#immigration-detention

#immigration-detention

Last month, a 20-year-old Guatemalan man who came to the United States when he was 2 years old was detained at a gas station by heavily armed men in black military-style uniforms, sent to Alligator Alcatraz, the notorious immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, and eventually ended up on a deportation flight back to Guatemala, according to a sworn declaration filed this week in San Diego federal court.

We go now from New Jersey's most famous musician to New Jersey Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver. She's facing up to 17 years in prison, stemming from an incident last May when she and two other Democratic congressmembers went to inspect Delaney Hall, the private immigration prison run by GEO Corporation under contract with ICE. The federal government claims McIver assaulted an immigration officer as federal agents were arresting Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who had accompanied the congressional delegation to Delaney Hall.

Lavandera reported tension [was] kind of escalating as whistles went off and protesters stood face-to-face with federal officers in the background; others could be seen holding signs and one protester waived the Mexican flag. The CNN broadcast picked up one protester yelling F*cking cowards! at the officers as Lavandera tried to talk about the scene. Authorities have been telling them for probably the better part of an hour to scoot back, Lavandera said.

Naked but for handcuffs, a waist restraint belt, and a towel to cover his modesty, a man waiting to be deported from the UK is carried by officers to his bed inside his new home the country's most notorious immigration detention centre. Days later, a resident with a history of mental health issues is restrained after smashing up the television in his room and boiling kettles of water in a bid to flood his sleeping area.

Last Thursday, I sat idling in my car, waiting for a photographer colleague to finish an assignment. An SUV pulled up in front of me. A middle-aged white woman, with a no-nonsense haircut, dressed in a puffy coat and big sunglasses, opened the car door. She leaned out of the driver's seat and stared at me for a while. I realized she was trying to decide if I was an ICE officer. I took the large press badge sitting on my dashboard and raised it for her to see. She waved and got back inside her car.

The CoreCivic, Inc. California City Immigration Processing Center stands in the Kern County desert awaiting reopening as a federal immigrant detention facility under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California City, California, on July 10, 2025. PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP via Getty Images All eyes are on the Trump administration's brutal "immigration enforcement" operation in Minnesota, where roving squads of federal agents in Minneapolis are demanding proof of citizenship from people of color on the street and lashing out against residents enraged by the deadly shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer last week.

Khanna's visit to the California City facility was pre-arranged. His office first reached out to ICE on Dec. 4 to set up the visit, which took place Jan. 5, a staff member said. Khanna said he and an aide spent about three hours there, and took an official tour of the facility - which is set to become ICE's largest in the state, with capacity for nearly 26,000 detainees. Khanna was reportedly told there were 1,428 detainees, including 215 women.

One of them handed Juan Giron a letter written by Kimberly, the trans woman he met when he was going to the bathroom and who called out to him, Hey, girl, pssst, hi. Now you might say that he and Kimberly are friends. He gave her a devotional scapular, and they get emotional when they see each other in the yard during the hour of sunlight they're allowed each day,

In San Diego, ICE recently arrested an undocumented immigrant at a U.S. Customs and Immigration Service interview after he applied for a green card, immigration lawyer Jan Bejar told Axios. The client married a U.S. citizen, but had overstayed a tourist visa after entering the country with his parents at the age of 12. USCIS approved the green card petition on the same day as ICE made the arrest. "This whole thing could have been avoided because as the officer said, 'Your case is perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with it,' Bejar said."

"The harm that's being committed in these buildings when people are being taken from their families and then put into concentration camps far outweighs any concerns to any harm that may come from standing here today in solidarity with people who are just simply trying to live their lives in this country in freedom and dignity," said Rabbi Cat Zavis. "Our faith traditions and our spiritual traditions call us to disrupt injustice and stand with them."

Kilmar Abrego Garcia leaves a check-in at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Baltimore Field Office the day after a federal judge ordered his release from a detention, on December 12, 2025. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images A federal judge has issued an order forbidding immigration officials from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father who was illegally deported to a super-prison in El Salvador earlier this year.

COATES: Tonight, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is out of ICE custody, and New York Attorney General Letitia James remains unindicted. Two headlines that will infuriate the president because of just how significant those losses or setbacks really are. Remember, Abrego Garcia was the Maryland migrant that was wrongfully deported to that notorious prison in El Salvador. The administration was forced to bring him back, then they detained him here in the United States. But today, a judge ordered him to be released after three months in custody because she says his detainment is illegal. The administration vows to appeal.

While appearing before a federal judge in Michigan last week, Mohan Karki saw his 5-month-old daughter in person for the first time. Karki was shackled and standing several feet away, according to his wife Tika Basnet, who was in the courtroom last Wednesday. Minutes later, his daughter began to wail and needed to exit the room, Basnet added. When Karki will reunite with his daughter remains unknown.

Officers at the large immigration detention camp located at the Fort Bliss army base in Texas are allegedly mistreating detainees, with accusations including beatings, sexual abuse and clandestine deportations of non-Mexican nationals into Mexico, according to a coalition of local and national US civil rights organizations. In a 19-page letter, addressed to senior government officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and Fort Bliss military command,

Lorena Pineda was five months pregnant when masked agents picked her up on a street corner near a San Fernando Home Depot in June. An agent grabbed her from the vending stand she ran with her sister-in-law and put her against a car. Be careful, she told him. I'm pregnant. Don't think I am going to let you go because of that, she recalled him saying.

The centre was shut in 2018 after years of problems, including riots, escapes and complaints about conditions. Protesters who gathered as the first detainees arrived described the move as a "terrible step backwards" but the government said Campsfield would "speed up enforced removals of foreign national offenders and illegal migrants". The plan has also been opposed by MPs, residents and charities, as well as Oxford City Council. The Home Office said Campsfield had undergone a 70m refurbishment and was "redeveloped to high security standards".

The federal watchdog system at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that oversees complaints about civil rights violations, including in immigration detention, has been gutted so thoroughly that it could be laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to abuse people with impunity, experts warn. Former federal oversight officials have sounded the alarm at the rapid dismantling of guardrails against human rights failures at the same time as the government pushes aggressive immigration enforcement operations.

Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy has said Majorie Taylor Greene's abrupt resignation is a sign of broader trouble for the GOP next year, given several House Republicans are leaving. She's almost like the canary in the coal mine, McCarthy told Fox News on Tuesday. And this is something inside Congress, they'd better wake up, because they are going to get a lot of people retiring, and they've got to focus.

Built in just eight days in the Everglades wetlands, the facility was intended to hold up to 5,000 federal immigration detainees. In July, around 1,800 people were confined there in groups of thirty-two inside disaster-relief tents, where conditions reportedly swung between extreme cold and heat, with sewage hauled out and drinking water brought in. Speaking to the Associated Press, migrant detainees and their lawyers described worm-infested food, swarms of mosquitoes, windowless cells, flooded floors with fecal waste, and insufficient showers and toilets.

After nearly a month in federal custody, a Bronx high school junior who was detained during a routine immigration check-in is set to be released, his lawyers announced Monday. Joel Camas, a 16-year-old junior at Gotham Collaborative High School, was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 23 despite having approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and a pending pathway to permanent residency, according to court filings.

Officers sometimes will not let lawyers meet with people who want to work with lawyers - even though they are not supposed to. Individuals in B-18 do not get the free, confidential phone calls with their lawyers that even the government says they should have. And sometimes, individuals are moved from B-18 to another location which does not allow lawyer visits at all.