Week of October 7–13, 2026

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear argument on Nov. 30 in Wassily v. Blanche, a case about whether a person who was once granted asylum must still hold that status to adjust to lawful permanent residence. Federal law lets the attorney general grant a green card to "any alien granted asylum" who has been present for at least a year, has not resettled elsewhere, and continues to have a well-founded fear of persecution.

The Justice Department reads that past-tense wording to require continuing asylum status. Tamer Wassily and Byron Velasquez Arreaga, both of whom had asylum terminated after convictions that immigration judges called particularly serious crimes, argue it does not. One was adjusted to permanent residence anyway; the other was found ineligible.

The outcome matters most for asylees convicted of offenses on a broad list that ranges from violent crimes to tax fraud.

Source: SCOTUSblog

Detained immigrants at the Folkston D Ray James ICE processing center in southeast Georgia launched a mass hunger strike this week to protest prolonged detention and conditions inside, according to advocates and family members. Advocates estimated at least 73 people were taking part. The facility is run by the GEO Group under contract with ICE.

Two Russian asylum seekers held there circulated a written document alleging substandard medical care, threats by guards, moldy food and a lack of due process. Advocates said participants include a Yemeni asylum seeker with lung cancer who has a US citizen child.

The protest follows a hunger strike earlier this year at Delaney Hall in New Jersey, also run by GEO Group. The Guardian has previously reported that ICE has sought court orders for involuntary medical procedures, including force feeding, on 19 hunger strikers since January 2025.

Source: The Guardian

Labor unions, university faculty groups and immigrant advocates filed suit on Oct. 5 in federal court in Massachusetts over two USCIS policies that they say make it harder for immigrants already in the United States to obtain green cards without leaving the country.

A May 21 policy describes adjustment of status as an extraordinary form of discretionary relief and tells officers to weigh an applicant's choice to apply from inside the country rather than through a consulate abroad. An August policy lets officers deny some applications without first issuing a request for evidence or a notice of intent to deny, and applies to cases that were already pending.

Plaintiffs include the American Association of University Professors, SEIU affiliates, Americans for Immigrant Justice and six individual applicants. USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler called the suit "frivolous" and said the agency applies long-standing law.

Source: Newsweek

The Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule creating new fees for Optional Practical Training, the program that lets F-1 students work in their field of study after or during their course. The rule would charge $70,000 for each student's initial OPT and $30,000 for any subsequent OPT, including the STEM extension, for students at Student and Exchange Visitor Program certified schools. DHS says the fees would combat fraud and protect US workers.

Forbes reported that the fees would fall on universities recommending students for OPT, and that the money would go to the Treasury as a miscellaneous receipt rather than to any anti-fraud program. DHS argues the cost would push schools to recommend only the most promising students.

The comment period closes Nov. 9, 2026. Immigration lawyers expect litigation over whether the executive branch may set fees at that level.

Source: Federal Register

Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership told agents nationwide on Tuesday to increase immigration arrests by 1,000 a day, returning to an earlier goal of 3,000 daily arrests, according to two sources who described the verbal directive to CNN. Agents were also told to aim for 19,000 arrests a week. ICE had recently been averaging about 2,000 arrests a day.

A Homeland Security spokesperson said there are "NO quotas on arrests" and that ICE uses every lawful tool to find and deport people in the country illegally. Secretary Markwayne Mullin has previously denied that the White House sets quotas.

Arrests were already climbing: ICE took about 51,000 people into custody in August, a monthly record for the administration, after more than 46,000 in July. The agency has also sought contractors to build temporary holding, processing and virtual hearing facilities.

Source: CNN

NPR reported that ICE has quietly used a warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, as a detention site through the summer, according to neighbors and others familiar with the operation. The agency has pursued a broader plan to convert warehouses into holding space in places where it lacks jail partnerships, including sites in Hagerstown, Maryland, and Surprise, Arizona.

State attorneys general in Maryland, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado and New Jersey sued to stop the conversions, largely on environmental grounds. In Maryland, Arizona and New Jersey, DHS has either agreed or been ordered by a judge to halt work pending environmental reviews.

A watchdog founder who tracks ICE expansion told NPR the warehouse program became a "boondoggle," and a former DHS official said administration figures wanted images of large holding sites for public messaging. DHS continues to hold on to several of the properties.

Source: NPR

Vice President JD Vance announced that the administration is suspending Microsoft from the PERM labor certification process, the Labor Department step employers use to sponsor workers, including H-1B holders, for employment-based green cards. Vance accused the company of fraud, saying it laid off 6,000 American workers last year while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards.

Microsoft said about 80 percent of the roughly 6,000 H-1B petitions it filed in the last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of existing employees, that remaining filings were for people already legally in the country, and that it pays H-1B employees the same as comparable staff.

Doug Rand, a former USCIS adviser, called the move incoherent, noting that a green card frees a worker from depending on one employer. Several other technology firms were included in the suspension.

Source: AP News

The administration opened fraud investigations into nine universities over their use of the J-1 exchange visitor program, which brings in students, researchers, lecturers and medical trainees. Vice President JD Vance named Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California, Davis, the California Institute of Technology, Arizona State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Officials said subpoenas have been issued and that investigators are examining whether foreign influence, improper financial relationships or visa abuse affect federally funded research. Vance said the nine schools staff federally funded research projects with J-1 holders at about 61 percent, against a national average of 38 percent, and accused them of undercutting the wages of American graduate students and researchers.

Stanford said it abides by applicable visa laws and will cooperate. Yale said it will review the documents once received.

Source: Politico

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and senior ICE official Marcos Charles defended agents who shot and wounded Oscar Belgal, a Dominican man, during an arrest attempt on Thursday in the Marble Hill section of upper Manhattan. Officials said Belgal refused to get out of his car, struck two ICE vehicles and appeared to drive toward officers, and that agents did not know his 5-year-old son was in the back seat. Belgal suffered a superficial neck wound and is held in a detention facility outside New York.

The New York Police Department released body camera footage of the aftermath. Reuters noted that ICE accounts of violent incidents have repeatedly been contradicted by video and court evidence.

Federal immigration officers had shot at least 21 people, killing seven, since January 2025. Mayor Zohran Mamdani called ICE "rotten to the core"; Mullin attacked the city's sanctuary policies.

Source: Reuters

Baltimore, Columbus and New Haven, together with the legal aid group Centro Legal de la Raza, asked the Supreme Court to stay a consent judgment that wiped out a Biden-era regulation on administrative closure, the tool immigration judges use to pause removal cases while a person pursues relief such as a U visa with USCIS.

Texas sued over the rule in June. The Justice Department conceded the same day that it was unlawful, and a judge in the Northern District of Texas entered judgment eliminating the regulation nationwide. The cities tried to intervene to defend it, but the lower courts refused.

Represented by Democracy Forward, they accuse Texas and the administration of "egregious collusion" and argue the case lacked the adversity federal courts require. Justice Samuel Alito handles emergency applications from that circuit and may refer the matter to the full court.

Source: The Hill

The administration said in court filings on Friday that it has begun facilitating the return of Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian man deported to Equatorial Guinea, a country where he has no ties. It is a rare reversal of a third-country removal.

A federal judge in Arizona ordered the Department of Homeland Security earlier in the week to bring Soliman back and to explain how it would do so. US Attorney Timothy Courchaine wrote that the government is working collaboratively with Soliman's lawyers to locate and contact him and is starting the process of facilitating his return.

Soliman, who is gay, had obtained an immigration judge's order barring his removal to Egypt, where he said he could be persecuted because of his sexuality. The case is one of a growing number of disputes over deportations to countries with which immigrants have no connection.

Source: NPR

US Customs and Border Protection published a proposed rule that would require rail carriers to send CBP advance electronic information about every crew member and passenger on a train arriving in or departing from the United States. Carriers would also have to transmit an advance notice of the train's arrival or departure.

CBP says the requirement would strengthen security screening while keeping international rail travel moving. Similar advance passenger information systems already apply to commercial air and sea carriers, so the change would close a gap for travelers crossing the Canadian and Mexican borders by rail.

The proposal appeared in the Federal Register on Oct. 13, 2026, with public comments due by Dec. 14, 2026.

Source: Federal Register