Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The Supreme Court declined to let the GEO Group take an immediate appeal in a 2014 lawsuit alleging that detainees at its Aurora, Colorado, facility were made to perform janitorial and other work for little or no pay to supplement inadequate meals.

GEO argued it should be immune from suit as a government contractor. A lower court disagreed, and the company asked the justices to allow an early appeal. Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said GEO may appeal if it is eventually found liable, but must wait until then. All nine justices agreed on the outcome; Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito differed on the reasoning.

GEO is among the largest private detention providers, managing or owning about 77,000 beds at 98 facilities. A similar suit in Washington state produced an order for the company to pay more than $23 million.

Source: AP News

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts ruled that the practice of quickly deporting people to countries with which they have no connection is illegal, and that they must receive meaningful notice and a chance to challenge the removal.

Murphy wrote that the case concerns whether the government may, without notice, deport someone to the wrong country or to a country where he is likely to be persecuted or tortured, denying him protections he would otherwise be entitled to seek.

He held that the government must first attempt removal to the country listed on a person's final order of removal. The case began after eight people slated for removal to South Sudan were instead flown to Djibouti, neither of which appeared on their paperwork.

Source: NBC News

Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security's deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, told a group of secretaries of state that immigration agents will not be stationed at polling places during the November midterms.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Honey told the group that any suggestion ICE will be present at a polling location is not true. A spokeswoman for Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read confirmed the pledge, and Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, said the same on social media. DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

The call also included the FBI, the Election Assistance Commission and the Postal Service. Democratic secretaries of state have raised concerns about Justice Department requests for detailed voter data.

Source: AP News

The administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to terminate temporary protected status for more than 6,000 Syrians, the third time it has asked the justices to intervene against lower court rulings blocking TPS terminations.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the Second Circuit's ruling is indefensible and flouts the court's two prior stays in materially similar cases. He asked the justices not only for immediate relief but to take the case on the merits docket and settle the underlying legal questions so the cycle does not repeat.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has moved to end or curtail TPS for numerous countries since taking office, prompting lawsuits over designations including Afghanistan, Cameroon and Ethiopia.

Source: The Hill

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston signed an executive order directing city police to assist peaceful protesters at immigration enforcement scenes and authorizing officers to detain federal agents who use deadly force.

Johnston said that if an ICE officer uses excessive force against a Denver resident, city police will step in, detain that officer and remove them from the situation, holding federal agents to the same standard as local ones. Police Chief Ron Thomas said officers would not interfere with lawful immigration enforcement, but that all officers have a statutory duty to intervene when they witness excessive force.

The order follows the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents in Minneapolis, and comes days after the president called on Congress to force cities to end sanctuary policies.

Source: Politico

Haitians with temporary protected status filled a Broward County library parking lot to renew expired driver licenses at a mobile state motor vehicles office, one of two events organized by local officials in Pembroke Pines and West Park.

The renewals follow a federal judge's order blocking the termination of Haiti's TPS designation and directing that holders remain eligible to drive. That window closes on March 15, or earlier if an appeals court rules in the government's pending appeal.

Thirty-six people signed up within the first half hour of the Wednesday event. Organizers said a valid license is a practical necessity in South Florida, where public transportation is limited and many residents commute long distances for work.

Source: Miami Herald

Surveillance video obtained by the Investigative Post shows Border Patrol agents dropping Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56-year-old refugee from Myanmar who was nearly blind, at a closed Tim Hortons in Buffalo on the night of February 19, the day he was released from a county jail where he had been held for a year.

The footage shows him stepping through the empty parking lot in jail-issued booties, walking past the locked door and pacing off into the cold. He was found dead in the street five nights later, outside the arena where the Buffalo Sabres play, after a passerby called 911.

Agents released him miles from his home without notifying his family or his lawyer. Customs and Border Protection said agents chose a warm, safe location for the drop-off.

Source: AP News

Emergency crews have been dispatched at least 11 times since mid-September to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas to treat children in medical distress, according to EMS logs and 911 audio obtained by NBC News.

On the recordings, medical staff inside the facility request ambulances for children struggling to breathe, running high fevers or appearing lethargic, reciting symptoms, vital signs and ages. Most children were taken to a nearby community hospital. In at least three cases they were transferred more than an hour away to a specialized pediatric hospital in San Antonio.

Dilley is the only ICE facility holding children with their parents. Lawyers, advocates and pediatricians have said it is not suitable for children.

Source: NBC News

Four federal district judges in West Virginia have used rulings arising from Operation Country Roads to describe what they call lawlessness by masked ICE agents, defiance of court orders and the deliberate infliction of fear.

The operation, run with local law enforcement, produced an estimated 650 arrests in January, largely of people stopped while driving. It has generated a flood of petitions from detainees, most without criminal records and with long-standing ties to the United States.

Judge Joseph Goodwin wrote on February 19 that antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening, describing masked, anonymous, armed agents in unmarked vehicles seizing people for civil immigration purposes without warrants. Another judge wrote that if the government may seize someone without due process, there is no check on its ability to seize anyone.

Source: Politico

Fewer than 3 percent of asylum cases decided in January were approved, a record low, according to Mobile Pathways, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes federal immigration data. The rate was 18 percent in January 2025.

Twenty percent of asylum seekers nationwide missed their hearings in January, double the share a year earlier. The trend is sharper in Los Angeles County, home to some of the country's largest immigration courts.

Asylum applicants with pending cases are lawfully present, but failing to appear at a hearing can result in a deportation order. Attorneys attribute the rise in no-shows to fear of arrest at courthouses, where immigration officers have detained people leaving hearings.

Source: Los Angeles Times

At least 14 active measles cases have been reported at Camp East Montana, the El Paso tent facility holding more than 3,000 detainees, Rep. Veronica Escobar said. Another 112 people at the facility are in isolation, and detainees with measles have been quarantined at local hospitals.

The city public health department had confirmed 13 cases at the facility and four in the surrounding community the previous week, and said the two sets of cases are unrelated. State health officials referred questions about the facility to the Department of Homeland Security, which has not answered questions about contact tracing.

Escobar and more than two dozen Democrats wrote to DHS asking it to close the camp, currently the largest ICE facility in the country. It was built in two months under a $1.2 billion contract.

Source: The Texas Tribune

The Department of Homeland Security published a notice terminating the designation of Yemen for temporary protected status. The designation had been set to expire on March 3, 2026.

The notice says the secretary reviewed country conditions and consulted other agencies before determining that Yemen no longer meets the statutory conditions for designation, and that termination is required by statute once that determination is made.

The termination takes effect at 11:59 p.m. local time on May 4, 2026. After that date, Yemeni nationals and people without nationality who last habitually resided in Yemen will no longer hold TPS under the designation, and the work authorization tied to it will end.

Source: Federal Register