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Trump Deportation Push Continues With TSA-ICE Partnership and Move to Strip Legal Status
"We will continue to fight alongside all immigrants and their families who are unjustly targeted by this callous administration," vowed the legal director at Justice Action Center.
Dec 13, 2025
As a "chilling" report in the New York Times revealed that the Transportation Security Administration is providing the names of all airline passengers to immigration officials, President Donald Trump's administration on Friday also openly continued its war on immigrants by announcing an end to allowing relatives of citizens or lawful permanent residents to enter the United States while awaiting green cards.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that it is terminating all categorical family reunification parole programs for immigrants from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras, and "returning parole to a case-by-case basis." An official notice has been prepared for publication in the Federal Register on Monday, and the policy is set to take effect on January 14.
Responding in a statement late Friday, Anwen Hughes, senior director of legal strategy for the refugee programs at Human Rights First, said that "this outrageous decision to pull the rug out from under the thousands of people who came to the US lawfully to reunite with their families is shocking."
"Yet again, this administration is taking extraordinary measures to delegalize as many people as possible, even when they have done everything the US government has asked of them," she continued. "The government did this in March when they announced their intent to take away lawful status from hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parole beneficiaries; they are doing it now with more than 10,000 people who came lawfully to reunite with their families; they are taking their attacks on birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court; and they are escalating their threats to delegalize untold numbers of others without notice."
"This outrageous decision to pull the rug out from under the thousands of people who came to the US lawfully to reunite with their families is shocking."
Guerline Jozef, executive director of the grassroots group Haitian Bridge Alliance, said in a Saturday statement: "Let's be clear: This is not about security. This is about an administration using racist, nativist scare tactics to dismantle lawful family reunification and terrorize Black and Brown immigrants."
"Family reunification parole was created to keep families together and provide a safe, legal pathway while people waited for visas that the US government itself told them would take years," Jozef noted. "Now those same families—many of them Haitian—are being punished for trusting the system. It is state violence, it is anti-Black, and it is an unacceptable betrayal of basic human dignity."
Lawyers behind a class action lawsuit against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other key administration leaders over the March policy—Svitlana Doe v. Noem—plan to also challenge the new move.
"Those who entered under the family reunification program should contact their immigration attorney immediately to better understand their options, as those options may change on December 15," warned Esther Sung, legal director at Justice Action Center, which represented plaintiffs in the earlier case.
"The legal team in Svitlana Doe v. Noem will also alert the court as soon as possible to ensure that our clients and class members are not unlawfully harmed by this move," Sung said. "Today's news is devastating for families across the country, but we will continue to fight alongside all immigrants and their families who are unjustly targeted by this callous administration."
Ending family reunification parole won't make us safer, it will only tear families apart. Our immigration policies should be fair and humane. This is just cruel.www.uscis.gov/newsroom/ale...
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— Rep. Linda Sánchez (@replindasanchez.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Meanwhile, as the Times reported Friday, in March, TSA began sending the names of all air travelers to another DHS agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which "can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people."
"It's unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration," the newspaper detailed. "But documents obtained by the New York Times show that it led to the arrest of Any Lucía López Belloza, the college student picked up at Boston Logan Airport on November 20 and deported to Honduras two days later. A former ICE official said 75% of instances in that official's region where names were flagged by the program yielded arrests."
In López Belloza's case, she tried to board her plane, but her ticket didn't work. The 19-year-old—who said she didn't know about a previous deportation order—was sent to customer service, where she was met by agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), another DHS agency playing a key role in Trump's sweeping and violent crackdown on immigrants.
Like the new attack on family reunification, the Times reporting sparked a wave of condemnation. David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said on social media, "Make sure people you know who need this information have this information."
Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, declared that "the Trump administration wants to make flying unsafe: unsafe because of surveillance, unsafe because of understaffed air traffic controllers, and unsafe because of gutted consumer protections."
Eva Galperin, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's director of cybersecurity, pointed to the constitutional protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, saying, "I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like the Fourth Amendment has something to say about this."
Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation EffortThe Transportation Security Administration is providing passenger lists to ICE to identify and detain travelers subject to deportation orders.www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u... obvi lawlessly…Prosecute all of them…
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— Sarah Szalavitz💡 (@dearsarah.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Amid protests over Trump's broader deportation push and the president's plunging approval rating on immigration, unnamed DHS sources confirmed Friday that CBP teams "under Commander Gregory Bovino will change tactics," according to NewsNation. "Instead of sweeping raids like those that have taken place at locations including Home Depot, agents will now be narrowing their focus to specific targets, such as illegal immigrants convicted of heinous crimes."
NewNation's reporting came just days after DHS published a database on ICE arrestees that led Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, to conclude that the department "is implicitly admitting that less than 5% of the people it arrests are people they believe are 'the worst of the worst.'"
This article has been updated with comment from Haitian Bridge Alliance.
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As Trump Drives Up Costs, Record Share of Subprime Auto Loans Overdue
"The vulnerable part of the economy is having an even tougher time making ends meet," said one finance professor.
Nov 13, 2025
Last month's jobs report may never be released after being delayed during the federal government shutdown, but other figures demonstrate the havoc President Donald Trump is wreaking on the US economy, including new data for subprime borrowers behind on car payments.
The share of US borrowers with low credit scores or limited credit histories who are at least 60 days past due on their auto loans rose to 6.65% in October, the highest percentage since Fitch Ratings began tracking it in the early 1990s.
"The vulnerable part of the economy is having an even tougher time making ends meet," Massachusetts Institute of Technology finance professor Christopher Palmer told Marketplace on Wednesday in response to the new data.
As Bloomberg reported Wednesday:
Miriam Neal in Atlanta is one of those struggling to afford all of her expenses. The 29-year-old lost her job as a research fellow in December and couldn't make her car payments, leading to her vehicle being repossessed. Thanks to a GoFundMe that she started in July, she was able to get her car back, but said she still can barely afford her bill.
"It's been a little bit difficult maintaining it with the car insurance, the maintenance, and my car loan," Neal said. "I'm usually about 30 days late."
She still hasn't been able to find employment and ended up having to move back in with her parents while she drives for Amazon Flex to make a little bit of money. Still, she estimates she makes only about $100 a day, which isn't enough for all of her bills.
Fitch's findings on missed car payments notably follow two key disruptions in the auto lending space.
"PrimaLend, which serves the 'buy-here-pay-here' auto financing market—where dealers sell and directly finance vehicles for customers with poor or limited credit—filed for bankruptcy protection last month," Reuters reported. "Tricolor, which sold cars and provided auto loans mostly to low-income Hispanic communities in the Southwestern United States, also filed for bankruptcy in September."
In mid-October, the credit score model development company VantageScore released an analysis showing that auto loans "have now evolved from being one of the least risky consumer credit products to one of the loan types most prone to delinquencies," as consumers struggle with rising interest rates, financing costs, and prices of cars, insurance, and repairs.
"Auto loans have not followed the trends of other credit products as delinquencies have been persistently trending up across all credit tiers and income groups over the past 15 years," said VantageScore's chief economist and strategy officer, Rikard Bandebo, in a statement. "Even after the industry tightened lending criteria three years ago, delinquencies have continued to rise."
A few days before the VantageScore analysis, Cox Automotive's Kelley Blue Book announced that in September, the average transaction price (ATP) of a new vehicle in the US had soared above $50,000 for the first time.
"It is important to remember that the new vehicle market is inflationary. Prices go up over time, and today's market is certainly reminding us of that," said Cox Automotive executive analyst Erin Keating last month. "The $20,000 vehicle is now mostly extinct, and many price-conscious buyers are sidelined or cruising in the used vehicle market. Today's auto market is being driven by wealthier households who have access to capital, good loan rates, and are propping up the higher end of the market."
"Tariffs have introduced new cost pressure to the business, but the pricing story in September was mostly driven by the healthy mix of EVs and higher-end vehicles pushing the new vehicle ATP into uncharted territory," she added. "We've been expecting to break through the $50,000 barrier. It was only a matter of time, especially when you consider the bestselling vehicle in America is a pickup truck from Ford that routinely costs north of $65,000. That's today's market, and it is ripe for disruption."
The downturn becomes more evident ...Record number of subprime borrowers miss car loan payments in October, data shows - www.reuters.com/business/aut...
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— Not Born Yesterday (@oatsmint.bsky.social) November 12, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Other recent findings that have shown the economic deterioration under Trump include a Thursday report from Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC), which found that the average US family is spending around $700 more each month on basic items since Trump returned to office in January.
"As families across the country spend more to pay their bills and put food on the table, Democrats and Republicans should be working together to lower costs," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC’s ranking member. "Instead, President Trump is pushing ahead with reckless tariffs that continue to fuel inflation and drive prices up even higher."
A closely watched University of Michigan survey revealed last week that since October, consumer sentiment has fallen over 6% to 50.3, the second-lowest level since 1978, and the "current economic conditions" index has dropped nearly 11% to an all-time low of 52.3.
Earlier in November, the Washington Post reported on layoff data from corporate outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which documented 153,000 job cuts in October, bringing the total for this year to 1.1 million.
"We haven't seen mega-layoffs of the size that are being discussed now—48,000 from UPS, potentially 30,000 from Amazon—since 2020 and before that, since the recession of 2009," said the firm's CEO, John Challenger. "When you see companies making cuts of this size, it does signal a real shift in direction."
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Under Pressure From Trump, UN Shipping Regulator Delays Vote on Net-Zero Rules
“With climate warming impacts being felt everywhere on Earth, kicking this decision down the road is simply evading reality," says one campaigner.
Oct 17, 2025
Advocates of establishing an international framework for decarbonizing global shipping on Friday decried a postponed vote on proposed rules—a move that came amid pressure from the administration of US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia.
Members of the United Nations International Maritime Organization's (IMO) Marine Environment Protection Committee gathered in London for a special meeting, MEPC 83, to vote on its Net-Zero Framework (NZF), a new set of global regulations aimed at slashing the shipping industry's greenhouse gas emissions.
A Saudi proposal to adjourn the meeting and delay a final decision on the NZF narrowly passed by a vote of 57-49, with 21 abstentions, Mongabay reported.
The NZF—whose goal is net-zero shipping by 2050—has two main interconnected components, a global fuel standard requiring ships to gradually reduce emissions, and a pricing mechanism meant to encourage the industry to voluntarily slash greenhouse gas output.
"The delay leaves the shipping sector drifting in uncertainty."
The NZF was approved at the last MEPC meeting in April, then shared with member nations for review, with an eye toward final assent during the current special meeting. However, while the European Union and nations including China and Brazil have been pushing for the NZF, the world's two largest oil producers—the United States and Saudi Arabia—are working to scupper the proposal, which Russia also opposes.
Trump took to his Truth Social network Thursday to pressure MEPC members to vote "no" on the NZF:
I am outraged that the International Maritime Organization is voting in London this week to pass a global Carbon Tax. The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping, and will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form. We will not tolerate increased prices on American Consumers OR, the creation of a Green New Scam Bureaucracy to spend YOUR money on their Green dreams. Stand with the United States, and vote NO in London tomorrow!
The one-year postponement drew sharp rebuke from supporters of the NZF.
“We are disappointed that member states have not been able to agree a way forward at this meeting," International Chamber of Shipping secretary general Thomas Kazakos said following Friday's vote. "Industry needs clarity to be able to make the investments needed to decarbonize the maritime sector, in line with the goals set out in the IMO [greenhouse gas] strategy."
"As an industry we will continue to work with the IMO, which is the best organization to deliver the global regulations needed for a global industry," Kazakos added.
John Maggs, who represents the Clean Shipping Coalition at the IMO, said in a statement, “By delaying adoption of its Net-Zero Framework, IMO has today squandered an important opportunity to tackle global shipping’s contribution to climate breakdown."
“With climate warming impacts being felt everywhere on Earth, kicking this decision down the road is simply evading reality," he added. "Governments serious about climate action must spend the next 12 months rallying every nation that supports the framework, convincing those who are on the fence, or opposing, that its adoption is the only sane way forward.”
Elissama Menezes, co-founder and director of the advocacy organization Equal Routes, said: "Delay costs the climate—and coastal Indigenous peoples and Arctic communities are already paying the price for inaction. This week’s non-outcome should mean that states and the marine sector should double down on related efforts to reduce the impacts from the triple planetary crisis.”
Faig Abbasov, director of shipping at the green group Transport & Environment, told Reuters that "the delay leaves the shipping sector drifting in uncertainty."
Global shipping accounts for approximately 3% of the world's CO2 emissions. Approximately 90% of all international trade is conducted at sea, and proponents of the NZF warn that emissions will soar without the regulations.
While leading shipping companies including Maersk and CMA CGM have taken steps to transition their fleets to zero emission vessels, they are still falling short of the goals laid out in the landmark Paris climate agreement or even the IMO’s own 2023 emissions reduction strategy.
”However, all is not lost—not by a long shot," said Maggs, "as there is an immediate opportunity to slash [greenhouse gas] emissions from shipping, minimize fuel burn, and the overall cost of the energy transition, and that is to strengthen and make enforceable the carbon intensity indicator (CII), the IMO’s cornerstone energy efficiency measure."
CII is a shipping industry regulatory metric that measures a vessel's annual carbon intensity.
“There’s no time to waste," Maggs added. "At MEPC 84 in April 2026 member states need to focus all their attention on transforming the CII into the energy efficiency powerhouse needed to quickly right this ship and put it back on route to being a climate solution.”
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