Week of July 8–14, 2026

Former Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was sentenced Wednesday to a $5,000 fine and no prison time for ushering a Mexican defendant out of her courtroom to avoid ICE agents waiting to arrest him. U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman said the case involved “an otherwise good person, upset by immigration policies in this country,” who “made a bad decision in the moment.”

Dugan, 67, was convicted of felony obstruction in December. Her lawyers argued at trial that the prosecution was intended to deter judges from interfering with ICE’s practice of arresting immigrants at courthouses when they appear for hearings.

She resigned in January after nine years on the bench, amid impeachment threats from Republican state legislators. The sentence closes a case that drew national attention to enforcement operations inside courthouses.

Source: NBC News

Vice President JD Vance said in Milwaukee on Wednesday that the Department of Labor has opened multiple investigations and sought dozens of subpoenas targeting fraud in the H-1B visa program. He spoke at the Wisconsin Air National Guard’s 128th Air Refueling Wing as part of an administration tour on fraud enforcement.

“American jobs ought to go to American workers and not foreign fraudsters,” Vance said, adding that companies and individuals abroad are using the program to undercut wages. He said anyone attempting to exploit the program would not be admitted to the United States.

H-1B visas are employer-sponsored nonimmigrant visas for workers in specialty occupations. Vance did not present specific evidence for the scale of fraud he described, and framed the effort as an issue for the midterm elections in the battleground state.

Source: The Hill

ICE adopted its expanded mandatory detention policy in a memo dated July 8, 2025, directing agents to hold without bond people who had lived in the United States for years and who overwhelmingly have no criminal record. In the year since, federal judges have ruled against the policy more than 15,000 times.

Politico’s analysis of the litigation found at least 464 federal judges have rejected the policy, with 54 ruling for the government, most of them Trump appointees. A majority of Trump-appointed judges who reached the question also ruled against it.

The dispute turns on a 1996 statute that every prior administration read as applying only to people apprehended soon after crossing the border. Four appeals courts have now rejected the expanded reading, and the administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

Source: Politico

President Trump said Wednesday that he will ask the Supreme Court to rehear the case in which it struck down his executive order limiting birthright citizenship. Writing on Truth Social, he called the ruling a “miscarriage of justice” and said he would seek a rehearing immediately.

The court quashed the day-one order last month, holding that denying citizenship to children born in the United States to parents present unlawfully or temporarily conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment.

Rehearings are exceptionally rare. The last time the justices agreed to rehear a case they had already decided was in 1965, and that was to resolve a technical issue rather than to reverse the outcome. The court has reversed a merits ruling on rehearing only once, in Reid v. Covert in 1956.

Source: New York Post

Representative John McGuire III, a freshman Republican from Virginia, introduced the Birthright Citizenship Clarification Act on Thursday, days after the Supreme Court held the president’s executive order on the subject unconstitutional.

The bill would amend section 301(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. It would withhold citizenship from a child whose mother is unlawfully present and whose father is not a citizen, and from a child whose mother holds only lawful temporary status and whose father is not a citizen.

The approach follows a separate opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who argued the order conflicted with the statute rather than the Constitution. Five justices held the question is constitutional, which would require an amendment rather than legislation to change.

Source: The Hill

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a request on July 9 asking the Supreme Court to throw out a 9th Circuit ruling and order that court to reconsider a challenge to the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans and Haitians, in light of the justices’ June decision on TPS for Haiti and Syria.

Venezuela was designated in 2021 and redesignated in 2023 by then-Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who cited a severe humanitarian emergency, and the designation had been extended through October 2026. Haiti was designated in 2010 after the earthquake.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen set aside the terminations and the 9th Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court paused Chen’s order as to Venezuela last fall, allowing removals of Venezuelan TPS holders to proceed while the case continued.

Source: SCOTUSblog

The Department of Homeland Security has proposed raising the paper filing fee for Form N-400, the naturalization application, from $760 to $1,330, and would eliminate the reduced-fee option and fee waivers for naturalization forms while keeping exemptions required by law for service members. DHS says the change aligns fees with adjudication costs.

Naturalization filings spiked to 169,159 in October 2025 ahead of a revised civics test, then fell to 41,478 in November. Attorneys expect a similar rush-then-slowdown pattern if the fee takes effect.

The proposal lands alongside an expansion of denaturalization cases. TRAC counted at least 15 denaturalization suits filed in May 2026 and 18 in the first half of June, against a historical average of about 11 a year between 1990 and 2017.

Source: Newsweek

The three men riding with Lorenzo Salgado Araujo when an ICE agent shot him in Houston say he never tried to run anyone over, and that agents fired into the van from the side, according to attorney Hugo Balderas Ibarra, who spoke with them at a detention facility and described their accounts at a Friday news conference.

ICE had said Salgado Araujo weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an officer, who fired in self-defense. Representative Sylvia Garcia said acting ICE Director David Venturella told her the agents had no body or dashboard cameras, and that neither Salgado Araujo nor his brother was the target of the operation.

At least 10 people have been killed by immigration agents since January 2025, according to an analysis by The Guardian. The Harris County district attorney said investigators are seeking surveillance footage and interviewing witnesses.

Source: The Texas Tribune

An ICE officer shot and killed a motorist in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday, the second use of deadly force by the agency in a week and at least the ninth death since the administration’s immigration crackdown began. Immigrant rights groups identified the man as a 26-year-old Colombian national, and the Colombian Embassy said it is assisting his family.

The Department of Homeland Security said agents were watching an address for a person with a final removal order, and that when they tried to stop a vehicle leaving it, the driver attempted to flee and an officer discharged his weapon while “fearing for public safety.”

Senator Angus King said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had told him the man tried to use the vehicle as a weapon, and that the agents had no body cameras. King said the differing accounts are what the investigation must resolve.

Source: PBS NewsHour

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration issued joint guidance telling banks and credit unions that undocumented borrowers may present an elevated credit risk, and that lenders should account for the possibility that a customer loses their job or is deported.

The guidance says institutions might consider requiring evidence of continuing work authorization when assessing ability to repay, and directs them to watch for lending concentrated in geographic markets, employers or industries likely to be affected by stepped-up enforcement.

It implements a May executive order directing Treasury and financial regulators to tighten due diligence on undocumented customers. Federal law does not bar banks from serving undocumented immigrants. The banking industry has raised concerns about the compliance burden of vetting customers for immigration status.

Source: Politico

A 28-year-old Mexican man died Tuesday morning in St. Augustine, Florida, after running from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents and being hit by a tractor-trailer on State Road 16. It was the third death connected to immigration enforcement in a week.

Florida Highway Patrol Master Sergeant Dylan Bryan said an encounter with agents took place in the parking lot of a gas station shortly before 7 a.m., that four people ran, and that one was struck while crossing the highway. FHP was not part of the operation but is investigating. The truck driver stopped and tried to help.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the agency is investigating as a matter of standard practice but declined to give details. The man’s immigration status and the reason agents were present were not disclosed.

Source: Miami Herald

Construction and demolition at a planned ICE facility near Gilroy have been halted while California’s lawsuit against the project proceeds. A federal judge approved the agreement Monday night. Attorney General Rob Bonta called the pause a significant step for the surrounding communities and environment.

The state and Santa Clara County sued in June, alleging the leased land is zoned exclusively for agricultural use and that the federal government skipped required notice to state and county officials and other procedural steps before starting work.

State and local officials believe the site would hold up to 150 people in short-term detention, which ICE denies. California already has eight immigration detention centers with combined capacity of about 9,000. Both sides asked the court to move up a hearing originally set for October 7.

Source: Los Angeles Times