Week of September 2–8, 2026

Hundreds of people queued for several blocks outside Miami's immigration court this week as the Justice Department expanded so-called mega master calendar hearings, in which a single judge calls dozens of cases at once. Under the previous system judges handled roughly three dozen cases a day; dockets now routinely exceed 100 people.

Attorneys say the compressed schedule makes it harder for courts to mail notices on time and for immigrants to find lawyers, driving up no-shows. Orders of removal issued in absentia have climbed to record levels, with more than 54,000 nationwide in July and about 56,000 in June, according to the legal platform bklg. In Miami, in-absentia orders rose from 1,383 in May to 2,886 in July.

A Justice Department spokesperson said reducing the court backlog remains a top priority, and the Executive Office for Immigration Review said it is adding judges and adjusting scheduling.

Source: NPR

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion on September 2 concluding that states accepting federal money for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income are obligated to report people they know to be unlawfully present to the Department of Homeland Security.

The opinion goes further than earlier guidance by extending the reporting duty to the entire state government, not only the agencies that administer the two benefit programs. Every state receives funding through both, which are among the largest safety-net programs for low-income families, older residents and people with disabilities.

The office said it was reinterpreting a 1998 Clinton-era opinion that required only the agencies running TANF and SSI to share information with federal immigration authorities. States that decline could risk their funding, and Democratic-led states are expected to challenge the interpretation in court.

Source: NBC News

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in Greenbelt, Maryland, issued a preliminary injunction on September 2 barring enforcement of the executive order Trump signed on August 6 to narrow birthright citizenship. The order targeted so-called birth tourism and would also deny citizenship to children whose parent works for a foreign government in the United States, engaged in fraud or a commercial transaction to obtain citizenship, or is classified as an alien enemy.

Boardman wrote that the order is "almost certainly unconstitutional" as applied to the class of babies she certified last year, because the Supreme Court's June 30 decision in Barbara v. Trump already held that those children are citizens at birth.

Her ruling bars the State Department, DHS and the Social Security Administration from denying or failing to recognize the citizenship of class members. The Justice Department had argued the suit was premature because implementing guidance had not yet been issued.

Source: Reuters

Draft State Department guidance would require parents or legal guardians applying for a U.S. passport for a child to submit proof of their own citizenship or immigration status, as part of implementing Executive Order 14418 on birthright citizenship.

Under the proposal, applicants would have to provide a valid U.S. passport or birth certificate, or evidence of immigration status such as an I-94 record or a permanent resident card. The department would use that information to decide whether the child falls within the order. At present, parents of U.S.-born children need only establish parentage and present photo identification.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the administration will "protect the meaning and value of American citizenship" and that the passport adjudication process should reflect that standard. The guidance had not been finalized when a federal judge blocked the underlying executive order.

Source: NBC News

A federal grand jury indicted ICE officer Christian Castro on six counts of making false statements to the FBI about the January 14 shooting that wounded Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan man, in the leg during immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. Castro surrendered to federal authorities and pleaded not guilty at a hearing in McAllen, Texas.

Federal prosecutors had originally charged Sosa-Celis and another man with assaulting an immigration officer, but dropped those charges after video evidence indicated officers may have misrepresented the encounter. A separate investigation into whether Castro should face civil rights charges remains open.

Castro also faces Minnesota state charges of assault and false reporting of a crime. He was released from a Texas jail last week after Governor Greg Abbott and a judge declined to act on Minnesota's extradition warrant. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said she expects him to be extradited.

Source: NBC News

A newly released whistleblower complaint says Immigration and Customs Enforcement made final job offers to many new officers before completing preliminary vetting steps including fingerprinting, identity verification and credit checks. The complainant was a unit chief in ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility, where background investigations had backlogged during the agency's hiring surge.

"This unprecedented lowering of standards sacrifices proper risk mitigation for expediency, placing DHS at risk of infiltration and insider compromise," the official wrote in an August 2025 memo to the DHS inspector general. The complaint asked the watchdog to investigate, suspend the practices and review recent hires for insider threats.

ICE announced in January that it had hired 12,000 officers in under a year, funded by a $75 billion congressional infusion. The agency said its professional responsibility office applies proper vetting rules and that the whistleblower no longer works there.

Source: AP News

Acting ICE director David Venturella told Representatives Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig that agents arrested 131 U.S. citizens in Minnesota for allegedly assaulting or impeding federal officers during Operation Metro Surge. The disclosure came in an August 18 letter shared with Axios.

Between January 8 and May 20, only 44 of those cases were accepted for prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and just 14 remained active as of May 20. The rest were dismissed, declined or resolved through pretrial diversion. The count is higher than tallies compiled by watchdog groups and journalists.

The letter also reported 4,674 noncitizens arrested during the operation, of whom 1,864 had criminal histories. Detainees spent an average of 39.9 days in ICE custody, and about half had been deported by June 17. A DHS spokesperson said officers face a coordinated campaign of violence.

Source: Axios

Government training materials shared with the Guardian instruct immigration judges to sharply restrict continuances, including for people who have already qualified for or been approved for a visa or green card but are waiting for it to become available under annual quotas.

The presentation, titled "Motions to Continue: Efficiently Advancing Cases to Completion," specifically addresses special immigrant juvenile classification for abused, abandoned or neglected children and U nonimmigrant status for crime victims. It warns judges that some continuances are sought "solely for the purpose of delay." Judges also appeared to be discouraged from granting more than 10 days for a person to find an attorney.

Because deportation can close off those pathways, denying continuances raises the risk that people with approved petitions are removed while waiting. A Justice Department spokesperson said reducing the immigration court backlog remains one of the administration's highest priorities.

Source: The Guardian

The Department of Homeland Security has proposed charging $103,265 for each of the 85,000 new cap-subject H-1B petitions filed each year. Combined with the $100,000 entry fee Trump imposed in September 2025, which a federal judge blocked as unlawful in June and which the Justice Department is appealing, an employer sponsoring a worker from abroad could pay $203,265.

The department says the money would fund the immigration system, projecting $8.8 billion over a decade, including $3 billion for USCIS and $3 billion for the immigration courts. Public comment runs through September 24, and the proposal drew more than 5,000 comments in its first week.

USCIS data show applications from abroad fell 87 percent after the first fee took effect. Universities, hospitals and tech firms say the charge would push skilled workers elsewhere; some nonprofit and university-affiliated hospitals are excluded.

Source: USA Today

Immigrants with cases at the Hyattsville and Baltimore immigration courts in Maryland and the Sterling court in Virginia have been rescheduled into two buildings not set up for in-person hearings, one in Washington, D.C., and one in Falls Church, Virginia, according to five attorneys who reviewed notices or attended hearings. The D.C. site has no listed Justice Department affiliation and is occupied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Notices arrived within days of the new hearing dates, and in at least two cases identified by NPR were not sent at all. Attorneys said the notices appeared aimed at people without lawyers.

Kel White of the D.C. chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said she watched an immigrant appear in person before a judge and prosecutor who were remote only. Missing a hearing can trigger an in-absentia removal order, allowing immediate detention and deportation.

Source: NPR

The Board of Immigration Appeals reversed an asylum grant to a Venezuelan woman and instructed immigration judges to weigh the capture of Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces in January as a change in country conditions when assessing fear of future persecution.

"The removal of the head of a national government is a very significant development," the board wrote, adding that fear tied to opposing a leader must be reevaluated once executive authority transfers. Maduro's former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, now leads the country, and human rights groups say the repressive apparatus remains intact.

The ruling makes asylum harder for Venezuelans left with few other options after Temporary Protected Status was terminated for more than half a million people. TRAC counted over 132,000 pending Venezuelan cases in 2024, and the overall asylum denial rate has reached 94 percent. Attorneys advised clients to update filings with current country evidence.

Source: Miami Herald

Court records reviewed by the Guardian show that ICE obtained permission from a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas to force-feed a Cuban man on hunger strike at a detention center, including by surgically fitting a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube without his consent.

The man was arrested on July 22 and declared a hunger striker three days later. Judge Andrew Hanen approved force-feeding on August 19, and ICE asked on September 1 for the order to be extended, with the surgical option included. The Guardian reports he is likely the 19th hunger striker in ICE detention for whom the agency has won approval for involuntary medical procedures since January 2025.

Most records in such cases are sealed. The man has no legal representation, which advocates called a failure of the justice system. DHS did not say how often he had been fed by tube.

Source: The Guardian