Week of July 16–22, 2025

Immigrants and legal advocacy groups filed a class action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting people who appear at immigration court for scheduled hearings and placing them in expedited removal.

The suit, against the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and ICE, argues that the arrests of thousands of people at court strip them of rights under the immigration statute and the Fifth Amendment. The pattern began in May: a judge grants a government lawyer's request to dismiss removal proceedings while officers wait in the hallway to take the person into custody, which opens the way to fast-track deportation.

Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, one of the groups behind the filing, said the practice discourages people from attending their own hearings.

Source: AP News

The administration deported five men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen to Eswatini in southern Africa, continuing removals to countries other than a person's own. The Supreme Court cleared the way for the practice in June by lifting a Boston judge's order requiring advance notice before such removals.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on social media that the flight carried individuals whose home countries refused to take them back. Border czar Tom Homan has said the government looks for another country willing to accept people whose nationals their own governments will not receive.

The scope of any agreement with Eswatini was not disclosed. The administration has sought similar arrangements with several countries as part of its removal strategy.

Source: Politico

A federal grand jury in Shreveport returned a 62-count indictment against three current and former Louisiana police chiefs, a marshal and an Oakdale businessman over an alleged visa fraud scheme, prosecutors announced. The charges were unsealed by Acting U.S. Attorney Alexander Van Hook for the Western District of Louisiana.

Prosecutors allege the officials accepted bribes to file false police reports naming noncitizens as victims of crime, which allowed them to apply for U visas. The U visa is available to certain crime victims who assist law enforcement.

The defendants are Oakdale police chief Chad Doyle, Ward 5 marshal Michael Slaney, Forest Hill police chief Glynn Dixon, former Glenmora police chief Tebo Onishea and businessman Chandrakant Patel. Patel faces additional bribery, mail fraud and money laundering counts. The conduct is alleged to have run from December 2015 to this month.

Source: NBC News

At least two men were charged under Florida's SB 4-C after a federal judge had already halted its enforcement, according to a report Attorney General James Uthmeier is required to file. St. Johns County deputies arrested both men in late May, more than a month after U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams froze the statute, which makes it a misdemeanor for people without legal status to enter Florida while eluding immigration officials.

Uthmeier said he learned of the cases at the end of June after requesting information from state and local law enforcement. Williams found him in contempt for defying her order and now requires bimonthly reports on any arrests or detentions under the law.

State prosecutors dismissed one charge and moved to vacate the other. Governor Ron DeSantis signed the law in February.

Source: NBC News

Researchers at UC Merced analyzing Census Bureau data found that private-sector employment in California dropped 3.1 percent in the week immediately after federal agents escalated immigration raids in the state. They said the decline was second only to the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and steeper than the immediate drop during the 2007-08 recession.

The analysis compares Current Population Survey responses from the week of May 11 with the week of June 8, following a raid at a downtown Los Angeles garment factory. More citizens than noncitizens reported not working in the later week.

The percentages equate to about 271,541 jobs lost among citizens and 193,428 among noncitizens. The survey asks respondents each month whether they worked the previous week.

Source: CalMatters

An agreement signed between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security gives ICE access to the personal data of the nation's 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicity. The document, obtained by the Associated Press, says the information will allow officials to find the location of noncitizens across the country.

The agreement had not been announced publicly. Lawmakers and some CMS officials have questioned the legality of giving deportation officers access to state Medicaid enrollee data, which the AP first reported in June. Health and Human Services officials had said at the time that the aim was to identify people enrolled improperly.

The new agreement states what ICE intends to do with the records. The administration has set a target of 3,000 immigration arrests a day.

Source: AP News

Data obtained from ICE through the University of California, Berkeley shows that people with no criminal charges or convictions made up an average of 47 percent of daily ICE arrests in early June, up from about 21 percent in early May.

The shift followed the administration's decision to triple the agency's daily arrest target. Daily arrests of people with charges or convictions also rose over the same period, but by a smaller margin.

The figures count arrests even when they did not lead to detention, and count multiple arrests of the same person separately. The change in composition indicates that the expanded quota is being met largely through arrests of people without criminal records.

Source: Axios

More than 200 Venezuelan men whom the United States deported to El Salvador's CECOT prison in March were flown to Venezuela as part of an exchange, President Nayib Bukele announced. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said 10 Americans held in Venezuela were released, along with a number of Venezuelan political prisoners.

The men were sent to El Salvador after the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act, an eighteenth-century wartime statute, arguing that the Tren de Aragua gang amounted to an invading force. The law allowed removal with little process.

Families and lawyers for many of the men have denied gang ties. In April an ICE official stated in a sworn court declaration that many of those deported had no criminal records in the United States.

Source: ABC News

The tax and spending law signed on July 4 creates a $250 visa integrity fee that most foreign nationals applying for a U.S. visa will pay from late 2025. The charge is scheduled to take effect by October 1 and will be administered jointly by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

It applies to nearly all nonimmigrant categories, including B-1 and B-2 visitor, F and M student, H-1B and H-4 work, and J exchange visas, and is added to existing application, reciprocity and anti-fraud fees. Travelers from Visa Waiver Program countries are not affected, and most Canadians and Bermudians are exempt.

The fee works as a compliance bond, refundable if the holder departs on time or lawfully changes status, but the refund process has not been set out. The stated purpose is reducing overstays.

Source: Forbes

The Department of Homeland Security's website now shows Haiti's Temporary Protected Status running to at least February 2026, with employment authorization, after a federal judge blocked the administration's attempt to cut the designation short.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in New York ruled that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem exceeded her authority when she moved up the end date. The Biden administration had extended Haiti's designation to February 3, 2026, covering more than half a million Haitian nationals. Cogan also partly denied the government's motion to dismiss the suit, which was brought by Haitian TPS holders, a labor union and a clergy group.

Ira Kurzban, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, called the outcome a victory. It was not clear whether the administration would appeal.

Source: Miami Herald

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has ended eligibility for fee waivers on Form I-131, the Application for Travel Document, Parole Documents and Arrival/Departure Records, when filed by certain parole applicants. The change took effect on July 17.

The affected categories are initial requests for an arrival and departure record under parole in place, filed by people already in the United States, and re-parole requests from people who previously received a period of parole under that program. Applicants in those categories must now pay the filing fee in full.

The agency also stated that new fees for certain immigration benefit requests will be introduced soon, following the fee provisions in the reconciliation law enacted this month.

Source: Miami Herald

The administration is preparing a proposed rule that would end or substantially change the random selection used when H-1B registrations exceed the annual limit of 65,000 plus 20,000 for holders of U.S. advanced degrees. The Office of Management and Budget is reviewing it and could clear it for publication within weeks.

A similar rule published in January 2021 would have ranked petitions by the Occupational Employment Statistics wage level offered, selecting from level IV down. The Biden administration delayed and then declined to implement it.

Under that design, DHS calculated that nobody paid at level I would be selected and roughly half of level II registrants would be. USCIS received 343,981 eligible registrations for fiscal 2026, far more than the filings the earlier analysis assumed, which would leave level II candidates, typically recent graduates and early-career workers, largely shut out.

Source: Forbes