Week of October 28 – November 3, 2026

The number of state and local officers deputized to enforce immigration law under ICE's 287(g) program has doubled in the past eight months, according to a report from the advocacy group FWD.us covered by NPR. More than 29,000 officers were deputized between January 2025 and October 2026, far more than the 11,600 deportation officers ICE employs directly.

Agencies in Florida and Texas, where governors have required local participation, accounted for about half of the more than 47,000 immigration arrests made nationally through 287(g) between January 2025 and August 2026. Deputized officers also drive enforcement in smaller states: they made 77 percent of Wyoming's immigration arrests in April 2026, 60 percent of New Hampshire's in June, and close to half of Oklahoma's that month after the state Highway Patrol enrolled all of its troopers.

Under the task force model, local police can make immigration arrests and receive federal funds for equipment. DHS calls the program a critical tool against crime and illegal immigration.

Source: NPR

The Supreme Court declined to restore a Biden-era regulation that let immigration judges suspend some deportation proceedings, turning down an emergency request from the cities of Baltimore, New Haven and Columbus and the legal services group Centro Legal de la Raza. The brief order, issued Tuesday with no noted dissents, leaves intact a consent judgment between Texas and the Justice Department that threw out the rule.

The 2024 rule, known as administrative closure, allowed judges to pause cases so that people such as crime victims and witnesses could pursue relief with US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Texas sued in June in Wichita Falls, and Chief Judge Reed O'Connor granted the state and the DOJ a final judgment the same day the case was filed.

The challengers called the agreement the product of "egregious collusion." O'Connor and the 5th Circuit found they lacked standing to intervene and defend the rule on appeal.

Source: SCOTUSblog

Three immigrants detained at the Miami Detention Center in Bunker Hill, Indiana, sued in federal court in the Northern District of Indiana, alleging that conditions there are inhumane and that official neglect has created a "dangerous medical crisis." The lawsuit, filed Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union, describes punishment that attorneys called excessive force "bordering on torture."

The complaint says one plaintiff, a Guatemalan woman with epilepsy, suffered repeated seizures after staff switched her medication and often failed to provide it, and that her report of a sexual assault went days without action. A Ukrainian-born man says he spent about nine weeks in solitary confinement, up to 24 hours a day in a cold cell. A third plaintiff says his cell flooded with sewage for three days. None of the three has been convicted of a crime in the United States.

DHS called the claims "blatantly FALSE." The former maximum security prison was converted to immigration detention last year, and two detainees have died there in 2026.

Source: WTHR

US District Judge Brendan Hurson in Greenbelt, Maryland, issued a temporary restraining order blocking US Citizenship and Immigration Services from sharply shortening the notice unaccompanied children receive before asylum interviews and from restricting their ability to reschedule.

The policies, adopted in August and September, eliminated a 21-day advance notice requirement, sometimes giving children fewer than 24 hours' warning, and allowed rescheduling only on a showing of "exceptional circumstances." Legal service providers including the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and The Door sued two weeks ago, arguing the changes were designed to speed deportations of children.

Hurson said the minimal notice was inconsistent with the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which requires the asylum process to account for the specialized needs of unaccompanied children, and that the stricter rescheduling standard violated the Administrative Procedure Act. He ordered prior policies reinstated. The order runs through November 13 while he weighs a longer-term block. The case is The Door v. Edlow.

Source: Reuters

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said President Trump agreed to grant a visa to the mother of Javits Frimpong, a 15-year-old immigrant from Ghana who was fatally shot in the Bronx, so that she can attend her son's funeral.

Frimpong was walking to school shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Thursday when he was shot in the abdomen, police said, and was pronounced dead at a hospital that day. No arrests have been made. The teenager had arrived from Ghana a year earlier to live with his father.

"I just got off the phone with President Trump and he has agreed to grant her visa immediately," Mamdani wrote on X on Saturday. The White House did not immediately confirm the decision to the Associated Press. Visitor visas for bereaved relatives are discretionary and are often refused to applicants from countries with high overstay rates.

Source: AP News

US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles issued a preliminary injunction ordering immigration agents in seven Southern California counties to stop detaining people solely because they appear Latino. She found that ICE and Border Patrol had "engaged in an unlawful, officially sanctioned practice of detaining individuals solely based upon their appearance as Latino or Latino and working class."

The ruling follows discovery in an ACLU lawsuit that produced text messages in which agents used racial slurs, depositions of agents, body camera footage and declarations from dozens of people detained, including US citizens. An earlier, temporary version of the order was set aside by the Supreme Court last year without explanation; Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately that agents may consider race as one factor among several.

The injunction gives plaintiffs' lawyers a basis to seek sanctions if profiling continues. DHS, which denies that its agents profile, has appealed.

Source: NPR

ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales turned himself in at a Houston courthouse and made a first appearance on a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. A Harris County grand jury indicted the 33-year-old on Friday over the October 10 pursuit in which his unmarked SUV struck Miguel Parra Hernandez, a 48-year-old Mexican construction worker, in a parking lot.

Judge Matthew Peneguy set bond at $30,000; prosecutors had asked for $75,000. ICE has said Parra Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle, an account prosecutors say surveillance video contradicts, showing the SUV crossing a median before hitting him as he ran away. Morales' attorney says his client did not commit a crime.

Morales had worked as an ICE deportation officer for a little over a year. He is among the few federal officers charged over conduct on the job during the administration's immigration crackdown.

Source: PBS NewsHour

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in a letter that the city will sue if ICE agents keep using municipal property to stage immigration operations. Agents have been seen parking and holding meetings in city-owned lots at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and along 111th Street at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, next to a city-run preschool.

"If your agents continue any unauthorized use of these lots, New York City will take legal action to prevent this unlawful commandeering of City property," Mamdani wrote. A DHS spokesperson said ICE's presence in public parking lots is authorized under federal law and that enforcement will not slow down.

Mamdani also issued a policy directing Parks Department staff to deny federal agents access to city parkland without a judicial arrest warrant, consistent with the city's sanctuary laws.

Source: Politico

Federal prosecutors in the Central District of California charged six more lawful permanent residents with making false statements on naturalization applications, alleging they registered to vote and cast ballots in California elections and then denied doing so under penalty of perjury. The defendants, from the Antelope and San Fernando valleys, are nationals of the Philippines, Mexico, Israel, Canada and Iran.

The complaints describe voting in elections from 2020 through June 2026 followed by naturalization forms that denied ever claiming US citizenship or registering to vote. Five of the six were arrested and scheduled for initial appearances in Los Angeles.

First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said the cases bring the total to 34 defendants in "Operation Protect the Vote" and renewed a request that California verify the citizenship of voters on lists provided by his office. Noncitizen voting is a federal crime and can also lead to removal; studies have repeatedly found it to be rare.

Source: US Department of Justice

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington temporarily barred the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from sending states lists of registered voters the administration says may not be citizens, and from asking election officials to set aside or refuse to count those ballots until citizenship is proven.

The order came a day before the midterm elections and followed federal letters to officials in California and Washington state. Voting rights and privacy groups argued the practice violated the Privacy Act of 1974. Chutkan said the administration's data may not be reliable, creating a risk that lawfully registered voters would be disenfranchised. The Justice Department said the letters were simply enforcement of the federal ban on noncitizen voting.

Separately, a 9th Circuit panel cleared the government to threaten prosecution of election officials who do not comply, and a Los Angeles judge had already refused to order California to segregate ballots from more than 20,000 voters.

Source: Reuters

The administration has drawn up plans to deport nearly 200 Afghan nationals by flying them to Pakistan, where they would be moved overland into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a US official told CBS News. The official said the plans remain in flux.

An ICE supervisory deportation officer, Sergio Aguilar, confirmed in an October 30 sworn declaration that a charter flight scheduled for November 3 would land in Pakistan with "further transport onward to Afghanistan." The declaration was filed in Sadat v. Mullin, after a federal judge ordered officials to explain the route. Sadat has since been released from custody after a judge found his detention violated due process.

Advocates warn deportees with ties to the US war effort could be persecuted. DHS said people removed to third countries receive notice and diplomatic assurances, but did not say whether Pakistan agreed to accept them. Sixty-six members of Congress have asked the administration to cancel the flights.

Source: CBS News

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit appeared unconvinced by the administration's argument that individual members of Congress cannot sue over a DHS rule requiring seven days' notice before visiting ICE detention facilities.

Thirteen Democratic lawmakers challenged the 2025 policy, which DHS issued citing "significant and sometimes violent incidents." A federal spending law from Trump's first term bars DHS from requiring prior notice of oversight visits, and US District Judge Jia Cobb blocked the policy in December 2025 and again in January.

Justice Department lawyer Steven Myers said a valid claim "is not 'you're mistreating Congress,' it's 'you're mistreating me.'" Judges Brad Garcia and Robert Wilkins suggested each member is injured when turned away, and Trump appointee Gregory Katsas questioned treating lawmakers worse than members of the public seeking records. The case is Neguse v. ICE.

Source: Reuters