Week of December 17–23, 2025
Reconstructed. This week was compiled in September 2026 from the reporting published at the time, each item linked to its source. Rules and figures reflect that week; several have changed since.
Judge blocks ICE limits on congressional visits to detention centers
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing policies restricting members of Congress from visiting immigration detention facilities, finding that ICE's requirement of seven days' notice likely exceeds the Department of Homeland Security's statutory authority.
"Plaintiffs have an interest in facts about whether facilities are overcrowded or unsanitary, whether the staff is engaging in abuse, or the location of constituents or their family members," Cobb wrote.
Twelve Democratic members of Congress sued in July after being denied entry to detention facilities. They also challenged a policy treating ICE field offices as outside the category of facilities lawmakers may visit without notice, arguing the rules obstruct oversight of a rapidly expanding detention system.
Source: AP News
South Africa raids US refugee processing center in Johannesburg
South African immigration authorities raided a United States refugee processing center in Johannesburg and arrested seven Kenyans working there, issuing deportation orders, the country's Home Affairs Ministry said. The ministry said the Kenyans held tourist visas that did not permit work, and that U.S. officials' arrangements with them raised questions about intent and diplomatic protocol.
No U.S. officials were arrested, and the ministry said the site was not diplomatic premises. South Africa's Foreign Ministry opened formal engagements with Washington and Nairobi.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said "interfering in our refugee operations is unacceptable" and sought clarification. The center processes the Afrikaner refugee admissions the administration created on the claim that South Africa's white minority faces persecution, a claim widely rejected.
Source: AP News
Supreme Court declines to halt immigration judges' speech case
The Supreme Court refused the administration's emergency request to freeze a lower court ruling in the immigration judges' challenge to a policy restricting their public speeches. There were no noted dissents, though the justices said the government could return if the lower courts moved too quickly.
Immigration judges are Justice Department employees. The question is whether they may sue in federal court or must use the federal workforce complaint system instead. An appeals court had found that the removal of officials who run that complaint system raised doubts about whether it still functions as Congress intended.
The Justice Department argued those removals were within the president's power and gave the lower court no grounds for doubt.
Source: AP News
Green card lottery suspended after Brown and MIT shootings
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she had ordered USCIS to pause the diversity visa program at the president's direction, after the suspect in the shootings at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor was found to have entered through it.
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national, studied at Brown on a student visa from 2000, received a diversity immigrant visa in 2017 and became a permanent resident months later. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The lottery, created by Congress, makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year to nationals of countries with low rates of immigration to the United States, many of them in Africa. Legal challenges to the suspension are expected.
Source: AP News
Abandoned asylum cases in New York more than doubled in 2025
Asylum cases closed as "abandoned" in New York rose from 3,951 in 2024 to about 10,000 by November 2025, according to an analysis by Mobile Pathways. In these cases a judge closes the proceeding before any hearing, usually because paperwork is incomplete, a deadline is missed, a court notice never arrived or a newly imposed fee went unpaid.
Applicants whose cases are abandoned lose the chance to present evidence and are typically issued a deportation order. From January through November, more than 40% of asylum applications in New York ended this way, a 170% increase over the same period in 2024. By October, abandonments accounted for more than half of all asylum outcomes in the city.
The analysis also found a sharp rise in removal orders issued in absentia.
Source: Documented
Whistleblower says USCIS is rejecting immigrants' records requests
A whistleblower told Congress that USCIS has adopted practices causing it to reject thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests for Alien Files that the agency would previously have processed, lowering its caseload so that it appears to meet a court-ordered deadline.
A-Files hold a person's immigration history and are usually the only way to obtain it, which matters because the file is often necessary to prepare a defense in removal proceedings.
In Nightingale v. USCIS, filed in 2019, Judge William H. Orrick of the Northern District of California granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs in December 2020 and ordered the agency to substantially comply with the statutory response deadline of 20 business days and to file quarterly compliance reports.
Source: American Immigration Council
Apple and Google tell visa holders to avoid leaving the country
Internal memos reviewed by NPR show Apple and Google advising U.S.-based employees on work visas against international travel, warning they risk being stranded abroad as consular processing slows.
Consulates and embassies have reported waits of months for visa appointments since new rules required applicants to undergo screening of up to five years of social media history. The two companies employ more than 300,000 people between them and rely heavily on H-1B workers.
"We recommend avoiding international travel at this time as you risk an extended stay outside of the U.S.," wrote Berry Appleman and Leiden, an immigration law firm advising corporate clients.
Source: NPR
South Sudanese face loss of Temporary Protected Status on January 5
Temporary Protected Status for South Sudanese nationals is set to end January 5, leaving hundreds of people facing return to a country marked by famine and political instability.
Among them is Alex Lomong, a Virginia resident who fled his village for Kenya in 2003 and arrived in the United States in 2009 at age 11. He ran for Ohio State and is close to Olympic trials qualifying times in middle distance.
"You have people who have been relying on that status for at least 14 years, who have paid their taxes, worked, built lives here, and contributed to the U.S. economy," said Mariam Masumi, an immigration lawyer who works with TPS holders in Virginia. Many South Sudanese holders settled in Maine, which has spent years recruiting younger workers.
Source: NBC News
Justice Department sues to block California's ban on masked agents
California and Los Angeles County are set to bar law enforcement officers from covering their faces on duty starting in January, with limited exceptions. The law was written in response to masked immigration agents operating in Los Angeles.
The Justice Department sued in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to block it, arguing in a November 17 brief that requiring agents to show their faces would put them at risk. During ICE operations, government lawyers wrote, "individuals can be heard threatening to doxx and find out who officers and their family members are and where they live," and websites publish officers' personal information.
The state's authority to regulate federal officers is the central legal question.
Source: CalMatters
DHS replaces the H-1B lottery with a wage-weighted selection
The Department of Homeland Security finalized a rule replacing the random lottery used to allocate H-1B work visas with a system that prioritizes higher-paid, higher-skilled applicants.
"The existing random selection process of H-1B registrations was exploited and abused by U.S. employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers," said USCIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser. The agency tied the rule to the September proclamation requiring employers to pay $100,000 per new visa.
Amazon was the largest recipient this year with more than 10,000 approvals, followed by Tata Consultancy Services, Microsoft, Apple and Google. California has the highest concentration of H-1B workers.
Source: AP News
Supreme Court keeps National Guard deployment blocked in Illinois
The Supreme Court refused to let the administration deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area in support of immigration enforcement, declining an emergency request to overturn U.S. District Judge April Perry's order. An appeals court had also refused to intervene. The justices took more than two months to act.
"At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois," the majority wrote.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the outcome but would have left more room for future deployments. The order is not a final ruling, and it may affect similar suits over troop deployments in other cities.
Source: AP News