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immigrant rights
2 Men Were Killed by ICE on Their Way to Work; Every Employer Now Has to Pick a Side
A movement that spent years avoiding a labor identity can't afford that caution anymore.
Aug 07, 2026
Last month Immigration and Customs Enforcement killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father and Houston construction worker, on the way to a job site. Just six days later another ICE agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián Guerrero on his way to work, who left behind a partner and 3-year-old daughter.
When I helped organize the fight for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), we put young people in caps and gowns and asked the country to see them as exceptional, college bound, English speaking, worthy of protection in a way that set them apart from the majority of undocumented people, who were not students but workers. It was a strategy built for a specific moment, and it won us what respectability politics ever can: temporary inclusion that separated us from the rest of our community. Many of us also shied away from the economic argument on principle, even though mainstream organizations were already making it, because it had become associated with more middle-of-the-road groups. We narrowed our own lane instead of widening it.
That caution has run its course. Two men were killed on their way to work within a week of each other. No amount of careful language changes it.
What's needed now is to say plainly that this happened to people doing exactly what all workers do every day, and that everyone who depends on immigrant labor, starting with employers and extending through the broader labor movement, has to decide what they owe them.
Employers, unions, and labor organizations cannot afford to look away while businesses that have relied on workers like Lorenzo and Johan for years stay quiet as their own workforce is targeted by the government.
None of this is about making immigrants prove they deserve safety by pointing to what they contribute. Nobody should have to justify their right to exist with a paycheck.
But there's a difference between demanding immigrants justify their worth and simply describing how this economy runs. Construction, hospitality, agriculture, food delivery, garment production, whole industries in this country would not function without an estimated 10 million undocumented workers, most without any union protection at all. That labor isn't a contribution to the American economy. It is the American economy.
My mother came to this country to work, and to build something for her family, and so did the workers I've spent my career organizing alongside. That desire, to work hard and provide rather than be given something, isn't unique to immigrants.
Every night, at kitchen tables across this country, whether the family is undocumented or not, people are asking each other, "How was work?"
Wanting to work and provide for the people you love is one of the most ordinary parts of being human, and there is real pride in the work itself. That labor is an identity, not just the exploitative relationship it's so often reduced to, one that wouldn't change even if our immigration status did.
I organized car wash workers in Los Angeles, in shops where owners stole wages and denied bathroom breaks because workers had no path to citizenship and no union behind them. A boss who can threaten to call ICE on one worker has leverage over the whole shop floor, and in plenty of workplaces that threat is the boss' whole labor strategy, cheaper and more effective at stopping organizing than firing people or hiring anti-union law firms ever was.
Employers have a different kind of leverage too, not the threat they can hold over a worker, but the influence of being a major employer, the kind that gets a phone call to the White House answered, or makes silence too costly to just sit on.
Last year, farmers raised alarms about the raids loudly enough that President Donald Trump's own agriculture secretary carried the message to the White House, and enforcement paused, for four days, before Stephen Miller pushed to reverse it and the raids resumed.
In Minneapolis this year, more than 60 CEOs signed a joint letter calling for "de-escalation" after federal agents killed two residents. The letter didn’t name ICE, and it didn’t ask for anything specific. The letter added to the scrutiny that was already mounting against ICE and Border Patrol after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Within a day, the Border Patrol commander was pulled from the city. Within two days, Trump himself was using the language of de-escalation. A vague joint statement helped move that. Imagine what an actual one could do.
The choice to speak up for workers, clearly and specifically, should be harder to dodge in the days since the killings of Lorenzo and Johan.
Rather than address why agents opened fire on unarmed men on their way to work, the administration's border czar, Tom Homan, went on Fox News and warned that there would be more "bloodshed" unless Democrats who criticize ICE stop talking. Homan is trying to make silence about these ICE killings the price of safety, and to put the blame for these two deaths anywhere but on the agents who pulled the trigger.
Every employer, every union, every business owner who has ever depended on an immigrant showing up to work now has to pick a side. Either stand with the workers whose labor built their businesses and industries, or fall in line behind a White House that is driving a white nationalist agenda. There is no third option where staying silent counts as staying out of it.
The administration isn't waiting to see whether employers choose workers or fall in line. The same crackdown that's killing and deporting workers who are already here is also causing real labor shortages in construction, agriculture, and dairy, and the administration has an answer for that shortage that has nothing to do with accountability.
This year alone, it has added 65,000 new H-2B guest worker visas and, for the first time, opened dairy farms to guest workers under a program where a worker's legal status, housing, and wages all depend on the same employer. Advocates have documented what that leads to for years: wage theft, confiscated passports, and workers threatened into silence because there is nowhere else for them to go.
Formerly enslaved people fought for this same principle a century and a half ago, insisting that only full citizenship, not tolerated presence, guaranteed they wouldn't be treated as less than fully human. This summer, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that exact principle when it struck down Trump's attempt to strip citizenship from children born to undocumented parents.
If the labor and immigrant rights movements don’t make the case ourselves, loudly and now, that immigrant workers deserve full rights and not just a job, that’s the model we’ll be handed. The alternative gets built for us either way, one where people are welcome only as controllable labor and for exactly as long as an employer finds them useful.
Employers, unions, and labor organizations cannot afford to look away while businesses that have relied on workers like Lorenzo and Johan for years stay quiet as their own workforce is targeted by the government. Unions and labor advocates also have a responsibility to clearly say that worker safety does not end at the shop door. Workers have the right to get to a job and get home without risking their lives.
Two men are dead because they went to work, and the mistake the immigrant rights movement cannot afford right now is forgetting that it is also a labor movement.
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The Unrestrained Brutality of ICE Is a Reign of Terror
There is little point in considering DHS’ pretexts for killing on a case-by-case basis. ICE’s abuse of immigrants is not the result of individual misdeeds—it is policy.
Jul 16, 2026
In less than one week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed twice.
Neither victim was the man they were looking for. And each time their excuses made no sense. But the killings served a purpose: terrorizing immigrant communities, in pursuit of President Donald Trump’s white nationalist agenda.
On July 7 in Houston, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who did not identify themselves stopped and shot to death Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national and father of three. Araujo had lived in the United States for 35 years and had applied to obtain legal status. He was on his way to work in construction.
Using its by-now familiar excuse, Homeland Security officials claimed that Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle and tried to run down ICE agents by “weaponizing” his van. The claim was disputed by witnesses, is inconsistent with the video evidence, and makes no sense.
ICE cannot be reformed because its purpose is not enforcing the law. It is terrorism for a white supremacist vision of America.
Araujo had no criminal record. Why would this law-abiding, middle-aged family man ram an ICE vehicle and try to kill ICE agents?
Six days later, in Biddeford, Maine, ICE killed again. This time they killed Johan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States.
Again, ICE claimed that Guerrero tried to run down the ICE agent. Again, no evidence supported the excuse. Twelve hours later Homeland Security abandoned the “weaponized” vehicle claim and tried another story: The ICE agent, “fearing for public safety,” shot Guerrero because he “attempted to flee the scene.”
Under Homeland Security’s account, an unmarked ICE vehicle driven by an unknown masked man attempts to stop a vehicle, the driver (who was not their intended target) tries to escape, and the agent fires. They claim, essentially, that failing to stop (if that actually even happened) amounts to “fleeing the scene”—and requires deadly force.
Johan Sebastian Guerrero was working legally at two jobs, as a cleaner and a food delivery driver. He had a wife and a 3-year-old daughter. Who can claim he was so dangerous he had to be killed?
Since Trump returned to the White House, immigration enforcement agents have killed at least 11 times, including Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as of this writing.
ICE agents routinely shoot at people in vehicles, even though official US government policy warns against the practice and says law enforcement officers should “move out of the path of the vehicle” rather than shoot. In addition, at least 49 people have died in ICE custody so far in Trump’s second term—a number that will only climb.
Brutality and violence are routine features of ICE operations, yet no ICE agent has been held responsible. In Trump’s war against immigrants, ICE agents know they may slay with impunity.
Donald Trump’s campaign of demonization and vilification sets the stage. Trump calls immigrants “animals” and “not human,” likening them to criminals or escaped mental patients. He calls them “vermin” who “infest our country,” and he embraces the Nazi theme that a despised group is “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The unrestrained brutality of ICE is a reign of terror. Killing without cause is not a problem for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); it is a feature. ICE’s indiscriminate violence conveys that non-white immigrants, lawful or otherwise, have no place in Trump’s America.
There is little point in considering DHS’ pretexts for killing on a case-by-case basis. ICE’s abuse of immigrants is not the result of individual misdeeds—it is policy. ICE cannot be reformed because its purpose is not enforcing the law. It is terrorism for a white supremacist vision of America.
Those who reject Trump’s vision, who insist on the humanity of our neighbors, who still believe we must welcome to America’s shores those yearning to breathe free, must stand up and say No.
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Trump's Indiscriminate War on Migrants Is a War on the Best of America
On this 250th anniversary, we are a diminished, insecure, fearful country, waging war on our greatest asset: our migrants, the people we once were, the people without whose ancestors none of us would be here.
Jun 22, 2026
The running gag in America’s yellow-bellied war on migrants is that if you’re here legally, you’re welcome, but if you’re not, we’re coming after you. The discrimination is not that discriminating.
The reigning rule on the eve of the 250th anniversary of our vanishing republic is: If you’re brown, Black, or otherwise undesirable, we’re coming after you. If you support the wrong kind of liberation movement—like, say, Palestinian rights to avoid an Israeli holocaust—or if you say the wrong thing about MAGA America on social media, we’re coming after you pretty much by any means necessary.
Doesn’t matter if you have a Green Card. Doesn’t matter if you’re a naturalized citizen. We’re coming after you. I haven’t yet heard of a native-born American becoming an unperson, but that can’t be far off. When a country loses its civil liberties and defaults from human rights to demonization, all bets are off.
We’ve become shamelessly familiar with Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s pogroms of undocumented migrants, most of whom have never committed a crime. OK. Let’s concede that they crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visa, which makes them lawbreakers, even if they’re not criminals. If you really want to destroy the economy, lose your farmworkers, your cleaning crews, your roofers, your childcare workers and servers, you could argue that they should be thrown out, even if they’re law-abiding; even if they work harder than you, me, and our American neighbors put together; even if without them, Social Security would have already gone bankrupt because it’s thanks to them that we exploit their payroll and other taxes without having to pay them a dime. Let’s concede that. Let’s throw the fuckers out.
The New Colossus has been replaced by our new Caligula’s ass.
But racism is not that discerning. Not in the slyly fascist calculus that wants a certain type of foreigner out of here. Between executive orders and administrative rules, President Donald Trump is going after legal, documented workers from browner countries by eliminating their right to work in airports or day care centers, to enroll in schools and universities, to drive trucks or even fill high-skilled jobs Americans are apparently too dumb to hold.
For example, the administration is working to end the right even of American-born children of migrants to receive federal day care subsidies. A green card is supposed to give you all the rights of an American citizen short of voting, serving on a jury, or running for office. I had one. I knew what it felt like. But now, the administration is banning green card holders from receiving small-business loans. Our own Derek Barrs, who used to be a school board member here and who now works for Trump as the administrator of the trucking division of the transportation department, has signed off on a new rule that makes it far more difficult for migrants to get commercial drivers’ licenses, though trucking has been one of the great entry-level roads to migrants’ American dream. (Faustian bargains don’t become you, Derek.)
There’s the illegal arrests and attempted deportations of numerous pro-Palestinian green card holders who had the temerity to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but not a single equivalent of pro-Israeli protesters succoring calls for a Palestinian genocide. There’s the new State Department rule requiring all visa applicants to reveal all their social media accounts and set them to “public.” The State Department uses the content to vet applicants and reject them based on past opinions, if those opinions don’t conform with MAGA ideology (calling Palestinians “animals” is fine. Calling Trump anything but god is not.) There’s the new rule requiring mere applicants for a green card to leave the United States first, which is just another way of weeding undesirables.
All that adds up to creative but sinister ways to send the message to non-Americans, especially non-Americans of certain pigments and origin, that they are not welcome, to force self-deportations, or to keep the downtrodden from imagining that Lady Liberty’s lifted “lamp beside the golden door” is still for them. The New Colossus has been replaced by our new Caligula’s ass. It’s working. Schools are emptying out. Universities, which used to be the crown jewel of American progress and unstoppable factories of Nobel prizes, are losing their brightest students to Europe and China. American innovation isn’t far behind, except in retreading xenophobic laws and methods better suited for Franz Kafka’s plots: Migrants, you’re all Joseph K now.
On this 250th anniversary, we are a diminished, insecure, fearful country, waging war on our greatest asset: our migrants, the people we once were, the people without whose ancestors none of us would be here. I’ll be celebrating in a couple of weeks. But it won’t be today’s America. It’ll be the America I came to as a migrant 47 years ago, and that me and my children hope to see again before we dig our shithole too deep to get out.
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ICE’s New Immigration Detention Center Guidelines Make Them Even More Dangerous
These new guidelines are a gift for private prison companies. By lowering standards across the board, they empower them to more thoroughly exploit detainees without fear of legal ramifications.
Jun 19, 2026
On June 15, Immigration and Customs Enforcement released new rules governing immigration jails intended to “streamline requirements” and “reduce the burden on our detention operators.”
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that during the revision process, The GEO Group, one of the biggest private prison firms in the country, requested that ICE make changes that would benefit its businesses and court cases.
The GEO Group has significant ties with the Trump administration. It was a major donor to President Donald Trump’s 2025 inaugural fund and Trump-aligned super PAC. In 2025, they spent more than $3.6 million on lobbying expenditures. Perhaps most importantly two of Trump’s top immigration officials—Border Czar Tom Homan and Acting Director of ICE David Venturella—were previously employed by them.
In a statement, ICE claimed it “consulted with a variety of stakeholders, including facility operators responsible for implementing the standards,” and “considered that input” during the revision process. The end result, however, is a series of policies that overwhelmingly benefit private prisons.
Detention centers have always been inhumane institutions by design. Under Trump, they are becoming even worse.
This includes: first, clarifying that detainees “are not considered facility and/or government employees and are not entitled to wages or benefits.” This effectively eliminates a prior rule that stipulated that detainees “shall receive monetary compensation of not less than $1.00 per day for work completed.”
That change alone is a major win for private prisons. The GEO Group has faced multiple lawsuits for violating minimum wage laws. In 2023, the Washington Supreme Court ordered the company to pay $17.3 million to hundreds of detainees in back pay.
By designating detainees as non-employees, ICE is providing private prisons with the legal excuse needed to engage in even more egregious wage theft.
Second, the new guidelines specify that detention centers do not “have a right of refusal for any ICE detainee that ICE decides to detain.” As such, they will likely be forced to admit people who are severely ill or injured, regardless of whether they are able to provide appropriate medical care.
A related rule change notes that “in cases where a detainee has medical or mental health needs that exceed the capabilities of the facility, the facility shall notify ICE and request a transfer.” This process may take days—time that a detainee with a life-threatening condition may not have. To date, at least 50 people have died in ICE detention since the start of Trump’s mass deportation campaign in January 2025.
Notably, last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funneled $10 billion through the Navy to accelerate the construction of new detention centers that could house as many as 10,000 people each. Under the Navy’s terms, contractors building and staffing those new facilities do not have a “right of refusal and shall take all referrals from ICE as applicable.” ICE’s new guidelines expand that “right of refusal” to existing immigration centers.
This sets a dangerous precedent at a time when more US citizens are being swept up in ICE’s immigration raids. This includes people like Dulce Consuelo Diaz Moralez, a US-born citizen, who was wrongfully imprisoned by ICE for 25 days late last year. Denying detention centers a “right of refusal” will likely protect them from any lawsuits resulting from US citizens arrested and held by ICE.
Third, detention centers are permitted to use “machine learning-based translation or generative AI” for “non-critical communication (i.e., those of moderate importance, urgency, or significance) or during informal interactions with detainees.” This includes “reviewing and responding to a detainee’s non-English grievance or other request related to basic issues/concerns within detention.”
As Dr. Homer Venters, an expert on correctional healthcare, remarks, such grievances often include “very urgent or even emergent information such as when a patient has been denied lifesaving care.”
Many detainees have reported that guards routinely ignore their pleas for medical care and assistance. In May 2026 at The GEO Group-operated Delaney Hall, one detainee, Elder Guerra, suffered a seizure after falling and hitting the back of his head. It was only after detainees begged that guards finally called an ambulance for him. According to his relative, Guerra’s condition continues to worsen.
Substituting human translators with AI provides guards with a built-in excuse for their lack of responsiveness. Going forward, they can simply claim that the translation tool failed to communicate the urgency of their request, which led to inaction on their part.
After all, such tools are far from infallible. For instance, volunteers with Respond Crisis Translation, an organization that offers human translation and interpretation services for migrants and refugees, described a case where a woman seeking asylum due to domestic abuse used the phrase “mi jefe” to describe her father—a common colloquialism in her country. The AI tool translated the phrase literally as “my boss,” and her application was denied.
The basic problem is that machine learning algorithms are trained on datasets consisting of whatever is most represented in digital sources. While there are over 7,000 languages and dialects spoken worldwide, the vast majority of digital content is written in English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, and Russian. This limitation means that AI tools will be far more prone to error when it comes to translating idioms from underrepresented parts of the world as well as underrepresented languages, such as Wolof or Hausa.
Given that the new guidelines do not require any form of human oversight for AI translations, if the AI makes a mistake (and it will), that error may never be corrected. What’s more, if that error has serious consequences for a detainee, it’s unclear who, if anyone, would be held responsible.
ICE claims that it is constantly reevaluating its detention centers “to ensure we are providing the best care to illegal aliens in our custody.” And yet, while there have been hunger and labor strikes at three The GEO Group-operated immigration jails within the last three months, none of the new guidelines address those systematic failures.
This is not surprising, however. Since Trump retook office, DHS has eliminated and restricted oversight, while also rescinding regulations meant to hold detention operators responsible for their mistreatment of detainees. On June 4, ICE announced it will no longer investigate or report the deaths of those who have been recently released from their custody. This move is meant to absolve ICE of responsibility for the deaths of people like Daphy Michel. A medical examiner said Michel, a Haitian asylum-seeker, was “suffering from untreated severe mental health issues and a significant language barrier.” Despite this, ICE agents released her 25 miles away from Pittsburgh in the middle of winter without a coat or any regard for how she would get home. She died of hypothermia three days later.
Neither DHS, The GEO Group, nor any private prison firm care whatsoever about the health and well-being of detainees. On June 8, The GEO Group filed a lawsuit against Colorado challenging a new law that requires them to always have medical and mental health professionals available at their detention facilities. It is currently being sued by the state of New Jersey for refusing to allow its Department of Health to conduct a full inspection of Delaney Hall.
These new guidelines are a gift for private prison companies. By lowering standards across the board, ICE is empowering them to more thoroughly exploit detainees without fear of legal ramifications.
Detention centers have always been inhumane institutions by design. Under Trump, they are becoming even worse. There is only one viable solution here: abolish detention centers; abolish ICE.
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Bearing Witness to ICE Abuses at Delaney Hall
We must work together to keep the pressure on the Trump administration to meet detainees' demands for human rights, due process, and for their freedom.
Jun 10, 2026
The warehouses of human suffering are all around us. Filthy, inhumane prisons where immigrants are hidden away and brutalized. It's up to us to keep pushing to end these modern-day concentration camps. To expose them, empty them, and tear them down.
For months we New Jerseyans have mobilized to defend our brothers and sisters locked away in Delaney Hall in Newark. Many there are on a hunger and labor strike to protest the inhumane conditions inside—the rotted food, untreated illness, physical abuse and mental anguish—and the injustice of their detention in the first place. They are demanding their freedom.
Delaney Hall is just one part of a national network of immigrant abuse. It’s not about enforcing immigration laws—it’s about a paramilitary operation to attack and imprison immigrants and people of color, and keep them in inhumane conditions without the possibility of freedom until they give up their rights and accept deportation. In prisons all over the country—Adelanto, Dilley, Krome, Otay Mesa, Hutto, and others—corporate contractors like GEO Group are profiting from human isolation, sickness, and death. The Trump administration is supplying the bodies. And Congress is pumping billions of dollars more to feed this obscene, corrupt system.
Right now there is so much we can and must do to support the people suffering and protesting inside those walls. Some courageous fighters have already been released. But the struggle continues. We must work together to keep the pressure on the administration to meet their demands for human rights, due process, and for their freedom, starting first with the release of the most vulnerable, the elderly, young, pregnant, and sick.
We who are outside need to keep fighting and organizing to defend imprisoned immigrants and to support their families.
At a bare minimum, we must bear witness. The ICE Out of New Jersey collective has brought together several state and local community and grassroots organizations to be in the front lines to defend immigrants and expose and resist the administration's abuses. The groups are the New Jersey Immigrant Rights Program of the American Friends Service Committee, CATA - The Farmworkers Support Committee, Cosecha NJ, DIRE (Deportation and Immigration Response Equipo), El Pueblo Unido, Estamos Unidos NJ, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Resistencia en Acción NJ, and Semilla Roja NJ.
Also, Eyes on ICE is building a network of watchful vigilance and mutual aid. Community members, elected officials, faith leaders, students, unions—it's going to take all of us, all across the country. To show that we could be different. We must not look away. And we must not stop.
President Donald Trump and those enforcing his white-supremacist campaign of mass imprisonment and mass deportations want us to feel afraid and powerless. The police—like the New Jersey state troopers who attacked peaceful protesters at Delaney Hall—want to intimidate us. We need to work together to shift this narrative, at all levels, from the governor and state and federal representatives to mayors and grassroots leaders.
When we say, “No justice, no peace,” we mean it. We are neither afraid nor powerless. And we are not strangers. We are human, like those just inside those walls.
Our freedom out here is linked to their freedom inside. We must fight for the liberation of all. The attack on one is an attack on all of us.
We must be witnesses when we are ordered to leave and told there's nothing to see. Even when Immigration Custom Enforcement agents and state police officers beat, trample, and pepper spray us in the name of "keeping the peace."
We must keep saying no—not now, not ever, never again. We must not allow the Trump administration and its state and local partners to keep abusing their power and using our money to commit moral atrocities in secrecy.
We the people must hold firm to our humanity and reject their barbarism.
The administration's top goal is to dehumanize immigrants. But despite all their violence, they have failed. The men and women behind the bars of immigrant prisons like Delaney Hall refuse to be dehumanized. Those who are on a hunger and labor strike are asserting their human dignity, which can never be erased.
We who are outside need to keep fighting and organizing to defend imprisoned immigrants and to support their families. We must keep up the pressure, for as long as it takes and with all the power we have.
We must not let their inhumanity dehumanize us.
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Trump Is Systematically Dismantling the Immigration Court System
The Trump administration’s overhaul of the immigration court system prioritizes cruelty and deportations over justice and the people’s right to due process.
Jun 01, 2026
On May 26, Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival issued a memo directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, attorneys within the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor to develop “anti-fraud policies” designed for “robust enforcement.” This effort “should include enforcement against immigration attorneys filing false asylum claims in immigration courts.”
In a press release, Percival further added: “Protection claims like asylum are intended to cover unique and narrow circumstances, but it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country. Historically, ICE has depended on the discipline of immigration judges and the enforcement of criminal fraud laws to deter this conduct, but ICE has its own tools. Now, thanks to this directive, ICE attorneys have greater authority to enforce the law and stop the abuse of our asylum system by illegal aliens and attorneys.”
Despite these accusations, however, there is no evidence of widespread asylum fraud occurring. As the National Immigration Forum explains, there are two departments responsible for adjudicating asylum cases: the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR). While each department has a dedicated fraud detection and prevention division, neither releases regular data on the number of cases terminated or investigated for fraud.
What limited data is available does not support the Trump administration’s case whatsoever. For instance, according to a 2015 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, “The number of USCIS asylum terminations for fraud has decreased in recent years, from 103 in fiscal year 2010 to 34 in fiscal year 2014.” During that span, USCIS terminated asylum for a total of 374 individuals due to fraud, while granting asylum to 76,122 individuals.
Going after immigration attorneys is another step toward dismantling the immigration court system and stripping noncitizens of any legal protection.
The Catholic Legal Immigration Network reports that USCIS issued 892 Notices of Intent to Terminate (NOITs) asylum status between 2009 and 2020, according to data they obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Of those issued NOITs, Notices of Continuation of Status were granted in 231 cases. Only 562 cases were terminated due to “fraud in the application.”
It is also worth noting that most asylum requests are denied. This does not mean, however, that those people did not have a legitimate fear of being persecuted or harmed in their home country. Because of regulations imposed by the Trump administration and other precedents, it is incredibly difficult for those fleeing domestic abuse, gender-based violence, police violence, and gang violence to win asylum. Even cases that would have been approved in the past are now ending with deportation orders.
What is occurring here is simply another instance of President Donald Trump weaponizing allegations of fraud to target and undermine an institution he dislikes. Whether it’s elections, Medicaid, Social Security, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Democrat-run cities, or immigration, Trump insists, without evidence, that widespread fraud is occurring at unprecedented levels. That baseless accusation then becomes the pretext for a wildly illegal abuse of power. All the while, the actual rampant fraud being committed by the Trump administration is swept under the rug.
Going after immigration attorneys is another step toward dismantling the immigration court system and stripping noncitizens of any legal protection.
Already in the past year, Trump has fired over 100 immigration judges out of roughly 750 that were in place when he returned to power. The majority of those fired were appointed under Democratic administrations, had previously worked as attorneys defending immigrants, and granted asylum at higher rates than those who kept their jobs (46% compared with 15%). The administration’s new hires, by contrast, have granted asylum in approximately 6% of cases.
Notably, in August 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a rule allowing “any attorney,” including those with no prior experience in immigration law, to serve as temporary immigration judges. The same week, the Pentagon authorized 600 military lawyers to serve six-month terms as temporary judges. As Kyra Lilien, a former immigration judge who was abruptly terminated in July 2025, noted: “Firing expert, high-performing, effective judges and replacing them with inexperienced temps does not make the courts more efficient or achieve any goals of systemic reform. It is simply destructive.”
Amid this purge of immigration judges, San Francisco’s immigration court, which handled the third-largest number of asylum cases in the nation, was forced to close on May 1, 2026. This is no accident. Between 2019 to 2024, almost 75% of petitioners were granted some form of relief by that court compared with 43% nationwide. This disparity, however, is not due to fraud, but rather reflects the incredible work of California’s vast pro-immigrant organizations and pro bono or low-cost legal services. Their efforts continue to ensure that most noncitizens across the state have access to legal representation at their hearings.
More than 117,000 cases previously handled by the San Francisco court are now being relocated to a courthouse in Concord, about 30 miles away from the city. However, because of firings, the Concord court is, at the time of this writing, down to four immigration judges and one supervisor.
These firings will continue. Any judge who resists Trump’s mass deportation regime will be removed and replaced with someone who won’t. In recruitment ads, the DOJ and DHS openly encourage applicants to “become a deportation judge.”
At the same time, Trump is taking additional steps to maximize the number of removal orders being issued by the courts. As part of removal proceedings, individuals are required to attend “master calendar hearings”—these are brief, preliminary hearings wherein a judge formally notifies the person of the charges against them and provides them with a schedule for future hearings.
Noncitizens are now being scheduled for master calendar hearings consisting of 100 or more people at a time. These “mega masters” are largely made up of people without any form of legal representation whose original hearing was scheduled for 2027, 2028, or 2029. In February 2026, dozens of Somali migrants also had their hearings abruptly rescheduled for later that month and the next.
The goal here is simple: When someone does not appear for their hearing, regardless of the reason, a judge can issue an in absentia removal order that allows ICE agents to detain and deport them. The Trump administration is fast-tracking these cases, providing immigrants and their attorneys little to no notice, in the hopes that most will miss their hearings and a judge—whether out of fear of losing their job or loyalty to Trump—will move to deport them.
In short, the Trump administration’s overhaul of the immigration court system prioritizes cruelty and deportations over justice and the people’s right to due process.
This must end. Immigration judges should not fear losing their job for doing the right thing. Immigration attorneys should not be subject to federal investigations for helping their clients. Meaningful reforms must be implemented both to solve the problems Trump has created and the ones that predated him.
Such reforms include: first, guaranteeing that every noncitizen has access to a publicly funded attorney.
Second, ensuring that the asylum process is fair and consistent across the nation. As it stands, asylum acceptance and denial rates vary significantly from judge to judge and from court to court, effectively making the asylum process into a lottery. For instance, a 2017 Reuters report documented the nearly identical stories of two Honduran women who were targeted by gang violence due to their activism. One was granted asylum by the now-closed San Francisco court, while the other was denied their request by a court in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, immigration courts must be removed from the executive branch. This is a necessary step to protect due process and stop the abuses being enacted by the Trump administration.
Ultimately, everyone, regardless of immigration status or whatever Trump believes, deserves to be treated with dignity and have their rights respected.
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Not a Penny More for ICE, Wars, or Billionaires—Fund Communities Instead
Immigrant families want what all families want: safety, health, and opportunities. The federal budget puts these at risk for our families—and yours, too.
Apr 22, 2026
Like all parents, I want the best for my children and my family. But sometimes policymakers make that more difficult.
My family is among the millions hurt by the federal government's cuts to essential services and healthcare. Due to laws passed by congressional Republicans, my children and I have lost our healthcare.
At the same time, we’ve been criminalized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), even though members of my family are US citizens and we are law-abiding. We’ve learned that doesn’t matter—especially if your skin is brown and you speak a language other than English.
We live in the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. Our city has a critical, locally funded assistance program called DC HealthCare Alliance. Both of our children have autism, and they’ve been receiving necessary care through the Health Services for Children with Special Needs (HSCSN) program.
We all need to be united as human beings—no matter where we were born or what language we speak. Human rights, not cruel partisan politics, are our common thread.
These programs are vital for their care—since I have to stay home with them, we count on my husband’s modest income to make ends meet. I also have an eye disease, and coverage through the DC Healthcare Alliance is essential for my glasses and treatment.
But due to the cuts in the GOP’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” and Congress’ drastic cuts to DC’s annual budget, I received a letter stating that my autistic children’s access to 24/7 emergency care has been cut, among other restrictions. I also received notification that I am no longer eligible for medical assistance from the Health Alliance.
This is warfare on our livelihoods. And for what?
We simply want what all families want—love, safety, health, and opportunities for our kids. Yet my taxpayer dollars—and yours—are being taken away from support for families and communities and put straight into the pockets of billionaires and ICE. Those masked ICE agents then prowl our schools, hospitals, and churches; break into our cars and homes without a judicial warrant; and use our small children as bait to abduct us.
The US hides the truth about how countries in Latin America become destabilized. Throughout the 1980s, the US government aided state terrorists in killing our people and installing thugs beholden to corporate interests instead of the well-being of their people. Yet now we see the same thing here in a country where many of us sought refuge.
I have not stood by while all these harms are being done to my family and neighbors—I’ve become a community leader. With the training from organizations like Spaces in Action and Popular Democracy, I host fundraisers to help house, feed, and clothe families who are too scared to leave their homes to work. We make homegoods to raise money to keep our children healthy.
We all need to be united as human beings—no matter where we were born or what language we speak. Human rights, not cruel partisan politics, are our common thread.
As the administration and their allies in Congress demand yet more money for ICE, my community stands with the courageous people of Minneapolis and all others who’ve stood up for the neighbors in the face of these cruel attacks. We stand with the families of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and all the innocents who have suffered and died at the hands of ICE.
Join us in calling for not a penny more to ICE, or billionaires, or illegal wars. Instead, invest our taxpayer dollars in our families, communities, and common humanity.
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Trump's Anti-Immigrant Agenda Turns the Ancient Story of Passover Into a Modern One
On Wednesday night, Jews sat down to the Passover seder and retold the story of how our ancestors, once welcomed into Egypt as refugees, were enslaved by a Pharaoh fearful of losing power. This year, it sounds like the news.
Apr 02, 2026
An authoritarian ruler seeks to consolidate his own power by stirring up fear about an immigrant population.
“These people are not like us,” he declares. “They are a potential fifth column, likely to join with our enemies and destroy us from within!” “We can keep ourselves safe only by controlling and oppressing them.”
On Wednesday night, Jews sat down to the Passover seder and retold the ancient story of how our ancestors, once welcomed into Egypt as refugees from famine, were enslaved by a Pharaoh fearful of losing power, and ultimately liberated through divine and human actions.
The Passover story has been retold in Jewish homes for millennia. This year, the ancient story tragically sounds like today’s news.
Now, the Supreme Court is considering overturning a core principle that once allowed those fleeing violence and oppression, my own great grandparents included, to find refuge in the United States.
President Donald Trump built his election campaign around stirring up fear of immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, and, over the past year, has ramped up detentions and deportations, canceled temporary protected status for nationals of multiple countries, flooded major American cities with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and flouted US policy and international law by deporting people to third countries.
All these actions have been undertaken with intense cruelty. Families have been divided; mothers tackled in airports, on the streets, and in their homes; and people sent to prisons and to nations where they have no connections.
Now, the Supreme Court is considering overturning a core principle that once allowed those fleeing violence and oppression, my own great grandparents included, to find refuge in the United States.
The justices are deliberating on Noem vs. Al Otro Lado, which will determine the constitutionality of the US government’s policy of physically blocking asylum-seekers from presenting themselves at ports of entry along the Mexican border. Longstanding US law requires the government to allow asylum-seekers to request asylum at ports of entry, and to give these claims a fair hearing.
Instead, the US has been preventing asylum-seekers from even making a claim and instead forcing them back to Mexico, where they are often stranded without shelter, adequate food, or protection from violence.
All of the current Supreme Court justices identify as either Christian, mostly Catholic, or Jewish. We hope they look to our shared scripture as they consider their rulings.
The Torah commands the retelling of the story of slavery and liberation, and also specifies what lessons should be learned from this experience. “You shall not wrong or oppress the ger,” God commands, “for you were gerim in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20). The word ger (plural: gerim) most likely refers to a person who came from somewhere else to live among the Jewish people—in other words, an immigrant or a stranger. Versions of this directive appear 36 times in the Torah.
As God established a lasting covenant with the Jewish people, God also laid out a series of laws aimed at establishing a just society. Central among these are the commandments regarding just treatment of the ger, who “...should be treated equally under the law.” (Numbers 15:15)
God, Godself, cares for immigrants just as God cared for the Jewish people during the period of their slavery in Egypt. “[God] loves the ger, and gives them food and clothing.” (Deuteronomy 10:18) Acting as God acts demands not only protecting immigrants from oppression, but actively caring for their needs.
The Torah also offers a negative example of a society whose cruelty toward immigrants, travelers, and others in need condemns it to destruction. The evil city of Sodom is notorious for its inhospitality toward visitors. “This was the sin of your sister Sodom,” the prophet Ezekiel declares, “She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility, yet they did not support the poor and the needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49)
The Talmud goes on to tell the story of one brave young woman who regularly sneaks food to a person in need, only to be tortured and killed once she is discovered.
These are the issues at stake in Noem vs. Al Otro Lado. When US officials turn asylum-seekers away at the border, rather than allowing them to plead their case, they are no different from the officials in Sodom who decreed, “Let us abolish the practice of traveling in our land.”
I've personally seen Jewish and other religious communities living out these ancient teachings. At the end of January, nearly 100 rabbis who are members of T’ruah, the organization I lead, half of whom live and work in Minnesota and half from out of state, joined some 600 other clergy to protest ICE in the Twin Cities.
These religious leaders are following the path that God has laid out, refusing to tolerate fearmongering or oppression of immigrants, and insisting on treating all people—whether born in the United States or elsewhere—justly, and according to a single legal code. The justices should do the same.
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Death in ICE Custody Reveals Preventable Systemic Failures
When the government takes custody of a person, it assumes total control over and liability for that individual’s safety, health, and survival. Unfortunately, in ICE detention, that obligation is being violated again and again.
Feb 18, 2026
In the wake of the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, nationwide attention has been fixed on the deeply troubled aspects of federal immigration enforcement. But beyond the use of deadly force, the preventable death of Parady La in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention reveals another serious, often overlooked set of failures that demand examination.
A little more than a month into 2026, eight people have already died at the hands of the US ICE, signaling yet another year of lethal systemic failure. La was the fourth fatality, a 46-year-old Cambodian refugee, who died of drug withdrawal just three days after entering ICE custody at a federal detention facility in Philadelphia. This death was entirely preventable. When the government takes custody of a person, it assumes total control over and liability for that individual’s safety, health, and survival. Unfortunately, in ICE detention, that obligation is being violated again and again.
According to reports from inmates later confirmed by medical experts, La told detention staff he was withdrawing and requested medical care, but his symptoms, including persistent vomiting, were left untreated, resulting in his death. Drug withdrawal is a predictable physiological response when a person who is chronically dependent on a substance is abruptly cut off, often involving severe nausea, vomiting, dehydration, physical pain and panic, cardiovascular strain, and escalating medical instability. Substance dependence is a chronic medical condition, no different in principle from other conditions that carry known risks when left unmanaged, such as diabetes, heart disease, or epilepsy. When symptoms of chronic conditions go untreated, particularly in custodial settings where people are confined, closely monitored, and unable to seek care on their own, the resulting harm is entirely foreseeable. Rather than explaining why someone reporting severe withdrawal symptoms was left without basic medical care in government custody, the official death notice on ICE’s website devotes significant space to detailing La’s past criminal history.
This lack of accountability is not surprising given the decades long history of preventable deaths in ICE. A Human Rights Watch analysis of 18 ICE detainee deaths between 2012 and 2015 found that independent medical experts concluded substandard medical care likely contributed to at least 7 of those deaths, with evidence of dangerous medical practices present in 16 of them. In several cases, detainees repeatedly reported severe symptoms only to be dismissed or accused of exaggeration, with hours-long delays before staff intervened. One man was found unresponsive in a pool of bloody vomit after officers failed to enter his cell for minutes, and emergency responders were not called until it was too late. A peer-reviewed analysis of 55 deaths in ICE custody between 2011 and 2018 found that nearly all involved serious medical failures, including delays in care in 95% of cases, poor care delivery in 95%, missed or ignored red flags in 80%, and failures in emergency response in 82% of deaths.
These repeated failures point to a detention system with limited transparency and little independent medical oversight.
More recent findings reinforce these earlier conclusions. A 2024 joint investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union, Physicians for Human Rights, and American Oversight examined 52 deaths in ICE custody from 2017-2021 and found that 95% were preventable or possibly preventable with appropriate medical care. Medical experts identified recurring failures across cases, including misdiagnosis, delayed or denied treatment, interrupted medications, and inadequate emergency responses, with people living with chronic health conditions disproportionately affected. Yet ICE continues to rely largely on internal death reviews, limiting transparency and meaningful corrective action and allowing the same preventable failures to recur.
What makes this lack of accountability even more disturbing is that the agency has recently halted payments to the third-party medical contractors responsible for providing care to people in custody. Reporting indicates that ICE stopped paying outside medical providers in October 2025, with claims processing not expected to resume until at least April 2026, even as the detained population has grown to more than 73,000 people nationwide. Because ICE relies heavily on these providers for specialty and off-site care, the payment freeze has already led some clinicians to stop treating detainees altogether and others to delay or deny essential services, including medications and treatment for chronic conditions. For people held in civil detention, this decision further erodes the already slim access to basic medical care inside facilities.
These repeated failures point to a detention system with limited transparency and little independent medical oversight. ICE detention facilities operate largely out of public view and are structured through layers of bureaucracy and private contracting that disperse responsibility across agencies and vendors. Medical care is often delivered by outside contractors, oversight is primarily internal, and meaningful external review is rare. In this environment, gaps in care are difficult to trace, accountability is easily diluted, and preventable deaths are allowed to recur without clear consequences.
When the government confines a person, whether in a prison, jail, or immigration detention facility, it assumes full control over that individual’s ability to access medical care. People in detention cannot seek emergency treatment on their own, choose their providers, refill prescriptions independently, or remove themselves from unsafe conditions. Their health and survival depend entirely on the state. Providing timely and adequate medical care in custody is therefore a baseline obligation that must be followed.
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Knitting the Anti-Trump Resistance—One Pink or Red Hat at a Time
The color of the hats might have changed over these years, but what has not changed is the core message: the symbolism of knitting as the slow work required to build a movement, and the need to take the time to plan before acting.
Feb 15, 2026
The pattern for a bright red melt the ICE hat popped up in my news feed the other day, and I immediately knew I had to knit one. That the pattern for the freshly renamed hat reproduces the pointed, tasseled hats Norwegians wore in the 1940s as a symbol of protest against Nazi occupation; that it comes from a small woman-owned yarn store in Minnesota at a time when it feels we are not far away from the catastrophe of Fascism and Nazism; that the proceeds from buying the pattern go to organizations that protect immigrant rights. All of this made it even more urgent that I get hold of some red yarn and start casting my stitches without delay.
I learned to knit as a young child from a woman who had herself learned from a woman who had herself learned from a woman. In Italy, where I was born and grew up, this was the norm for girls, though boys were never taught the craft.
As a teen, I enjoyed the meditative quality of the repetitive work of making something grow, one knot at a time. I marveled at the magic of my hands transforming linear yarn into a multidimensional artifact. I learned the patience needed to make and unmake and remake something until I could get it not perfect but good enough. I absorbed the anti-consumerist message of frogging, or unraveling, an old sweater that no longer fits and reusing the yarn to make a new one. I grasped the necessity to create plans before jumping into action.
Then life got in the way, and I let it all fall to the side while I concentrated on becoming a scientist and relocating to the United States to work in biomedical research. My hands turned to handling pipettes and tubes rather than yarn and needles.
But symbols are important. They speak through history, they tell us we are not alone, they let us say things that words often cannot express.
But without my consciously knowing it, it became clear that the same skills were needed in the lab as in putting together a knitting project. There it was, the need to slow down and plan ahead, to repeat the same gesture over and over again, to reuse old concepts for new discoveries, to build step by step until a complex theory emerges from the simplicity of a single experiment. During those years, my brain might have forgotten the practicalities of knitting, but the underlying lessons were all there.
In early 2016, after more than 20 years in the US, I applied for citizenship, hoping to contribute my vote against what would become President Donald Trump’s first term. Bureaucracy was too slow to allow me the privilege to cast my vote that year, but it did not stifle my willingness to protest what I saw as a dangerous development.
The pussyhat, which became a symbol of the protest movement against President Trump, brought me back to knitting. I got hold of some bright pink yarn and needles at my local women-owned yarn store and discovered that my hands still had the muscle memory of what I had learned decades earlier on the other side of the world. I knit a bunch of pussyhats for myself and my friends, which we sported at the Chicago’s women’s march on the gorgeous, hopeful day that was January 21, 2017.
It’s now almost 10 years later, and here we are again, knitting hats against the dangers to our democracy. The hat’s color has changed, from the pink that represented women’s rights to the red now pointing to the defense of immigrants’ rights. As a woman immigrant, I need both and I am sure I will need more in the future.
The color of the hats might have changed over these years, but what has not changed is the core message: the symbolism of knitting as the slow work required to build activism and resistance, and the need to take the time to plan before acting. Knitting as the symbol of the patience it takes to build something meaningful and complex, one knot at a time. As the symbol of the need to constantly make and remake, to reuse what we built in the past to create something that fits the moment. And of knitting, just like quilting, embroidery, and other textile crafts, as reclaiming the role of women in history.
Yes, I know, a handmade hat will not determine the success of our resistance. Just like the pussyhats did not prevent a second Trump term, the melt the ICE hats by themselves will not stop the violence perpetrated against immigrants and those who try to protect them. But symbols are important. They speak through history, they tell us we are not alone, they let us say things that words often cannot express.
When I went to get my skein of yarn the other day, a young man wearing the same bright red hat I was planning to make was at the store, chatting with the owner, who had set aside a basket of skeins of red yarn. The young man told me, matter-of-factly, that he had just finished knitting the hat he was wearing and was there to buy some yarn to make a few more hats for his friends.
And there it was, the symbolism personified. A male knitter, unthinkable when I was a young girl, who let me know, without needing to explain it, that women’s history should not only be reclaimed but also shared with those who can treasure it. A red hat and a basket of red yarn that signaled, “You have nothing to fear here.” That told me that the accent that inflects my English was welcome, not despised. That I did not need the copy of the US passport I have started to take with me wherever I go. That we can do this, together, one knot at a time.
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