Week of August 12–18, 2026

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security. The notice said a no-bid solicitation could be published as early as Friday.

The devices, marketed as the G.L.O.V.E., or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, are made by Compliant Technologies of Lexington, Kentucky, and have been used by some jails and police departments. The company says they work as ordinary patrol gloves until an officer activates the electrical mode, and must touch skin to deliver a pain stimulus.

Civil rights groups objected, saying ICE officers already face criticism over use of force with limited oversight. DHS said it was preparing a response and offered no immediate comment.

Source: AP News

The average length of stay for children at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas has exceeded the legal limit in eight of the 14 months the facility has been open. The Flores settlement caps detention of children at 20 days.

One 16-year-old from Los Angeles has been held with his mother for 123 days. His family came from Iran more than a decade ago, and ICE arrested them in April after Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed officers to revoke their permanent legal status. His father is held separately at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

In a sworn affidavit, the teenager described sharing rooms with cockroaches, spiders and mosquitoes. He had been preparing to start his junior year and try out for the varsity tennis team.

Source: The Texas Tribune

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that the department has revoked more than 600 visas as part of a new enforcement effort against what the administration calls birth tourism networks. “American citizenship is not for sale,” he wrote, accusing organized networks of arranging travel so that children are born on U.S. soil.

The effort follows the executive order on birth tourism signed last week and a Justice Department memo directing U.S. attorneys to prioritize such prosecutions.

Giving birth in the United States is not itself unlawful, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh of the Migration Policy Institute, though traveling with the intent to do so and the conduct of the companies Rubio described, such as visa fraud, are crimes. The State Department referred further questions to its press release.

Source: Newsweek

Haitians in Ohio who lost Temporary Protected Status are increasingly being fitted with ankle monitors rather than detained, attorneys say. ICE has summoned them to in-person check-ins where they are released on monitoring until an immigration judge decides whether they have another basis to remain, such as an asylum claim.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official said the approach reflects a lack of detention space for the more than 300,000 Haitians who lost status after the June Supreme Court decision.

Katie Kersh, an attorney at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, said several clients received letters requiring check-ins and were released with monitors and a 75-mile travel limit from home. DHS declined to comment on the use of ankle monitors.

Source: NBC News

Jose Chajon-Raxon, a Guatemalan man detained at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, New Jersey, on July 18, suffered a medical emergency the next day and died after hospitalization, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Wednesday.

A nurse who responded saw him “experiencing seizure-like activity,” DHS said. He was taken to a hospital and, according to the department, released from ICE custody on July 22. The statement did not give the date of his death. DHS said ICE was not notified because it is not responsible when someone dies weeks after leaving custody.

Two other men held at Delaney Hall have died in the past year, Edwin Lopez-Cornejo of El Salvador this month and Jean Wilson Brutus of Haiti in December. Representative Rob Menendez said he received conflicting information about the case.

Source: NBC News

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the leading challenge to the use of the Alien Enemies Act against alleged Tren de Aragua members on Thursday, because the government had already removed all three plaintiffs using other legal authorities. The underlying question is left unresolved.

“This development is unobjectionable,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote, noting the Supreme Court had said the government could remove the named petitioners under other laws and that they identified no defect in those removals. The court declined to substitute new plaintiffs.

The Supreme Court had blocked summary removals under the 1798 statute without an opportunity to contest them. A panel ruled against the administration in September before the full court agreed to rehear the case in January.

Source: NBC News

Maisa Lopes Eliaser, the wife of an Army staff sergeant, is home after more than a month in immigration detention. She was aboard a deportation flight to Brazil on Wednesday when ICE officers received a call about her mid-flight and asked whether she wanted to continue or return.

Other detainees left the plane in Brazil while she stayed on board and returned to Louisiana. Officers told her she was “famous” because videos about her case had circulated.

“Who made the call? We don’t know,” said her husband, Staff Sergeant Alexis Jaramillo. Eliaser was among the more than 50 spouses and parents of active-duty troops identified in an Associated Press investigation this month, which prompted an inquiry by congressional Democrats. DHS did not immediately comment.

Source: AP News

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Massachusetts lifted her administrative stay on Friday in a case brought by Somali Temporary Protected Status holders, clearing the way for the administration to begin deporting them.

Burroughs wrote that the Somali plaintiffs had made a convincing showing of irreparable harm and that the balance of hardships and the public interest favored them, but that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mullin v. Doe, which held that TPS terminations are unreviewable, bound her to “view things through the Mullin prism.”

Somalia was first designated for TPS in 1991 and was last redesignated under the Biden administration, which cited widespread and ongoing armed conflict. The ruling continues a run of terminations following the June decision.

Source: The Hill

Administrative rulings issued in recent months bar immigration courts from pausing cases while children wait on visas already in process, and reopen the question of whether every child who arrived alone qualifies as an unaccompanied minor.

Immigration judges are now applying those rulings broadly as grounds for rapid removal orders. Attorneys say the application goes well beyond what the rulings require and cuts off children’s procedural rights.

“It’s a full on assault on children,” said Kel White of the Acacia Center for Justice, which until last month oversaw representation of thousands of children in immigration court under a federal contract that has since expired. Taken together, the changes erode the long-standing principle that children are treated as uniquely vulnerable in the system.

Source: Politico

ICE is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration law, according to a planning document published Friday. Officers would buy coverage of up to $500,000 in personal liability and be reimbursed up to $250 a year, roughly the expected cost.

The agency’s partnerships with local departments have grown sharply over the past year, and insurance would remove a hurdle that has made some departments reluctant to sign 287(g) agreements.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, said the plan removes even slight risk of liability for officers who violate rights while assisting ICE arrests. He has urged Congress to make it easier to sue immigration agents for misconduct.

Source: AP News

University associations and labor unions filed suit to block the rule limiting F-1 student and J-1 exchange visitor admissions to fixed four-year periods. The rule was finalized in July and takes effect September 15, ending the long-standing “duration of status” policy.

The complaint argues the rule is arbitrary and capricious, that the Department of Homeland Security relied on thin anecdotal support for its national security rationale, and that the agency disregarded substantial public comment.

Plaintiffs warn of falling international enrollment, weakened university finances and loss of talent in research fields where doctoral and medical programs routinely run longer than four years. They ask the court to vacate the rule before it takes effect.

Source: Forbes

An analysis by the Project on Government Oversight found that the number of ICE detention facilities receiving the agency’s highest inspection grade, “superior,” has tripled since 2024, alongside weakened detention standards and fewer inspections.

The improving scores coincide with rising deaths in custody. 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE detention since 2004. Four people have died at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center since August 2025, the most of any facility in that period.

Recent reports from facilities describe bad water, untrained staff and slow responses to acute and chronic medical needs, complaints echoed by disability rights groups, a federal judge and the California Justice Department. Grades come from ICE’s own Office of Detention Oversight, and a facility that fails twice in a row can lose federal funding.

Source: CalMatters