Week of May 13–19, 2026

Federal judges have ruled against ICE detention practices in roughly 90 percent of the cases decided since the agency began requiring that most people facing deportation be held without a hearing, according to a Politico analysis of the rulings.

The administration has lost nearly 10,400 of the decided cases and won about 1,200. More than 425 different judges have reached the same conclusion, across appointments by presidents of both parties. Politico published the underlying database of rulings.

ICE adopted the policy last July. The dispute has strained relations between the Justice Department and the judiciary and is widely expected to reach the Supreme Court. Many of those detained have spouses and children who are U.S. citizens.

Source: Politico

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued an interim final rule codifying the $100 annual fee on asylum seekers and requiring payment within 30 days of notice. An applicant who does not pay will have the asylum application automatically rejected, be denied a work permit, and face a higher risk of deportation if they lack another lawful status.

The rule takes effect May 29. USCIS argued that without established consequences it would have no way to enforce the fee, leaving unpaid cases in the backlog indefinitely.

The fee was introduced almost a year ago, and its rollout confused applicants and attorneys who could not determine how to pay. Litigation over the asylum fees is continuing.

Source: Politico

David Venturella will serve as acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement when Todd Lyons steps down at the end of the month, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.

Venturella left the GEO Group in early 2023 and has since led the ICE division that oversees detention contracts. At GEO, which houses about a third of ICE detainees, he served as executive vice president for corporate development, according to a securities filing. He also oversaw ICE removal operations in 2011 and 2012.

GEO has won substantial business under the deportation campaign, including a $1 billion, 15-year contract for a detention center in Newark. The company operates 23 ICE facilities with about 26,000 beds, and its chief executive told investors that last year brought the most new business in company history.

Source: AP News

The State Department is waiving visa bonds for foreign nationals who hold tickets to the 2026 World Cup. Since the start of this year, visitors from 50 countries have been required to post a bond of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000, refunded when they leave the United States on time.

“We are waiving visa bonds for qualified fans who bought World Cup tickets,” said Mora Namdar, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs. FIFA said the announcement reflected its work with the White House task force for the tournament.

The waiver does not lift the travel bans issued last year. Citizens of Iran, Haiti, Ivory Coast and Senegal, all of which qualified for the tournament, remain at least partly barred from entering the country.

Source: USA Today

Six people died in California immigration detention centers over the past year as crowding strained medical care, according to a 175-page state investigation released by the attorney general's office.

It is the highest death toll since California began inspecting the facilities seven years ago. There were no deaths in the state's centers in 2024. The detained population in California rose by more than 150 percent during the deportation campaign. Four of the deaths occurred at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County and two at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility.

Eighteen people have died in immigration detention nationwide this year, and 48 since the start of the administration. A study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association put the current death rate at 88.9 per 100,000, nearly seven times the fiscal 2023 level.

Source: CalMatters

The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared Texas Senate Bill 4 to take effect in full, issuing an unpublished order that lifted a district court injunction granted the day before the law was due to start.

Civil rights groups sued this month to block four sections: the crime of re-entering the country without authorization even if the person has since gained legal status; magistrates' authority to order removal; the crime of failing to comply with such an order; and the requirement that magistrates continue a prosecution even when an asylum claim or other immigration case is pending.

The groups called the ruling “disappointing and out of step with the Constitution.” It is the latest reversal in a long series of rulings on the 2023 law.

Source: The Texas Tribune

The secretary of homeland security determined that it is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations and other legal requirements to allow expedited construction of barriers and roads near the international land border in Texas.

The determination relies on section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, as amended by the REAL ID Act of 2005 and the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which gives the secretary authority to set aside legal requirements that would otherwise apply to barrier construction.

The notice cites the Secure Fence Act's requirement that the department achieve operational control of the land border, and Executive Order 14165, signed in January 2025, which directs the deployment and construction of physical barriers along the southern border.

Source: Federal Register

U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled that federal agents may not make arrests without exceptional circumstances in and around the three Manhattan buildings where immigration proceedings are held.

The order ends a practice that allowed agents to detain people who appeared as required before immigration judges. Castel wrote that alongside the government's strong interest in enforcing immigration law is a serious interest in letting people attend removal proceedings and pursue asylum claims “without fear of arrest.” Agents may still arrest people elsewhere, and at the courthouses when there is a serious threat to public safety.

Government lawyers recently reversed their position, saying 2025 courthouse arrest policies did not apply to immigration courts. Castel, who declined to bar the practice last year, said that change required correcting a clear error.

Source: NBC News

The mother of a 12-year-old U.S. citizen recovering from a rare brain tumor was denied a humanitarian parole request that would have let her return to the United States so her daughter could resume specialized treatment.

The girl was 10 when both of her undocumented parents were deported to Mexico more than a year ago. She and four siblings, three of them also U.S. citizens, left with them, interrupting months of treatment that followed emergency surgery in 2024 to remove the tumor.

Her health has deteriorated. Last month she had a seizure severe enough to cause a fall, and tests at a hospital two and a half hours away returned abnormal results. Her U.S. doctors said the findings show her brain is not regenerating as expected.

Source: NBC News

President Trump signed an executive order directing bank regulators and federal departments to look for indications that people without legal status are opening accounts or obtaining loans and credit cards.

The order is narrower than banks had expected. Earlier reporting indicated the White House was drafting a measure that would make collecting customers' citizenship information mandatory. The order frames the issue as a credit risk, saying the administration will not permit risks to the financial system from extending credit to people who are inadmissible or removable.

Banks have never collected citizenship or immigration status, so no reliable figures exist. The Urban Institute estimated that 5,000 to 6,000 mortgages have been issued to borrowers using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, and found lenders reluctant to make such loans.

Source: AP News