Week of July 9–15, 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.
Supreme Court refuses to let Florida enforce its state illegal entry law
In a brief unsigned order, the Supreme Court declined to let Florida enforce SB 4-C, a law enacted in February that makes it a state crime for people who entered the country illegally to enter or remain in Florida. The order leaves in place a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami.
The Florida Immigrant Coalition, the Farmworker Association of Florida and two undocumented immigrants challenged the law, arguing that federal immigration law preempts it and that it violates the dormant commerce clause. The Eleventh Circuit refused to freeze Williams's order in June, finding the state law likely displaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The appeals court has fast-tracked Florida's appeal, with argument set for the week of October 6. Until then the law cannot be enforced against anyone.
Source: SCOTUSblog
Lawyers say they cannot reach clients held at Florida's Everglades detention camp
Immigration attorneys report that they have been unable to meet clients transferred to the state-run detention facility in the Florida Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz, which opened without established procedures for attorney visits or for locating detainees.
Magdalena Cuprys, a Florida attorney, said her Honduran client was taken there two weeks earlier after a highway patrol stop at a truck weigh station, and that a bond motion filed at Krome Detention Center went unprocessed because court staff had no information about detainees at the new site. An associate who spent a day at the facility was told staff had no instructions for handling attorney visits.
At Krome, lawyers can meet clients in person or by secure video for most of the day. The Miami Herald has reported detainees describing mosquito bites, days without showers and little natural light.
Source: Forbes
US citizens report being detained by immigration agents during raids
A growing number of U.S. citizens, many of them Latino, say immigration agents detained them or stopped them and demanded proof of citizenship during enforcement operations. An Axios review of news reports, videos and advocacy group accounts identified several such cases since January, including one man held in immigration detention for 10 days.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not released statistics on the detention of citizens for months. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the recent reports are false and accused the media of peddling a false narrative about ICE officers.
In one case, Leonardo Garcia Venegas, who was born in Florida, was briefly detained in May at a construction site in Foley, Alabama, after agents alleged his Real ID was fake. Raids have concentrated in Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego and agricultural areas of California.
Source: Axios
New Hampshire judge certifies class and blocks birthright citizenship order
U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante in Concord granted class-action status to a suit brought on behalf of a pregnant immigrant, immigrant parents and their infants, and issued a preliminary injunction blocking President Trump's executive order restricting birthright citizenship nationwide.
Laplante certified the class only for babies who would be affected, not for their parents, and stayed his order for seven days to allow the government to appeal. He said depriving a person of birthright citizenship was irreparable harm.
The route matters because the Supreme Court limited universal injunctions in June, leaving class actions as a principal way to obtain nationwide relief. Justice Department lawyers argued the requested relief was too broad and that the class certification request was premature. The American Civil Liberties Union brought the case.
Source: NBC News
Green card holder denied re-entry at the Maine border over old convictions
Chris Landry, a 46-year-old lawful permanent resident who has lived in New Hampshire since he was three, was refused entry to the United States at Houlton, Maine, while returning from a family trip to Canada. Officers questioned him for about three hours about past convictions in New Hampshire before turning him away.
Landry said he was told not to return or he would be detained, and that his only route back is a hearing before an immigration judge. He faced charges of marijuana possession and driving with a suspended license in 2004 and 2007 and says he has had no criminal record since.
He has a partner, five children and a manufacturing job in the state. Lawful permanent residents returning from abroad can be treated as applicants for admission if they have certain criminal convictions.
Source: NBC News
State Department consular chief denies an ideological deportation policy
John Armstrong, the State Department's top consular official, testified at a trial in a lawsuit alleging that the administration runs an unconstitutional ideological deportation program aimed at pro-Palestinian academics. He called the accusation groundless and said he would know of such a policy because he runs the Bureau of Consular Affairs and its 13,000 staff.
Armstrong said no visas were revoked over protected speech, but when asked whether visas were pulled because of students' political viewpoints he said that support for a terrorist organization is grounds for revocation. He said the practice predates Secretary of State Marco Rubio's determinations this year that certain academics' presence in the country is incompatible with U.S. foreign policy.
The case concerns foreign students and faculty whose visas were canceled after campus protests.
Source: Politico
Labor Department opens office to speed temporary worker visa approvals
The Department of Labor has created an Office of Immigration Policy intended to serve as a single point of contact for employers seeking faster approval of temporary worker visas, following pressure from farmers and hotel operators who say enforcement is draining their workforce.
Noncitizens make up as much as 40 percent of the agricultural labor market. Growers have warned that the deportation campaign threatens harvests and the food supply, while parts of the president's base object to any measure they view as amnesty for employers who hired unauthorized workers.
The program is aimed at the existing H-2A and H-2B temporary visa categories rather than at creating a new status or a path to permanent residence.
Source: Axios
State Department cuts visa validity for four African countries to three months
Most nonimmigrant, nondiplomatic visas issued to nationals of Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria will now be single entry and valid for three months, replacing multi-entry visas that ran two years or more. The State Department described the change as a global reciprocity realignment matching the terms those countries offer American travelers.
The department said the policy is under ongoing review and could change if the countries improve secure travel documents, reduce visa overstays and share law enforcement data. Nigeria is the largest African source of international students in the United States, with a 13.5 percent annual increase reported in the 2024 Open Doors survey.
Bayo Onanuga, a spokesman for Nigeria's president, disputed the reciprocity rationale. The change follows June suspensions of visas for citizens of Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan.
Source: Newsweek
Los Angeles to give cash cards to residents affected by immigration raids
Mayor Karen Bass announced that Los Angeles will distribute prepaid cash cards carrying a couple hundred dollars each to people affected by federal immigration raids, with the first cards expected within about a week. The money comes from philanthropic donors rather than city funds, and cards will be handed out by immigrant rights organizations including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
Bass said residents are avoiding work and staying home, and described a family at risk of eviction after one earner was detained. She compared the program to the Angeleno Cards issued during the pandemic.
She also signed an executive order directing city departments to strengthen protocols and training on the city's sanctuary policy, which bars use of city staff or property for immigration enforcement except in serious criminal cases. Departments have two weeks to submit plans.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Most people in ICE detention have no criminal convictions, agency data show
ICE statistics show that of the 57,861 people in the agency's detention as of June 29, some 41,495, or 71.7 percent, had no criminal convictions. That group included 14,318 people with pending charges and 27,177 with no known convictions or pending charges.
ICE assigns detainees a threat level from 1 to 3, with those lacking a criminal record classified as having no threat level. As of June 23, 84 percent of people held at 201 facilities had no assigned threat level, 7 percent were rated level 1, 4 percent level 2 and 5 percent level 3.
The figures sit against the administration's stated aim of deporting what the president calls the worst of the worst. Researchers at UCLA and the Brennan Center said the enforcement data does not match that description.
Source: AP News
Detainees in at least seven states report hunger and spoiled food in ICE custody
People held in ICE detention centers in at least seven states describe food shortages, spoiled meals and weight loss, according to detainees and immigration advocates. At one facility an incident among detainees was reported to have started in part over food.
The complaints come as the detention system runs beyond its funded capacity. As of mid-June ICE was holding nearly 60,000 people, about 45 percent above the level Congress provided for. A former ICE official said facilities struggle to stock food when they receive unexpected surges of new arrivals.
Advocates say there are fewer channels for detainees to raise concerns after job cuts at an independent watchdog office within the Department of Homeland Security. Lawyers report the problems across facilities regardless of which private contractor runs them.
Source: NBC News
ICE memo makes people who entered illegally ineligible for bond hearings
Todd Lyons, ICE's acting director, told staff in a July 8 memo that the agency was reinterpreting its detention authority and that, effective immediately, people who entered the country illegally are ineligible for a bond hearing before an immigration judge. They can be released only if the Department of Homeland Security grants an exception.
The directive relies on a 1996 provision and applies to people who had previously been allowed to remain free while their immigration cases proceeded. Lawyers told the American Immigration Lawyers Association that clients were being taken into custody at immigration court under the policy, including one man who had lived in the United States for 25 years.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the agency is enforcing the law as written. The new spending law provides ICE with $45 billion for detention.
Source: AP News