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immigration
After 25 Years, 9/11 Continues to Shape How America Polices Immigration
For a quarter century, America has treated immigration enforcement as a form of counterterrorism. Yet, instead of making us safer, it has given rise to an increasingly militarized agency that, in the name of protecting ‘the homeland,’ uses its vast surveillance network and policing powers to target and kill innocent people.
Sep 11, 2026
Since the start of its second term, the Trump administration has repeatedly defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement shootings and killings, smeared their victims as “domestic terrorists,” racially profiled people with the Supreme Court’s consent, expanded their biometric and social media surveillance capabilities while also maintaining over a dozen “secret and obscure” watchlists. It is effectively dismantling the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, tried—and is trying again—to repeal birthright citizenship, paused all immigrant visa applications, and is aggressively pursuing politically motivated visa revocations and denaturalizations, among other extreme measures.
All of this is reflective of the rampant and unfettered xenophobia, Islamophobia, and white nationalism that define the Trump administration. Yet, at same time, we must also acknowledge that Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) violence and Trump’s assault on the immigration system is an extension of the national security framework built following the 9/11 attacks.
ICE was established in March 2003 as part of “the single-largest government reorganization since the creation of the Department of Defense.” A key rationale for including ICE within the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was that the 9/11 hijackers entered the US legally via temporary visas. To keep “the homeland” safe, a more aggressive approach to immigration was thus deemed necessary. As Attorney General John Ashcroft remarked in 2002:
In this new war, our enemy's platoons infiltrate our borders, quietly blending in with visiting tourists, students, and workers. They move unnoticed through our cities, neighborhoods, and public spaces. They wear no uniforms. Their camouflage is not forest green, but rather it is the color of common street clothing. Their tactics rely on evading recognition at the border and escaping detection within the United States. Their terrorist mission is to defeat America, destroy our values, and kill innocent people.
Going forward, immigration enforcement and control agencies would police and surveil every immigrant as if they were potential terrorists. As the Department of Justice (DOJ) emphasized in 2004, “The primary mission of ICE is to prevent acts of terrorism by targeting the people, money, and materials that support terrorists and criminal activities.”
In the name of counterterrorism, the DOJ launched the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) in 2002. Under this program, male foreign nationals aged 16 or older from 25 countries—24 of which were majority-Arab and Muslim (the other was North Korea)—were fingerprinted, interviewed, photographed, and required to check in with immigration officials at regular intervals. These regulations applied to both new arrivals and individuals who were already in the US on temporary visas. NSEERS was suspended in 2011 and finally terminated in 2016 by President Barack Obama—it led to no terrorism prosecutions.
Despite its failure, NSEERS, alongside other measures and decades of Republican fearmongering, functioned to normalize the link between immigration enforcement, border control, and counterterrorism. In doing so, it amplified the alleged danger posed by “radical Islamic terrorism,” thus setting the stage for the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on Muslims. This, in turn, served to distract from the far greater and actual domestic terrorism threat posed by white supremacist groups. As a report by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs noted, “In 2019, DHS publicly acknowledged white supremacist violence as a major threat to national security for the first time, despite being aware internally of the severity of the threat for 10 years.”
In our desperation to prevent another 9/11, we have spent billions building our own homegrown domestic terrorism threat.
The goal of combating terrorism also promoted a demand for more biometric technologies. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) noted in 2001, the reason why “a large group of coordinated terrorists [could] operate for more than a year in the United States without being detected” is because “we could not identify them. We did not know they were here. Only if we can identify terrorists planning attacks on the United States do we have a chance of stopping them. And the biometrics technology, the state-of-the-art technology of today, really offers us a very new way to identify potential terrorists.”
To that end, DHS established the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program in 2003 to collect biometric identifiers from foreign nationals and build an electronic check in-check out system. As Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security at DHS Asa Hutchinson remarked in 2003, “initially, fingerprints and photographs” will be used; however, “as the technology is perfected, additional forms such as facial recognition or iris scans may be used as well.”
Fast forward two decades and now, ICE agents are currently deploying facial recognition software such as Mobile Fortify. In May 2026, ICE awarded a $25.1 million contract to BI2 Technologies to acquire over 1,500 wireless, handheld iris-scanning devices. In its fiscal year 2027 budget request, DHS allocated $7.5 million to develop face-scanning “smart glasses” that would grant agents real-time access to biometric databases.
Now, importantly, none of this should be taken to mean that the pre-9/11 landscape was entirely welcoming to immigrants. The “browning of America” discourse depicted—and continues to depict—immigrants as an existential threat to the nation. Meanwhile immigration policies like the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996 expanded the number of deportable offenses while also introducing expedited removal processes that allowed immigration officers to deport people without a formal hearing.
And yet, there were a few rays of hope. There was broad support for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, with a Senate hearing scheduled for September 12, 2001. On September 6, 2001, the US and Mexico announced they had reached an agreement on a framework for border and immigration reform that included “respecting the human dignity of all migrants, regardless of their status; recognizing the contribution migrants make to enriching both societies.” At the time, both President George W. Bush and President Vincente Fox “agreed that US-Mexican relations have entered their most promising moment in history.” Then 9/11 happened, and everything changed.
For 25 years, America has treated immigration enforcement as a form of counterterrorism. Yet, instead of making us safer, it has given rise to an increasingly militarized agency that, in the name of protecting “the homeland,” uses its vast surveillance network and policing powers to target and kill innocent people. In our desperation to prevent another 9/11, we have spent billions building our own homegrown domestic terrorism threat.
After 25 years, we must finally recognize that DHS and ICE were never the solution. If we truly wish to make America safer and greater, we must choose to forge a new path—to work toward a world without war, resentment, and violence.
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Following Project 2025 Playbook, Trump Officials Unveil Plan to Rig 2030 Census
“The Constitution is clear. Every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted in the Census,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Sep 09, 2026
The Trump administration on Wednesday formally proposed sweeping changes to the 2030 US Census that could exclude millions of people from the population count, alter congressional representation in favor of Republicans, and shift the distribution of federal resources among states.
The proposal—which was published in the Federal Register and is subject to a 30-day public comment period—redefines a person's “usual residence” as the place where they legally spend the most days during the Census count period, with tax records such as returns and W-2s used as evidence.
Most significantly, people who are not US citizens or permanent residents as of April 1, 2030, would be excluded from the apportionment count altogether, a sharp departure from the 2020 census, which counted foreign citizens living in the United States regardless of immigration status as required by the Constitution.
The proposed change is rooted in a disputed interpretation of the Constitution’s reference to the “whole number of persons” in each state, with the administration arguing that “persons” should be understood through the historical concept of “inhabitants” and membership in the political community.
Under the proposal, Census questionnaires would also be barred from asking about race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, arguing that such information is outside the Census' core constitutional purpose.
Some of the proposed changes track closely with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led plan to expand executive power and shrink the federal government.
Left-leaning legal experts asserted that the changes proposed by the Trump administration violate the 14th Amendment, which mandates congressional apportionment based on “the whole number of persons in each state,” regardless of their immigration status.
"The Constitution is clear. Every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted in the Census," Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James said on social media.
"We stopped the Trump administration's Census attacks in 2020, and we're exploring our legal options to fight back again," she added, referring to successful lawsuits to stop the administration's efforts to end the Census count early, add a citizenship question, and exclude undocumented immigrants from congressional apportionment.
In 2019, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in Department of Commerce v. New York that the Trump administration's rationale for the proposed citizenship question “seems to have been contrived."
Responding to Wednesday's announcement, William Roberts, senior vice president of rights and justice at the Center for American Progress (CAP), said in a statement that "the administration’s proposal is a flagrant assault on our democracy, designed to manipulate voting maps and dilute the political representation of diverse American communities."
"Eliminating questions on race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation strips our government of critical data needed to ensure vital resources are extended to the communities who need them most; and notably, it would also make it more difficult to enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965," he continued.
"Furthermore," Williams stressed, "excluding undocumented immigrants and noncitizens from congressional apportionment directly violates the [14th] Amendment’s mandate to count the 'whole number of persons in each state.'"
"CAP condemns this blatant attempt to weaponize the Census for political gain," he added. "Congress has final authority over the census, and the public has 30 days to write their representatives and oppose this rule."
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'Atom Bomb Dropped' in Maine Gubernatorial Race as Bobby Charles' Sister Backs His Democratic Opponent
"Under the anti-choice positions Bobby holds today, even in cases of rape, I would not have been able to make a decision about my own body should that have become necessary," said Anita Charles, a sexual assault survivor.
Sep 09, 2026
Just two weeks after Maine gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles drew national headlines with his comments about sending immigration agents to polling stations, the Republican's sister publicly explained why she won't be voting for him in November, calling out his campaign rhetoric and platform as well as his relationship with an infamous pedophile.
The campaign website for Bobby Charles, a former Washington, DC lobbyist, highlights that their mother was a public school teacher. In a Wednesday opinion piece for The Portland Press Herald, Anita Charles, a longtime educator herself, wrote that their mother taught them both "that how we treat other people matters."
"She taught us to be compassionate, not to name-call or judge people by their race, gender, religion, country of origin, or who they love. She taught us that differences do not diminish us, and that we have a responsibility to treat others with dignity. Those lessons shaped my entire life, as well as my career," according to Anita Charles. "They are also the reason I cannot support my brother's campaign for governor."
Anita Charles acknowledged that "Bobby and I have never agreed politically. For most of our adult lives, we have managed those differences with civility. But as divisive rhetoric has become central to his campaign, I can no longer remain silent. It shows up in how he talks about our schools, our vulnerable communities, and about women's healthcare."
She noted that "there is one issue I cannot discuss without speaking from the deepest part of my own experience: sexual assault."
As she detailed:
Bobby was a close friend and colleague of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert from 1995 to 1999. He praised Hastert and benefited from their relationship as he built his career in Washington. Hastert later admitted to sexually abusing children and was convicted of illegally paying hush money to conceal that abuse. Bobby has never publicly renounced that association.
That is difficult for me to understand because my own childhood was marked by sexual violence. Someone who was part of our lives for more than a decade was a pedophile who repeatedly assaulted me. My brother has known what happened to me for 50 years.
Under the anti-choice positions Bobby holds today, even in cases of rape, I would not have been able to make a decision about my own body should that have become necessary. This isn't a debate I'm observing from a distance; it's about my childhood. And it's about my ongoing health and well-being as a woman.
As the Bangor Daily News noted Wednesday, Bobby Charles' current "campaign website doesn't list any proposals about abortion," but he has "called abortion 'abhorrent' and supported the 2022 US Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade."
Arguing that "Maine deserves leadership rooted in empathy, dignity, intellectual honesty, and respect for every person who calls this state home," Bobby Charles' sister concluded that she will be voting for Democrat Hannah Pingree for governor.
The op-ed quickly circulated on social media after its publication. Local writer Anthony Emerson said that an "atom bomb dropped in the Maine governor’s race this morning."
Anita Charles' article came as her brother continues to face criticism for boasting about his ties to President Donald Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, at a Maine Young Republicans event and claiming that he would ask the federal offical to send US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Marshals to the state's voting booths.
Maine AFL-CIO president Cynthia Phinney said in a Wednesday statement that "in Maine and the United States, voters elect our leaders in free and fair elections. Calling for masked federal agents to be deployed around polling locations is a cynical attempt to intimidate voters."
"No one should be afraid to show up and exercise their constitutional right to vote, but that's exactly what this is trying to do," Phinney continued. "Our union movement rejects this desperate political tactic, and we know our democracy is strongest when all of us show up to exercise our democratic rights in peaceful elections free from fear or intimidation."
Trump's weaponization of ICE has been a key issue in Maine politics this cycle—including the contest between Republican US Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson—particularly since an agent fatally shot Biddeford resident Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in July.
"Every Mainer deserves to feel safe in their own neighborhood," Pingree said last month. "As governor, I'll demand real, independent oversight, not empty promises. I'll keep fighting for accountability. ICE out of Maine."
The US National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. It offers 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
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ICE Hired Unqualified Goons After 'Unprecedented Lowering of Standards': Whistleblower
Immigration and Customs Enforcement "chose... to be more convenient rather than thorough," even though "there was a potential to put lives at risk," said the whistleblower.
Sep 03, 2026
A whistleblower is claiming that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dangerously lowered its hiring standards for new recruits, who were given final job offers without undergoing even preliminary vetting.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the whistleblower, who has worked at ICE for 17 years, filed a complaint in August 2025 with the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security that sounded alarms about what he described as an "unprecedented lowering of standards" for hiring.
According to the complaint, applicants were offered jobs before they they even passed fingerprint and identity checks, which the whistleblower said created "grave national security risks" for the agency.
In an interview with the Times, the whistleblower said that ICE "chose... to be more convenient rather than thorough," even though "there was a potential to put lives at risk and jeopardize national security."
This is at least the second whistleblower complaint to raise concerns about the deterioration of standards at ICE.
In February, former ICE lawyer Ryan Schwank alleged in a complaint that he "received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank also alleged that "the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken," which he warned "can and will get people killed."
ICE's hiring standards came under scrutiny this summer after it was revealed that ICE agent David Brouillette, who fatally shot a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, had a lengthy history of allegedly abusive behavior.
As noted by the Times, Brouillette was even rejected for a job at the police department in Hallowell, Maine because he had "too many red flags."
The ICE hiring surge came shortly after passage of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated more than $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement operations. ICE last year said it would use some of the money to hire 10,000 additional agents, more than double the number of agents who had previously worked at the department.
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Trump 'Laying the Groundwork for Election Meddling' With DHS Hunt for Noncitizen Voters
"Trump is pulling DHS agents from human trafficking and terrorism cases to chase his made-up voter fraud conspiracies," said one congressman.
Sep 02, 2026
The New York Times' Wednesday reporting on a US Department of Homeland Security "blitz to find elusive voter fraud" by noncitizens is heightening fears that President Donald Trump will try to meddle in the country's midterm elections, which are just over two months away.
The newspaper revealed that as part of a "hunt for noncitizens among the nation's registered voters" internally called the Unlawful Voter Initiative, hundreds of DHS agents "are scouring voter rolls managed by the states, and are using personally identifiable information about individual voters, such as their dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers, to look them up on those rolls."
"In some cases, investigators are effectively posing as individual voters by plugging their names and personal information into public-facing websites run by the top election official in each state. Some of these sites declare they are meant for individual use, potentially raising privacy concerns," according to the Times, which reviewed related documents and training videos.
While DHS said in a statement that it "is committed to ensuring that only US citizens vote in US elections," and Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin "have made the integrity and security of our elections a top priority," the newspaper noted the "absence of evidence of widespread fraud," and that the department "is pulling agents from their normal duties, which include investigating such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism."
Trump infamously refused to accept his 2020 loss, launching various unsuccessful legal battles and even motivating some of his supporters to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since returning to power last year, the president has imposed a mass detention and deportation campaign that has killed both immigrants and US citizens while pushing various policies that critics warn are intended to limit legitimate participation in elections, from photo identification requirements to restrictions on voting by mail.
Sharing the reporting on social media Wednesday, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: "In other words, hundreds of federal agents are being diverted away from their jobs going after serious criminals and instead told to find needles in a haystack—all to find evidence for Trump's predetermined conclusions. It's a great time to be a criminal in Trump's America."
Democrats on the US House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee similarly declared that "instead of hunting terrorists and human traffickers, DHS is pulling agents away to investigate a conspiracy theory that has been debunked year after year."
A member of the panel, Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), also stressed that "Trump is pulling DHS agents from human trafficking and terrorism cases to chase his made-up voter fraud conspiracies."
"Even the conservative Heritage Foundation's data shows noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare," he highlighted, referring to the right-wing think tank's database that identifies around 100 cases of noncitizen voting since 2000.
Walkinshaw warned that "Trump is laying the groundwork for election meddling in November."
Daniel Delgado, who served as deputy assistant secretary for immigration policy at DHS during the Biden administration, emphasized that "every agent that's being forced into this witch hunt means one less agent working on critical missions like curbing the flow of fentanyl into the country, or stopping human trafficking and combating terrorism, etc. The administration is deliberately making America less safe."
Cynthia Travieso, executive vice president of state campaigns and programs at the nonprofit All Voting Is Local, ripped the "McCarthy-era-like hunt" as "a waste of resources and a desperate and pathetic attempt to control elections by scapegoating immigrants and spreading lies which can keep specific groups from voting, including Black, Brown, and new Americans."
Travieso continued:
This move by DHS to pull agents that investigate "such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism" is based on false claims and debunked conspiracy theories that put thousands of American voters at risk of losing their voter eligibility. Equally outrageous is that the effort also risks potential privacy breaches due to the unclear use of driver's license data, birth dates, and Social Security numbers. It's especially ironic that President Trump’s DHS is expanding its immigrant voter hunt at the same time as the US Postal Service's purported effort to sabotage vote-by-mail, which would harm naturalized citizens who vote by mail at a rate of nearly 8 percentage points higher than native-born citizens. This is part of the blueprint that demonstrates how badly the White House administration wants to control our elections.
States run elections, not the president and not DHS. State election officials have checks and balances in place to verify an individual's voter eligibility and keep voter rolls accurate, and they work incredibly hard to ensure that every eligible voter can vote and that every vote is counted.
Instead of fueling election conspiracy lies, the Trump administration should focus on protecting voters from barriers to the ballot. Any efforts otherwise are a desperate attempt to undermine the will of the people and sow confusion and distrust. We won't let them gaslight us.
Separately on Wednesday, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) filed a lawsuit against DHS, Mullin, and US Attorney General Todd Blanche, accusing them of illegally targeting citizens who were not born in the United States to prevent them from lawfully voting.
"Naturalized citizens are Americans," CHIRLA executive director Angelica Salas said at a news conference in Los Angeles, according to Spectrum News. "They took the oath. They earned their citizenship, and they have the same rights as every other American citizen."
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'Blood Is On Their Hands': Haitian Student Dies In Apparent Suicide After Trump Ends Deportation Protections
"Because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams."
Sep 01, 2026
Since President Donald Trump was running for office two years ago, Springfield, Ohio has been a central target of Trump and Vice President JD Vance's racist attacks and violent mass deportation operation, with the White House threatening the city's Haitian population with forced removal back to their unstable home country.
On Monday, Springfield became the site of a new tragedy that immigrant rights advocates said was directly caused by the Trump administration's xenophobic agenda, particularly its termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitian migrants, when 20-year-old Pierre Damas Bel was killed by a tractor trailer on Interstate 70—apparently dying by suicide after the loss of the protections pushed him into despair.
As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, college student and aspiring doctor Bel parked on the highway's shoulder Monday morning, got out of his car, and walked into westbound traffic. He was pronounced dead at the scene after being struck.
Ohio authorities are investigating, but Bel's family believes his death to be a suicide.
His family told the Post that Bel had become distressed in recent weeks after the US Supreme Court allowed Trump's termination of TPS for Haitians and Syrians.
Although he had a pending asylum case and a hearing scheduled for October, Bel was required to report to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of terminating TPS. Officers placed an electronic monitoring device on his ankle.
In late July, Bel wrote in an Instagram post: “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”
The Post reported that classmates bullied Bel over the bracelet, and he was unable to continue playing soccer as he had for years.
“He felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierres Ronal Bel, told the Post.
Last Friday, it appeared that Bel would not be able to continue in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) due to the Trump administration's monitoring of him as it pursued deportation. As the Post reported:
His JROTC class instructor handed students their uniforms, which resemble those of the US armed forces, but did not give one to Bel. His father said the college student concluded it was because of the device strapped around his ankle.
“He came home that day feeling very bad,” Pierres Ronal Bel said through a translator.
Bel "killed himself because of the Trump administration’s obsession with hurting Haitians and the humiliating shame of an ICE ankle monitor," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "His blood is on their hands."
The White House had threatened to flood Springfield with ICE agents earlier this year when it first announced it was ending TPS, which for 16 years has provided Haitians with deportation protections. During the 2024 election, Springfield ended up in Trump and Vance's crosshairs as the two Republicans spread baseless, racist lies that Haitian community members there were eating their neighbors' pets.
TPS was initially granted to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 in Haiti—one of the worst disasters in modern history and one that the country has struggled to fully recover from, as it's also faced soaring violence and unrest following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The US State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti for any reason due to gang violence, kidnappings, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis there.
Despite that, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has gloated that "the T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY" and urged Haitians who have been legally living and working in the US for years to go back to "Home Sweet Haiti"—making such comments as at least 47 people were killed and 50 were kidnapped in a gang attack near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince late last month.
Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance told the Post that the Trump administration's policies "are what caused [Bel's] untimely death."
Bel came to the US in 2024 to reunite with his parents, who had left Haiti three years earlier. Reichlin-Melnick said that "he almost certainly flew here through the [Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans] parole program, entering legally after a background check and probably with his parents having sponsored him. He broke not a single law. Not one."
Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) said that "because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams."
"This never should have happened," he said. "His blood, and the blood of all those who have died as a result of these policies, is in the hands of Trump and his top officials who have championed them."
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org.
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'Sadism': Trump DHS Boasts of Deportation Flight to Haiti in 'Propaganda' Video
"These are our neighbors and coworkers who were legally living and working here," said one advocate. "Stripping away their protections and then threatening them with deportation is cruel beyond words."
Aug 28, 2026
By releasing a video of Black men wearing handcuffs and prison uniforms being hauled onto a deportation flight, the US Department of Homeland Security appeared to be fulfilling a key objective of President Donald Trump's decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants, said one immigration policy expert on Thursday.
President Donald Trump "hates Haitians," said American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, "and the White House wanted videos of Black people in chains, so they stripped them all of status."
Reichlin-Melnick said the video, which also features a Haitian song and the text "Temporary Meant Temporary. Leave Now" on screen, was "propaganda for an audience of people that thrills to the sight of Black men being led in chains" and whom Trump's mass deportation agenda and racist attacks on Haitians, Somalis, and other refugee populations are aimed at satisfying.
The video was released a week after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent a charter flight with 161 Haitians on board to Haiti, where gang violence, kidnappings, and humanitarian crises that have continued more than a decade after the 2010 earthquake have pushed the US State Department to maintain its highest "Do Not Travel" warning for Americans.
The administration said that flight would be the first of many, following the US Supreme Court ruling in June that allowed DHS to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
The National Office of Migration in Haiti said last week that the Haitians aboard the ICE flight had not benefited from TPS, but were people who were facing removal proceedings due to criminal convictions or who had entered the US without authorization.
In the video—as in the Trump administration's persistent rhetoric about its mass deportation operation, which it claims is targeting "the worst of the worst" violent criminals—DHS suggested the Haitians who have been granted TPS for years pose a danger to the US public, despite the fact that criminal convictions make people ineligible for the protected status.
"TPS holders had been living and working legally and paying taxes," said Drop Site News—taxes, Reichlin-Melnick stressed, that do not permit them to benefit from federal assistance programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Medicaid.
David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the "sadism" depicted in the DHS video was "unrelenting."
The video was released as Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami called on the Trump administration to "rethink" its decision to end TPS for Haitians following an August 23 gang attack outside the country's capital of Port-au-Prince, in which at least 47 people were killed and at least 50 were kidnapped.
"The country is not safe, that Haiti is still a house on fire," Wenski told OSV News. "This should cause our administration to rethink its decision to send back into Haiti over 300,000 Haitians."
A bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would extend TPS for Haitians through early 2029, and "would pass very easily" if Trump "would voice his support," said Wenski.
Cory Archibald of the anti-Zionist group Track AIPAC called for prosecutions of top White House officials including Trump, Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, "all the way on down to the masked chuds joyriding in this video and loading these men onto planes."
"All of them are guilty," she said, "and all of them should be prosecuted."
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'I'm Going to Ask Tom': Maine GOP Nominee for Governor Calls for ICE at Polling Stations
"His plan to ask Trump’s border czar to send ICE agents to Maine polling places just weeks before Election Day is not only deeply alarming—it is likely illegal," said the head of the state Democratic Party.
Aug 27, 2026
By letting attendees at a Maine Young Republicans event in on his "secret" plan for the midterm elections, the state's Republican nominee for governor detailed a proposal that, according to one public policy think tank, is wholly illegal.
In an audio clip released Wednesday by the Bangor Daily News, Bobby Charles, a lawyer and former Reagan administration staffer, boasted about his connections to the Trump administration's border czar, Tom Homan, a key figure in President Donald Trump's mass deportation operation.
"Here's my secret. I have a friend named Tom Homan," said Charles, drawing applause from the GOP voters. "I'm going to ask Tom... three or four weeks before the election, maybe three, I'm going to make an appeal for ICE and Marshals to be at our voting booths."
🚨 NEW Audio: Bobby Charles reveals "secret" plan to invite ICE to Maine three weeks before Election Day. pic.twitter.com/nSx2o9yxjJ
— Maine Democrats (@MaineDems) August 26, 2026
Charles was referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Marshals, both armed federal law enforcement officers whose presence at polling sites to intimidate voters would be against the law, according to the Brennan Center for Justice .
Trump has also alluded to sending ICE and other armed federal agents to polling places during the midterm elections in November, saying in May when he was asked about the idea that he would "do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections."
At the Brennan Center for Justice last month, senior counsel Hayne Yoon wrote that "despite the implied threat, the law is clear."
"Sending armed federal agents, including those from ICE, to election sites is illegal," wrote Yoon. "Federal law and many states’ laws prohibit not only armed federal agents at polling sites, but also interference in elections or voter intimidation by any officials or private citizens. More important, using these tactics would be a flagrant attempt to hold on to power through force and intimidation and an affront to free and fair elections."
In his comments at the Young Republicans event, Charles also asked rhetorically whether “illegals who are being paid money” to vote would "like" the deployment of ICE agents at polling places. The remark made the gubernatorial candidate one of several Republicans to push the baseless claim that undocumented immigrants or noncitizens have committed voter fraud in order to sway elections.
There are no documented reports of immigrants ever being paid to vote, and a 2024 American Immigration Council analysis of data collected by the right-wing Heritage Foundation found only 68 cases of proven noncitizen voting dating back to 2000, "amounting to less than 0.0001% of total votes."
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Hannah Pingree said Wednesday that Charles' comments make clear that he would push Trump's MAGA agenda, despite his recent attempts to distance himself from the president, who is unpopular with Mainers.
"He is begging Trump's ICE to come interfere with our free and fair elections," said Pingree. "I think that conduct speaks for itself and I trust the Maine people to see it for what it is."
Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, added that Charles "continues to prove that he is a MAGA extremist who will stop at nothing to put himself and his MAGA agenda ahead of Mainers. His plan to ask Trump’s border czar to send ICE agents to Maine polling places just weeks before Election Day is not only deeply alarming—it is likely illegal. This is a blatant attempt to intimidate voters and yet another reason Bobby Charles is too extreme for Maine.”
Charles' comments come six weeks after an ICE agent fatally shot Biddeford, Maine resident Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in an incident that the Trump administration has not appeared to investigate. ICE has made more arrests in Maine so far this year than it did in all of 2024-25 combined, and out of 491 arrests made, 89% of those detained had no criminal convictions.
Homan recently told a Republican state lawmaker that the state would soon "see a lot more enforcement action" due to Trump's decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians.
The Justice Department announced this month that it would deploy at least 1,000 federal officers to polling places as people vote in the November 3 elections. The administration has suggested the public should not be alarmed by the plan because anyone who is a citizen will not be targeted by the agents, but as the ACLU noted, at least 155 citizens in eight states last year, including 32 children, were detained, targeted, or subjected to misconduct by federal immigration agents.
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'I'm Heading to Danbury,' Says US Senator as ICE Arrests Parents at School Bus Stops
“ICE is not here to protect Danbury,” Sen. Chris Murphy said. “ICE is here to put Danbury into a state of terror.”
Aug 26, 2026
National, state, and local Democratic officials joined activists in Danbury, Connecticut on Wednesday to demand accountability for the dozens of immigrants—some of them reportedly in the country legally—detained in recent days by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including parents who were seized while seeing their children off to school.
“This morning in Danbury, ICE was arresting parents at school bus stops,” US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a social media post. He alleged that agents waited until children had boarded buses, potentially leaving them to return home from school without their parents.
“I’m heading to Danbury,” he said. Murphy joined other Connecticut Democrats, including Gov. Ned Lamont, US Rep. Jahana Hayes, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, and Danbury Mayor Roberto Alves, as well as immigrant rights advocates at Kennedy Park to condemn the Trump administration's deadly and xenophobic crackdown.
“ICE is not here to protect Danbury,” Murphy told the crowd in the Fairfield County city of 86,000 residents—around 35% of whom are foreign-born immigrants. “ICE is here to put Danbury into a state of terror.”
“Congress should not authorize a single additional dollar for ICE while this illegality continues,” the senator added.
Hayes said, “What I would hate to see is a snowball effect where a parent is detained, and then a child goes into state custody because there's no one to pick them up."
Alves said that nearly 50 community members have been detained this week that he knows of, but warned that the actual number of arrests is likely higher.
"ICE has increased enforcement and stepped up its tactics with an intentional brutality you have all seen," the mayor told the crowd in the park. "The operations coincided with the start of school here in Danbury."
“We’re here because mothers, fathers, workers, and longtime community members are being swept up, with no rhyme or reason, not as part of a targeted campaign of folks who have committed serious crimes," he continued. "We’re seeing racial profiling, random people being picked up off the streets."
“ICE is pulling people after they put their kids on the school bus," Alves said. "Operations in front of a daycare, where 3- to 5-year-olds are looking out the window asking what’s going on. An operation on the first day of school at our second-most-populated, highly diverse elementary school in Danbury as students are being dropped off by parents and school buses."
"This isn’t a coincidence; this is intentional,” he stressed, adding that he received reports of legal residents being detained.
“So when we hear folks say, ‘Oh, we want people to do it the right way,’ the folks doing it the right way are also getting deported," he added. "We can’t stand for that anymore."
Juan Fonseca Tapia, a Mexican immigrant and co-founder of the advocacy group Danbury Unites for Immigrants (DUFI), broke down while recounting what he said he saw during the blitz, including one person getting pepper-sprayed and another taken to the hospital after being struck by an ICE vehicle.
“They were taking people everywhere. They hurt them. They were bleeding," he said. "I saw the chains they put on them—not handcuffs, literal chains.”
DUFI volunteer Clementina Lunar described a father being arrested while putting his child on a school bus.
“When he handed the child to the bus helper, ICE came and took him,” she said.
Lunar added that Danbury residents are mobilizing to help each other and monitor school bus stops.
“There is fear," she said, "but there is also a lot of resilience and resistance."
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5-Year-Old Detained by ICE in Austin Will Be Deported With Father
The father of Liam Tadeo has opted to deported to Mexico with his son, after the Trump administration refused to release the child into the custody of family.
Aug 25, 2026
US Congressman Greg Casar said the case of 5-year-old Liam Tadeo exemplified how President Donald Trump and his immigration enforcement agencies are using children "as bait and leverage to fuel his mass deportation machine," as it was reported that Tadeo's family had been forced to arrange for the child and his father to leave the country after they were detained earlier this month.
As KUT News in Austin reported Monday, Victor Martinez Nieto, Tadeo's father, is now set to be deported to Mexico with his son, rather than risk the child entering the Trump administration's custody following their detention.
Martinez Nieto was taking Tadeo to a children's soccer match in Austin on August 16 when he was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a traffic stop. The father and son were eventually taken to South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, 150 miles away from home—a facility that has been condemned by Democratic lawmakers and rights groups as detainees, including children, have reported medical neglect, abuse, and poor living conditions.
The administration has refused to release Tadeo to his mother, who lives in Austin, Texas, or other family members. The Department of Homeland Security has routinely claimed that "ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates" if their parent is deported, but Tadeo's case is the latest in which that statement has been called into question.
Casar, a Texas Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said he was with Tadeo's mother on Monday "as she found out what it means to have your child held hostage by ICE."
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Casar, "arrested 5-year-old Liam and refused to safely return him to his mother. As a result, unless Liam's parents 'agreed' for him to be deported with his father, Liam could be entirely separated from his family and put into custody."
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, a lawyer for the family, told KUT News that Martinez Nieto was planning to return to Mexico with his son out of fear that Tadeo would be placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which oversees "unaccompanied" immigrant children.
"Children can be held in this system for months or even years at a time. It's a really bad experience for children, and the family is just not willing to risk Liam being held alone,” Lincoln-Goldfinch told the outlet.
More than 20,000 children in the custody of ORR have lost access to legal representation under the Trump administration, as ORR has ended federal contracts with groups that provide legal services.
Lincoln-Goldfinch told KUT News that Tadeo's mother is trying to determine how to reunite with her son, who was supposed to start kindergarten in Austin the week he was detained.
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