Week of September 17–23, 2025

An Associated Press report with News21 documented noncitizen service members, veterans and their relatives caught up in the administration's removal program. Army veteran Sae Joon Park, who arrived from Seoul at age seven, enlisted at 19 and received a Purple Heart after being shot in Panama, self-deported in June rather than face detention.

Park had been ordered removed after a 2009 drug arrest but was granted deferred action because of his service, checking in with immigration officials annually for 14 years. At his June appointment he was told a removal order stood against him.

Under the Biden administration, ICE policy treated prior military service as a significant mitigating factor in enforcement decisions and extended some protection to noncitizen relatives of service members. Retired Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, a lawyer who represents veterans facing removal, said the change harms recruiting and readiness.

Source: AP News

Immigration Judge Jamee Comans, sitting in Jena, Louisiana, denied Mahmoud Khalil's request for a waiver of removal and ordered him deported to Algeria or Syria. The order, filed in court documents this week, rests on findings that Khalil omitted material information from his Form I-485 application to adjust status.

Comans wrote that his lack of candor was not an oversight but a willful misrepresentation intended to improve his chances of approval, and declined to grant a discretionary waiver. She had denied his asylum application in a written decision on June 20.

Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student detained by ICE in March and released in June, has 30 days to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals. A separate order from a federal judge in New Jersey bars his removal while his habeas case proceeds.

Source: NBC News

USCIS published a notice reinstating the 2020 naturalization civics test with one modification, calling it the 2025 test. Applicants will be asked up to 20 questions drawn from a bank of 128 and must answer 12 correctly, replacing the 2008 test of 10 questions with a passing score of six.

The single change from the 2020 version is that officers stop asking questions once an applicant has passed or failed, rather than working through all 20. The English reading, writing and speaking components are unchanged.

Anyone who filed a naturalization application before the notice, or within 30 days of publication, still takes the 2008 test. Applications filed on or after October 20, 2025 face the new test. Applicants aged 65 or older with 20 years as permanent residents keep the 10-question version.

Source: Federal Register

President Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers, a category whose filing fee had been $215. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the cost would likely push the number of visas issued well below the annual cap of 85,000 because sponsorship would no longer be economic.

"If you're going to train people, you're going to train Americans," Lutnick told reporters, adding that employers wanting a highly sophisticated engineer could pay the fee.

Lawyers and business groups expect legal challenges on the grounds that the president is setting fees Congress has not authorized. Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta did not comment; Microsoft declined. Groups that argue H-1B workers displace Americans welcomed the change.

Source: AP News

The White House rolled out the gold card, a residence route for foreign nationals who pay $1 million, or $2 million if a company sponsors an employee, plus a $15,000 vetting fee. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it will replace the EB-1 and EB-2 employment categories used by people of exceptional ability.

The administration expects to make about 80,000 gold cards available initially and may phase out other visa routes later. Lutnick said holders would pay tax on worldwide income in the same way as citizens and permanent residents, and projected $100 billion in revenue.

A separate Trump Platinum Card, priced at $5 million, would let holders spend up to 270 days a year in the United States without US tax on non-US income. A waiting list for the program opened in June.

Source: Politico

The Department of Homeland Security said almost 550 people had been arrested in Operation Midway Blitz, the Chicago-area enforcement campaign that began on September 8. The figure covers arrests by ICE and other federal agencies assisting the effort, and was released hours after a senior official told the AP the total stood above 400.

The operation follows similar campaigns in Los Angeles and Washington. Community groups report a marked increase in agents on the street, and the operation has drawn allegations of excessive force and of dragnets that have swept up US citizens.

The administration has said it will send additional immigration agents and National Guard troops to Chicago over the objections of state and city officials.

Source: AP News

The Justice Department filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to halt US District Judge Edward Chen's ruling that the administration unlawfully ended Temporary Protected Status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans. The Ninth Circuit had declined to stay the ruling while the case proceeds.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the court's unexplained May order, which reversed an earlier Chen decision affecting a separate group of about 350,000 Venezuelans, should govern this case too. He wrote that lower courts were disregarding the court's emergency docket orders.

The administration has moved to end TPS for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians granted the status under President Biden. Congress created TPS in 1990; designations run in increments of up to 18 months.

Source: Politico

A White House official said the $100,000 H-1B fee will not apply to people who already hold valid visas and are re-entering the country. The clarification followed a weekend of confusion after the proclamation, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, September 21.

As drafted, the text led some immigration lawyers to read the fee as applying to any H-1B holder outside the United States when it took effect. Several technology companies told employees on H-1B visas to return before Saturday and not to travel afterward.

For the largest sponsors, including Microsoft, Amazon and outsourcing firms such as Cognizant, the fee could add more than $1 billion a year in costs if applied broadly to new petitions.

Source: Axios

The Department of Homeland Security published a notice terminating the Temporary Protected Status designation for Syria, which had been due to expire on September 30, 2025. The Secretary concluded, after reviewing country conditions and consulting other agencies, that Syria no longer meets the statutory conditions for designation.

The termination takes effect at 11:59 p.m. local time on November 21, 2025. After that date, Syrian nationals and people without nationality who last habitually resided in Syria lose TPS, along with the work authorization and protection from removal that come with it.

Holders who have no other basis to remain in the United States will need to obtain another status or leave once the termination takes effect.

Source: Federal Register

The North Carolina legislature gave final approval to a criminal justice package named for Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death on a Charlotte light rail train on August 22. The House voted 81-31 to accept the Senate version, sending it to Governor Josh Stein.

The bill limits pretrial release, requires more defendants to undergo mental health evaluations and contains provisions that could restart executions in the state. The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., had been arrested more than a dozen times and was released this year by a magistrate on a misdemeanor charge without bond. He faces state and federal murder charges.

Stein, who has said he supports some pretrial changes, was reviewing the measure. House Democrats argued it does little to fund mental health services or additional officers.

Source: AP News

The Department of Homeland Security proposed replacing the random H-1B lottery with a weighted selection process when registrations exceed the annual cap of 85,000, which the agency says has happened every year for more than a decade.

Under the proposal, each registration would be assigned to one of four wage bands. Workers in the highest band would be entered into the pool four times and those in the lowest band once, raising the odds for higher-paid roles and reducing them for entry-level positions. DHS said the change would better serve the program's original intent.

The proposed rule was set for publication in the Federal Register the following day, opening a public comment period. It follows the $100,000 fee on new petitions announced four days earlier.

Source: NBC News

Federal immigration agents have detained people on the grounds of California state courthouses even though state law prohibits civil arrests there. Local reporting has documented at least two dozen such detentions in Stanislaus, Glenn, Los Angeles and Fresno counties.

In one case, a Fresno man was taken by plainclothes agents minutes after a judge congratulated him on completing a court-ordered domestic violence intervention program. His sister said six people surrounded him outside the courthouse and put him in an unmarked van. He is now in Mexico.

California passed the courthouse restriction during the first Trump administration. ICE has defended the practice on the grounds that a courthouse is a safe place to apprehend someone. NPR has reported similar detentions at state courthouses elsewhere in the country.

Source: CalMatters