U.S. organization led by immigrant youth, committed to building the "largest pro-immigrant movement this country has ever seen."
"Immigrant young people of United We Dream declare ourselves hopeful and clear eyed about the fight ahead," said the group's executive director Greisa Martínez Rosas. "With Trump pledging to carry out the largest deportation effort in our country's history—ctivating the military to raid our communities, schools, hospitals, and more in order to round up our people into concentration camps—young, Black, brown, and queer leaders who have been at the vanguard of our movement and of creating meaningful change are ready move mountains to protect our communities."
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'It's a Disgrace': Biden Weighs Making Temporary Asylum Limits Harder to Lift
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," said one campaigner.
Sep 04, 2024
Two months after U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum, senior administration officials are reportedly considering making the policy—which was meant to be temporary—much harder to lift.
Biden's June directive invoked Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to deny migrants asylum—"when the southern border is overwhelmed."
The policy shuts down asylum requests when the average number of daily migrant encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500. Border entry points may allow migrants to seek asylum when the seven-day average dips below 1,500.
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law."
The changes under consideration would reopen entry only after the seven-day average for migrant encounters remains under 1,500 for 28 days.
"The asylum ban itself is arbitrary and duplicative. It has no relation at all to a person's asylum claims, meaning even a person with an extraordinarily strong claim would be denied for crossing at a time when many others, potentially thousands of miles away, are doing the same," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, said Wednesday.
"There is no doubt that we need to rethink the current asylum system, which would include giving it an infusion of resources so that people don't have to wait five years for a decision," he continued. "But cutting it off to whole swathes of people for reasons unrelated to their claims isn't a fix."
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law, which since it was created in 1980 has mandated that all people on U.S. soil be permitted to request humanitarian protections, regardless of how they got here," Reichlin-Melnick added.
U.S. officials say Biden's order has resulted in a dramatic decrease in asylum claims.
According to The New York Times:
Since Mr. Biden's executive order went into effect, the number of arrests at the southern border has dropped precipitously. In June, more than 83,000 arrests were made, then in July the number went down further to just over 56,000 arrests. Arrests in August ticked up to 58,000, according to a homeland security official, but those figures still pale in comparison to the record figures in December when around 250,000 migrants crossed.
Migrant rights advocates condemned the new rules. Less than two weeks after Biden issued the order, a coalition of rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the administration, arguing the policy was illegal and endangered migrant lives.
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA's director of refugee and migrants rights, said Wednesday on social media. "High numbers of people being denied their human rights is not a sign of success, it's a disgrace."
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'Bullsh*t': Trump Slammed for Trying to Distance Himself From Project 2025
"Trump is now desperately trying to run from his deep ties to Project 2025... MAGA extremists' radical wish list for a second Trump term," President Joe Biden's campaign said.
Jul 05, 2024
Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday attempted to distance himself from a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right takeover of the federal government, prompting derision from observers who underscored close ties between the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee and the blueprint's authors.
Trump took to his Truth social media platform to claim the knows "nothing about Project 2025," a sweeping initiative spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation to boost the power of the presidency and purge career federal civil servants, who would be replaced with Trump loyalists.
"I have no idea who is behind it," Trump added, a claim that numerous observers quickly countered.
In an email entitled, "Donald Trump & Project 2025: One and the Same," Democratic President Joe Biden's reelection campaign said that "Trump is now desperately trying to run from his deep ties to Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation's 900-page deeply unpopular manifesto drafted by former Trump officials that offers Americans a preview of MAGA extremists' radical wish list for a second Trump term."
"Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump's second term that should scare the hell out of the American people," Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. "Project 2025 staff and leadership routinely tout their connections to Trump's team, and are the same people leading the [Republican National Committee policy platform, Trump's debate prep, campaign, and inner circle."
"Trump's Supreme Court and Project 2025 have designed the playbook for Trump to achieve his dream of being a dictator on day one, with unchecked, imperial power," Moussa added. "Allowing a self-absorbed convicted felon that kind of power would be devastating for our democracy and middle-class families. This November, voters must stop Trump from turning the Oval Office into his throne room."
As CNN detailed Friday:
Paul Dans, the head of Project 2025, was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration, and the group's roadmap for the next administration includes contributions from others who have worked for the former president, including his former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn. John McEntee, Trump's former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and one of his closest aides while in office, is also a senior adviser for the project.
Mother Jones Washington, D.C. bureau chief David Corn said: "This is B.S. Christian nationalist Russell Vought, who is one of the Trump allies in charge of the GOP platform effort, is a coordinator of Project 2025. Trump is gaslighting once again."
Others noted that Trump's own Make America Great Again, Inc. super PAC is running ads highlighting Project 2025.
Critics have called Project 2025 a "blueprint for autocracy"—an assessment bolstered by last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling bestowing the president with what experts described as king-like powers, which Trump's advisers have reportedly vowed to exploit if he wins November's election.
The Associated Press reported last month that a right-wing group allied with the presumptive GOP nominee was drafting a list of federal employees who are disloyal or insufficiently dutiful to Trump, an undertaking compared with the McCarthyite anti-communist crusade during the second Red Scare in the 1950s.
Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation, raised eyebrows earlier this week after he said that the coming right-wing "revolution" will "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be," which some observers took as a thinly veiled threat of violence.
In his Friday Truth post, Trump said that he disagrees with some of Project 2025's agenda and that "some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."
"Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them," he reiterated.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan responded to Trump's claim in a social media post saying, "What's revealing about Donald Trump loudly disavowing Project 2025 and falsely denying any knowledge of it is that clearly he knows how damaging it can be to his election bid."
"So why on earth did neither Biden nor the CNN moderators bring it up at the debate last week?" he asked.
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In 'Massive Escalation', Texas Sues to Shut Down Faith-Based Shelter for Helping Migrants
"If the work that Annunciation House conducts is illegal—so too is the work of our local hospitals, schools, and food banks," said the nonprofit organization.
Feb 21, 2024
A faith-based migrant aid organization that's operated in El Paso, Texas for nearly five decades said Wednesday that Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton ordered it to turn over documents about its work earlier this month—but that a lawsuit filed by Paxton has now made clear that his true goal is to shut down the group's network of shelters.
Annunciation House, which provides food and housing for refugees and undocumented immigrants, received an order from the Consumer Protection Division of Paxton's office on February 7, demanding that it turn over documents including legal service referrals, identifying information about asylum-seekers and migrants the group helped, and applications for federal funding. The organization was given one day to turn over the documents, and Paxton provided no explanation for the demand.
A request for an extension was denied by the state, and Annunciation House asked a court for a restraining order to grant it more time, as well as requesting that the court rule on which documents it had to hand over.
On Tuesday, Paxton announced he was suing Annunciation House, saying that given the group's "flagrant failure" to turn over the documents, his office "may terminate the business's right to operate in Texas."
"The [Office of the Attorney General] lawsuit seeks to revoke Annunciation House's authorization to do business in Texas and asks the court to appoint a receiver to liquidate their assets," said Paxton.
Annunciation House said that Paxton's statement made clear that his "real goal is not records but to shut down the organization," adding that the attorney general's office "has stated that it considers it a crime for a Catholic organization to provide shelter to refugees."
The group noted that "there is nothing illegal about asking a court to decide a person's rights," as it did following the February 7 request, and pointed out that public services across the country also provide aid to migrants and refugees.
"The attorney general's illegal, immoral and anti-faith position to shut down Annunciation House is unfounded," said the group. "Annunciation House has provided hospitality to hundreds of thousands of refugees for over 46 years... Annunciation House's response to the stranger is no different from that of the schools who enroll children of refugees, the clinics and hospitals who care for the needs of refugees, and the churches, synagogues, and mosques who welcome families to join in worship."
"If the work that Annunciation House conducts is illegal—so too is the work of our local hospitals, schools, and food banks," said the group.
Despite the organization's well-established record of helping to ensure refugees have temporary housing—work that it said "helps serve our local businesses, our city, and immigration officials" as well as Annunciation House's guests themselves, Paxton suggested the group's officials are "worsening illegal immigration" and facilitating human smuggling.
"The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) reviewed significant public record information strongly suggesting Annunciation House is engaged in legal violations such as facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house," Paxton claimed.
Jerome Wesevich, a lawyer with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, which is representing Annunciation House, expressed shock at the "aggressive" tone of Paxton's rhetoric about the nonprofit.
"These are church ladies," Wesevich told The Texas Tribune of the volunteers who help run Annunciation House's shelters. "He's using documents as an excuse to shut down a religious organization he doesn't agree with."
Paxton's lawsuit and threat to shut down the group follow the Texas government's attempt to circumvent federal immigration law by erecting a razor wire fence to keep migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The state government has accused the Biden administration of perpetuating chaos and "lawlessness" at the border.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director of the American Immigration Council, called Paxton's lawsuit "a massive escalation in Texas' war on the federal government and on people of faith who feel called by God to support the stranger."
"There are people of faith around the country, who believe that they are putting the teachings of the Bible (or other religious books) practice by providing services to migrants," said Reichlin-Melnick. "Paxton's lawsuit should send a shiver down the spine of every faith-based nonprofit in the state."
Before shelters like Annunciation House began working in conjunction with the federal government in 2020, he added, the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement "would just dump migrants off at the bus station after they were released from custody. It was a chaotic mess."
"I was in El Paso in 2018 and at Annunciation House itself, and saw the Border Patrol dropping off migrants there to ensure they had a place to sleep for the night," he added. "If even [the Department of Homeland Security] under the Trump administration thought they were a valuable partner, that tells you how far off base Paxton is."
A hearing on both Annunciation House's request for clarification about what documents it needs to turn over and about Paxton's call for Texas to revoke the nonprofit's registration in the state is set to take place "at some point before March 7," Wesevich told The Texas Tribune.
"Within a badly broken immigration system, the humanitarian assistance provided by Annunciation House is one of the few things that works well," said former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat. "We in El Paso stand with the faith leaders and volunteers who lead this work and make us proud to call this border community our home."
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