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us immigration and customs enforcement
Ex-Trump Lawyer Says 'We're Screwed' if Trump Pressures New AG Blanche to Subvert Elections
"There's no circumstance under which we shouldn't expect Blanche to seize ballots and seize voting machines and try to interfere in the process of the upcoming election."
Aug 09, 2026
One of the many questions swirling around new US Attorney General Todd Blanche is whether he'd go along with President Donald Trump's efforts to subvert the result of another election.
In 2020, when Trump attempted to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden, his attempts to claim the result was marred by systemic fraud were met with resistance from then-Attorney General William Barr.
But under Blanche, who served for two years as Trump's personal defense attorney, things may be very different.
That's according to another of Trump's former lawyers, Ty Cobb, who served as White House special counsel for nearly a year during Trump's first term, as he came under investigation by then-special counsel Robert Mueller over his campaign's alleged coordination with the Russian government.
Cobb, who has been an outspoken critic of both Trump and his appointment of Blanche, appeared for an interview released Saturday on Zeteo's "Mehdi Unfiltered." Host Mehdi Hasan asked Cobb, "Come 2028, does American democracy survive Donald Trump?"
"I’m not sure they survive it in 2026,” Cobb responded.
Meet the Former Trump White House Lawyer Who Says Our Democracy Could Be ‘Screwed’ in 2026 by Mehdi Hasan
Ty Cobb, who represented the Trump White House during the Mueller investigation, questions whether democracy will survive the midterms and accuses Trump of 'unprecedented' corruption.
Read on SubstackNoting Barr's resistance to Trump in 2020, Hasan asked: "If the midterms don’t go Trump’s way this fall, is there any world in which Todd Blanche stands up to Trump if he’s asked to find some fake evidence of voter fraud, or are we screwed now?”
“We’re screwed,” Cobb said bluntly.
“Great,” Hasan said. “That’s what I suspected.”
Trump has, on multiple occasions, floated the idea of canceling the midterm elections outright and has enacted measures aimed at blocking mail-in voting and seizing voter information from states. He has also said he wants Republicans to "nationalize" elections in Democratic-leaning locales.
Cobb noted that Blanche "has already echoed [former Trump chief strategist] Steve Bannon's view that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] should be on the street during the election," adding, "I think we'll almost certainly see that."
Hasan pointed out that the administration has routinely ignored court orders, especially with regard to its immigration enforcement. Cobb predicted that "the level of noncompliance" so far "is nothing compared to what we're about to see."
He said that if Democrats take the US House of Representatives and begin pursuing investigations, he suspects there will be "a number of contemptuous acts" by the administration. "We can count on the Justice Department to pursue zero of those referrals."
"That's assuming that the midterms actually produce a Democratic Congress," he continued, noting that even if one were elected legitimately, "whether they get seated or not by [Republican House Speaker] Little Mikey Johnson and his service to the president, that remains to be seen."
Cobb said that's in addition to other "dangers" around the election, including the presence of ICE agents. "Blanche has suggested that people should be happy to see ICE at the polls."
Where Barr refused Trump's requests to do so in 2020, Cobb said, "There's no circumstance under which we shouldn't expect Blanche to seize ballots and seize voting machines and try to interfere in the process of the upcoming election."
"I think that the president has made it very clear that he doesn't want immigrants or people of color to have the ability to go to the polls," Cobb said. "He's going to do everything he can in blue states and elsewhere to try to prevent this election from going smoothly."
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‘Like the Gestapo’: Trump-Voting Businessman Horrified After ICE Arrest of His Fiancée
"The most horrible things shouldn’t have to happen to you in order to oppose them," said one critic.
Aug 07, 2026
A Trump voter is in shock after the president's ongoing effort to conduct the largest mass deportation campaign in US history impacted him personally.
In an interview with CBS News published Thursday, Texas businessman John Gannon expressed regret for supporting President Donald Trump in the 2024 election after federal immigration officials last month detained his fiancé, a Venezuelan immigrant named Yasmin Suarez Reyes.
Gannon said that he expected that Trump's mass deportation campaign would only go after criminals who are unlawfully in the US, but instead found "they are picking up law-abiding citizens" and "destroying families, jobs."
Texas businessman John Gannon says he feels "totally betrayed" after his Venezuelan fiancée, Yasmin Suarez Reyes, was detained by ICE at Houston's international airport.
A lifelong Republican who says he voted for President Trump, Gannon told CBS News' @camiloreports he now… pic.twitter.com/7dDvGH1TrM
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 6, 2026
Gannon, the owner of over 1,000 billboards in the US and of a hotel and restaurant in Mexico, explained that Suarez Reyes was detained in July by multiple US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after passing through security at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
According to Gannon, the ICE officers "swarmed" Suarez Reyes and "wrestled her off into a car" without providing an explanation.
"This is like the Gestapo," Gannon said.
Anne Kennedy, an attorney representing Suarez Reyes, told CBS that her client entered the US legally and had a pending asylum case and had been able to get a work permit and a Texas driver's license before she was detained. Kennedy also noted that Suarez Reyes had no criminal record.
"For almost two weeks now, she has been in a physical jail cell," said Kennedy, "when she has done nothing more than follow the laws of the United States and do what our immigration laws allow her to do."
When asked by CBS what message he had for Trump, Gannon encouraged the president to "go after the criminals" but "leave the mom and pops and the kids alone."
"Man, he's destroying families," Gannon added.
Some critics expressed little empathy for Gannon's situation, however, given Trump's decades of racist attacks on immigrants.
"You voted for Trump to do this to other people," commented journalist Molly Knight. "You’re mad because he’s not doing this to 'the right people,' as defined by you."
Election forecaster Rachel Bitecofer was similarly unsympathetic, and sarcastically summed up Gannon's position as, "I only wanted other people's relatives deported!"
Gun safety activist Shannon Watts questioned why Gannon needed to be personally impacted by Trump's policies to turn against them.
"The most horrible things shouldn’t have to happen to you in order to oppose them," Watts wrote.
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Critics Demand Full Senate Block Confirmation of 'Trump Crony' Blanche After GOP Advances AG Nomination
"Todd Blanche has one client, and it’s not the American people," said one coalition of advocacy groups.
Aug 04, 2026
Senate Democrats and advocacy groups are making the case for the full Senate to block Todd Blanche from being confirmed as US attorney general after Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance his nomination Tuesday along party lines.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Blanche, currently President Donald Trump's acting attorney general, "has aided and abetted the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States."
Democratic colleagues described Blanche's support for Trump's $1.8 billion "weaponization fund," his neglect of survivors abused by Jeffrey Epstein, and his obstruction of investigations into killings and misconduct by immigration agents, as evidence that he is, in the words of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), "probably the most discreditable person ever to seek the office of attorney general."
Their criticisms were echoed by anticorruption watchdogs and rights groups, who argued that Blanche, who was previously Trump's personal lawyer, was still acting like it even while serving as Acting Attorney General.
“Senators must urgently do the right thing and block Blanche," said Lisa Gilbert, the president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, who referred to him as a "Trump crony."
"If we make Todd Blanche America’s lawyer at the head of the Justice Department," Gilbert said, "we are accepting a man... who rubberstamped the corrupt IRS deal that Trump made with himself to shield all the Trumps and their businesses, not only from enforcement of any taxes they may have dodged or any fines or payments they may owe to American taxpayers, but from ‘any and all’ related consequences for violating any federal criminal or civil law."
In recent days, Blanche committed to kill the so-called "slush fund" in exchange for support from Republican holdouts like Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (NC).
Gilbert and other co-chairs of the Not Above the Law Coalition—a collective of anticorruption advocacy groups—said that the agreement was "an unenforceable piece of paper that Trump never signed" and have warned that Blanche will revive efforts to pay government funds to Trump supporters, including those who took part in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, as soon as he is confirmed.
Following Tuesday's vote, Cornyn said that Blanche "gave us the assurances that [the fund] was dead and would not be revived, and in this case we have no alternative but to take his word."
Arisha Hatch, the executive director of the women's organization UltraViolet, said the Republicans who voted for Blanche had also sided against "the majority of the American people, who demand integrity from our elected leaders and want everyone involved in Jeffrey Epstein's network—including those who enabled it—to be held accountable."
Epstein survivors have criticized Blanche for his role in overseeing the DOJ’s highly scrutinized release of files related to his alleged crimes, including the department's exposure of victims’ private information and intimate photos while omitting information that identified prominent associates, including Trump himself.
At the urging of Tillis, Blanche held an hour-long meeting where he met with victims of Epstein's abuse, who said in a letter published Tuesday that he appeared dismissive of their concerns.
"When we met with Todd Blanche, he interrupted us. He told us to 'get to the point.' He told us to report what happened to us to the FBI. We already have," the survivors said. "Some of us have been reporting these crimes for decades. This was a check-the-box meeting designed to secure Senator Tillis' vote."
Maya Wiley, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, added that Blanche had "pursued baseless claims against civil rights organizations, sought sweeping access to state voter data, permitted a lawless [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]," echoing criticisms about the DOJ’s withholding of evidence from Minnesota prosecutors related to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents.
Republicans control the Senate by a margin of 53-47 and are down a vote with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) currently absent, meaning that just three defectors could be enough to block Blanche's confirmation, which could come to a vote within days.
"The Senate doesn’t need unanimous courage to block Blanche," said Brett Edkins, managing director for policy and political affairs at the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America. "It needs a few Republicans willing to put country over party.”
Gilbert, Edkins, and the other co-chairs of the Not Above the Law coalition—Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center and Kelsey Herbert, campaign director at MoveOn—noted Blanche's own statements that the DOJ, long described as a politically neutral agency, was not independent from the president, and a slip-up during a confirmation hearing during which he referred to himself as Trump's lawyer.
"Todd Blanche has one client, and it’s not the American people," the advocates said. "Committee Republicans just chose not to see it. The full Senate now has the final word, and every senator should use it to reject this nomination.”
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Condemning 'Commodification of Child Imprisonment,' Castro Leads Call to Shut Down Dilley ICE Center
"There's a 2-month-old baby there and four pregnant women there," said the Texas Democrat. "It's no place for a 2-month-old baby to be, or even a 1- or 5-year-old kid."
Jul 29, 2026
Democratic Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro appeared on MS NOW early Wednesday to discuss his recent trip to and persistent efforts to shut down what he called a "trailer prison" where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding families in Dilley.
After leading a letter signed by over 100 other Democrats calling for the closure of the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, Castro on Tuesday conducted a congressional oversight visit of the facility with members of the Democratic Women's Caucus, including Reps. Yassamin Ansari (Ariz.), Lizzie Fletcher (Texas), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Luz Rivas (Calif.).
During the interview on "Morning Joe," Castro said that Americans have watched in horror as ICE has killed and brutalized US citizens and immigrants in the streets, "but there's a brutality behind the prison walls of these detention centers that almost no one gets to see except for members of Congress who have an opportunity to go inspect them."
While touring the Dilley center seven times recently, "I've seen a lot of desperate children. I've seen traumatized children. There is a system there that is abusive of people," Castro said, citing complaints of worms in food, yellow drinking water, and inadequate medical care.
"When I asked, they said the youngest person there is 2 months old—so there's a 2-month-old baby there and four pregnant women there right now. And, you know, I can tell you that it's no place for a 2-month-old baby to be, or even a 1- or 5-year-old kid," he said.
Noting that the Texas facility is run by a private prison company—CoreCivic—and condemning the "commodification of child imprisonment," Castro declared that "we want the Dilley detention center shut down."
His comments on MS NOW mirrored those he and other lawmakers delivered outside the facility, also known as the South Texas Family Residential Center, and during a press conference with the organizations FWD.us and Families Belong Together.
The center is currently detaining 539 individuals, from 84 families, according to Pressley. She said that "these are law-abiding people that are our neighbors—people we love, people we live next to, we work and worship with, who were just going about their lives and met with such an aggressive disruption that they will be recovering from for the rest of their lives."
"Dilley must be shut down. We have to abolish ICE. And then I'm gonna take it one step further and say any of those agents that have contributed to and caused the injury, the harm, and even fatalities, they must also be held accountable, and we should abolish qualified immunity for these federal law enforcement officers," she argued.
FWD.us president Todd Schulte also called for "shutting down Dilley and releasing these children and families immediately."
"Dilley reflects a broader pattern that should not be expanded with additional, unprecedented taxpayer funding," he stressed, denouncing the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the Republican-controlled Congress has poured into President Donald Trump's mass detention and deportation campaign, led by ICE and US Customs and Border Protection.
"This will only cause irreparable harm to children and communities," Schulte warned. "Thank you to the members who continue to call for the release of families, and we join them in their calls for Dilley's closure."
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'Disgusting': Dem Senator Says ICE Threatened to Beat Seattle Business Owner Unless He Signed Deportation Form
"What ICE is doing is illegal and disturbing."
Jul 29, 2026
Sen. Patty Murray on Wednesday accused federal immigration enforcement officials of attempting to coerce a longtime Seattle resident to sign a voluntary deportation form using threats of violence.
In a video posted on social media, Murray (D-Wash.) delivered an update on Eduardo Aguirre Esparza, who was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last week.
The senator said that Aguirre Esparza, whom she described as "a local Seattle small business owner with no criminal history" and the husband of a US citizen, was taken to an ICE office in Tukwila, Washington, where he was held in a room for 10 hours.
ICE agents threatened to beat up a Seattle small business owner, married to a citizen, with NO criminal record unless he signed a "voluntary" departure.
I'm told there were cameras in the room.
I'm demanding any video and that Eduardo be brought home immediately. https://t.co/jMpYSh08WC pic.twitter.com/1GViRDhbmU
— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) July 29, 2026
"He was surrounded by 20 ICE agents, who were pressuring him to sign a voluntary departure," said Murray. "They physically pushed him and threatened to beat him up if he didn't sign it. This is disgusting."
Murray said that she has learned that there are security cameras in the room where Aguirre Esparza was being held, and she demanded that ICE hand over any footage in its possession.
"What ICE is doing is illegal and disturbing," Murray emphasized. "Eduardo is now being held in Texas, away from his family and his lawyers. I am demanding that [the US Department of Homeland Security] return Eduardo to Washington state now so he can get the due process everyone should expect in America."
In a separate statement, Murray said that Aguirre Esparza has "deep ties to our local community" and "was working hard to pursue a legal pathway to lawful permanent residence."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, commented that Murray's account of Aguirre Esparza's detention "is a good reminder that some 'voluntary' departures people sign while detained by ICE are the product of coercion."
"The worst incidents I've heard of over the years involve agents grabbing a person's hands and forcing them to sign a piece of paper they can't read," Reichlin-Melnick added. "It's a 'voluntary' removal."
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Study Shows How Trump's ICE Raids Cost Americans Jobs
"Not only are these arrests often cruel and unnecessary," said one economist, "but they’re also hurting the very Americans President Trump promised to help.”
Jul 29, 2026
President Donald Trump has spent years insisting that immigrant communities are "taking our jobs" and that expelling migrants via the mass deportation campaign he's imposed on cities and towns across the country would swiftly result in an employment boom—but a new study reveals how aggressive raids by federal agents are resulting in a decline in employment for US-born citizens as well as their immigrant neighbors and coworkers.
A study authored by Elizabeth Cox and Chloe East and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that while Trump's sweeping raids and arrests of hundreds of thousands of people have pushed those who have been deported out of their jobs, and "immigrants who remain in the US are working less due to chilling effects," those changes have done nothing to stimulate job growth among US citizens.
"We show no evidence of positive effects of the labor market outcomes of US-born workers," wrote the authors. "Instead, ICE activity lowers the employment rate of US-born male workers, likely driven by a combination of complementarities in production and reductions in economic activity both reducing labor demand for US-born workers."
In other words, said the Immigration Research Initiative (IRI) on Monday, "arresting and deporting immigrants results in a cascade of job loss," affecting longtime employees who have work authorization but may stay home or leave the US out of fear of being deported, and US-born workers who struggle to keep businesses afloat after people who support their essential operations are detained and deported.
The study focused on men's employment because about 90% of the people arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other related agencies have been male.
For every 1,000 immigrant men arrested by ICE, the researchers found a 2.5% decline in employment for immigrant men without a college degree—those most at risk of being detained.
In areas where ICE activity has been particularly aggressive, a 0.54% decline in employment among US-born men in the area was found for every 1,000 ICE arrests.
"On US-born males’ employment rate, we find a negative and significant effect," reads the study. "There is no evidence that employers increase wages to attract US-born workers."
In response to the study, IRI created a model showing how employment would be affected in each state, should 1% of the most at-risk immigrant men be detained by ICE.
The group projected that such a dramatic statewide surge in enforcement in California, for example, would result in the direct expulsion of 15,600 immigrant men from their jobs. Another 615,000 immigrants would lose employment due to the chilling effect of the surge, and an estimated 466,000 US-born Californian men would also ultimately lose their jobs.
"Jobs where undocumented immigrants play a particularly big role are often complementary to jobs with higher numbers of US-born workers," IRI explained. "For instance, in the construction industry, a high concentration of roofers and construction laborers are immigrants, and are often undocumented, while a high concentration of electricians and plumbers are US-born. Then when construction companies cannot find laborers, they build less, and hire fewer electricians."
Texas, another state with a large immigrant workforce, would see an estimated 9,700 immigrant men swept up in a statewide surge that targeted 1% of the most at-risk people. An additional 237,800 immigrant men would also lose work, as well as 266,100 US-born men.
More than 128,000 American men would also be projected to lose employment as the result of immigration enforcement in Florida, as well as 18,600 in North Carolina; 16,800 in Pennsylvania; and 11,700 in Arizona.
IRI examined three states in Northern New England—Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont—as a whole, determining that mass arrests would take a total of 300 immigrants out of the workforce in the states, and would force job cuts for about 700 US citizens.
Mass deportation operations like Trump's shrink both the workforce and the overall economy of an area, said IRI, because the people who are directly impacted—and those who fear ICE enforcement even if the government has no legal reason to deport them—"no longer shop at businesses, eat at restaurants, and pay taxes."
"The decline in consumer spending likely explains the study’s finding that employment reductions are concentrated in 'non-tradeable' sectors, those driven by local spending (e.g. restaurants) rather than sectors oriented toward exports (e.g. manufacturing)," said IRI.
James Myall, senior economic policy analyst at Maine Center for Economic Policy, said in a statement Tuesday that the research "just proves how self-defeating the Trump administration’s immigration policies really are."
"Not only are these arrests often cruel and unnecessary," said Myall, "but they’re also hurting the very Americans President Trump promised to help.”
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Top DHS Statistics Official Resigns, Citing 'War on Immigrants' and Trump's 'Brazen Corruption'
"Since Trump took office last year, his office has been repeatedly blocked from sharing previously public data," said one expert of Marc Rosenblum.
Jul 28, 2026
A top immigration policy expert accused a right-wing online news source of spreading an "outrageous lie" on Monday about the US Department of Homeland Security's top statistician, who resigned over the weekend and cited President Donald Trump's "war on immigrants" as a major reason for his departure.
America First Post wrote in a post on social media that Marc Rosenblum, who until recently was the executive director of the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS), "easily could’ve been underreporting deportations or illegal populations, ruining data."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, countered that Rosenblum sought under both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration to publish "the most transparent data on immigration enforcement ever; monthly information on [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection] arrests and removals, stuff that had NEVER been published before."
Such data has not been published since the first days of Trump's second term in the White House, said Reichlin-Melnick, as the president has ramped up deportation operations and federal agents have violently carried out his anti-immigration agenda—arresting more than 10,000 people in a recent five-day span and killing at least 11 people during enforcement operations.
In a post on LinkedIn, Rosenblum wrote that over 10 years, the team he managed at OHSS grew from 11 people to 45 people under the Biden administration.
"We matured official data processing to update monthly," wrote Rosenblum. "We launched new lines of daily and weekly internal reports. We massively expanded our analytic capacity."
"My OHSS co-workers are outstanding career federal civil servants. They are smart, mission-focused experts who produce high-quality results in a challenging and often hostile work environment," he continued. "But it will come as no surprise that I’m thrilled to end my relationship with the current administration. Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption), I just need a change."
Daniel Delgado, a former DHS deputy assistant secretary for immigration policy, said the department was "far better off for the work that Marc accomplished, no matter how hard the current incompetent leadership try to hide it."
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute—which has found that the majority of immigration arrests made last year were of people who had no criminal convictions—told NOTUS last November that under the Trump administration, DHS was providing "no accountability, no way to assess, no public understanding about what’s really going on that is not curated by a press release from the agency."
Reichlin-Melnick has also frequently spoken out about the lack of data being publicly released by DHS to back up its claims about immigration arrests.
While DHS has repeatedly claimed in public statements that its agents are getting "the worst of the worst off our streets," the agency's own "Worst of the Worst" database released late last year showed less than 10,000 people who had been arrested—a tiny fraction of the 220,000 people who had been detained by federal agents up to that point.
"Marc Rosenblum was one of the most dedicated civil servants I’ve ever met, a man who spent his career working to get DHS to share more data," said Reichlin-Melnick. "Since Trump took office last year, his office has been repeatedly blocked from sharing previously public data."
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'Never Should Have Gotten This Far': Trump DOJ Moves to Drop Case Against Union Leader David Huerta
"This case, like others, sought to silence criticism of the administration's improper immigration actions," said attorneys representing California labor leader David Huerta.
Jul 27, 2026
The US Department of Justice on Monday moved to drop its criminal case against California labor leader David Huerta, who was charged with conspiring to impede an officer after being arrested last year while protesting federal immigration enforcement operations.
In a two-page filing, the DOJ said it was moving to dismiss charges against Huerta, president of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West.
As noted by a Monday Politico report, the DOJ had originally hit Huerta with a felony obstruction count, then downgraded it to a misdemeanor, before moving to drop the case altogether.
Heurta's arrest caused an outcry last year, as video footage taken from the protest showed a masked law enforcement officer shoving the labor leader to the ground during a demonstration against a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Los Angeles.
EVERYBODY WATCH.
ICE IS OUT OF CONTROL.
Video of SEIU California’s President David Huerta getting assaulted & arrested during an ICE raid in the warehouse district of Downtown Los Angeles today.
He’s an LA native, American citizen and labor leader.
Don’t turn away. pic.twitter.com/TuDDSHaISC
— Fight for a Union (@FightForAUnion) June 6, 2025
In a statement released after the government's motion to dismiss the case, Huerta said that the Trump DOJ "is finally admitting what we knew from day one and what was obvious to anyone who saw the videos: the charge against me was baseless, meant to intimidate anyone who dares to speak out, organize, or demand justice."
Attorneys Abbe Lowell and Marilyn Bednarski, who are representing Huerta, delivered a scathing assessment of the DOJ's conduct.
"This case, like others, sought to silence criticism of the administration's improper immigration actions," the attorneys said. "Today's filing is proof that David and other critics will not be silenced."
Lowell and Bednarski added that, even though their client is no longer facing criminal charges, the choice to pursue prosecution in the first place inflicted significant costs upon him.
"This case revealed that the Department of Justice was willing to charge a labor leader, hold it over him for months, and then walk away from it once the charge couldn't survive scrutiny," they said. "That is not how a justice system is supposed to work."
The California Federation of Labor Unions expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that the decision to charge Huerta showed the DOJ has gone off the rails.
"Today, justice prevailed," the federation said. "But it never should have gotten this far. The arrest of our union brother David Huerta was an assault on the entire labor movement by the Trump administration. The decision to drop these outrageous charges reflects the power of working people standing together."
Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, told The Los Angeles Times on Monday that she wasn't surprised to see the government move to dismiss charges against Huerta because there were "problems with this case from day one."
“When you look at the photos and videos, there’s certainly an argument from the defense that it was law enforcement acting in a defensive manner and he was just protesting," Levenson said. "It would have been a tough case for the prosecution to win if this went to trial."
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'Bigotry' as Government Policy: Trump Orders ICE to Ramp Up Arrests of Haitians
"ICE has been ordered to round up nurses, home health aides, factory workers, teachers, students, and thousands of others who have been living and working here legally for years; who’ve done nothing wrong."
Jul 27, 2026
Mass arrests of Haitian immigrants by federal agents could begin as early as this week, according to federal documents regarding President Donald Trump's new directive to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court's ruling that Trump could end deportation protections for the community.
A binding mandate was expected to be sent to lower courts on Monday regarding the high court's decision last month that held the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could strip 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is granted to migrants from certain countries facing disasters, armed conflicts, or other conditions that would put immigrants in danger if they were forced to return there.
After the mandate is transmitted, Haitians across the country will lose their ability to legally live and work in the US, and the administration is reportedly already planning to send ICE agents into states including Ohio—where Haitian communities were targeted by Trump and Vice President JD Vance during the 2024 election—to quickly arrest and deport migrants to their crisis-stricken home country.
Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, director-general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration, told the Haitian Times this month that according to the US embassy in the Caribbean country, about 250 former TPS beneficiaries could be forced back to Haiti on flights each week.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, emphasized that the reported operation targeting Haitian communities is just the latest evidence that Trump is rounding up people who have been living and working in the US for years, despite the White House's claims that it is going after "the worst of the worst."
"The majority of Haitians with TPS today entered the US lawfully on humanitarian parole during the Biden administration, and then transitioned to TPS before their parole status expired," said Reichlin-Melnick. "Those people have not spent a single day in violation of immigration law."
The crisis in Haiti that necessitated TPS for people who arrived in the US from the country, he added, "hasn't ended."
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with widespread food insecurity, and large swathes of the country as well as transport routes are controlled by armed gangs. Violence intensified toward the end of 2025 "and remains the dominant force shaping the daily life of Haitians," according to the United Nations, with more than 8,100 killings reported last year, and gangs have increasingly used children in violent attacks.
Many healthcare facilities are "barely functioning," and extreme weather including hurricanes and droughts have worsened the humanitarian crisis. The country has also struggled to fully recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of Haitians.
Last week, US Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) spoke out about a Pentagon plan to strengthen coordination between the UN's Gang Suppression Task Force in Haiti and a private military contractor run by Erik Prince, a close ally of Trump's. The contractor, Vectus Global, has conducted drone strikes that have killed dozens of Haitian civilians.
Those conditions are what DHS suggested Haitians should voluntarily return to, after having built lives in the US, when the agency told CBS News on Monday that TPS has been used as a "defacto amnesty program" and called on people who are about to lose protections that have been in place for 16 years to "self-deport."
"What we would say now is it's closing time which means you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," DHS told CBS News. "The good news is it's not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home."
The Supreme Court's majority asserted last month that Trump administration officials did not make "overtly racial" comments about Haitians that would suggest the push to end TPS for the population was driven by "racial animus"—but US District Judge Ana Reyes in the District of Columbia came to the opposite conclusion earlier this year, saying then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had likely pushed to end TPS "because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
Reyes pointed out that Noem had not acknowledged the $1.3 billion Haitian TPS holders pay each year in taxes, and said Trump's racist comments about Haitians in the US—including that they "probably have AIDS" and that residents of the community in Springfield, Ohio were eating their white neighbors' pets—were rooted in "racial animus."
The ICE directive to ramp up enforcement operations against "an ethnic group the president has repeatedly attacked is bigotry as official government policy," said Reichlin-Melnick.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) called on members of Congress to sign on to a discharge petition she put forward for a vote on "the American Dream and Promise Act, to extend protections for TPS holders from Haiti and 16 other countries."
"In less than four days, House Democrats secured 210 signatures, including two Republicans, we just need eight more members of Congress to force a vote," said Garcia. "TPS holders, you are not alone, we are with you!"
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‘ICE Is Her Running Mate’: Maine Democrats Spotlight Collins' Support for Rogue Trump Agency
"Susan Collins is directly responsible for handing ICE a blank check," said a top Maine Democratic official.
Jul 23, 2026
With Troy Jackson securing enough delegates to become the Maine Democratic Party's nominee for the US Senate at an unprecedented convention this coming weekend, party strategists and leaders have intensified their efforts to tie incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins to the Trump administration's grave abuses.
In an interview with The New Republic published Thursday, Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, singled out Collins' votes to fund US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a significant vulnerability.
Anti-ICE protests in Maine erupted earlier this month after the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Colombian national Joan Sebastian Guerrero, who was killed by federal immigration agents in front of his six-year-old daughter during a traffic stop.
While Collins lobbied the US Department of Homeland Security to pause traffic stops in the wake of the shooting, President Donald Trump rebuffed her request and said the stops should continue.
Murphy-Anderson told The New Republic that Collins can't escape blame for ICE violence given her role in voting to hand the agency a record amount of money.
Last week, days after Guerrero was killed by a federal agent, Collins declined to say she regretted voting for additional ICE funding.
" Susan Collins is directly responsible for handing ICE a blank check," said Murphy-Anderson. "This is front and center now in our communities. And we are going to hold her accountable in November."
While attacking Collins' votes to fund ICE won't be the entirety of Maine Democrats' strategy for taking on Collins, Murphy-Anderson emphasized that the shooting of Guerrero is "viscerally" affecting voters "across broad segments of our electorate."
Jackson on Tuesday targeted Collins' votes for ICE in a social media post.
"Susan Collins lied to Mainers," Jackson wrote. "She helped destroy Roe v. Wade, she advanced Trump's $990 billion Medicaid cuts, and she gave ICE $70 billion continue its rogue terror campaign."
Susan Collins lied to Mainers. She helped destroy Roe v. Wade, she advanced Trump's $990 billion Medicaid cuts, and she gave ICE $70 billion continue its rogue terror campaign.
Together, we will replace her with a Senator who gives a damn about working people in this country. pic.twitter.com/2B8VmQJsuB
— Troy Jackson (@TroyJackson207) July 21, 2026
Maine Democrats' plan to make Collins' support for ICE an anchor around her neck drew praise from Nicholas Grossman, professor of international relations at the University of Illinois.
"Anti-ICE is pro-freedom," Grossman wrote in a social media post. "That stance is moral, patriotic, and a political winner. Susan Collins' pro-ICE votes are an electoral liability she didn't have in previous races. And an ICE officer with a history of domestic abuse recently killed an innocent man in Maine. Definitely campaign on that."
Adam Gurri, founder and publisher of Liberal Currents, said that pinning ICE's actions directly on Collins was a smart tactic to undermine her image as a "moderate" Republican.
"We can’t let her play this game she’s been doing her whole damn career," wrote Gurri, "where she gives her vote to every evil policy but then play acts being the mediator for how the policy is deployed."
Journalist Jason Sattler argued that Collins' support for ICE funding opens up a new line of attack on her.
"ICE is her running mate," Sattler wrote.
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