Week of August 19–25, 2026

U.S. District Chief Judge Dolly M. Gee in Los Angeles appointed an independent monitor and a special master to oversee compliance with the Flores settlement, the nearly 30-year-old agreement setting minimum standards for housing, education and medical care for detained migrant children.

In a pair of decisions this week, Gee criticized the administration’s treatment of children in custody and said she saw no alternative to naming an enforcer. “Defendants cannot claim amnesia as to the history of the case,” she wrote in Monday’s order.

Young detainees have described inedible food, substandard medical care and harsh treatment by guards and staff. The administration has filed appeals seeking to rescind the Flores settlement entirely.

Source: Los Angeles Times

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued guidance allowing officers reviewing green card applications to consider whether a U.S. citizen child or other relative of the applicant has used health or social service programs, even when the applicant has not.

The release describes five factors officers will weigh in deciding whether an applicant is inadmissible as a public charge, and directs them to assess all pertinent facts case by case.

The guidance takes effect September 18, replacing the 2022 framework with a broader discretionary standard set out in the USCIS Policy Manual. Spokesman Zach Kahler said the agency is protecting American taxpayers from subsidizing people who may become dependent on public benefits.

Source: The Hill

The United States deported more than 160 people to Haiti on Thursday, the first flight since the administration won its legal fight to end Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitians.

The plane landed in Cap-Haitien because the main airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous. U.S. commercial flights to the capital are banned through early September because of gang violence. Gangs control an estimated 70 percent of Port-au-Prince and territory beyond it.

The group included TPS holders and people who had served prison sentences, said Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, director general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration. Some were not born in Haiti. Delva said several planned to travel to the southern region, a dangerous trip because gangs control the routes.

Source: AP News

Religious groups asked a federal judge to consider holding Department of Homeland Security officials in contempt after an undercover ICE agent dropped a concealed body-worn audio recorder during a martial arts session in the gymnasium of University Baptist Church in Minneapolis in May.

The groups say the operation violated a February order by U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor IV barring immigration enforcement activity in or near certain houses of worship. Court records show the operation also involved surveilling the church exterior and photographing cars in its parking lot.

The agent said he left the gym without noticing the recorder was missing and returned about three minutes later. The details emerged in a criminal case in which the Justice Department has charged more than a dozen people with conspiracy to impede federal officers.

Source: Politico

Judge Jeannette Vargas of the federal district court in Manhattan struck down the State Department’s ban on immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries, ruling it contrary to law and beyond the secretary of state’s statutory authority. She reversed any visa denial based solely on the policy.

In January the department paused immigrant visa issuance for nearly 40 percent of the world’s countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Haiti, Somalia and Russia, saying it would keep out people who would take welfare and public benefits.

Vargas found that consular officers were directed to reject applicants based on nationality alone. The statute allows a public charge refusal only after an officer weighs the applicant’s finances, age, health, skills and family circumstances.

Source: WBAL-TV

With lower court stays lifted after the Supreme Court’s June ruling, TPS holders from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, South Sudan, Burma, Ethiopia, Yemen and Somalia can now be deported, in addition to those from Haiti and Syria.

Judges who had initially sided with TPS holders were required to reexamine their orders in light of the decision, which held that terminations are not subject to judicial review.

Haitians are among the largest groups, with nearly 350,000 protected before the ruling. Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance said the first deportation flight to Haiti on Thursday night carried roughly 170 people, including one of her clients.

Source: The Hill

ICE is taking increasing steps to avoid state and local inspection of detention facilities as complaints about conditions grow. In some cases contracts have been rewritten to declare that centers are not subject to particular local or state laws.

In others, the agency has purchased facilities from the private companies that built them. The companies keep running the centers, but federal ownership strengthens their position against litigation.

GEO Group chief executive George Zoley told shareholders on a May earnings call that federal ownership bolsters protection from what he called unwarranted litigation over medical care and detention conditions, and that the strategy matters as some states consider more active oversight. A settlement announced this week confirmed that private detention facilities in California are subject to state workplace safety law.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Luis Manuel Aviles, 48, a handyman in Key West, Florida, was arrested by immigration authorities after leaving home to take his car to a mechanic, according to his wife, Argelia Aviles. He is from Nicaragua, has lived in the United States for 19 years and holds a work permit, she said.

His son was in his ninth month aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which set a U.S. record for uninterrupted time at sea.

The arrest follows the rollback of protections for military families. The Associated Press has identified dozens of parents and spouses of active-duty troops detained since the start of the term, with at least six deported and one self-deported. One of the military’s advertised benefits is parole in place for immediate relatives of service members.

Source: PBS NewsHour

The Department of Homeland Security submitted a proposed rule imposing a fee of $103,265 on all new H-1B petitions, reviving in regulatory form the $100,000 charge a federal judge blocked in June as an unlawful tax requiring congressional approval.

The proposal was filed Monday for Federal Register publication on Tuesday, opening a 30-day public comment period.

The original charge was announced by presidential proclamation in September 2025 and drew suits from labor unions, research universities and dozens of states, which argued it would hobble hiring at hospitals already short-staffed and in technology firms that rely on foreign-born researchers and engineers. USCIS said the payments would support immigration programs that otherwise need funding.

Source: Politico

The State Department is preparing to revoke the B1 and B2 business and tourist visas of up to 200,000 people who have applied for or are seeking asylum, according to department documents obtained by the Associated Press and two U.S. officials. It would be the largest single mass revocation in U.S. history.

The action covers visas issued between 2016 and 2026 and would be coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security. An announcement is expected in coming weeks.

Spokesman Tommy Pigott said the department is identifying foreigners who entered as short-term visitors and then filed for asylum, and declined to confirm a number, saying revocations will be rolling. Officials said most people with pending asylum cases would be recategorized rather than immediately deported.

Source: PBS NewsHour

A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report dated August 20 found that Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative arm, devoted about 30 percent fewer hours to fentanyl enforcement between fiscal years 2024 and 2025, and that its fentanyl seizures fell 39 percent.

Time spent on fentanyl cases dropped by 250,000 hours in 2025 while hours spent on immigration investigations rose by 1.7 million.

“With ICE dedicating more staff hours to immigration investigations, staffing hours for fentanyl investigations declined,” the inspector general wrote. Investigators also opened fewer fentanyl cases over the period. The report is the latest internal review to examine the tradeoffs of redirecting the agency toward immigration enforcement.

Source: Miami Herald

ICE arrested 49,571 people in July, the highest monthly total of the second Trump administration, according to government data provided to the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley and UCLA and analyzed by the Associated Press.

The figure is a 15 percent increase over 43,021 in June and 70 percent above the 29,241 recorded in February, after the enforcement surge in Minnesota.

The rise came as the agency moved away from high-profile operations in large cities toward quieter arrests, many at traffic stops, aided by a hiring surge and by state and local officers deputized to enforce immigration law. ICE has also begun arresting Haitians whose protection from deportation was stripped after the Supreme Court ruling.

Source: AP News