By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is ramping up its plans to revoke the citizenship of immigrants who’ve committed crimes or pose a national security risk, according to a recent memo underscoring the Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda.

Efforts to identity and go after those suspected of cheating to get their citizenship are not new to this administration.

But the public push is raising concerns from advocates, who have accused the administration of trying to use immigration enforcement for political purposes. It’s receiving increased scrutiny after a Republican member of Congress suggested that Zohran Mamdani, the New York City Democratic mayoral candidate, should be subject to denaturalization proceedings.

Here’s a look at the denaturalization process and what the Justice Department’s memo means:

Denaturalization cases are rare

The U.S. government can strip a naturalized immigrant of their citizenship if they are criminally convicted of naturalization fraud or if the government proves through civil proceedings that they illegally obtained their citizenship through fraud or misrepresented or concealed facts on their application.

For years, the government’s denaturalization efforts focused largely on suspected war criminals who lied on their immigration paperwork, most notably former Nazis. The Justice Department filed just more than 300 total cases between 1990 and 2017.

An initiative that began under the Obama administration called Operation Janus expanded those efforts by seeking to identify people who had used different identities to get green cards and citizenship after they were previously issued deportation orders.

In 2016, an internal watchdog reported that 315,000 old fingerprint records for immigrants who had been deported or had criminal convictions had not been uploaded to a Department of Homeland Security database that is used to check immigrants’ identities. The same report found more than 800 immigrants had been ordered deported under one identity but became U.S. citizens under another.

The first Trump administration made such investigations a bigger priority, creating a Justice Department section focused on denaturalization cases.

But even then, the number of denaturalization cases remained small, as the administration didn’t have the resources to bring many amid an onslaught of legal challenges to immigration policies it had to defend against, said Matthew Hoppock, an attorney in Kansas who represents people in denaturalization cases.

Justice Department says it will prioritize certain cases

The push was announced in a memo from the recently confirmed head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate. Shumate said the cases the department will prioritize include people who “pose a potential danger to national security,” people who commit violent crimes, members of gangs and drug cartels and people who commit Medicaid fraud and other types of fraud.

The benefits of the denaturalization process, Shumate wrote, “include the government’s ability to revoke the citizenship of individuals who engaged in the commission of war crimes, extrajudicial killings, or other serious human rights abuses; to remove naturalized criminals, gang members, or, indeed, any individuals convicted of crimes who pose an ongoing threat to the United States; and to prevent convicted terrorists from returning to U.S. soil or traveling internationally on a U.S. passport.”

Hoppock said the memo sort of “blows the doors open” for the administration to file as many as many denaturalization cases as it has the resources to file.

Lawyers raise alarm about the potential impact

The broad language in the memo raises the prospect “that any offense, at any time, may be used to justify denaturalization,” said Christopher Wellborn, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

“It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where the government invokes unsubstantiated claims of gang affiliation or uses an individual’s criminal record to claim that citizenship was illegally procured,” Wellborn said in a statement.

Others worry the administration’s public push will stoke fear among naturalized immigrants.

“The more you talk about it, the more you frame it as ‘we’re coming after your naturalization, we’re coming after you,’ the more of a chilling effect we see on people applying for naturalization,” said Elizabeth Taufa, senior policy attorney and strategist at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “Even those folks that really are eligible for naturalization.”

Critics have accused the Trump administration using immigration enforcement to go after people because of their speech — most notably in the case of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, whom it has sought to deport over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.

“One of our ongoing concerns is will they target these politically, will they start combing through people’s immigration files if they don’t like you or if they think you don’t agree with the government,” Hoppock said.

“I think most Americans would support the idea of stripping someone of citizenship if they got it through fraud and they are also a dangerous person,” he said, but the concern is if they start going through “regular folks’ immigration files to find a T that is not crossed or an I that is not dotted so they can use it as a weapon.”

Justice Department recently secured denaturalization in one case

The department last month announced that it had successfully secured the denaturalization of a man who was convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material.

The British man had become a U.S. citizen after enlisting in the U.S. Army under a provision that provides a pathway to citizenship for U.S. service members, officials said. He only listed a speeding ticket when asked on his naturalization application if he had “ever committed a crime or offense for which you were not arrested,” and he became a U.S. citizen in 2013.

Months later, he was arrested in Louisiana on child sexual abuse material charges and convicted, according to the department.

“The laws intended to facilitate citizenship for brave men and women who join our nation’s armed forces will not shield individuals who have fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship by concealing their crimes,” Shumate said in a statement at the time. “If you commit serious crimes before you become a U.S. citizen and then lie about them during your naturalization process, the Justice Department will discover the truth and come after you.”

The post Supreme Court limits nationwide injunctions, but fate of Trump birthright citizenship order unclear appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

MIAMI (AP) — A Canadian man being held by immigration officials in South Florida has died in federal custody, officials said.

Johnny Noviello, 49, died Monday afternoon at the Bureau of Prisons Federal Detention Center in Miami, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement press release said. The cause of death was under investigation.

Noviello was being detained pending removal from the U.S., officials said. He entered the U.S. in 1988 on a legal visa and became a lawful permanent resident in 1991. He was convicted of drug trafficking and other charges in 2023 and sentenced to a year in prison, officials said.

Noviello was picked up by ICE agents at his probation office last month and charged with removability because of his drug conviction, authorities said.

Seven other immigration detainees have died in federal custody this year, with 11 deaths reported in 2024.

By KATE PAYNE

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is racing ahead with construction of a makeshift immigration detention facility at an airstrip in the Everglades over the opposition of Native American leaders who consider the area their sacred ancestral homelands.

A string of portable generators and dump trucks loaded with fill dirt streamed into the site on Thursday, according to activist Jessica Namath, who witnessed the activity. The state is plowing ahead with building a compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and other temporary buildings at the Miami Dade County-owned airfield located in the Big Cypress National Preserve, about 45 miles west of downtown Miami.

A spokesperson for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which is helping lead the project, did not respond to requests for comment.

State officials have characterized the site as an ideal place to hold migrants, saying there’s “not much” there other than pythons and alligators.

Indigenous leaders dispute that and are condemning the state’s plans to build what’s been dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz ” on their homelands. Native Americans can trace their roots to the area back thousands of years.

For generations, the sweeping wetlands of what is now South Florida have been home to Native peoples who today make up the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, as well as the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.

“Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands. The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations,” Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress wrote in a statement on social media.

There are 15 remaining traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages in Big Cypress, as well as ceremonial and burial grounds and other gathering sites, Cypress testified before Congress in 2024.

“We live here. Our ancestors fought and died here. They are buried here,” he said. “The Big Cypress is part of us, and we are a part of it.”

Garrett Stuart, who lives about 3 miles from the site, described the crystal clear waters, open prairies and lush tree islands of Big Cypress as teeming with life.

“Hearing the arguments of the frogs in the water, you know? And listen to the grunt of the alligator. You’re hearing the call of that osprey flying by and listening to the crows chatting,” he said. “It’s all just incredible.”

Critics have condemned the detention facility and what they call the state’s apparent reliance on alligators as a security measure as a cruel spectacle, while DeSantis and other state officials have defended it as part of Florida’s muscular efforts to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“To have alligators and pythons be the security guards, only someone who’s never spent time in the swamp would ever say something like that,” Stuart said. “They’re afraid of human beings.”

The Florida National Guard is preparing to send up to 100 soldiers to the facility on July 1 to provide site security and staff augmentation, and other support “as directed.”

“We don’t have a set timeline for this mission due to the fluid nature of the situation, but we will stay on the ground for as long as we’re needed and at the direction of Governor DeSantis,” Guard spokesperson Brittianie Funderburk said in a statement.

Tribal leaders and environmentalists are urging the state to change course, noting billions of dollars in state and federal funds have been poured into Everglades restoration in recent years, an investment they say is jeopardized by plans to house some 1,000 migrants at the site for an undetermined amount of time.

Indigenous leaders and activists are planning to gather at the site again on Saturday to stage a demonstration highlighting why the area is “sacred” and should be “protected, not destroyed.”

“This place became our refuge in time of war. It provides us a place to continue our culture and traditions,” Miccosukee leader Betty Osceola wrote in a social media post announcing the demonstration.

“And we need to protect it for our future generations,” she added.

Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

By REBECCA SANTANA and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala and Honduras have signed agreements with the United States to potentially offer refuge to people from other countries who otherwise would seek asylum in the United States, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday at the conclusion of her Central America trip.

The agreements expand the Trump administration’s efforts to provide the U.S. government flexibility in returning migrants not only to their own countries, but also to third countries as it attempts to ramp up deportations.

Noem described it as a way to offer asylum-seekers options other than coming to the United States. She said the agreements had been in the works for months, with the U.S. government applying pressure on Honduras and Guatemala to get them done.

“Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well,” Noem said. “We’ve never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the United States.”

During U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, the U.S. signed such accords called safe-third country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed “safe.”

The U.S. has had such an agreement with Canada since 2002.

The practical challenge was that all three Central American countries at the time were seeing large numbers of their own citizens head to the U.S. to escape violence and a lack of economic opportunity. They also had extremely under-resourced asylum systems.

In February, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed deals with El Salvador and Guatemala that allowed the U.S. to send migrants from other nations there. But in Guatemala’s case it was to only be a point of transit for migrants who would then return to their homelands, not to apply for asylum there. And in El Salvador, it was broader, allowing the U.S. to send migrants to be imprisoned there.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Mexico would not sign a third safe country agreement, but at the same time Mexico has accepted more than 5,000 migrants from other countries deported from the U.S. since Trump took office. She said Mexico accepted them for humanitarian reasons and helped them return to their home countries.

The U.S. also has agreements with Panama and Costa Rica to take migrants from other countries though so far the numbers sent have been relatively small. The Trump administration sent 299 to Panama in February and fewer than 200 to Costa Rica.

The agreements give U.S. authorities options, especially for migrants from countries where it is not easy for the U.S. to return them directly.

Sherman reported from Mexico City.

By MICHAEL CASEY and REBECCA BOONE

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from withholding billions of dollars in transportation funds from states that don’t agree to participate in some immigration enforcement actions.

Twenty states sued after they said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened to cut off funding to states that refused to comply with President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. barred federal transportation officials from carrying out that threat before the lawsuit is fully resolved.

“The Court finds that the States have demonstrated they will face irreparable and continuing harm if forced to agree to Defendants’ unlawful and unconstitutional immigration conditions imposed in order to receive federal transportation grant funds,” wrote McConnell, the chief judge for the federal district of Rhode island. “The States face losing billions of dollars in federal funding, are being put in a position of relinquishing their sovereign right to decide how to use their own police officers, are at risk of losing the trust built between local law enforcement and immigrant communities, and will have to scale back, reconsider, or cancel ongoing transportation projects.”

On April 24, states received letters from the Department of Transportation stating that they must cooperate on immigration efforts or risk losing the congressionally appropriated funds. No funding was immediately withheld, but some of the states feared the move was imminent.

Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin and Vermont filed the lawsuit in May, saying the new so-called “Duffy Directive” put them in an impossible position.

“The States can either attempt to comply with an unlawful and unconstitutional condition that would surrender their sovereign control over their own law enforcement officers and reduce immigrants’ willingness to report crimes and participate in public health programs — or they can forfeit tens of billions of dollars of funds they rely on regularly to support the roads, highways, railways, airways, ferries, and bridges that connect their communities and homes,” the attorneys general wrote in court documents.

But acting Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Sara Miron Bloom told the judge that Congress has given the Department of Transportation the legal right to set conditions for the grant money it administers to states, and that requiring compliance and cooperation with federal law enforcement is a reasonable exercise of that discretion. Allowing the federal government to withhold the funds while the lawsuit moves forward doesn’t cause any lasting harm, Bloom wrote in court documents, because that money can always be disbursed later if needed.

But requiring the federal government to release the money to uncooperative states will likely make it impossible to recoup later, if the Department of Transportation wins the case, Bloom said.

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Farmers, cattle ranchers and hotel and restaurant managers breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump ordered a pause to immigration raids that were disrupting those industries and scaring foreign-born workers off the job.

“There was finally a sense of calm,’’ said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition.

That respite didn’t last long.

On Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin declared, “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine (immigration enforcement) efforts. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.’’

The flipflop baffled businesses trying to figure out the government’s actual policy, and Shi says now “there’s fear and worry once more.”

“That’s not a way to run business when your employees are at this level of stress and trauma,” she said.

Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the United States illegally — an issue that has long fired up his GOP base. The crackdown intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term.

Suddenly, ICE seemed to be everywhere. “We saw ICE agents on farms, pointing assault rifles at cows, and removing half the workforce,’’ said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports increased legal immigration.

One ICE raid left a New Mexico dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55. “You can’t turn off cows,’’ said Beverly Idsinga, the executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico. “They need to be milked twice a day, fed twice a day.’’

Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district, said many of his Hispanic workers — whether they’re in the country legally or not — have been calling out of work recently due to fears that they will be targeted by ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks away from a collection of federal buildings, including an ICE detention center.

“They sometimes are too scared to work their shift,” Gonzalez said. “They kind of feel like it’s based on skin color.”

In some places, the problem isn’t ICE but rumors of ICE. At cherry-harvesting time in Washington state, many foreign-born workers are staying away from the orchards after hearing reports of impending immigration raids. One operation that usually employs 150 pickers is down to 20. Never mind that there hasn’t actually been any sign of ICE in the orchards.

“We’ve not heard of any real raids,’’ said Jon Folden, orchard manager for the farm cooperative Blue Bird in Washington’s Wenatchee River Valley. “We’ve heard a lot of rumors.’’

Jennie Murray, CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said some immigrant parents worry that their workplaces will be raided and they’ll be hauled off by ICE while their kids are in school. They ask themselves, she said: “Do I show up and then my second-grader gets off the school bus and doesn’t have a parent to raise them? Maybe I shouldn’t show up for work.’’

The horror stories were conveyed to Trump, members of his administration and lawmakers in Congress by business advocacy and immigration reform groups like Shi’s coalition. Last Thursday, the president posted on his Truth Social platform that “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”

It was another case of Trump’s political agenda slamming smack into economic reality. With U.S. unemployment low at 4.2%, many businesses are desperate for workers, and immigration provides them.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born workers made up less than 19% of employed workers in the United States in 2023. But they accounted for nearly 24% of jobs preparing and serving food and 38% of jobs in farming, fishing and forestry.

“It really is clear to me that the people pushing for these raids that target farms and feed yards and dairies have no idea how farms operate,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, said Tuesday during a virtual press conference.

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated in January that undocumented workers account for 13% of U.S. farm jobs and 7% of jobs in hospitality businesses such as hotels, restaurants and bars.

The Pew Research Center found last year that 75% of U.S. registered voters — including 59% of Trump supporters — agreed that undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs that American citizens don’t want. And an influx of immigrants in 2022 and 2023 allowed the United States to overcome an outbreak of inflation without tipping into recession.

In the past, economists estimated that America’s employers could add no more than 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution calculated that because of the immigrant arrivals, monthly job growth could reach 160,000 to 200,000 without exerting upward pressure on prices.

Now Trump’s deportation plans — and the uncertainty around them — are weighing on businesses and the economy.

“The reality is, a significant portion of our industry relies on immigrant labor — skilled, hardworking people who’ve been part of our workforce for years. When there are sudden crackdowns or raids, it slows timelines, drives up costs, and makes it harder to plan ahead,” says Patrick Murphy, chief investment officer at the Florida building firm Coastal Construction and a former Democratic member of Congress. “ We’re not sure from one month to the next what the rules are going to be or how they’ll be enforced. That uncertainty makes it really hard to operate a forward-looking business.”

Adds Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank: “ICE had detained people who are here lawfully and so now lawful immigrants are afraid to go to work … All of this goes against other economic objectives the administration might have. The immigration policy and the economic policy are not lining up at all.’’

AP Staff Writers Jaime Ding in Los Angeles; Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas; Lisa Mascaro and Chris Megerian in Washington; Mae Anderson and Matt Sedensky in New York, and Associated Press/Report for America journalist Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed to this report.

By BRUCE SCHREINER

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has asked a federal judge to strike down a Kentucky regulation that it says unlawfully gives undocumented immigrants access to in-state college tuition.

The U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit says the regulation violates federal immigration law by enabling undocumented students to qualify for the lower tuition rate at Kentucky’s public colleges and universities, while American citizens from other states pay higher tuition to attend the same schools.

“Federal law prohibits aliens not lawfully present in the United States from getting in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens. There are no exceptions,” the suit said.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a federal court in Kentucky, follows a similar action by Trump’s administration in another red state as part of its efforts to crack down on immigration.

A federal judge blocked a Texas law that had given college students without legal residency access to reduced in-state tuition. That order only applied to Texas but was seen as an opening for conservatives to challenge similar laws in two dozen states. Such laws were intended to help “Dreamers,” or young adults without legal status, to be eligible for in-state tuition if they meet certain residency criteria.

“The Department of Justice just won on this exact issue in Texas, and we look forward to fighting in Kentucky to protect the rights of American citizens,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

The lawsuits in both states follow recent executive orders signed by Trump designed to stop any state or local laws or regulations the administration feels discriminate against legal residents.

The Texas suit listed the State of Texas as the defendant but did not name the state’s Republican governor as a defendant. The suit in Kentucky names Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear as one of the defendants.

The Kentucky regulation in question appears to have been issued by the state’s Council on Postsecondary Education before 2010, Beshear’s office said Wednesday in a statement that attempted to separate the governor from the legal fight.

Beshear — who was first elected governor in 2019 and is now in his second and last term due to term limits — is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2028.

Beshear spokeswoman Crystal Staley said the governor has no authority to alter the regulations of the education council, or CPE, and should not be a party to the lawsuit.

“Under Kentucky law, CPE is independent, has sole authority to determine student residency requirements for the purposes of in-state tuition and controls its own regulations,” Staley said in the statement.

Beshear in the past has denounced Trump’s anti-immigrant language as dangerous and dehumanizing and has called for a balanced approach on immigration: one that protects the nation’s borders but recognizes the role legal immigration plays in meeting business employment needs. Beshear has said he believes that “Dreamers” should be able to get full American citizenship.

A spokeswoman for CPE, another defendant in the Kentucky case, said Wednesday that its general counsel was reviewing the lawsuit and regulation but had no additional comments.

Kentucky’s Republican attorney general, Russell Coleman, said he has “serious concerns” that CPE’s policy violates federal law and said his office supports the Trump administration’s efforts.

A handful of Republican lawmakers in Kentucky tried to bring up the issue during this year’s legislative session but their bill made no headway in the GOP-supermajority legislature. The measure would have blocked immigrants in the state illegally from claiming Kentucky residency for the purpose of paying in-state tuition at a state college or university.

The Justice Department suit says the regulation is in “direct conflict” with federal law by allowing an undocumented student to qualify for reduced in-state tuition based on residence within the Bluegrass State, while denying that benefit to U.S. citizens who don’t meet Kentucky’s residency requirements.

Students from other states generally pay higher tuition rates than in-state students to attend Kentucky public colleges, the suit says. Exceptions exist when a reciprocity agreement with another state allows for reduced tuition rates for qualifying students from that other state, it said.

The regulation recognizes undocumented immigrants who graduated from Kentucky high schools as Kentucky residents in conflict with federal law, the suit says.

“It directly conflicts with federal immigration law’s prohibition on providing postsecondary education benefits — such as lower tuition rates — based on residency to aliens not lawfully present in the United States that are not available to all U.S. citizens regardless of residency,” the suit says.

By SOPHIA TAREEN and DORANY PINEDA

CHICAGO (AP) — To Jose Abel Garcia, a Guatemalan immigrant in the Los Angeles area, President Donald Trump’s latest promise to expand deportations in Democratic-led cities doesn’t change much.

The 38-year-old garment worker said Trump’s doubling down on Democratic strongholds while pausing immigration arrests at restaurants, hotels and farms doesn’t spare workers who are simply trying to make rent.

“He just talks,” Garcia said. “The raids keep happening and it’s going to be hard for him to follow through on that because he isn’t acting alone.”

In recent days Trump has vowed to shift immigration enforcement away from political allies and toward political foes, prioritizing deportations in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and cities at “the core of the Democrat Power Center.” At the same time, he’s reversed course and paused arrests in industries that heavily rely on a foreign-born workforce.

Garcia and other immigrants say, either way, fears remain high in their communities, while experts note the Trump administration’s pullback on work site immigration enforcement is a lesson other administrations learned long ago. Meanwhile, Democrats and activists insist Trump’s moves are calculated and something they’ll use as a rallying cry.

Escalating political fight

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been locked in a widening dispute with the Trump administration, said the motivation behind singling out Democratic cities is clear.

“Incite violence and chaos in blue states, have an excuse to militarize our cities, demonize his opponents, keep breaking the law and consolidate power,” Newsom posted Monday on X. “It’s illegal and we will not let it stand.”

Trump again fixed on New York and Chicago on Monday while pointing to Los Angeles demonstrations against his administration policies, and adding many of “those people weren’t from LA, they were from California.”

“I want to focus on the cities,” he said at the Group of Seven Summit in Canada.

The Trump administration has said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least3,000 arrests daily, up from about 650 daily during the first months of Trump’s second term. Already, the president and his allies have targeted so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions” with splashy live-streamed arrests, lawsuits and summoning mayors and governors to testify at the Capitol.

“It’s clear that Trump is escalating these attacks on Democratic cities because he’s threatened by the mass mobilizations,” said U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a Chicago Democrat. “I expect Democrats will push back harder.”

In the Los Angeles area, a group of advocates continued community-led patrols to watch for ICE arrests and warn neighbors.

Organizer Francisco “Chavo” Romero said they’re also patrolling Metro rail stations and other public transit hubs.

“They double down, we triple down,” he said.

Worksite arrests

Pulling back on worksite enforcement is new for Trump, but not in recent history.

Going after employers on immigration compliance has been a controversial issue, particularly in industries that rely on immigrant labor. For instance, nearly half of those in meatpacking are thought to be born abroad.

Under a 1996 immigration law, the Clinton administration investigated hiring practices to weed out employees without proper U.S. work authorization and to punish employers. But it didn’t last long. Investigations took months. Workers were afraid to come to work. Some farmers complained their crops were suffering. Elected officials began to intervene.

“It pretty much stopped,” said Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was the predecessor to ICE.

Now a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Police Institute, she said other presidential administrations have grappled with the same problem.

“That’s always the conundrum: How do you hold the employer accountable?” she said. “You can go and get the workers and in two weeks there are going to be more workers hired.”

Earlier this month, immigration authorities raided an Omaha meat production plant, angering company officials who said they followed the law. Trump’s first administration saw the largest workplace sting in a decade with arrests at seven Mississippi chicken plants.

That made his shift to pause such operations a surprise. He wrote on Truth Social that the arrests were “taking very good, long time workers” away and it was hard to replace them.

How the pause will play out is unclear. A message left Monday with the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.

Immigrants and activists left baffled

Still, Trump’s approach confused many.

“On one hand, he will stay away from certain industries and at the same time double down on Chicago,” said Lawrence Benito, head of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “I’m not sure how to reconcile those two comments.”

He said the group would continue to help immigrants understand their rights in the case of ICE arrests.

U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Chicago Democrat, accused Trump of trying to silence dissent.

In a lengthy post on his Truth Social site about cracking down on Democratic cities, Trump said, without any evidence, that Democrats were using immigrants living in the country without legal status to steal elections.

For others, the latest policies were simply another thing to worry about.

Jorge Lima, 32, said his immigrant parents from Mexico are only leaving home to go to their jobs as garment workers in California.

“They don’t go out anymore,” he said. “They’re afraid but they have to eat.”

Pineda reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed from Washington.

We’re coming off a powerful weekend of action. Millions of people in hundreds of cities were united in “No Kings” protests that swept the country. 

Americans were out to condemn what many see as President Donald Trump’s federal overreach, aggressive anti‑immigrant enforcement, and a military parade that celebrated him and the U.S. Army. 

In Los Angeles, protesters have been out for days and Trump responded with a page from the authoritarian playbook. He deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines onto the streets of L.A. On Friday, for the first time in recent history, military personnel temporarily detained a civilian.

Here in Detroit, thousands raised their voices at Clark Park, shouting “down with deportations.” Local advocates say ICE agents recently arrested a Venezuelan family in Southwest Detroit moments after their asylum hearing was dismissed. At the McNamara federal courthouse, asylum seekers were detained just as judges ended their proceedings. 

That tactic — attend your immigration hearing and risk arrest — is becoming common.

An almost-graduated Detroit high school student was also detained during a traffic stop on his way to a school field trip. He was deported last week despite many calls from the community urging officials to let him temporarily stay. 

To help us think about this moment, we’re joined by attorney and professor Sabrina Balgamwalla. She’s the director of the Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic at Wayne State University. 

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming  on demand.

Trusted, accurate, up-to-date.

WDET strives to make our journalism accessible to everyone. As a public media institution, we maintain our journalistic integrity through independent support from readers like you. If you value WDET as your source of news, music and conversation, please make a gift today.

Donate today »

More stories from The Metro

The Metro: Black-owned brewery to join the Detroit beer scene

Nadia Zyiad

Read More »

The Metro: Mayoral candidate Joel Haashiim fights for Detroit grassroots power

Sam Corey

Read More »

The Metro: New public health school emerging at Wayne State University

Robyn Vincent

Read More »

The post The Metro: Immigrants face arrest at hearings as Trump policies spark nationwide protests appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

By AAMER MADHANI and ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels, after President Donald Trump expressed alarm about the impact of aggressive enforcement, an official said Saturday.

The move follows weeks of increased enforcement since Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.

Tatum King, an official with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, wrote regional leaders on Thursday to halt investigations of the agricultural industry, including meatpackers, restaurants and hotels, according to The New York Times.

A U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to The Associated Press the contents of the directive. The Homeland Security Department did not dispute it.

“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokesperson, said when asked to confirm the directive.

The shift suggests Trump’s promise of mass deportations has limits if it threatens industries that rely on workers in the country illegally. Trump posted on his Truth Social site Thursday that he disapproved of how farmers and hotels were being affected.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” he wrote. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

While ICE’s presence in Los Angeles has captured public attention and prompted Trump to deploy the California National Guard and Marines, immigration authorities have also been a growing presence at farms and factories across the country.

Farm bureaus in California say raids at packinghouses and fields are threatening businesses that supply much of the country’s food. Dozens of farmworkers were arrested after uniformed agents fanned out on farms northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County, which is known for growing strawberries, lemons and avocados. Others are skipping work as fear spreads.

ICE made more than 70 arrests Tuesday at a food packaging company in Omaha, Nebraska. The owner of Glenn Valley Foods said the company was enrolled in a voluntary program to verify workers’ immigration status and that it was operating at 30% capacity as it scrambled to find replacements.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, has repeatedly said ICE will send officers into communities and workplaces, particularly in “sanctuary” jurisdictions that limit the agency’s access to local jails.

Sanctuary cities “will get exactly what they don’t want, more officers in the communities and more officers at the work sites,” Homan said Monday on Fox News Channel. “We can’t arrest them in the jail, we’ll arrest them in the community. If we can’t arrest them in community, we’re going to increase work site enforcement operation. We’re going to flood the zone.”

The post Immigration center plan stirs debate in Baldwin appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI

In one of his first acts of his second term as president, Donald Trumppardoned hundreds of people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to keep him in office, including those who beat police officers.

On Monday, Trump posted a warning on social media to those demonstrating in Los Angeles against his immigration crackdown and confronting police and members of the National Guard he had deployed: “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”

The discrepancy of Trump’s response to the two disturbances — pardoning rioters who beat police on Jan. 6, which he called “a beautiful day,” while condemning violence against law enforcement in Los Angeles — illustrates how the president expects his enemies to be held to different standards than his supporters.

“Trump’s behavior makes clear that he only values the rule of law and the people who enforce it when it’s to his political advantage,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.

Trump pardoned more than 1,000 people who tried to halt the transfer of power on that day in 2021, when about 140 officers were injured. The former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, called it “likely the largest single day mass assault of law enforcement ” in American history.

Trump’s pardon covered people convicted of attacking police with flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch. Many of the assaults were captured on surveillance or body camera footage that showed rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police as officers desperately fought to beat back the angry crowd.

While some who were pardoned were convicted of nonviolent crimes, Trump pardoned at least 276 defendants who were convicted of assault charges, according to an Associated Press review of court records. Nearly 300 others had their pending charges dismissed as a result of Trump’s sweeping act of clemency.

Roughly 180 of the defendants were charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement or obstructing officers during a civil disorder.

“They were extremely violent, and they have been treated as if their crimes were nothing, and now the president is trying to use the perception of violence by some protesters as an excuse to crack some heads,” said Mike Romano, who was a deputy chief of the section of the U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted those involved in the Capitol siege.

A White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, defended the president’s response: “President Trump was elected to secure the border, equip federal officials with the tools to execute this plan, and restore law and order.”

Trump has long planned to use civil unrest as an opportunity to invoke broad presidential powers, and he seemed poised to do just that on Monday as he activated a battalion of U.S. Marines to support the presence of the National Guard. He mobilized the Guard on Saturday over the opposition of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats.

The Guard was last sent to Los Angeles by a president during the Rodney King riots in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act. Those riots were significantly more violent and widespread than the current protests in Los Angeles, which were largely confined to a stretch of downtown, a relatively small patch in a city of 469 square miles and nearly 4 million people.

The current demonstrations were sparked by a confrontation Saturday in the city of Paramount, southeast of downtown Los Angeles, where federal agents were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office.

California officials, who are largely Democrats, argued that Trump is trying to create more chaos to expand his power. Newsom, whom Trump suggested should be arrested, called the president’s acts “authoritarian.” But even Rick Caruso, a prominent Los Angeles Republican and former mayoral candidate, posted on the social media site X that the president should not have called in the National Guard.

Protests escalated after the Guard arrived, with demonstrators blockading a downtown freeway. Some some set multiple self-driving cars on fire and pelted Los Angeles police with debris and fireworks.

Romano said he worried that Trump’s double standard on how demonstrators should treat law enforcement will weaken the position of police in American society.

He recalled that, during the Capitol attack, many rioters thought police should let them into the building because they had supported law enforcement’s crackdown on anti-police demonstrations after George Floyd was murdered in 2020. That sort of “transactional” approach Trump advocates is toxic, Romano said.

“We need to expect law enforcement are doing their jobs properly,” he said. Believing they just cater to the president “is going to undermine public trust in law enforcement.”

Associated Press writers Michael Kunzleman and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

Clashes between protesters and law enforcement bled into Orange County on Monday, as an anti-immigration rally in Santa Ana grew heated in the evening after a day of reported U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations around the region.

Reports of ICE activity came in from across the city, including outside Home Depot locations, at a business park near Warner Avenue and Garnsey Street and at a commercial area around Broadway and Warner, according to the Orange County Rapid Response Network, a mutual aid group that keeps watch for ICE activity in local communities. In Fountain Valley, agents were reported near a car wash and a fast food restaurant off Magnolia Street and near Fountain Valley Regional Hospital. Additional activity was confirmed in Huntington Beach by the network.

According to network coordinator Sandra De Anda, at least a dozen people were detained outside of a Home Depot on Harbor Boulevard, and community dispatchers logged several others being detained throughout the day.

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said immigration officials appeared to have targeted day laborers waiting for work. News of the raids sparked protests Monday at several locations in Santa Ana, including outside Santa Ana City Hall and near the Home Depot.

Ricky Dominguez, 36, of Santa Ana, said he went to the protest near the civic center after work because he had been left “speechless” that ICE was seen detaining people in Santa Ana.

“I saw what was going on with ICE and felt I had to be here,” he said. “They’re here in my backyard.”

Throughout the afternoon, the crowd of protesters grew along Santa Ana Boulevard in front of the federal building. At one point, when protesters tried to block a van from leaving a driveway from the federal building, police intervened to push the crowd back and used pepper spray as a deterrent.

Just before 6 p.m., the demonstration had grown to several hundred people and was at times blocking Santa Ana Boulevard and Civic Center Plaza, the former of which was shut down to traffic with barricades in place. The federal building was guarded by law enforcement members in tactical gear, some had patches that said Homeland Security Investigations or Homeland Security Police.

Dylan Carranca, 23, of Fullerton, said he was standing in front of the agents near the federal building when he saw three tear gas canisters get thrown into the crowd standing in the street.

“We were just standing there. I didn’t see anything get thrown by our side and then all of a sudden we saw three get thrown. One on the right, one in the middle and one on the left. I saw one land and I took off running,” Carranca said, whose eyes had turned red from the gas.

Protesters who had spent the afternoon in Santa Ana said police at first were using pepper bullets, but later switched to rubber bullets.

“Every time we move up, we don’t even do anything, they’re just there and tell us to stay. We get close and they keep trying to get us to get back with tear gas and they start shooting rubber bullets,” said Carla, 22, of Santa Ana, who did not want to give her last name. “It’s a cycle.”

Photos: Santa Ana Police declare riot as immigration raids spark day-long protest

Just before 6:30 p.m., someone from the crowd launched an object toward the agents, which triggered another round of tear gas and the crowd to move back.

After 7 p.m. law enforcement declared the gathering a riot and told people they needed to leave and be off the street or they would be arrested.

Across town, around 100 people gathered peacefully at the intersection of Harbor and MacArthur boulevards around 6:30 p.m. to protest the immigration enforcement actions that took place earlier in the day.

“ICE out of OC,” the protesters chanted, as passing cars honked in support. They held signs that read, “We celebrate sanctuary here” and “No one is illegal.”

Carlos Perea, executive director of the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice, said he hadn’t expected day laborers in Orange County to be targeted so soon, following the recent raids in Los Angeles.

Councilmember David Penaloza, who represents the area around the Home Depot on Edinger, condemned the timing and tactics of the enforcement activity.

“These actions are not about public safety,” he said in a statement. “They are about intimidation and sowing fear among some of the most vulnerable and hardest-working members of our community.”

“No city resources have been or will be used to assist ICE agents in any way,” Penaloza added. “However, if any individuals — whether federal agents or peaceful protesters — resort to violence, Santa Ana police will respond to help maintain public safety.”

The Santa Ana Police Department said in a statement that the department “does not and will not participate in immigration enforcement efforts.”

Sarmiento, who previously served as Santa Ana mayor, visited a Home Depot on Edinger Avenue on Monday morning and said he was told at least six people had been detained there.

“Our day laborers, they’re simply looking for work,” he said in a social media video. “These are people who are not criminals, these are people who are trying to feed their families.”

Councilmember Thai Viet Phan called the day’s events “unconstitutional, horrifying and inhumane,” and pointed to the broader pattern of enforcement she said is targeting immigrant families across Southern California.

“Separating families, raiding schools, invading hospitals and ambushing graduation ceremonies do not constitute public safety,” she said in a statement.

Monday’s events in Orange County follow a weekend of coordinated federal raids in the Los Angeles area. At least 44 people were detained across a handful of sites, and protests have quickly escalated across the area, with large crowds gathering at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A., Paramount and Boyle Heights. Over the weekend, the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles, a move California officials are now challenging in court.

In Orange County, some residents said they feared enforcement activity may intensify as focus shifts south. At the Magnolia Car Wash in Fountain Valley, the assistant manager said he saw federal agents arrive just before 11 a.m. in unmarked Suburbans, two Ford pickups and one Mercedes-Benz, park in the middle of the lot and begin making arrests inside the business.

“I went up to ask if they needed anything and they didn’t answer. Two of them went straight inside,” he said in Spanish for a Facebook livestream. “I said, ‘These are workers! Are you looking for immigrants or criminals?’ I got closer, and as I did, one of them scratched my face with his fingernail.”

He said ICE detained six or seven of his coworkers and described the scene as chaotic and aggressive.

“It felt like a kidnapping,” he said. “We’re hardworking people here to work, not to steal from this country.”

Victor Valladares, a local activist and former official with the Orange County Democratic Party, livestreamed from the scene and said he believes at least six people were detained.

“What happened here is unjust. People were just working, and they took six of them,” Valladares said in Spanish.

Tracy La, executive director of VietRISE, said her organization is tracking enforcement across Little Saigon. On Monday morning, La said a Border Patrol agent was seen tackling a Latino man near a bus stop in front of the Song Hy Vietnamese supermarket.

“This blatant act of racial profiling and militarized immigration enforcement aggression against our Latino and migrant neighbors took place down the street from VietRISE’s office,” she said in a statement. “Trump’s overtly racist immigration agenda has no place in Orange County. We condemn these unjust attacks by ICE and Border Patrol that are by and large terrorizing Latino communities.”

Law enforcement agencies in Orange County emphasized that while peaceful protest is protected, any violence or vandalism would be prosecuted.

“The Orange County Sheriff’s Department will always defend the First Amendment rights of those who peacefully protest, but criminal activity such as vandalism, destruction of property and assaults will not be tolerated,” Sheriff Don Barnes said in a statement.

District Attorney Todd Spitzer also said his office is monitoring the situation.

“Any evidence of criminal activity, including failure to obey lawful orders to disperse, will be investigated and thoroughly reviewed,” he said in a statement.

Santa Ana Councilmember Phil Bacerra urged protesters to avoid giving federal officials a reason to escalate enforcement.

“Exercise your constitutional right to express yourself peacefully. Do not engage in illegal activity,” he said in a statement. “Vandalism, looting and assaulting law enforcement are neither peaceful nor legal. Show your love for Santa Ana by not giving the federal government any excuse to send the National Guard to the Golden City.”

The total number of people detained in Orange County on Monday has not yet been confirmed. The Orange County Rapid Response Network’s De Anda said her team is still in the process of confirming a number.

Photos: Santa Ana Police declare riot as immigration raids spark day-long protest

The post Detroit Evening Report: Travel ban rollout appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

Unhappy with the Trump Administration’s arrests of undocumented immigrants, about 50 protesters demonstrated near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Detroit on Sunday.

Mass arrests and deportations, including some that continue to violate court orders, have sent many to the streets in protest.

Over the weekend, law enforcement in Los Angeles, CA attacked protesters and journalists with tear gas and projectiles injuring dozens.

The crowd was small but vocal, chanting “Summer’s here, melt the ICE, immigrants deserve their rights,” along with chants in Spanish that included expletives aimed at ICE.

Mike Barber, a special education teacher from White Lake, was among them. He says he’s troubled by the administration’s actions.

“This is against what America stands for,” Barber says. “America is a nation of immigrants and now they want to kick them out without even looking at their papers.”

“It could be us next if we’re disliked.”

“I mean, here at Wayne State, we had people that got their F1 visas canceled,” Pico says. “These aren’t criminals, and the fact that Trump wants to portray them like that, I mean, he’s just racist.”

Jo Pico was drawn to protest after seeing the police-initiated violence in LA.

Leah Checchini of Hazel Park says her father immigrated from Argentina and that she believes everyone should have the same opportunity that he did.

“I have a lot of friends that are in the process of getting their papers taken care of and everything,” Checchini says. “So just seeing what’s happening to people is enraging, to say the least.”

Nationwide protests are planned for Saturday. It coincides with a planned show of military might by President Trump.

The President is celebrating his birthday with a military parade in Washington D.C.

Trusted, accurate, up-to-date.

WDET strives to make our journalism accessible to everyone. As a public media institution, we maintain our journalistic integrity through independent support from readers like you. If you value WDET as your source of news, music and conversation, please make a gift today.

Donate today »

The post ‘Melt the ICE’ Protesters in Detroit Unhappy with Immigration actions appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

The post Trump announces travel ban and restrictions on 19 countries set to go into effect Monday appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must give migrants sent to an El Salvador prison a chance to challenge their removals.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg said that people who were sent to the prison in March under an 18th-century wartime law haven’t been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges.

The ruling is the latest milestone in a monthslong legal saga over the fate of deportees imprisoned at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.

By JACQUES BILLEAUD

PHOENIX (AP) — Twenty years ago, when Arizona became frustrated with its porous border with Mexico, the state passed a series of immigration laws as proponents regularly griped about how local taxpayers get stuck paying the education, health care and other costs for people in the U.S. illegally.

Then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio gladly took up the cause, launching 20 large-scale traffic patrols targeting immigrants from January 2008 through October 2011. That led to a 2013 racial profiling verdict and expensive court-ordered overhauls of the agency’s traffic patrol operations and, later, its internal affairs unit.

Eight years after Arpaio was voted out, taxpayers in Maricopa County are still paying legal and compliance bills from the crackdowns. The tab is expected to reach $352 million by midsummer 2026, including $34 million approved Monday by the county’s governing board.

While the agency has made progress on some fronts and garnered favorable compliance grades in certain areas, it hasn’t yet been deemed fully compliant with court-ordered overhauls.

Since the profiling verdict, the sheriff’s office has been criticized for disparate treatment of Hispanic and Black drivers in a series of studies of its traffic stops. The latest study, however, shows significant improvements. The agency’s also dogged by a crushing backlog of internal affairs cases.

Thomas Galvin, chairman of the county’s governing board, said the spending is “staggering” and has vowed to find a way to end the court supervision.

“I believe at some point someone has to ask: Can we just keep doing this?” Galvin said. “Why do we have to keep doing this?”

Critics of the sheriff’s office have questioned why the county wanted to back out of the case now that taxpayers are finally beginning to see changes at the sheriff’s office.

Profiling verdict

Nearly 12 years ago, a federal judge concluded Arpaio’s officers had racially profiled Latinos in his traffic patrols that targeted immigrants.

The patrols, known as “sweeps,” involved large numbers of sheriff’s deputies flooding an area of metro Phoenix — including some Latino neighborhoods — over several days to stop traffic violators and arrest other offenders.

The verdict led the judge to order an overhaul of the traffic patrol operations that included retraining officers on making constitutional stops, establishing an alert system to spot problematic behavior by officers and equipping deputies with body cameras.

Arpaio was later convicted of criminal contempt of court for disobeying the judge’s 2011 order to stop the patrols. He was spared a possible jail sentence when his misdemeanor conviction was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2017.

Several traffic-stop studies conducted after the profiling verdict showed deputies had often treated Hispanic and Black drivers differently than other drivers, though the reports stop short of saying Hispanics were still being profiled.

The latest report, covering stops in 2023, painted a more favorable picture, saying there’s no evidence of disparities in the length of stops or rates of arrests and searches for Hispanic drivers when compared to white drivers. But when drivers from all racial minorities were grouped together for analysis purposes, the study said they faced stops that were 19 seconds longer than white drivers.

While the case focused on traffic patrols, the judge later ordered changes to the sheriff’s internal affairs operation, which critics alleged was biased in its decision-making under Arpaio and shielded sheriff’s officials from accountability.

The agency has faced criticism for a yearslong backlog of internal affairs cases, which in 2022 stood around 2,100 and was reduced to 939 as of last month.

Taxpayers pick up the bill

By midsummer 2026, taxpayers are projected to pay $289 million in compliance costs for the sheriff’s office alone, plus another $23 million on legal costs and $36 million for a staff of policing professionals who monitor the agency’s progress in complying with the overhauls.

Galvin has criticized the money spent on monitoring and has questioned whether it has made anyone safer.

Raul Piña, a longtime member of a community advisory board created to help improve trust in the sheriff’s office, said the court supervision should continue because county taxpayers are finally seeing improvements. Piña believes Galvin’s criticism of the court oversight is politically driven.

“They just wrote blank checks for years, and now it makes sense to pitch a fit about it being super expensive?” Piña said.

Ending court supervision

Christine Wee, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the sheriff’s office isn’t ready to be released from court supervision.

Wee said the plaintiffs have questions about the traffic-stop data and believe the internal affairs backlog has to be cleared and the quality of investigations needs to be high. “The question of getting out from under the court is premature,” Wee said.

The current sheriff, Jerry Sheridan, said he sees himself asking the court during his term in office to end its supervision of the sheriff’s office. “I would like to completely satisfy the court orders within the next two years,” Sheridan said.

But ending court supervision would not necessarily stop all the spending, the sheriff’s office has said in court records.

Its lawyers said the costs “will likely continue to be necessary even after judicial oversight ends to sustain the reforms that have been implemented.”