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immigration
Judge Strikes Down Trump 'Anti-Immigrant' Policies, Orders Restart of Asylum Processing
“This ruling reaffirms a basic principle: The federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,” said one advocate.
Jun 05, 2026
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday struck down a series of President Donald Trump's policies that he ruled were rooted in "anti-immigrant sentiments" and ordered the administration to resume processing of asylum grants and immigration benefit applications of people from 39 targeted countries.
Last November, US Citizenship and Immigration Services indefinitely suspended asylum adjudications and froze immigration applications for people affected by a travel ban implemented after a man from Afghanistan allegedly shot two National Guard troops in Washington, DC.
Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries” and expedite the removal of people his administration doesn’t consider “a net asset” to the United States. The administration's move halted the ability of people from affected nations to obtain green cards, US citizenship, and other benefits.
US District Judge John J. McConnell Jr., an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in his ruling that the administration's policies are rooted in “anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making" and have placed immigrants living in the United States in "indeterminate legal limbo."
“The challenged policies placed the lives of countless individuals on hold—solely by virtue of their countries of birth,” McConnell wrote. “Over six months later, many of those individuals remain without work, without legal status, and without any meaningful ability to plan for their futures.”
“The government effectively invites the court to shut its eyes and ignore the strong evidence of anti-immigrant animus before it,” the judge added. “Doing so would require profound naiveté on the court’s part. Unfortunately for the government, that is an invitation that this court will have to decline.”
US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival slammed McConnell's ruling in a social media post accusing "the Left" of "running the same gambit with so-called 'animus' claims since 2017."
"It is sabotage dressed in legal clothing," Percival added. "It goes like this: (1) the admin is racist, (2) therefore a policy I don’t like is motivated by race, (3) therefore it is invalid. They have used it on virtually every Trump-era DHS policy."
Plaintiffs and others involved in the case welcomed McConnell's decision.
“This ruling reaffirms a basic principle: The federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,” Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement.
"These unlawful policies caused enormous harm to families, workers, asylum seekers, and communities across the country who were left in limbo, unable to work, access protections, or move forward with their lives," Perryman added. "We are pleased that the court recognized the devastating human consequences of these policies. Our communities deserve a fair process governed by law, not political targeting rooted in fear-mongering and discrimination.”
🚨 STATEMENT: Federal Judge Rejects Trump Admin’s Unlawful Immigration Restrictions, Restoring Access to Asylum for Immigrant NYers“Everyone deserves a fair chance to have their case heard under the law." Murad Awawdehnyic.org/press
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— New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) (@thenyic.bsky.social) June 5, 2026 at 10:43 AM
Milagro Sique, CEO at the Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, said: “Today is a good day. On behalf of the thousands of immigrants we serve, we are grateful to Judge McConnell for his ruling."
"These policies were wrong, plain and simple, and caused profound fear and uncertainty for so many of our friends, neighbors, and coworkers," Sique added. "Having the judicial process work as intended—by upholding the rule of law—gives us some reassurance that all is not lost and allows those who have been impacted to move forward with their lives in a meaningful way."
Abbey Koenning-Rutherford, staff attorney at Muslim Advocates, said that "today’s decision is an unsparing rejection of the government’s discriminatory and unlawful actions to gut access to immigration benefits under the false pretext of national security."
“These policies unjustly revived the discriminatory logic of the first Muslim and African bans and expanded them widely to millions of community members already inside the United States," she continued, referring to policies enacted during Trump's first term.
"In vacating these unlawful policies, the court makes it unmistakably clear that the Trump administration cannot hold the lives of immigrants in legal limbo based on their countries of birth, and must continue processing their applications for status and benefits as required by law," Koenning-Rutherford added.
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—an immigrant from India—was among the Democratic lawmakers who applauded Friday's ruling, writing on social media that "this is a BIG win."
"A judge has now reaffirmed that Trump’s freeze on processing immigration applications for 39 countries is illegal and that processing must restart immediately," she added. "Today’s ruling is not the end of the fight, but it is a major step in the right direction."
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DOGE Wanted to Falsely List Millions of People as Dead in Social Security Database: Whistleblower
One critic accused the Trump administration of plotting "financial murder" against millions of people.
Jun 05, 2026
A federal whistleblower has revealed plans by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to falsely list millions of people in the Social Security database as dead in a scheme to pressure them to leave the US.
In an interview published Friday by The Washington Post, former Social Security Administration (SSA) executive Jeremiah Schofield outlined a DOGE-concocted scheme that would have potentially cut people off from wages, banking, and government benefits by falsely listing them as dead.
Schofield said a DOGE employee told him in a phone call that they wanted to add 2.7 million living people to SSA's "Death Master File," cutting them off from essential financial services so they would either leave the country voluntarily or show up to local SSA offices to complain, where they would be promptly arrested.
“That call was one of the most disappointing calls I’ve been in in my 25-year career,” Schofield, who left the SSA in October, told the Post. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
While immigrants were the primary target of the scheme, Schofield said that the list of people created by DOGE included some US citizens and lawful permanent residents.
One anonymous former SSA employee who spoke with the Post outlined the serious ramifications for the 2.7 million people had they been added to the Death Master File.
“If you’re on the [Death Master File] you can’t have a bank account," they explained, "you can’t get credit, so no apartment, no way to save money, no way to get paid, no way to get on insurance or carry health insurance. It has a ton of devastating effects.”
Schofield said he refused to carry out the DOGE employee's request after consulting with SSA lawyers who said falsely marking living people as dead would likely be illegal.
The plan was ultimately shelved, and the Trump administration claimed in recent court filings that it has revoked DOGE employees' access to SSA data.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said that Schofield's whistleblower report was yet another example of President Donald Trump's administration abusing its power and weaponizing the federal government.
"Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security," Altman said, "but this whistleblower report is the latest evidence of how he really views it: As nothing more than a weapon to wield against his enemies."
Altman added that removing living people from the database is essentially "financial murder."
"It means losing access to your bank account, your health insurance, and your credit cards," Altman explained. "It means getting kicked out of your home. It means that your life is destroyed."
Whistleblower Aid, the nonprofit legal assistance organization representing Schofield, said their client's claims show "no one is safe from this type of weaponization of our Social Security data."
"If the administration is permitted to ‘kill people off’ and ruin their lives to pursue its anti-immigrant agenda," the group added, "it will be able to use the same cruel and illegal tactics against anyone who has a Social Security number.”
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As Detained Immigrants Strike Against 'Chaos and Cruelty,' Advocates Demand 'Not Another Dime for ICE'
"Americans want real accountability and reform, and there is no version in Congress that reins in ICE and addresses the abuses we are witnessing," said the head of America's Voice.
Jun 01, 2026
With US senators returning to Capitol Hill on Monday after a Memorial Day recess, Republicans are working to get a second budget reconciliation package to President Donald Trump's desk—and critics of his mass deportation campaign continue to push back against giving immigration enforcement agencies $72 billion.
Much of that money would go to the US Department of Homeland Security and two of its agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump's deportation agenda notably got over $170 billion in last year's budget reconciliation package, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Since Trump signed that legislation last summer, he has deployed federal agents to various communities across the country, including Chicago and the Twin Cities, where they were documented violating the rights of US citizens and immigrants alike—even killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Immigrants who have been caught up in such operations have often been held in "inhumane conditions" at detention centers. For example, according to a lawsuit filed last week, a tent encampment at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas "has become notorious for flagrant human rights abuses that people endure during their detention—they are confined to windowless enclosures in tents and suffer egregious physical abuse by guards; abhorrent medical and mental health care, including for people with chronic conditions like cancer and HIV; indiscriminate use of solitary confinement to punish and silence victims of guard abuse; and other flagrant constitutional violations, including exposure to measles, tuberculosis, and other diseases."
"Not even a year in, there already have been three reported deaths at Camp East Montana," the complaint notes. "In one case, a man was beaten to death after asking for his asthma medication—a death the medical examiner later ruled a homicide. A fourth man died shortly after being released from Camp East Montana, where he had been denied the chemotherapy that he needed to treat his cancer."
Overall, from Trump's return to office early last year to late April, ICE has reported more than 50 detainee deaths. An Associated Press investigation published last week found that at least 10 of them, all men, died by suicide.
"Not another dime for ICE—not while children are locked in trailer prisons, detainees are on hunger strike, and protesters are being pepper-sprayed for demanding basic decency," Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the group America's Voice, said in a Monday statement.
As her group detailed:
Detainees at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey are on a hunger and labor strike, now in its fifth day, citing reported infestations, inadequate medical care, and no air conditioning, with protests outside met by masked ICE agents deploying pepper spray and tasers. At the Desert View Annex in Adelanto, California, at least 20 detainees launched a hunger strike citing a lack of medical care, unsafe drinking water, and mold. At Dilley, Texas, more than 6,300 children have been detained since the start of Trump's second term in facilities described by those inside as a trailer prison, with lights on 24 hours a day and children as young as two months old among those held. Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has threatened to halt processing of international travelers at Newark Airport amid the ongoing dispute with New Jersey officials over conditions at Delaney Hall.
Following protests on Friday and Saturday nights at Delaney Hall, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka imposed a curfew from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am ET. Multiple people who did not comply with it on Sunday night were arrested.
CBS News reported that as the curfew took effect, "a warning was issued to the protesters who had gathered outside the zone. Thirteen minutes later, state police in riot gear rushed toward the crowd. Officers on horses came in from the other side, surrounding the crowd and herding them away into a standoff."
Discussing the New Jersey demonstrations during an interview on Fox News, Mullin claimed that "they're not just exercising their First Amendment" rights; "these are violent protesters that are there to injure everybody—that's even bystanders."
A DHS spokesperson said in a Monday statement to Fox News Digital that "RIOTERS WILL NOT SLOW US DOWN."
"The perimeter around Delaney Hall is FULLY closed... No rioters breached the perimeter last night. Our ICE operations continue undeterred," the spokesperson added. "ANYONE who attempts to obstruct law enforcement or disrupt our operations will be prosecuted and face justice."
Meanwhile, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), District 1, directed attention to those inside the facility, saying in a Monday statement that it "stands in full solidarity with the people detained at Delaney Hall in Newark who have laid down their labor and refused their meals to demand dignity, safety, and freedom."
As CWA District 1 detailed:
Make no mistake: This is a labor struggle. The people held inside Delaney Hall are forced to cook meals, clean the floors, and keep the facility running—for as little as one dollar a day. These workers are on strike to protest the unconscionable conditions they are forced to endure and the basic due process they are entitled to, but have been denied.
While the private contractors who operate these detention centers bank millions, the workers who sustain them are denied the most basic protection and respect. When workers in those conditions organize, withhold their labor, and act together to demand better, they are doing what working people have always done to win justice. We recognize a strike when we see one.
The labor movement was built on the principle that no person should be exploited, silenced, or treated as less than human because of who they are or where they come from. The demands coming from inside Delaney Hall—an end to medical neglect, an end to exploitative labor, the release of the elderly, the young, and the sick, and the restoration of basic due process—are the same demands for dignity, equity, and justice that animate our own fight every day. An injury to one is an injury to all.
We honor the courage of the strikers and of the families and community members standing watch outside the facility, and we defend their right to peaceful protest. And we condemn in the strongest terms the escalation and violence by ICE and state police against people peacefully exercising their constitutional rights.
Cárdenas of America's Voice called out Trump, Mullin, and Stephen Miller, the president's White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, who is infamous for pushing the family separation policy during his first term.
"The Trump-Miller mass purge machine is running unchecked, and Mullin isn't bringing accountability," Cárdenas said Monday. "Instead, this administration continues draining resources from real public safety, separating American-born children from their parents, and spending millions on masked agents while American families are unable to make ends meet."
"The Senate has a clear choice to make: Side with the chaos and cruelty or listen to the American people," she continued. "Poll after poll reveals that the public resoundingly rejects masked and armed agents inflicting random violence against immigrants and Americans alike."
"Americans want real accountability and reform, and there is no version in Congress that reins in ICE and addresses the abuses we are witnessing," she stressed. "This administration has made clear that reform is not on the table. Congress should not give them another dime to prove it."
Both chambers of Congress are narrowly controlled by Republicans, but efforts by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to advance immigration enforcement legislation have been hampered by Trump's controversial $1.776 billion slush fund for insurrectionists. However, as of Monday, after losses in court, the Trump administration is backing off its push for the fund for now, meaning the bill may soon move forward on Capitol Hill.
"I can't think of a less appropriate time to pour another $72 billion into ICE and CBP—especially without requiring meaningful reforms or accountability measures," Bridget Moix, a leader at Quaker organizations including Friends Committee on National Legislation, FCNL Education Fund, and Friends Place on Capitol Hill, wrote Friday for Religion News Service.
"As Quakers, we reject the false choice between security and human dignity," Moix added. "True safety cannot be built through fear, cruelty, or unchecked power. Lasting security comes from thriving communities, functioning institutions, economic opportunity, and respect for human rights."
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