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immigration and customs enforcement
Trump's Deadly, Cruel Immigration Policy May Be a Political Failure As Well
As more information comes out about lives lost, communities harmed, and an economy hobbled by the loss of critical workers, previously supportive voters may turn against Trump's mass deportation agenda.
Jul 24, 2026
The Trump administration is doing everything it can to get rid of what it considers to be “undesirable” people.
The administration has removed temporary protected status (TPS) for more than a million people from over a dozen countries. It is sending people back to active war zones in Sudan and Somalia. It is deporting people to Myanmar, a country under a military dictatorship. In the case of Venezuela, it is returning people to a country struggling to deal with the aftereffects of an earthquake.
Some holders of this status have been in the country for a long time. Nearly 90% of the 170,000 Salvadorans who have TPS, first granted 25 years ago, participate in the US labor force, contributing over US$5 billion to the US economy.
The administration makes no exceptions in its campaign to deport anyone and everyone. Even as it has promised to fight a war on behalf of the people of Iran, it has reportedly provided information about Iranian asylum-seekers to the Iranian government. These details about their lives, such as their sexual orientation and religious beliefs, make it even more likely that they will be persecuted on return. Dozens of Russians, who don’t enjoy TPS, were flown back to Russia, where several were immediately slapped with draft notices.
The administration has tried to tout the successes of its deportation program. But the deaths of citizens and noncitizens alike have put supporters of the president on the defensive.
There is no length to which the administration won’t go to deport people, even American citizens like the children born in the United States who were kicked out of the country along with their parents. So far, the Supreme Court has blocked the administration’s attempt to overturn the “birthright citizenship” clause in the US Constitution. But President Donald Trump is still pushing his allies to take up the fight in Congress to change the law.
The administration even tried to add 2.7 million living people to the “Death Master File,” which is a database of dead people maintained by the Social Security Administration. Trump’s plan was to make life so difficult for people declared “dead” that they would self-deport or, if they showed up to dispute their “death,” to detain them in preparation for deportation. It was only because of a whistleblower that this plan didn’t go into effect.
But the most visible effort by the US government has been to target the approximately 14 million “unauthorized immigrants” who, as of 2023, constituted over 4% of the US population. Such immigrants keep the American economy afloat by picking fruit, slaughtering cows, building houses, and taking care of the elderly.
Trump’s mass deportation campaign, in other words, would wreck the US economy. The undocumented don’t take away jobs from native-born Americans because the latter generally don’t want the jobs that immigrants fill. But the administration is willing to risk economic disaster in its effort to keep America a predominantly white country.
Trump’s anti-immigrant plan has not just evicted people. It has not just locked them away in detention centers. It has killed them.
In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were involved in two killings. Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national living with his wife and young daughter in a small town in Maine, was not the subject of an ICE raid, but ICE agents killed him anyway. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, was a businessman and father of three on his way to work in Houston when agents stopped his car and shot him.
More than a dozen people have died in these kinds of interactions with ICE, including two US citizens—Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good—protesting ICE actions in Minnesota.
The number of detainees who have died in custody is even higher. Tens of thousands of people are being held in detention facilities that the Trump administration has established around the country. Despite administration claims that it is only deporting dangerous criminals, more than 70% of those detained have no prior criminal convictions.
More than 50 people have died in the detention facilities, a rate that is more than twice as high as Trump’s first term. They have died because of conditions inside the facilities or because they didn’t receive sufficient medical care. Several have died by suicide.
The Trump administration has pledged to deport a million people a year. It hasn’t quite reached that benchmark, with the administration itself claiming around 900,000 deportations as of mid-May. It has also claimed that more than 2 million people have self-deported. However, without transparent data from the Department of Homeland Security, it is difficult to verify the administration’s claims.
These numbers are critical to the administration’s approval rating. On virtually all other policies, Trump is losing popularity. Inflation numbers remain high, and the economy is failing millions of Americans. The war in Iran continues to push up gas prices. The administration is still dogged by controversies around budget cuts, corruption, anti-vaccine policies, and connections to Jeffrey Epstein. The overall approval rating for the administration is around 37%, with a large percentage of independent voters now adopting negative views of the president.
The one issue where a sizable number of Americans still approve of administration policies, however, is immigration. Compared to the economy at 33% and the war in Iran at 29%, 40% of Americans approve of his immigration policies. But even here the numbers are declining, since half of Americans supported his approach to immigration when he took office in 2025.
The administration has tried to tout the successes of its deportation program. But the deaths of citizens and noncitizens alike have put supporters of the president on the defensive. The detention and deportation of key members of communities—hard workers, religious leaders, even those espousing the same conservative family values of the administration—have led to a significant decline in anti-immigrant sentiment among Republicans.
Still, with the economy on the rocks and the war in Iran nowhere near an end, the Republicans will likely try to emphasize the “success” of the administration on immigration policy in the upcoming midterm elections in November. It will be a desperate strategy. As more information comes out about lives lost, communities harmed, and an economy hobbled by the loss of critical workers, the administration’s deportation strategy may turn out to be a failure politically as well for the president and his party.
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No Amount of ICE Killings Will Make America Great
In light of all this death, we must seriously ask ourselves: Are we, as a nation, greater because a 3-year-old girl will never know her father? Are federal agents murdering people working hard to provide for their families making any of our lives better? Are we safer because of ICE?
Jul 17, 2026
On July 13, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Biddeford, Maine murdered Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national authorized to work in the US. One of his neighbors described him as “an excellent person, a good father, good husband.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleged that Guerrero “attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”
Yet, footage obtained by The New York Times shows Guerrero slowly driving in a circle as he is confronted by multiple agents—there is no evidence that he endangered anyone. One of their vehicles is clearly shown ramming into his. Afterwards, three agents surround the car with one pointing his gun at the driver’s side window. While not shown in the video, five gunshots can be heard. After the incident, there were four visible bullet holes on the front windshield.
Such excessive and unnecessary violence is the new norm. Last October, Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times in her car. In December, Isaias Sanchez Barboza, a Mexican national, was shot at least three times. In January, Renee Nicole Good, a US citizen, was also shot three times, including one to her head. The same month, Alex Pretti, another US citizen, was shot at least 10 times in the span of five seconds.
So long as ICE exists, it will continue to kill.
This latest shooting comes less than a week after ICE agents in Houston murdered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who had lived in the US for 35 years. Here too, DHS blamed the victim. A DHS spokesperson alleged that Araujo “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.” DHS used the same story to justify the murder of Good and shooting Martinez. As in those cases, video evidence and eyewitness accounts dispute the Trump administration’s narrative.
A week after Araujo’s death, the FBI filed a warrant application claiming that the agency has reason to believe that there were illegal drugs in the vehicle he was driving. FBI Special Agent David McNeilly alleged that he observed small plastic bags “with a white crystal-like substance” in the cargo van. The application cites probable cause for “distribution, manufacturing, or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and simple possession of a controlled substance.”
Domingo Garcia, the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Adelante PAC, accused federal investigators of trying to “change the public discourse and prejudice a jury in Harris County.” He further remarked, “It just smells of a smear campaign and a cover up.”
Garcia is right to be suspicious. There are many documented cases of law enforcement planting drugs on victims. The Trump administration has also demonstrated time and time again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable. After shooting Martinez five times, Border Patrol agent Charles Exum was congratulated by then-Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino. Good and Pretti were immediately smeared as “domestic terrorists” by several members of the Trump administration, including by then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Moreover, this administration has actively sought to manipulate federal investigations into past ICE killings—this includes launching an investigation into Renee Good’s wife, Becca Good, while actively stopping probes into her murderer, Jonathan Ross. They have also intentionally delayed turning over key evidence to state prosecutors.
It is worth further emphasizing that, by DHS’ own admission, Araujo was not the target of ICE’s operation. Even if there were drugs in the van (and there is no evidence that there were), those agents did not know that. They did not kill him because of drugs; they did not kill him to protect public safety; they did not kill him in self-defense. ICE agents killed him and Guererro because they knew they could.
Guerrero and Araujo were not the only people to die in ICE-related incidents this month. On July 14, a 28-year-old man in Florida died while fleeing ICE agents.
A day prior, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a Venezuelan national, died while being transferred between detention centers in Georgia. In a press release, his sister and immigrants’ rights groups reported that, despite their repeated pleas, ICE deprived him of medication he desperately needed. Including Arenas-Silva, at least 22 people have reportedly died in ICE custody this year.
Importantly, this figure does not include the deaths of people like Nurul Amin Shah Alam and Daphy Michel. Shah Alam, a nearly blind refugee who did not speak English, was abandoned by immigration enforcement agents alone on a cold winter night in New York state. He was found dead a few days later. A state medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
Similarly, Michel, a Haitian asylum-seeker “suffering from untreated severe mental health issues and a significant language barrier,” was arrested by ICE in late February. Agents put an ankle monitor on her, drove her 25 miles away to Pittsburg where she was then abandoned. She died of hypothermia days later. Her death was also ruled a homicide.
On June 4, ICE announced it would no longer investigate or report the deaths of those recently released from detention centers—people like Shah Alam and Michel. This rescinds a policy instituted in 2021 by the Biden administration to hold the agency accountable for releasing severely ill detainees.
This is the reality of what ICE is: an agency that kills people; an agency that intentionally lets people die; an agency without remorse or accountability. Banning traffic stops or mandating bodycams will not change this. So long as ICE exists, it will continue to kill.
In light of all this death, we must seriously ask ourselves: Are we, as a nation, greater because a 3-year-old girl will never know her father? Are federal agents murdering people working hard to provide for their families making any of our lives better? Are we safer because of ICE?
The tens of billions of our taxpayer money spent on ICE could be going to fund childcare, instead of killing parents. It could be used to fund healthcare instead of an agency that deprives medication. It could be used to meaningfully improve the lives of millions instead of agents that kill and injure innocent people.
For all our sakes, enough must finally be enough. We must abolish ICE. Punish the ICE agents who have committed these shootings. Hold every member of the Trump administration who covered their crimes and every politician who voted to fund ICE responsible for the chaos they have unleashed across our country.
Unless there is real change, it is not a matter of if, but when ICE will kill again.
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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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'We Cannot Stand Silent': Sheinbaum to Seek Criminal Charges Over ICE Detention Deaths
"We cannot turn a blind eye to the Mexicans who have died," said Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Jul 10, 2026
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that her government intends to pursue criminal charges over the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Associated Press reported that Sheinbaum's administration will submit a request "to state prosecutors' offices and the US Department of Justice, asking them to consider criminal charges against those responsible for the deaths." The request, according to AP, "will be accompanied by civil lawsuits against the companies that operate the detention centers in an effort to put an end to human rights violations in those facilities."
Sheinbaum said her government decided to urgently move forward with its likely doomed push for accountability after an ICE agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston earlier this week. Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national, had been living in the US for more than three decades.
Mexico's president called the killing "sad and regrettable," arguing that it "appears to have been targeted."
"We are going to do everything in our power, because we cannot stand silent," Sheinbaum said Thursday. "We cannot turn a blind eye to the Mexicans who have died."
According to a recent report by Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, "the mortality rate of deaths in ICE custody is at its highest level in over a decade and has more than doubled since [US President Donald] Trump’s second term began."
"The rate is nearly four times that of the Biden administration, and more than two and a half times as high as that of the first Trump administration," the report found, noting that a record 71,000 people were in immigration detention in January 2026. "The surge in deaths is much worse than what one would expect even considering the much higher number of people in detention."
Deaths in ICE custody have drawn international alarm, with the United Nations high commissioner for human rights saying last month that "the lack of transparency and clarity surrounding the circumstances of these deaths in custody undermines accountability for them."
“I call for prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations into all deaths in ICE custody," said Volker Türk. "Those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account, and the rights of the victims’ families to truth, justice and reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld."
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ICE Kills, DHS Lies: The New Normal of Trump’s America
Federal agents flood our neighborhoods; a poorly trained, gun-happy immigration agent kills someone; the administration alleges, without evidence, that the victim was responsible; no proper investigation is conducted; no one is held accountable. Rinse and repeat.
Jul 09, 2026
On July 7, an Immigration Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national. According to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Araujo “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.” As of the time of this writing, the agency has yet to provide any evidence.
This shooting comes days after a massive surge in ICE arrests. Between June 26 and June 30, 10,000 people were reportedly detained by immigration agents.
This is a tragic story—one that we have seen many times before.
Silverio Villegas González: On September 12, Villegas González, a Mexican national, was shot and killed by an ICE agent. This occurred during the agency’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in the Chicago area.
Araujo was not the first of ICE’s victims. So long as the agency exists, he will not be the last.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleged that the ICE agent “was hit by the car and dragged a significant distance. Fearing for his own life, the officer fired his weapon.” DHS further claimed that the agent “sustained multiple injuries.”
These were lies. Bodycam footage collected by Franklin Park police officers show the ICE agent saying he “got dragged a little bit” and describing his own injuries as “nothing major.” Surveillance video shows that Villegas González did not drive toward or hit either agent. Several eyewitnesses further refute DHS’ narrative.
Marimar Martinez: On October 4, Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum. In a statement, DHS described this as “defensive fire.” They alleged, without evidence, that Martinez and her fellow “domestic terrorists” “ambushed” and “rammed federal agents with their vehicles.” On social media, FBI Director Kash Patel posted a video—from an unrelated incident—of a black SUV aggressively ramming an agent’s truck as "proof" of Martinez’s crime.
These, too, were lies. Bodycam footage shows the agents already had their weapons drawn as one of them turned the steering wheel toward Martinez’s car. One agent can be heard saying, “It’s time to get aggressive.”
Text messages reveal the “big time” support Exum received from then-Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks, and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in the aftermath of this incident. Hours after the shooting, Bovino even offered to extend Exum’s retirement with CBP “in light of [his] excellent service in Chicago.” He added, “you have much yet left to do!”
In a group chat, Exum bragged about how he “fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes.”
Renee Nicole Good: On January 7, Noem alleged that Good, a US citizen, “weaponize[d] her vehicle” and “attempted to run” over ICE agent Jonathan Ross. This act of so-called “domestic terrorism” justified Ross’s lethal action.
Once again, more lies. Footage captured on that day definitively showed—from multiple camera angles—that Good was turning away from Ross as he opened fire. He was never in danger.
Six months later, her murder has yet to be properly investigated. This was always the government’s plan. The day after her death, Vice President JD Vance insisted that the officer had “absolute immunity.” A few weeks afterwards, six federal prosecutors resigned over the Justice Department’s reluctance to investigate Ross. An FBI agent who had opened a civil rights investigation into Good’s death also resigned after she was ordered to reclassify it as an investigation into an assault on the ICE agent.
To these names, there are many we can add: Ruben Ray Martinez (shot and killed), Alex Pretti (shot and killed), Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis (shot), Jesus Javier Gomez Islas (shot, left permanently blind in his right eye), Keith Porter Jr. (shot and killed), Carlitos Ricardo Parias (shot).
Trump’s bigotry, Congress’ cowardice, and the Supreme Court’s blind obedience; a government devoid of checks and balances at war with its own people—this is America after 250 years.
This is the new normal of Donald Trump’s America—federal agents flood our neighborhoods. A poorly trained, gun-happy immigration agent kills someone. The administration alleges, without evidence, that the victim was responsible. No proper investigation is conducted. No one is held accountable. A family is torn apart. A community traumatized. Rinse and repeat.
We do not yet know all the details surrounding Araujo’s death. Perhaps we will never.
For now, there are two things we can take as certainties: First, any official narrative put forth by ICE, DHS, or the Trump administration cannot be trusted. They have repeatedly lied to the public, defended their killers, and blamed the victims. In their view, if you are killed by ICE, protest ICE, criticize ICE on social media, or even write a strongly worded email to ICE, then you are the criminal. You are the “domestic terrorist.”
Second, Araujo was not the first of ICE’s victims. So long as the agency exists, he will not be the last. The next victim could be anyone. Regardless of race or legal status, we are all vulnerable to Trump’s taxpayer-funded secret police.
This is the reality that we all find ourselves in—one that is nurtured and sustained by every aspect of the federal government: the Trump administration’s militarized immigration enforcement and crackdown on political dissent; a Congress that continues, despite the deaths, to provide billions to ICE and DHS; and a Supreme Court that gives ICE agents legal immunity to racially profile minorities and that paves the way for DHS to strip noncitizens of their protection status.
Trump’s bigotry, Congress’ cowardice, and the Supreme Court’s blind obedience; a government devoid of checks and balances at war with its own people—this is America after 250 years.
On Facebook, Araujo’s son, Ronaldo Salgado, wrote: “My father has been in this country for nearly 35 years, working in construction to provide for myself, my two brothers, and my mother. He was in the process of obtaining his work permit through the legal process. He was on his way to work, picking up his workers. My father did not deserve this.”
None of ICE’s victims deserved this.
We cannot allow ICE to continue tearing families apart. We cannot continue to suffer politicians and institutions that prioritize war and violence over helping the people they are meant to serve.
Despite the dangers, we must continue to protest ICE. We must advocate for progressive candidates and policies. The situation is bleak, but things will only get worse if we do nothing. The White House will not save us. The Supreme Court will not save us. Congress, as it stands, will not save us. We must save ourselves.
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Pressure Rises on Home Depot to Address ICE Raids at Stores
From Congress to communities nationwide, Home Depot’s silence is being noticed.
Jul 08, 2026
Pressure is rising on Home Depot to do something—say something—about the raids taking place at its stores. In Washington, DC, over two dozen members of Congress signed a letter to the company in a letter requesting answers about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol raids that have taken place at its stores over the past year. In Sacramento, a state bill would require big box home improvement stores to report on the raids. And meanwhile, local neighbors of the company continue to show up at the store—for day laborers being targeted by President Donald Trump—and sending messages to the company in more creative ways.
One year ago, in June of 2025, Trump henchman Stephen Miller berated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and demanded they increase arrests by targeting Home Depot parking lots. The result has been hundreds of arrests at the stores, with militarized and masked agents carrying out violent and chaotic raids, racially profiling and brutalizing customers and neighbors, and utilizing the store as bait for day laborers looking for work.
In response, thousands of local volunteers have shown up at their local Home Depots to document the raids and to show solidarity and support for their neighbors and day laborers—and to protest the presence of ICE or Border Patrol police at their local home improvement stores. The protests have continued on a rolling basis, with a recent one showcasing two dozen store customers joining a colorful sing-song protest calling on Home Depot to “do the right thing.”
Meanwhile, the response from the company has been… silence. With so much attention on the home improvement giant—which has become a site of numerous human and civil rights abuses against its own customers—members of several state legislatures and the US Congress have taken notice. On June 25, U.S. Rep Judy Chu (-D-Calif.) led 25 members of Congress in a letter addressed to Home Depot and Lowe's, asking for the companies to answer questions about the raids taking place at their stores.
The Members wrote:
While we recognize that your companies do not control federal immigration enforcement operations and may not receive advance notice of such activity, these operations have occurred repeatedly at or near your stores across the country. As Members of Congress, we believe it is important to understand what information your companies possess regarding these incidents and what steps are being taken to protect the safety of workers, customers, bystanders, and surrounding communities.
Read the full letter here.
In California, Pasadena state Sen. Sasha Renee Perez (D-25) introduced the “REPAIR Act” (SB1103), which would compel big box home improvement stores to report when raids take place on their properties. The bill is a direct response to Home Depot’s refusal to give clear answers—or to share information with the public—about the arrests, abuses, and surveillance taking place on its properties, or to make clear its position on the raids. The bill has passed the state Senate, and on June 23 the legislation, known as the "ICE Out of Home Depot" state bill, passed the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.
At this point, even Home Depot investors themselves are starting to ask questions. The only remaining question is whether Home Depot is listening to its neighbors, to its investors, or even its own customers.
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Attacks on Immigrant Communities Are Attacks on All of Our Health
The White House and their congressional allies are funding ICE’s brutal dragnet operations in our communities by cutting health coverage, defending clinics, and making it harder for families to get the care they need.
Jul 06, 2026
Congress just passed $70 billion in additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In cities like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, and beyond, children have been detained, families separated, and neighbors stopped based on their skin color or spoken language. ICE violence has killed a mother and an ICU nurse, separated more than 100,000 American children from their families, and left people detained in inhumane facilities.
The decision by congressional Republicans to double down on President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda through new funding is not just another attack on our immigrant friends and neighbors, including those who are legal residents, but it is also a direct attack on our public health and healthcare systems.
The tens of billions in additional funding is on top of an unprecedented $170.7 billion for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including $30 billion for ICE and deportation efforts, approved last year under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R.1)—a law which also slashed more than $1 trillion in federal healthcare funding. These cuts have and will continue to kick people off their healthcare coverage, give Americans fewer options for affordable healthcare, and drive up costs at clinics and hospitals across the country, all while billions of dollars have been funneled into ICE raids and violence that threaten the safety and well-being of immigrants and US citizens alike. All the while, American families are facing an affordability crisis, struggling to make ends meet to pay for essentials like groceries, rent, and healthcare.
Put simply: The White House and their congressional allies are funding ICE’s brutal dragnet operations in our communities by cutting health coverage, defunding clinics, and making it harder to get the healthcare families depend on—and it affects everyone’s health.
What makes our neighborhoods healthier and safer isn’t ICE enforcement. It’s communities that can access the care, services, and resources they need to thrive and remain resilient.
The divergence of federal dollars away from healthcare and into ICE has led to an influx of poorly trained enforcement agents in our cities, in our airports, and on our streets. The aggressive policing and surveillance of our neighborhoods create an environment of fear, turning our streets, schools, workplaces, and hospitals into places of threat rather than safe community spaces. As a result, community members, including vital immigrant healthcare workers, are staying home, unable to contribute to the economic vitality of our neighborhoods or seek and provide necessary healthcare. In addition, as more people lose health coverage, uninsured patients seeking emergency care results in higher uncompensated care costs, putting financial pressure on health facilities, and forcing them to scale back services for all.
We cannot afford to let ICE enforcement gut the health system we all rely on. What makes our neighborhoods healthier and safer isn’t ICE enforcement. It’s communities that can access the care, services, and resources they need to thrive and remain resilient. We should all be treated with dignity and be able to safely access healthcare and other neighborhood resources vital for our health and well-being.
A new poll from the Protecting Immigrant Families coalition finds that most Americans agree. Sixty-four percent of Americans disapprove of how ICE is handling their job, and 83% of Americans support access to healthcare and social services for lawfully present immigrants. The data overwhelmingly show that Americans, no matter where they stand politically, believe in and want to protect the humanity of their immigrant neighbors, despite actions from the federal government.
We urge congressional and state leaders to act. Stand in solidarity with immigrant communities. Codify sensitive locations protections that prohibit ICE raids or presence at schools, places of worship, hospitals and health centers, and other places that are meant to be safe spaces for everyone. Ban local officials from inquiring about immigration status. Secure our sensitive personal and health data from inappropriate federal access. Make future DHS funding conditional on real oversight and accountability for the families being torn apart, the neighborhoods being destabilized, and the dismantling of the healthcare system we all rely on.
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The Trump Admin Wants the Prairieland Sentences to Scare You Into Silence
NSPM-7 is the architecture of a system designed to make dissent unthinkable, but it won’t work.
Jun 29, 2026
Mari Rueda's favorite color is blue, as is, sometimes, her hair. She used to live with two cats, two rabbits, a dog, and her tween child. She was a casual gardener and an enthusiastic karaoke singer in training to be a doula. Des Sanchez Estrada is a tattoo artist, poet, and animal lover who sometimes fostered orphaned baby possums and liked experimenting with vegan cooking. Des and Mari are married. One year into the Trump administration's violent campaign of mass deportation and immigrant roundups, they are facing a combined century in federal prison: 70 years for Mari, 30 for Des. Their crimes? Mari went to a noise demonstration outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center. Des moved a box of zines.
On July 4, 2025, Mari joined dozens of others at a noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. Noise demonstrations are a commonly used form of protest solidarity; I've been to a number of them outside metro Atlanta jails over the years. People gather outside carceral facilities and get loud, because the people inside have no other way of knowing that anyone outside is fighting for them. People bang pots and pans, play music, sometimes set off fireworks. The vibes are generally good, until police invariably show up.
Prairieland sits on the discordantly cheery-sounding Sunflower Lane, 40 miles southwest of Dallas. It's a private prison run for profit by LaSalle Corrections, designed to hold 707 people, although it usually cages more than a thousand. Like every ICE detention center, it has a documented record of inadequate medical care, suicide prevention failures, and deaths in custody.
When police showed up to interrupt the July 4 noise demo, things devolved into chaos quickly. One of the responding officers had a gun trained on an unarmed protester who was running away, and Benjamin Song, a former Marine and firearms trainer, acted in a split second: He fired a shot at the officer, who sustained an injury to his neck and was discharged from the hospital hours later. It's obviously a very good thing that this wasn't a fatal shot—but we didn't need to look much further into the future for what Song was fearful of to come to pass. In Minneapolis, federal agents shot and killed two protesters within a three-week period this January.
The people who show up outside detention centers, who defend forests and animals, who organize bail funds and drive people to demonstrations, are not doing it because they expect it to be free.
So: one person, acting on their own, fired one shot. The federal government then used it to imprison people in the vicinity, and some who weren't even there at all.
Song received a sentence of 100 years. Mari's 70-year sentence came down after she was convicted of rioting, material support for terrorism, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, use and carry of an explosive, and conspiracy to conceal documents for allegedly asking Des to move the box of political literature. Five others who were present received 50 years each for rioting, material support for terrorism, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and use and carry of an explosive (which, to be clear, were consumer fireworks, the kind you can buy on the side of the road in most states). For comparison: the longest sentence handed to any January 6 participant before the pardons was 22 years, given to the former leader of the Proud Boys a paramilitary organization that stormed the United States Capitol to stop the certification of a presidential election.
I think it's important to name two things here: first, how exceptionally long these sentences are, even on a US-adjusted scale; and second, how this criminalization of protest is not unexpected, it’s just the next mutation of the sprawling policing and incarceration apparatus we've built over decades.
It's not even a unique strategy. In November 1919, in what became known as the Palmer Raids, the Department of Justice arrested more than 4,000 people across the country. Much like the Prairieland defendants, the vast majority were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time—guilty, in the eyes of the government, of possessing radical politics: being Russian, simply being present when others were arrested, attending meetings, holding the wrong beliefs. The government eventually deported 800 of them.
The legal tools on display today are the same ones, just tweaked a bit over the ensuing century. The felony murder doctrine has sent thousands of people to prison for life for deaths they didn't cause. (A notable example that garnered a lot of attention: Ryan Holle lent his car to a friend in Florida, went to sleep, and was convicted of first degree murder when his friend committed a robbery and killed someone). Conspiracy law has been used to prosecute the periphery of alleged drug networks, “gang” affiliations, and social movements for generations. Mandatory minimums have produced sentences that are wildly disproportionate to the underlying conduct for as long as they have existed. The terrorism enhancement applied to the Prairieland defendants—because they had fireworks—has been used to inflate sentences and justify mass surveillance against Muslim communities, environmental activists, and animal rights protesters for decades.
The brutality of these sentences is not particularly shocking to the communities that have been living with police violence and mass incarceration for generations. It is a confirmation of what they already knew—that this is a country willing to sentence an aspiring doula and mother of a 13-year-old to 70 years in a cage for fleeing a righteous protest, while pardoning everyone who stormed the Capitol.
The Prairieland prosecution was underwritten by National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), the presidential memo issued in September 2025. President Donald Trump also cited the Prairieland case in an update to his memo designating “antifa”—which literally just means anti-fascist—as a terrorist organization. His memo defines the common threads of left wing terrorism, among other things, as anti-capitalism and opposition to immigration enforcement. It’s being used across the country: in Minneapolis, 15 organizers were indicted in June under NSPM-7 for “overt acts” which included sharing flyers. In Atlanta, two Stop Cop City protesters were federally indicted two weeks ago for conduct from 2022—four years ago!—explicitly as part of the NSPM-7 initiative. In Michigan, pro-Palestine student protesters face federal charges for conduct from 2023. People who carry zines, use Signal, defend land and animals, wear black, or show up outside detention centers are now, under NSPM-7, potential domestic terrorists.
Prairieland was a detention center—our country’s modern answer to a concentration camp—before it was a crime scene.
I watched the Stop Cop City movement—and the state’s violent response to the community’s dissent—unfold in Atlanta. In November 2023, I sat in a courtroom as 57 people churned through arraignment proceedings on a sweeping racketeering case; defendants held neon green numbers and were split into groups of five because the courtroom wasn't big enough to hold them all at once. The rambling, 110-page indictment had charged protesters with criminal conspiracy for things like transferring less than $20 in reimbursement for harm reduction supplies, refusing police commands to exit a tree house, and signing an arrest form with the acronym "ACAB." These, the state alleged, were overt acts in furtherance of a terrorist enterprise. That RICO case eventually collapsed.
Many of the new NSPM-7 cases are not over, so they too may eventually collapse. The Prairieland defendants have pending motions for acquittal and new trial. The Brennan Center has found NSPM-7 to be wholly unmoored, legally. But "eventually" is measured in years of people's lives spent in federal cages.
What happened in Fort Worth last week is a message. The federal government is betting that sentences of 30, 50, 70, 100 years will make the cost of showing up too high. But the people who show up outside detention centers, who defend forests and animals, who organize bail funds and drive people to demonstrations, are not doing it because they expect it to be free. They are doing it because the alternative—a world in which Prairieland and everything it represents goes unchallenged—is unbearable. NSPM-7 is the architecture of a system designed to make dissent unthinkable, but it won’t work. What it will do is hurt people, and the question every organizer now has to answer is: How do we build a movement sturdy enough to absorb that hurt and keep going?
As Marlon Kautz, an Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizer and Stop Cop City RICO defendant, has said: "A plan to avoid repression is a plan to lose." The only meaningful response is to build protest movement infrastructure that can withstand it—through legal defense funds, rapid response networks, the refusal to throw anyone under the bus, the refusal to cooperate with the government, and the sustained work of dismantling the infrastructure that made these sentences possible.
You certainly don't end people’s willingness to protest by making those same people angrier. Prairieland was a detention center—our country’s modern answer to a concentration camp—before it was a crime scene. That's why people were there, and that’s why they'll be back.
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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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When ICE Detains a Father, a Child Pays the Price
As Father's Day approaches, many children are already missing fathers they were unfairly separated from, not because those fathers failed their children, but because of a failed immigration system that is increasingly willing to separate families.
Jun 19, 2026
When I was little, I’d wake up when I heard my dad getting ready for work. I’d run downstairs hoping to catch him before he left so I could hug him goodbye. My father, an immigrant from India, came to the United States as a child with my grandparents in search of stability and opportunity. They worked hard to build a life here, and I grew up watching my dad do the same—out the door early, home late.
Sometimes I cried if I missed him before he left. Sometimes I cried even after a hug, because the day felt so long without him. But there was one thing I never questioned: He would come home.
Too many children in immigrant families don’t have that certainty today. In recent months, high-profile cases have shown how quickly stability can disappear, as families are swept into immigration enforcement and children are separated from their parents, often with little warning. New research from the Brookings Institution estimates that more than 100,000 children have been separated from a parent during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and that most of those children are likely US citizens. Researchers also warn the true scale may be even higher because the government does not consistently track whether detained immigrants are parents.
A father can leave for a shift and not come back, not because he chose to abandon his family, but because immigration agents arrested him on his way to work, during a scheduled court check-in, or even in everyday places like airports. In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been deployed in airports across the country, where travelers have witnessed arrests unfold in real time. We are already seeing the consequences in deeply troubling ways, including the case of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in Minnesota, whose detention alongside his father drew national attention.
For years, politicians have lamented a “fatherlessness crisis.” We should name what we are doing when we detain and deport fathers without regard for their children. We are actively manufacturing it.
When parents are detained, children are often pulled into the system with them, or families are left scrambling to stay together. Recent court filings describe hundreds of children held in family detention facilities beyond court-ordered limits, often without adequate food, medical care, or mental health support. Many other children are left with relatives, neighbors, older siblings, or informal caregivers while parents remain in detention or face deportation proceedings, forcing children to navigate sudden loss and uncertainty.
According to federal data compiled by TRAC, more than 60,000 people are currently held in ICE detention, and nearly three-quarters have no criminal conviction. The Trump administration claims that ICE targets “the worst of the worst,” but the data tell a different story. Because immigration arrests disproportionately target working-age men, many detained are likely fathers. That gap matters deeply in a country where more than 4 million US citizen children live with an undocumented parent. That omission makes it easier to debate immigration enforcement policy while overlooking the children who are directly impacted. Even if only a fraction of those detained are parents, that still means thousands of children losing a caregiver, a provider, or both, frequently overnight. They are neighbors and community members, often fathers who were actively raising their children until the day the government took them away. I know this not only from policy data, but from listening to fathers talk about their children.
As a senior policy researcher at Children’s Rights, I study how family stability shapes a child’s well-being and how quickly it can be shattered by the government. We have found that current immigration policies are not only separating families but causing measurable harm to children, including mental health challenges, developmental delays, and disruptions to their education. Federal data show children being held in immigration custody for months at a time, often averaging more than 150 days, exposing them to prolonged instability and stress.
In a qualitative study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, my co-authors and I interviewed 85 Latino fathers raising young children in the United States. Many were immigrants, primarily from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. They spoke about love and connection, wanting to be present, witness milestones, and serve as role models. They reflected on their own parents and their hopes for their children. They described the burdens of responsibility, but also of joy. They sounded like parents everywhere, underscoring how universal these parenting motivations are.
That is why detaining fathers is not just harsh, it is shortsighted. Decades of research show fathers play a unique role in children’s emotional well-being, behavior, and learning. When the government removes a father without warning, holds him for weeks or months, and ultimately deports him, children do not experience it as “policy.” They experience it as a profound loss.
As Father’s Day approaches, I am thinking about the fathers who show up for their children every day, who work long hours, provide stability, and try to build better futures for their families. Across the country, many children are already missing fathers they were unfairly separated from. Not because those fathers failed their children, but because of a failed immigration system that is increasingly willing to separate families.
For years, politicians have lamented a “fatherlessness crisis.” We should name what we are doing when we detain and deport fathers without regard for their children. We are actively manufacturing it. If we truly care about children’s health and well-being, we must treat family integrity and stability as essential.
Congress and the administration should require ICE to collect and publicly report whether those it detains are parents of minor children, and ensure children are not left without safe caregiving arrangements. This is especially urgent given recent reporting that ICE is failing to follow its own policies designed to protect family unity, including requirements that agents ask whether someone has children and allow parents to make decisions about their care. ICE should use detention more sparingly for parents and expand community-based alternatives that allow people to keep working and caring for their children while their cases proceed.
I still picture my younger self at the top of the stairs, running toward my father’s morning hug. Every child deserves to believe, with confidence, that a parent who leaves in the morning will come home at night.
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