Week of August 26 – September 1, 2026

The administration ordered U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide to put visa applications on hold and cancel scheduled interviews. Officials say the pause allows in-depth training for consular staff on rejecting applicants likely to become a financial burden on the government.

The pause came days after a federal judge struck down the January suspension of immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries, which rested on a similar public charge rationale.

Earlier pauses have cut issuance sharply. After a month-long halt in student visa processing in May 2025, F-1 issuance fell 36 percent from May to August compared with the prior year, nearly 100,000 fewer student visas, contributing to a drop of at least 17 percent in new international enrollment.

Source: Forbes

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a petition, docketed Monday, asking the Supreme Court to uphold the proclamation the president signed on his first day back in office suspending asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border. The filing accuses lower courts of judicial interference.

The proclamation suspends entry for people who cross outside a port of entry or arrive at one without proper documents, and bars them from seeking asylum or other protection while the president declares an invasion at the southern border.

Sauer called the measure a commonsense reading of immigration law and cited the 2018 decision upholding the first-term travel ban. It is the first time the proclamation has reached the justices, who will consider the petition after the term opens in October. A class action brought by RAICES, Las Americas and the Florence project challenges the policy.

Source: The Hill

Federal immigration officers detained dozens of people in Danbury, Connecticut, in an operation that began Monday, despite opposition from local officials and protesters. Connecticut has state laws limiting cooperation with ICE.

Officers, some wearing masks, made arrests outside apartment buildings, at traffic stops, in parks, near an elementary school and outside a daycare center, according to the mayor and local activists. One father was detained after walking his child to a bus stop.

Clementina Lunar of Danbury Unites for Immigrants said more than 50 arrests had affected 40 families by Wednesday evening. Nearly a third of the city’s 90,000 residents are Hispanic or Latino and slightly more were born abroad.

Source: AP News

An internal Department of Homeland Security memo issued to state attorneys general in April 2025 authorized National Guard members to “perform immigration functions” outside their home state, including arresting people without authorization to be in the country.

The memo works around the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from law enforcement duties, by reasoning that Guard troops become federal employees when ordered to another state, and that the Homeland Security secretary may designate any federal employee an immigration officer.

It is unclear whether troops carried out arrests under the theory, and the department has not defended it in court. “DHS is trying to pull a fast one,” said Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center for Justice, who studies domestic uses of the military.

Source: Politico

A divided panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that ICE’s reading of the mandatory detention statutes distorts a 30-year-old law meant to cover people who had recently crossed the border, and that detainees with extensive ties to the United States have a due process right to a bond hearing.

Eight appeals courts have now rejected the agency’s position and two have accepted it. Both the Justice Department and the ACLU have asked the Supreme Court to take the question in the term beginning in October.

Under the policy, people who have lived in the country for years can be treated as “seeking admission” and held without bond. A Politico analysis found judges have rejected the position in more than 90 percent of cases.

Source: Politico

The Department of Homeland Security sent a second deportation flight to Haiti in a week on Thursday, returning 57 people to Cap-Haïtien, including several children born in the United States and Brazil who belonged to two families aboard.

The youngest passenger was a 3-year-old born in the United States. The charter, ICE Air flight GXA6196, originated in Alexandria, Louisiana, and left Opa-locka Executive Airport at 10:04 a.m., landing shortly after 11:30 a.m.

Deported parents told the Herald they found it scandalous that U.S.-born children were being sent to Haiti, and criticized the Haitian government for accepting returnees it is not equipped to receive. Cap-Haïtien has been the main gateway for international flights since gang violence closed Port-au-Prince to U.S. carriers.

Source: Miami Herald

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Friday that federal officials have given his office no information about the July 7 fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by immigration officers, and that he will present the evidence gathered so far to a grand jury within a few weeks, partly to compel disclosure of more details.

Teare said his office may also sue the Department of Homeland Security to obtain information. Grand juries can subpoena federal agencies and conduct their own investigations.

His office now knows the names of the four ICE agents who pursued the van Salgado Araujo was driving but declined to release them, citing grand jury secrecy. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which is running a parallel investigation, has received some material from DHS and is sharing it.

Source: The Texas Tribune

A Department of Homeland Security procurement notice shows ICE plans to spend up to $2 million on Boston Dynamics Spot robots and accessories. According to the planning document, officers would use them to inspect potentially dangerous locations remotely before entering, not to apprehend people.

The notice, filed in the department’s Acquisition Planning Forecast System, says the robots would provide inspection, situational awareness and hazard assessment in confined, unstable or otherwise difficult areas.

The purchase follows the agency’s move to buy electric shock gloves for officers, which drew objections from civil rights organizations and Democratic lawmakers. Both acquisitions are funded by the enforcement money Congress appropriated last year.

Source: USA Today

California lawmakers voted Monday to bar federal immigration agents and contractors from future employment by the state, cities, counties, school districts and other public entities, and to outlaw electric shock gloves of the kind ICE plans to buy for its officers.

The employment bill, authored by Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez of Los Angeles and named the Get the Feds Out Act, allows an exception for officers accepted into a police agency who complete the state’s basic training course, with suitability assessed case by case.

Both measures were part of a package aimed at ICE tactics, including arrests of people appearing at courthouses for scheduled immigration hearings. The bills now go to the governor.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Pierre Damas Bel, a 20-year-old Haitian student at Wright State University, stepped into traffic on Interstate 70 near Springfield, Ohio, and died of his injuries, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. His family said he had been humiliated by the ankle monitor immigration officials required him to wear since July and had been bullied at school.

“Around 11 the police showed at my door to report that my son threw himself under a truck,” his father said in a statement. A local pastor, Carl Ruby, said the family wanted the death understood as a suicide connected to immigration policy.

ICE said Bel entered the country in 2024 through the CBP One app and was released. He settled in Springfield with his parents and two brothers, made the honor roll at Springfield High School and was recruited to play soccer at Wittenberg University.

Source: NBC News

ICE arrested roughly 50,000 people in August, according to internal agency data, keeping pace with July’s record. Monthly arrests fell sharply in February and March, began rising in May, and set records in June and July.

The current surge is less visible than the city-by-city operations earlier in the year that culminated in the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis.

The roughly $70 billion package the House passed in June to fund ICE and the Border Patrol through the end of the term made the agency the best-funded law enforcement body in U.S. history. The money has paid for turnkey detention facilities and for planned purchases of equipment including electric shock gloves.

Source: NBC News

An analysis of USCIS data by the National Foundation for American Policy finds the employment-based immigration backlog now exceeds 1.2 million people, a rise of more than 20 percent since 2020.

The backlog reflects an annual cap of 140,000 employment-based green cards set decades ago and a per-country limit that produces far longer waits for applicants from India, China and the Philippines. India alone accounts for nearly one million people in the queue.

Without action by Congress, the analysis projects the backlog will pass 2 million within 15 years. An earlier effort to exempt highly skilled professionals from the per-country limits was blocked in Congress. Applicants wait years in temporary status, tied to sponsoring employers.

Source: Forbes