Week of February 11–17, 2026

An Associated Press review found at least two dozen Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and contractors have been criminally charged since 2020, in cases involving physical and sexual abuse, corruption and other abuses of authority.

Most of the conduct predates the funding increase Congress approved last year, which gave ICE $75 billion to hire officers and expand detention. The agency said last month it had doubled in size in under a year, to 22,000 employees. Experts told the AP that misconduct tends to rise after rapid hiring, citing the Border Patrol's experience after it doubled in size by 2011.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said wrongdoing is not widespread, that most new hires came from other law enforcement agencies and were thoroughly vetted, and that ICE takes misconduct allegations seriously.

Source: AP News

Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed an executive order barring federal immigration agents from using New Jersey state property as a staging area, processing location or operations base. Agents may still enter public areas, but need a judicial warrant for non-public parts of state facilities.

The order applies only to executive branch departments and agencies, not to local governments. Sherrill said the state had heard reports of federal activity on state land and that the order would help track where agents are operating.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called the order legally illiterate and said it would not improve public safety. Several other Democratic governors have issued comparable directives in recent weeks.

Source: Politico

An NBC News Decision Desk poll conducted with SurveyMonkey found 49 percent of adults strongly disapprove of the administration's handling of border security and immigration, up from 38 percent last summer and 34 percent in April.

Sixty percent of those surveyed in the week after the killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota disapproved somewhat or strongly, while 40 percent approved, including 27 percent who strongly approved.

Independents drove most of the change, with strong disapproval in that group rising 15 points since August. Immigration had been the president's strongest issue in polling through 2024 and 2025; his rating on it has now fallen to the level of his overall job approval.

Source: NBC News

White House border czar Tom Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge, the enforcement campaign across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that the Department of Homeland Security had called its largest immigration enforcement operation ever.

Federal authorities said the sweeps produced more than 4,000 arrests. Thousands of officers were deployed, and the operation drew sustained street protests after federal officers fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Gov. Tim Walz urged residents to stay vigilant while officers withdraw, calling the operation an unnecessary, unwarranted and in many cases unconstitutional assault on the state. The announcement came as new polling showed majority disapproval of the administration's immigration enforcement.

Source: AP News

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has been reassigning staff and sending specialists to field offices to review whether naturalized citizens could be denaturalized, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The stated goal is to refer 100 to 200 possible cases a month to the Justice Department's Office of Immigration Litigation. Denaturalization cases have historically been rare and limited to people who concealed criminal histories or human rights violations during their applications. The Justice Department filed 102 such cases in total across the president's entire first term.

The effort sits alongside other measures aimed at legal immigrants, including thousands of visa revocations and the purchase of large warehouses for detention.

Source: NBC News

U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ruled that ICE violated the rights of people it detained in Minnesota by holding them in an overcrowded, ill-equipped facility without access to lawyers.

Brasel, an appointee of President Trump, wrote that the government surged officers into the Twin Cities without accounting for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees, and that the Constitution does not permit arresting thousands of people and then disregarding their rights because honoring them would be difficult.

She ordered the administration to overhaul conditions at the Bishop Henry Whipple federal building at Fort Snelling and to provide routine, unmonitored phone access, including a chance to notify attorneys and family at least an hour before any transfer out of state. In-person attorney visits had been discontinued when the operation began.

Source: Politico

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes denied the government's motion to stay her February 2 order, which blocked the Department of Homeland Security from ending temporary protected status for more than 300,000 Haitians.

The government had taken the unusual step of appealing to the appeals court and simultaneously asking Reyes to reverse herself. She said she would issue a written order in time for the appellate court to consider the appeal. DHS lawyers have until February 19 to file briefs, and a ruling could follow at any time after that. The department could also seek emergency relief at the Supreme Court.

Reyes also addressed threats she said she received after the February 2 ruling. Protections and work authorization remain in place for TPS holders in the meantime.

Source: Miami Herald

A bipartisan group of 100 members of Congress wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asking her to exempt the health care sector from the administration's $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions.

The letter was led by Reps. Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat, and Michael Lawler, a New York Republican. It says providers depend on international workers for physicians, clinical laboratory staff and other specialist roles, and that the fee will worsen existing staffing shortages and could push chronically underfunded hospitals to their financial limit.

The fee, introduced last year, applies to certain new H-1B petitions. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

Source: Newsweek

A document posted online by New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend $38.3 billion to raise detention capacity to 92,600 beds.

The plan calls for 16 regional processing centers holding 1,000 to 1,500 people for average stays of three to seven days, eight large detention centers holding 7,000 to 10,000 people for average stays under 60 days, and the acquisition of 10 existing facilities. All are meant to be operating by November, financed through last year's tax law.

ICE held more than 75,000 people in mid-January, up from 40,000 a year earlier. The agency has quietly bought at least seven warehouses in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas, some larger than a million square feet.

Source: AP News

ICE Director Todd Lyons said his agency and the Justice Department opened a joint criminal investigation into whether two immigration officers gave untruthful sworn testimony about the shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis in January.

Video evidence contradicted the officers' claim that they were attacked with a snow shovel and a broom. Prosecutors dropped all felony charges against the two Venezuelan men who had been accused of assaulting an officer.

The officers, who were not named, were placed on administrative leave. Lyons said they could face dismissal and criminal prosecution. Defense attorneys said the false testimony had serious consequences for the two men and their families.

Source: Los Angeles Times

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General said the partial government shutdown forced it to suspend roughly 85 percent of its audits, evaluations and inspections.

The office has eight active reviews of the administration's immigration crackdown, including examinations of facial recognition use and allegations that ICE agents used excessive force. Those reviews are among the work now on hold.

Congressional Democrats are withholding votes to fund the department until it agrees to changes at ICE and Customs and Border Protection, including requiring agents to wear body cameras and display identification numbers and last names. With Senate Republicans and the White House refusing a proposed ban on agents wearing masks, the department is expected to stay unfunded for at least ten days.

Source: Politico

Agreements that let local police officers make federal immigration arrests grew by 950 percent during the administration's first year, according to an analysis of ICE data by the policy group FWD.us.

As of January 26, officers at 1,168 agencies had been trained to assist ICE under section 287(g), up from 135 agencies during the Biden administration and 150 at the end of the president's first term. The growth is driven largely by a revived task force model that deputizes local officers to stop and arrest people on suspicion of being in the country unlawfully.

Not every department has signed on. Dallas police rejected a proposal to join, citing the pull on officers' regular duties, and police chiefs in Montgomery County, Maryland, said none of their departments had entered an agreement.

Source: NBC News