By MARTHA BELLISLE

SEATTLE (AP) — In what appears to be the first major challenge to the new $100,000 fee required for H-1B visa applications, a coalition of health care providers, religious groups, university professors and others filed a federal lawsuit Friday to stop the plan, saying it has “thrown employers, workers and federal agencies into chaos.”

President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Sept. 19 requiring the new fee, saying the H-1B visa program “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.” The changes were slated to go into effect in 36 hours, which caused panic for employers, who instructed their workers to return to the U.S. immediately.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, said the H-1B program is a critical pathway to hiring healthcare workers and educators. It drives innovation and economic growth in the U.S., and allows employers to fill jobs in specialized fields, the lawsuit said.

“Without relief, hospitals will lose medical staff, churches will lose pastors, classrooms will lose teachers, and industries across the country risk losing key innovators,” Democracy Forward Foundation and Justice Action Center said in a press release. “The suit asks the court to immediately block the order and restore predictability for employers and workers.”

They called the new fee “Trump’s latest anti-immigration power grab.”

Messages seeking comment from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which are named as defendants along with Trump and the State Department, were not immediately returned.

The H-1B visa program was created by Congress to attract high-skilled workers to fill jobs that tech companies find difficult to fill. About a third of H-1B workers are nurses, teachers, physicians, scholars, priests and pastors, according to the lawsuit.

Critics say the program is a pipeline for overseas workers who are often willing to work for as little as $60,000 annually, well below the $100,000-plus salaries typically paid to U.S. technology workers.

Historically, H-1B visas have been doled out through a lottery. This year, Seattle-based Amazon was by far the top recipient of H-1B visas with more than 10,000 awarded, followed by Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Apple and Google. Geographically, California has the highest number of H-1B workers.

The $100,000 fee will discourage the best and brightest minds from bringing life-saving research to the U.S., said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors.

Mike Miller, Region 6 Director of the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, said Trump’s plan “prioritizes wealth and connections over scientific acumen and diligence.”

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, contends the “exorbitant fee” invites corruption and is illegal. Congress created the program and Trump can’t rewrite it overnight or levy new taxes by executive order, the groups said.

By MICHAEL CASEY

BOSTON (AP) — A federal appeals court in Boston ruled on Friday that the Trump administration cannot withhold citizenship from children born to people in the country illegally or temporarily, adding to the mounting legal setbacks for the president’s birthright order.

A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals became the fifth federal court since June to either issue or uphold orders blocking the president’s birthright order. The court concluded that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claims that the children described in the order are entitled to birthright citizenship under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The panel upheld lower courts’ preliminary injunctions, which blocked the birthright order while lawsuits challenging it moved ahead. The order, signed the day the president took office in January, would halt automatic citizenship for babies born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily.

“The ‘lessons of history’ thus give us every reason to be wary of now blessing this most recent effort to break with our established tradition of recognizing birthright citizenship and to make citizenship depend on the actions of one’s parents rather than — in all but the rarest of circumstances — the simple fact of being born in the United States,” the court wrote.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose state was one of nearly 20 that were part of the lawsuit challenging the order, welcomed the ruling.

“The First Circuit reaffirmed what we already knew to be true: The President’s attack on birthright citizenship flagrantly defies the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and a nationwide injunction is the only reasonable way to protect against its catastrophic implications,” Bonta said in a statement. “We are glad that the courts have continued to protect Americans’ fundamental rights.”

In July, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the third court ruling blocking the birthright order nationwide after a key Supreme Court decision in June. Less than two weeks later, a federal judge in Maryland also issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the order. The issue is expected to move quickly back to the nation’s highest court.

The justices ruled in June that lower courts generally can’t issue nationwide injunctions, but they didn’t rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states.

A federal judge in New Hampshire later issued a ruling prohibiting Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide in a new class-action suit, and a San Francisco-based appeals court affirmed a different lower court’s nationwide injunction in a lawsuit that included state plaintiffs.

In September, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to uphold its birthright citizenship order. The appeal sets in motion a process at the high court that could lead to a definitive ruling from the justices by early summer on whether the citizenship restrictions are constitutional.

“The court is misinterpreting the 14th Amendment. We look forward to being vindicated by the Supreme Court,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

At the heart of the lawsuits challenging the birthright order is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which includes a citizenship clause that says all people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to U.S. jurisdiction, are citizens.

Plaintiffs in the Boston case — one of the cases the 1st Circuit considered — told Sorokin that the principle of birthright citizenship is “enshrined in the Constitution,” and that Trump does not have the authority to issue the order, which they called a “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”

Justice Department attorneys argued the phrase “subject to United States jurisdiction” in the amendment means that citizenship isn’t automatically conferred to children based on their birth location alone.

In a landmark birthright citizenship case, the Supreme Court in 1898 found a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to strip legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.

The justices issued an emergency order, which will last as long as the court case continues, putting on hold a lower-court ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco that found the administration had wrongly ended temporary protected status for the Venezuelans. The three liberal justices dissented.

Trump’s Republican administration has moved to withdraw various protections that have allowed immigrants to remain in the United States and work legally, including ending TPS for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians who were granted protection under President Joe Biden, a Democrat. TPS is granted in 18-month increments.

In May, the Supreme Court reversed a preliminary order from Chen that affected another 350,000 Venezuelans whose protections expired in April. The high court provided no explanation at the time, which is common in emergency appeals.

“The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court wrote Friday in an unsigned order.

Some migrants have lost their jobs and homes while others have been detained and deported after the justices stepped in the first time, lawyers for the migrants told the court.

“I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote. “Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.”

Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife or other dangerous conditions. The designation can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary.

Chen found that the Department of Homeland Security acted “with unprecedented haste and in an unprecedented manner … for the preordained purpose of expediting termination of Venezuela’s TPS” status.

In earlier denying the Trump administration’s emergency appeal, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote for a unanimous three-judge appellate panel that Chen determined that DHS made its “decisions first and searched for a valid basis for those decisions second.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, had argued in the new court filing that the justices’ May order should also apply to the current case.

“This case is familiar to the court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this Court’s orders on the emergency docket,” Sauer wrote.

The result, he said, is that the “new order, just like the old one, halted the vacatur and termination of TPS affecting over 300,000 aliens based on meritless legal theories.”

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

By VALERIE GONZALEZ

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Trump administration said Friday that it would pay migrant children $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries, dangling a new incentive in efforts to persuade people to self-deport.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t say how much migrants would get or when the offer would take effect, but The Associated Press obtained an email to migrant shelters saying children 14 years of age and older would get $2,500 each. Children were given 24 hours to respond.

The notice to shelters from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Families and Children did not indicate any consequences for children who decline the offer. It asked shelter directors to acknowledge the offer within four hours.

ICE said in a statement that the offer would initially be for 17-year-olds.

“Any payment to support a return home would be provided after an immigration judge grants the request and the individual arrives in their country of origin,” ICE said. “Access to financial support when returning home would assist should they choose that option.”

ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and the Health and Human Services Department did not immediately respond to questions about the amount of the payment and age eligibility.

ICE dismissed widespread reports among immigration lawyers and advocates that it was launching a much broader crackdown Friday to deport migrant children who entered the country without their parents, called “Freaky Friday.”

The administration has also offered $1,000 to adults who voluntarily leave the country. Advocates said $2,500 may prevent children from making informed decisions.

“For a child, $2,500 might be the most money they’ve ever seen in their life, and that may make it very, very difficult for them to accurately weigh the long-term risks of taking voluntary departure versus trying to stay in the United States and going through the immigration court process to get relief that they may be legally entitled to,” said Melissa Adamson, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law.

Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, echoed concerns about the offer, saying it “pressures children to abandon their legal claims and return to a life of fear and danger without ever receiving a fair hearing.”

U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.

Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.

The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.

The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.

The post ACLU of Michigan seeks release of detainee with leukemia, seven others appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

Among those held is a 33-year-old father with life-threatening cancer, and he’s been denied.

The post ACLU sues over detention of immigrants in Michigan, citing unconstitutional ICE policy appeared first on Detroit Metro Times.

The post Detroit Evening Report: Whitmer urges Trump to reconsider new H1B visa cost appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

Local cooperation with federal agents stokes fear and exposes communities to costly lawsuits.

The post Advocates warn Michigan police against cooperating with ICE appeared first on Detroit Metro Times.

The post Threat of political violence remains high after Kirk killing appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

By DANIEL WALTERS/InvestigateWest

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The first time Denys’s children heard fireworks go off in Spokane, Washington, they were terrified. His kids had grown up about 20 miles from the Russian border, in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, and they knew too well the booms of Russian missile attacks and screeching sounds of Ukrainian air defenses.

In 2023, after Russians attacked the hospital where his youngest daughter, Olivia, had recently been born, Denys knew he needed a way out, and fast.

That’s when a former neighbor, living in an American city on the other side of the world, offered him an escape:

“He called me and said, ‘We have a nice program — Uniting for Ukraine,’” Denys recalled. “If you want to come, grab your family and move.”

Denys, who asked his last name not be used, leapt at the opportunity. He’s stayed in Spokane for the past three years, getting used to a place where explosions are simply celebrations of freedom. He’d spent a half year learning English, and then drawing on his Ukrainian experience making boilers, he swiftly got a job welding construction beams at Metals Fabrication Co.

Like so many of the 240,000 Ukrainians who have immigrated to this country through the Uniting for Ukraine program, his future here is precarious.

Launched by former President Joe Biden in 2022, Uniting for Ukraine is a “humanitarian parole” program. It allowed Ukrainian immigrants to temporarily stay and work in America, two years at a time, so long as they found an American sponsor willing to help support them.

In June, however, Denys lost his job — not because he did anything wrong, but because the federal government failed to reauthorize his right to work. Under Donald Trump’s administration, which is targeting humanitarian parole programs affecting nearly 1.8 million migrants, renewals have ground to a halt.

“I’m very worried about my family,” Denys said. “I need to buy food. I have three kids.”

Along with freezing the Biden-era parole programs for Ukrainian refugees, the administration completely withdrew parole protections for more than 530,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and over 9,000 from Afghanistan.

Many Ukrainians are taking notice of what’s happening to other refugees. In Spokane, two Venezuelan immigrants who had come here legally through humanitarian parole programs were jailed and slated for deportation, despite applying for asylum. When they showed up for a scheduled meeting in June with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they were arrested by ICE and carted off to Tacoma’s immigration detention center. A mass protest resulted in 30 arrests, federal charges for nine demonstrators, and national media attention.

Unlike Latin American, Haitian and Afghan immigrants, most Ukrainians don’t have to worry about racial profiling. They haven’t been tarred with wild falsehoods about eating pets from the presidential debate stage. But while Ukrainians were never the primary target of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Biden’s immigration legacy, they’ve been caught in the crossfire. At the mercy of a rapidly changing and dysfunctional federal bureaucracy, many are paralyzed by the uncertainty — faced with a choice of waiting for a government response, working illegally, surviving on charity, or leaving America entirely.

“There’s this no man’s land,” said Spokane immigration attorney Sam Smith. “There’s this in-between that they’re stuck in. There’s no good solution for them.”

Frozen in place

Whether because of its climate or its people, Spokane, a mid-sized Washington city on the Idaho border, has been a hub for Ukrainian immigration since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought a new surge of nearly 3,000 Ukrainians, many who quickly got to work establishing their new lives.

At a coffee stop started by another Ukrainian immigrant, Maksym Bedenko proudly hands InvestigateWest the business card for The Old Preacher, a small barbershop business he started in 2023. He was lucky enough to re-enroll in the Uniting for Ukraine program in August of last year, when it was still easy to get re-approval. But he knows a slew of other people, including Amazon workers, factory workers and caregivers, who have all lost their jobs.

The second Trump administration had launched with a salvo against nearly every aspect of the immigration system. Executive orders banned new refugees, severed contracts with refugee resettlement organizations and put any renewals of those with programs like Uniting for Ukraine on hold.

During the campaign, Trump had demonized Biden’s humanitarian parole programs, which had resulted in a surge of immigrants into some cities. On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order to “terminate all categorical parole programs” that were contrary to his policies.

Three days later, a freeze order went out from the acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Stop processing all Uniting for Ukraine applications, including from those trying to renew their parole status. No parole status, no new rights to work.

Spokane Slavic Association Vice President Zhanna Oberemok, who immigrated to Spokane shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, said drivers for her husband’s trucking company recently started seeing some of their workers lose their commercial driver’s licenses as their work authorizations expired.

“Within the next week or so, we’re going to be losing about seven drivers because their driver license just became inactive,” Oberemok said.

Employers were frustrated to have to let perfectly good workers go.

Sara Weaver-Lundberg, vice president for Metals Fabrication Co., said by email that Denys had been a “gilded unicorn,” the rare, impossible-to-find experienced worker, and losing him “put a strain on our production.”

He was dependable, she said, always willing to work overtime when they needed it. She reached out to her corporate attorney and contacted her congressman to find help for Denys, but so far, neither route has been effective.

“I cannot imagine having to leave my country because it was no longer safe for me and my family,” Weaver-Lundberg said. “Denys did just that — he left Ukraine and entered this country legally. … Now, because of a pause in the program or backlog, he is living in this country with no job.”

Every two weeks, Denys had been sending money to his mother — still in Ukraine, where the prices of groceries and utilities have skyrocketed because of the war. He had been hoping to bring her to the United States through Uniting for Ukraine. Now, that’s out of the question, too.

Without a job, he’s been relying on the generosity of his sponsor — his former neighbor — to pay for food and rent for himself, his wife and his three kids. He’s waiting for a phone call from the state government to see if he’s eligible for unemployment benefits. He noted how he’d been turned from someone contributing to tax revenue through his work into someone costing the government money.

At a table at the Spokane refugee resettlement nonprofit Thrive International, Denys speaks through a translator, a woman who herself came here through the Uniting for Ukraine program.

“I know some families, they got mortgages,” Denys said. “They have loans for their cars. They have huge bills every single month.”

They’re left with an ugly decision: Provide for their family or follow the law. It’s a choice Denys hasn’t made and doesn’t want to.

“I should probably find some job and work under the table, but I don’t want to do that,” Denys said. “But it’s like the government pushes us to do that. We don’t want to do that. We want to work legally and follow the law.”

Pushing back

Elsewhere in Spokane, a local doctor has been fighting for months for a remedy in federal court. In February, Kyle Varner, an activist who spent a month along the Ukrainian border caring for refugees and who’d sponsored nearly 50 Venezuelan immigrants, joined a lawsuit to challenge the new policies, writing that he feels “that there is something fundamentally and morally wrong with treating people differently and giving them fewer rights simply because they were not born in this country.”

Along with immigrants from Ukraine, Nicaragua, Haiti and Afghanistan, he asked the court to force the Trump administration to start processing humanitarian parole applications again.

So far, the verdict has been mixed: New parole applications remain frozen, and in May, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to order a half-million Latin American immigrants to leave the country, a decision that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned could lead to “social and economic chaos.”

But thanks to a lower court ruling, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent out a memo on June 9, officially lifting the freeze on processing parole renewals. In theory, Ukrainian immigrants like Denys would begin to see their right to work restored. So far, few have.

“We’ve seen some cases denied. And some cases be asked for additional evidence,” said Matthew Soerens, the policy director for World Relief, a national refugee resettlement organization. “But at least the folks that we’re helping, we are not aware of cases being approved for humanitarian parole renewal from Ukraine.”

Smith, the local immigration attorney, says the parole system remains functionally frozen. He suspects it’s a matter of priorities, that the Trump administration is dumping more resources into enforcement and kicking people out instead of helping people to stay.

“It’s pretty clear what the administration thinks about … immigrants and immigration generally,” Smith said.

Alternate routes

Many Ukrainian immigrants have lit upon another strategy, one that uses the glacial pace of the federal immigration bureaucracy to their advantage. Some are filing for asylum — arguing they have a well-founded fear of political, racial or religious persecution from their home country.

And while an asylum application can sometimes take five to 10 years to process, immigrants can get work authorization while they wait.

There’s just one big hitch: It still takes six months, once you apply for asylum, to get work permits. Even if Denys applied today, he wouldn’t be able to get the right to work again until March.

Even then, Smith, the attorney, hesitates to offer any kind of certainty. Lately, federal policy has been chaotic enough that it’s hard to provide long-term assurances.

Often, the government hasn’t formally communicated at all about changes in policy, and when it has, it’s sometimes been a mistake. In April, according to The Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security had emailed many Ukrainians across the country telling them that their humanitarian parole had been canceled, and threatening that if they didn’t leave the United States, “the federal government will find you.” The message was an error, but it was sent out so broadly that even Smith — an attorney, not an immigrant — got the email.

“There’s a lack of clarity all throughout the system, which makes an already difficult system to navigate even more difficult and perilous,” Smith said. “It paralyzes the system, but it also paralyzes people.”

Appealing to Trump

In Congress, there have been a handful of stabs at trying to make things easier for Ukrainian immigrants — a Senate bill proposes letting Ukrainians on humanitarian parole continue to work, while a bill in the U.S. House would give the Ukrainian parolees a way to become permanent residents. But while both bills have bipartisan supporters, neither has gotten much traction. The Republican Party has been starkly divided on Ukraine, the traditional anti-Russian wing in conflict with a growing isolationist wing.

Spokane’s Republican congressman, U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, embodies that tension. In February, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was booted from the White House following a combative meeting with Trump, Baumgartner called for Zelenskyy’s resignation.

But in April, he also co-authored a bipartisan letter calling for the Trump administration to continue to offer Ukrainian immigrants protection.

“Many of them have found employment, pay taxes, have their children enrolled in school, and are positively contributing to their new communities,” the letter states. “Revoking their protections and sending them back to a war-torn country before peace is secured would be devastating for both them and their families.”

Baumgartner said he did not get a response from the administration.

Still, he stressed to InvestigateWest that “the Ukrainian population have really been model immigrants. They’re hard-working folks, they are entrepreneurs, small business owners.” He was hopeful that Trump could use his tough-on-immigration reputation as a way to bring about reform of a broken system.

In a dark way, Oberemok with the Spokane Slavic Association finds a reason for optimism in the recent news about the stabbing of a young Ukrainian refugee woman in North Carolina. Trump, in his social media post calling for the death penalty for the “animal” who murdered her, had characterized her as a “beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety.”

“It’s already giving us hope that he’s not planning on sending us back home,” Oberemok said.

So far, Trump has shown little sign of making it easier for immigrants. In an interview this month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow declared that the administration plans to make it even harder, and more expensive, for immigrants to get work authorization. He accused the Biden administration of using work permits as a magnet to attract droves of foreigners to the United States.

“To the extent that we can shut off work authorization once we terminate these paroles, we’ve done that,” Edlow said. “You may be eligible for a work permit, but that doesn’t mean anymore that that’s going to result in you being able to remain in this country.”

For now, Ukrainian immigrants continue living under what Mariia Chava, Denys’s sponsor and former neighbor, calls “the big question mark.”

“What will be tomorrow?” she said. “Nobody knows.”

Denys knows he can’t return to Ukraine, where war is still raging and where many see those who left as traitors.

He loves the beauty of nature in Spokane, driving on America’s wide open roads. But he can’t live in a place where he has to fear deportation, where he’s not allowed to provide for his family without breaking the law, where he has no clear path to becoming legal.

“I love this country,” Denys said. “Just give me a chance to work.”

This story was originally published in InvestigateWest and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

By GARY FIELDS and CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to once again federalize Washington, D.C.’s police force, in what he suggested could come in response to the city’s mayor’s stated refusal to cooperate with immigration enforcement.

Trump’s emergency order, which took over the local police force, expired last week. Hours before it elapsed, Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the city would not cooperate with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement in their continued operations in the nation’s capital. Earlier, she had said the city would work with other federal agencies even after the emergency order expired.

In an early-morning social media post on Monday, Trump said his intervention into the D.C.’s law enforcement had improved crime in the city, a claim Bowser has backed up, though, data shows crime was already falling in Washington before the law enforcement surge began.

Trump said crime could increase if cooperation on immigration enforcement ceases, in which case he would “call a National Emergency, and Federalize, if necessary!!!”

The mayor’s office declined to comment.

The White House did not say if Trump would follow through on his threat. It also did not say whether the president had considered trying to extend his previous order that placed the city’s police force under federal control. The order was not renewed by Congress and lapsed Sept. 11.

Bowser issued an order Sept. 2, setting up how the local police will continue working with the federal law enforcement agencies that continue working in the city. The order listed a number of federal agencies she anticipated working cooperatively with the MPD, the local police, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Secret Service, among other agencies. Absent was ICE.

Speaking Sept. 10 at a ribbon cutting ceremony, the mayor said “immigration enforcement is not what MPD does,” referring to the local police department. She added that when the emergency order ends, “it won’t be what MPD does in the future.”

Data analyzed by the Associated Press during the emergency period showed that more than 40% of arrests were immigration related, highlighting that the Trump administration continued to advance its hardline immigration policies as it sought to fight crime in the nation’s capital.

Federal law enforcement agencies and National Guard units from D.C. and seven states are continuing operations in the city.

Trump’s threat comes the same day that the House Committee on Rules is taking up several D.C.-related bills, including a proposal to lower the age at which juveniles can be tried to 14 from 16 for certain serious crimes, as well as restricting the district’s authority over its sentencing laws and its role in selecting judges.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a similar hearing last week.

The district is granted autonomy through a limited home rule agreement passed in 1973, but federal political leaders retain significant control over local affairs, including the approval of the budget and laws passed by the D.C council.

By STEPHEN GROVES, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations and other hardline immigration measures will result in roughly 320,000 people removed from the United States over the next ten years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday in a report that also projected that the U.S. population will grow more slowly than it had previously projected.

Trump’s tax and spending law, passed by Congress and signed in July, included roughly $150 billion to ramp up his mass deportation agenda over the next four years. This includes funding for everything from an extension of the United States’ southern border wall to detention centers and thousands of additional law enforcement staff. The CBO found that 290,000 immigrants could be removed through those measures, and an additional 30,000 people could leave the U.S. voluntarily.

Coupled with a lower fertility rate in the U.S., the reduction in immigration means that the CBO’s projection of the U.S. population will be 4.5 million people lower by 2035 than the nonpartisan office had projected in January. It cautioned that its population projections are “highly uncertain,” but estimated that the U.S. will have 367 million people in 2055.

Lower immigration to the U.S. could have implications for the nation’s economy and the government’s budget. The report did not directly address those issues, but it noted that the projected population would have “fewer people ages 25 to 54 — the age group that is most likely to participate in the labor force — than the agency previously projected.”

Democrats in Congress have been warning that mass deportations could harm the U.S. economy and lead to higher prices on groceries and other goods.

In the White House, Trump has said he wants to see a “baby boom” in the U.S. and his administration has bandied about ideas for encouraging Americans to have more children. But the CBO found no indication that would happen.

“Deaths are projected to exceed births in 2031, two years earlier than previously projected,” it noted.

By RUSS BYNUM and KATE BRUMBACK

POOLER, Ga. (AP) — After more than 300 South Korean workers were taken into custody during a raid on an electric battery plant in Georgia, the country’s foreign minister traveled to the U.S. this week in hopes of bringing them home.

Law enforcement agents detained some 475 workers during the raid Thursday at the battery factory under construction on the campus of Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant west of Savannah. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Seoul and Washington were discussing details for the workers’ return.

Here are some things to know about the raid and its aftermath.

What efforts have been made to get the South Koreans home?

Korean Air says a Boeing 747-8i will fly from South Korea to Atlanta as early as Wednesday to bring the workers home. Asked about the flight and about Foreign Minister Cho Hyun’s visit to the U.S., the Korean embassy said it is staying in close contact with U.S. authorities and that its priority is “the safety of our citizens.”

The South Korean workers were being held at an immigration detention center in Folkston, in southeast Georgia, near the state line with Florida. It’s a 285-mile (460-kilometer) drive from there to Atlanta.

South Korean television stations showed Cho Ki-joong, consul general at the Korean Embassy in Washington, speaking outside the detention center. He said some administrative steps remained to be completed but that things were going smoothly. The South Korean Foreign Ministry declined to comment on media reports that he and other diplomats met with detained workers.

What are the immigration consequences for the workers?

U.S. authorities have said that those detained during the raid were “unlawfully working” at the plant. But Charles Kuck, a lawyer representing several of the detained South Koreans, said the “vast majority” of the workers from South Korea were doing work that is authorized under the B-1 business visitor visa program.

A B-1 visitor for business visa allows foreign workers to stay for up to six months, getting reimbursed for expenses while collecting a paycheck back home. There are limits — for example, they can supervise construction projects but can’t build anything themselves — but if it’s spelled out in a contract, they can install equipment, Los Angeles immigration lawyer Angelo Paparelli said.

Also, South Korea is one of 41 countries whose citizens can use the U.S. Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), which provides a visa waiver if they can provide “a legitimate reason’’ for their visit, and this basically gives them B-1 visa status for up to 90 days, said immigration attorney Rita Sostrin in Los Angeles.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry has said that officials from Seoul and Washington are discussing details that could allow all of that country’s detained workers to leave the U.S. voluntarily instead of being deported. A deportation order could make someone ineligible to return to the U.S. for up to 10 years, while people who agree to “voluntary departure” may be able to apply for a visa to return to the U.S., according to a guide on the Justice Department’s website.

What effect has the raid had on the area around the plant?

In Pooler, a suburb of Savannah, the sprawling Hyundai electric vehicle plant has triggered noticeable growth.

Signs in shopping center parking lots point to homes for sale in new subdivisions nearby. Construction crews work on multistory apartment buildings while finished apartments in the same complex display large banners proclaiming they’re ready for new residents.

Meanwhile, a growing number of Korean restaurants and Asian grocery stores have found a home among standard American fast-food franchises and chain eateries like Starbucks and Cracker Barrel.

Ruby Gould, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Savannah, said there’s no question that last week’s raid has raised anxiety among the area’s Korean immigrants.

“People are very upset about the incident, the arrest of the workers,” Gould said. “I’m sure there are some people in fear about this visa situation after they witnessed what’s happened.”

The U.S. Census Bureau says Pooler’s population jumped to 31,171 last year, an increase of 21% since 2020. That period includes the groundbreaking and construction of Hyundai’s EV factory.

People of Asian origin made up just 6% of the suburban city’s residents in 2020. While newer demographic data isn’t available, people in the area say Korean-Americans and South Korean immigrants make up a sizable share of recent newcomers.

Pastor Robin Kim and his wife closed last month on a new home in Pooler, where Kim is starting his own church. He left the Army a few months ago after serving as a chaplain to soldiers at nearby Fort Stewart. Kim said they wanted to be a part of the Savannah suburb’s growing Korean community.

Kim, 51, has sought to calm some of the anger and anxiety in the community since last week’s raid. He noticed fewer Korean people out shopping over the weekend, and reads a constant stream of messages posted in a chat group of 1,900 local Korean residents.

“The people feel like they’re being watched, like they’re being judged by the American people,” Kim said. “They are scared right now. They don’t want to be trouble.”

He said some are resentful at the U.S. government considering the billions of dollars Hyundai has invested in the Georgia plant and the thousands of U.S. jobs it’s creating. Others worry the immigration arrests will mean increased scrutiny that hinders their own efforts to extend visas or obtain green cards.

A suggestion that local Korean residents stage a protest, Kim said, was quickly stifled by others who cautioned against drawing attention.

“They’re trying to keep a low profile right now,” he said, “to not go out much and stay home.”

For his part, Kim hopes the raid doesn’t have lasting impacts.

“I hope the Korean community keeps thriving here,” he said, “and we get over this incident real soon.”

Brumback reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Hyung-Jin Kim in Seoul, Didi Tang and Paul Wiseman in Washington.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced Monday it is beginning a surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago, dubbing it “Operation Midway Blitz” and claiming it will target “criminal illegal aliens” who have taken advantage of the city and state’s sanctuary policies.

The announcement comes more than two weeks after the Republican president began to say he was planning to target Chicago over crime, causing Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson to caution residents to prepare for potential immigration sweeps.

“For years, Governor (JB) Pritzker and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago’s streets — putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. “President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem have a clear message: No city is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.”

Pritzker, the state’s two-term Democratic governor and vociferous critic of the Republican president, took to the social platform X to contend the ICE surge “isn’t about fighting crime.”

“That requires support and coordination — yet we’ve experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks,” he wrote. “Instead of taking steps to work with us on public safety, the Trump administration’s focused on scaring Illinoisans.”

Johnson also said the city had “no notice of any enhanced immigration action.”

The Homeland Security statement marks the first official word from the Trump administration about increased immigration enforcement after weeks of Trump vacillating between vows of “going in” to Chicago with the potential deployment of National Guard troops to fight overall crime, to a stepped-up immigration enforcement role by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. ICE has secured an office at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago to serve as an operations hub for its activities.

There was no word on how long the ICE operation would last, and there was also no mention of whether Trump would deploy the National Guard to play a supporting role.

“We are concerned about potential militarized immigration enforcement without due process because of ICE’s track record of detaining and deporting American citizens and violating the human rights of hundreds of detainees,” Johnson said in a statement.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said the ramped-up ICE activity was a waste of federal law enforcement resources, and she warned Trump was looking to “provoke a response to his un-American actions, hoping for images of chaos and violence to validate his lie that Chicago is an apocalyptic city in crisis and justify sending in the military to intimidate Americans.”

Despite the “blitz” announcement, it remained unclear Monday how extensive the actions were in the early going. Local officials and immigrant activists cited only a handful of arrests.

Advocates said they had confirmed ICE presence on the Southwest Side and at least three detentions of “community members in a stretch along Archer Avenue,” said Rey Wences, senior director of deportation defense at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

“We believe this operation signaled the beginning of ICE(‘s) full escalation in Chicago and Illinois,” Wences said, noting it came after “many other raids.”

“This has been happening, and it has been starting to get normalized in many of the places in the state and across the city, but this is not normal,” Wences said.

Although the Trump administration portrayed its actions as targeted toward arresting only immigrants who are criminals, studies have also shown that ICE has arrested thousands of Latinos with no criminal history in random locations across the nation.

Under Illinois’ sanctuary state policies, enacted by Pritzker’s Republican predecessor, one-term Gov. Bruce Rauner, Illinois law enforcement cannot cooperate with federal immigration enforcement agents unless they have a detainment warrant issued by a judge. ICE routinely uses an administrative detainment warrant that it issues on its own.

The Trump administration has been previously rebuffed in challenges to the state’s sanctuary policy, with the courts noting that immigration enforcement is the purview of the federal government.

Trump set the stage for the operation with a social media post Saturday morning depicting military helicopters flying over the city’s lakefront skyline using the title “Chipocalypse Now.”

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” Trump posted on his Truth Social account, altering the famous phrase from the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now,” about the smell of “Napalm.” In the post, Trump was depicted in U.S. Army fatigues and sunglasses and wearing a Stetson U.S. Cavalry hat like the lieutenant colonel portrayed in the movie by actor Robert Duvall.

“Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” Trump wrote, a day after signing an executive order to rename the Department of Defense to its pre-1949 title.

Hours before the DHS announcement, Trump on Monday morning once again urged Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential aspirant, to call the White House for federal help to request National Guard assistance with city crime. The governor has repeatedly vowed he will not make such a request because it is not necessary, adding that Trump is trying to normalize the sight of military on city streets as part of the president’s moves toward authoritarian rule from the White House.

On his Truth Social platform, Trump cited six shooting deaths recorded in the city over the weekend, as well as other murders in recent weeks, as he criticized Pritzker and Johnson for inaction.

Just days after his “Chipocalypse Now” post, which he backed off a day later by saying it wasn’t directed at the city but at criminals, Trump sought to cajole Chicago residents into supporting a federal intervention.

“Governor Pritzker just stated that he doesn’t want Federal Government HELP! WHY??? What is wrong with this guy, and the 5% in Polls Mayor. I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them. Only the Criminals will be hurt!” Trump wrote on Monday morning.

“We can move fast and stop this madness. The City and State have not been able to do the job. People of Illinois should band together and DEMAND PROTECTION. IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!!! ACT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!” he wrote. “Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT.”

Later, speaking at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., he told the audience, “We’re waiting for a call from Chicago. We’ll fix Chicago,” as he cited reduced crime in the District of Columbia after he federalized law enforcement there, something he cannot do in the individual states.

“We could do the same thing in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,” Trump said.

“I don’t know why Chicago isn’t calling us, saying, please give us help when you have, over just a short period of time, 50 murders and hundreds of people shot, and then you have a governor that stands up and says how crime is just fine,” Trump said, before explaining one major political reason for continuing the rhetoric.

“It’s really crazy,” the Republican president said of Democrats, “but we’re bringing back law and order to our country.”

But faith leaders and immigration advocates in Chicago continued to push back against Trump’s narrative that Chicago is crime-ridden and rallied in support of a handful of individuals believed to have been detained by federal agents on Sunday.

Wences described the detentions as “abductions,” and said they were “seemingly random, with agents profiling and approaching them on the street.”

Among those was a street vendor selling flowers on a busy intersection in the Archer Heights neighborhood. He was arrested by three men wearing vests that read “Police Federal Agent.” They were in two vehicles, including a dark Subaru with a Missouri license plate. ICE had not confirmed the arrest as of Monday evening.

Gissele Garcia, 26, pulled over her car as she was driving home from the grocery store when she saw the commotion in the parking lot of a Honda City car dealership on South Archer Avenue and South Pulaski Road. The West Lawn resident approached with her phone up, filming the encounter. She tried getting the street vendor’s name and asked him if he had any family she could call.

Speaking in Spanish, the man said he didn’t know his relatives’ phone numbers.

“It seemed — I don’t know how to put this — like he had given up,” she told the Tribune Sunday.

By Monday morning, around 50 people shouted “faith over fear,” in Daley Plaza in response to the escalating threat. The event was led by leaders of the Inner City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), LIVE FREE Illinois and New Life Centers.

Speakers said there were other ways to improve Chicago than sending in federal agents, including federal spending on health care and education.

“This is not America,” said rally attendee Donald Nye, 68 of Downers Grove. “This is not what my grandson is gonna grow up in. I got a 4-year-old grandson and I’m not gonna allow him to grow up with this. I mean, this is not the way I grew (up).”

Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella, Alice Yin and Adriana Perez contributed.

By CHRISTINE FERNANDO, JOHN O’CONNOR and SOPHIA TAREEN

CHICAGO (AP) — The streets in some of Chicago’s liveliest neighborhoods are quiet these days. Public schoolteachers want online learning for families scared to venture out. And houses of worship are urging people to carry identification everywhere they go.

As the nation’s third-largest city awaits a much-hyped federal intervention, residents are making changes in their daily routines. President Donald Trump has promised Chicago will see a surge in deportations and National Guard troops as he targets Democratic strongholds. While the feeling of being vulnerable isn’t new, especially among immigrants, many say this time the fear is deeper and the preparations more drastic.

Even Sam Sanchez, a Chicago restaurant owner who voted for Trump, criticized the Republican’s plans for the city. As a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico, he is also taking precautions.

“They’re profiling,” he said of federal agents. “My wife and I went to a wedding and I told my wife, ‘Bring your citizenship papers.’”

Slower business traffic

There is a noticeable drop in street food vendors in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, and businesses report less foot traffic. The largely Mexican enclave features a two-mile stretch of businesses and restaurants that is often noted as one of Chicago’s highest-grossing shopping districts after Michigan Avenue.

“The streets that were busy are dying down,” said Galilea Mendez, 25, who visits from the suburbs.

The neighborhood has been subject to immigration enforcement before.

Residents are quick to recall a 2007 daytime raid that locked down a popular shopping mall and increased enforcement in 2019 during Trump’s first term. Another wave of trepidation came in January when the Trump administration launched a nationwide operation from Chicago.

But things feel more intense now.

Laura Padilla, who has sold clothes in the area for more than 20 years, said that since Trump’s second term, the streets are “dead.”

Another longtime clothing merchant in the neighborhood, Xochitl Martinez, said Trump should focus on improving the lives of Latinos.

“He has to support Latinos so we can work, so stores can open, so more sales can happen, so we can prosper more and lift up our families and lift up the country,” Martinez said.

Celebrations for Mexican Independence Day, which Chicago commemorates for weeks with car caravans, parades and festivals, have been muted. One festival was canceled while others added security.

Immigration attorneys say their clients are afraid to attend appointments, including at court. Churches with large immigrant populations are starting to notice an attendance dip.

Fabio Fernandez, owner of 3W-We Will Win, an art and T-shirt company in the predominantly Latino Pilsen neighborhood, said a mood of anxiety and uncertainty permeates. He has seen fewer customers.

“We shouldn’t fear or feel like we can’t walk the same streets that we usually roam,” he said.

Recent arrests

Fueling Chicagoans’ fear is the lack of information about what the Trump administration plans to do.

Calls to an activists’ emergency hotline to report immigration arrests have jumped in recent days, including details that couldn’t be confirmed or were mistaken.

“The deportation machine has always existed for decades,” said Antonio Gutierrez with Organized Communities Against Deportations. “This feels unprecedented.”

A handful of weekend immigration arrests launched the city’s vocal immigrant rights groups into action. Activists said five people in a predominantly Latino area, including a longtime flower vendor, were targeted by armed and masked federal agents.

Federal officials said the arrests were part of ongoing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and resulted in the detention of four people with previous criminal arrests. The arrests came a day before the Department of Homeland Security announced a new operation in Chicago because of its so-called sanctuary laws, which limit cooperation between local police and federal agents.

It was unclear what role the operation would play in the broader threats of federal intervention, but activists and elected officials said it felt like things were ramping up.

“They’re gathering steam,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Tuesday.

Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson object to any federal surge and have promised to sue.

Some Chicagoans carry passports

Attorneys and activists have encouraged immigrants to carry documents and share their whereabouts for months. The message has spread recently to U.S. citizens and in Black and LGBTQ enclaves.

Vianney Alarcon, 42, says she has started carrying her passport when she leaves her North Side home. Her parents keep their green cards with them.

“It’s just disheartening,” she said.

Roughly 20% of Chicago’s 2.7 million people are foreign born. Most come from Mexico, China and India, according to Census estimates. Racially, white, Black and Latino residents each comprise roughly one-third of the city, with a smaller number of Asian residents.

A group of pastors, imams and rabbis urged all residents this week to carry identification, film encounters and protest. The guidance comes after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a restraining order barring immigration authorities in Los Angeles from stopping people solely based on things including race.

“We will fight for this city,” said the Rev. Otis Moss III of Trinity United Church of Christ, the influential Black church once attended by former President Barack Obama.

Teachers want online learning

Despite the widespread unpopularity of remote learning, the Chicago Teachers Union wants schools to offer it for students who fear being targeted by immigration agents.

Union President Stacy Davis Gates said Chicago should follow Los Angeles’ lead; the city’s schools offered offering online options amid an immigration crackdown earlier this year.

“Because they had the infrastructure for online learning they were able to direct young people to those spaces,” she said.

Chicago Public Schools leaders said the district will continue classes in person, but they will reassess as needed.

“In-person instruction continues to provide the strongest foundation for learning,” officials said.

In letters to parents, district officials have reiterated that schools don’t coordinate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ask for immigration status. School leaders noted that children who felt unsafe walking home could duck into a church or firehouse and create neighborhood text groups.

Teachers in the district that is predominantly Black and Latino have been passing out flyers informing families of their rights.

“We know that being informed is the best way to empower our communities to stay safe,” said Linda Perales, a special education teacher.

Associated Press writers Melina Walling and Laura Bargfeld in Chicago contributed. O’Connor reported from Springfield, Illinois.

This story corrects the spelling of Galilea Mendez’s first name. It also corrects the attribution of a partial quote about streets to Laura Padilla from Xochitl Martinez.

A longtime Detroit resident and father of five U.S. citizen children was released from immigration detention on Wednesday after a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully denied him due process. Juan Manuel Lopez-Campos, who has lived in the U.S. for 26 years and has no criminal record, was arrested during a traffic stop […]

The post Detroit father of 5 released from ICE detention after federal court order appeared first on Detroit Metro Times.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, federal agents arrested 1,432 undocumented immigrants in Michigan as of the end of July, and most had no criminal convictions, according to data from the Deportation Data Project. The total is nearly triple the 523 arrests recorded during the same period in 2024, when Joe Biden was […]

The post Most undocumented immigrants arrested by ICE in Michigan under Trump had no criminal convictions appeared first on Detroit Metro Times.

By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times

KINI, Mexico — On a hot June night Jesús Cruz at last returned to Kini, the small town in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula where he spent the first 17 years of his life.

His sister greeted him with tearful hugs. The next morning she took him to see their infirm mother, who whispered in his ear: “I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

After decades away, Cruz was finally home.

Yet he was not home.

So much of what he loved was 3,000 miles away in Southern California, where he resided for 33 years until immigration agents swarmed the car wash where he worked and hauled him away in handcuffs.

Cruz missed his friends and Booka, his little white dog. His missed his house, his car, his job.

But most of all, he missed his wife, Noemi Ciau, and their four children. Ciau worked nights, so Cruz was in charge of getting the kids fed, clothed and to and from school and music lessons, a chaotic routine that he relished because he knew he was helping them get ahead.

“I want them to have a better life,” he said. “Not the one I had.”

Now that he was back in Mexico, living alone in an empty house that belonged to his in-laws, he and Ciau, who is a U.S. permanent resident, faced an impossible decision.

Should she and the children join Cruz in Mexico?

Or stay in Inglewood?

Cruz and Ciau both had families that had been broken by the border, and they didn’t want that for their kids. In the months since Cruz had been detained, his eldest daughter, 16-year-old Dhelainy, had barely slept and had stopped playing her beloved piano, and his youngest son, 5-year-old Gabriel, had started acting out. Esther, 14, and Angel, 10, were hurting, too.

But bringing four American kids to Mexico didn’t seem fair, either. None of them spoke Spanish, and the schools in Kini didn’t compare with those in the U.S. Dhelainy was a few years from graduating high school, and she dreamed of attending the University of California and then Harvard Law.

There was also the question of money. At the car wash, Cruz earned $220 a day. But the day rate for laborers in Kini is just $8. Ciau had a good job at Los Angeles International Airport, selling cargo space for an international airline. It seemed crazy to give that up.

Ciau wanted to hug her husband again. She wanted to know what it would feel like to have the whole family in Mexico. So in early August she packed up the kids and surprised Cruz with a visit.

Kini lies an hour outside of Merida in a dense tropical forest. Like many people here, Cruz grew up speaking Spanish and a dialect of Maya and lived in a one-room, thatched-roof house. He, his parents and his five brothers and sisters slept in hammocks crisscrossed from the rafters.

His parents were too poor to buy shoes for their children, so when he was a boy Cruz left school to work alongside his father, caring for cows and crops. At 17 he joined a wave of young men leaving Kini to work in the United States.

He arrived in Inglewood, where a cousin lived, in 1992, just as Los Angeles was erupting in protest over the police beating of Rodney King.

Cruz, soft-spoken and hardworking, was overwhelmed by the big city but found refuge in a green stucco apartment complex that had become a home away from home for migrants from Kini, who cooked and played soccer together in the evenings.

Eventually he fell for a young woman living there: Ciau, whose parents had brought her from Kini as a young girl, and who obtained legal status under an amnesty extended by President Reagan. They married when she turned 18.

As their family grew, they developed rituals. When one of the kids made honor roll, they’d celebrate at Dave & Buster’s. Each summer they’d visit Disneyland. And every weekend they’d dine at Casa Gambino, a classic Mexican restaurant with vinyl booths, piña coladas and a bison head mounted on the wall. On Fridays, Cruz and Ciau left the kids with her parents and went on a date.

As the father of four Americans, Cruz was eligible for a green card. But the attorneys he consulted warned that he would have to apply from Mexico and that the wait could last years.

Cruz didn’t want to leave his children. So he stayed. When President Trump was reelected last fall on a vow to carry out mass deportations, he tried not to worry. The government, he knew, usually targeted immigrants who had committed crimes, and his record was spotless. But the Trump administration took a different approach.

On June 8, masked federal agents swarmed Westchester Hand Wash. Cruz said they slammed him into the back of a patrol car with such force and shackled his wrists so tightly that he was left with bruises across his body and a serious shoulder injury.

Ciau, who was helping Esther buy a dress for a middle school honors ceremony, heard about the raid and raced over. She had been at the car wash just hours earlier, bringing lunch to her husband and his colleagues. Now it was eerily empty.

Cruz was transferred to a jail in El Paso, where he says he was denied requests to speak to a lawyer or call his family.

One day, an agent handed him a document and told him to sign. The agent said that if Cruz fought his case, he would remain in detention for up to a year and be deported anyway. Signing the document — which said he would voluntarily return to Mexico — meant he could avoid a deportation order, giving him a better shot at fixing his papers in the future.

Cruz couldn’t read the text without his glasses. He didn’t know that he very likely would have been eligible for release on bond because of his family ties to the U.S. But he was in pain and afraid and so he signed.

Returning to Kini after decades away was surreal.

Sprawling new homes with columns, tile roofs and other architectural flourishes imported by people who had lived in the U.S. rose from what had once been fields. There were new faces, too, including a cohort of young men who appraised Cruz with curiosity and suspicion. With his polo shirts and running shoes, he stood out in a town where most wore flip-flops and as few clothes as possible in the oppressive heat.

Cruz found work on a small ranch. Before dawn, he would pedal out there on an old bicycle, clearing weeds and feeding cows, the world silent except for the rustle of palm leaves. In all his years in the big city, he had missed the tranquility of these lands.

He had missed his mother, too. She has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair. Some days, she could speak, and would ask about his family and whether Cruz was eating enough. Other days, they would sit in silence, him occasionally leaning over to kiss her forehead.

He always kept his phone near, in case Ciau or one of the kids called. He tried his best to parent from afar, mediating arguments and reminding the kids to be kind to their mother. He tracked his daughters via GPS when they left the neighborhood, and phoned before bed to make sure everyone had brushed their teeth.

He worried about them, especially Dhelainy, a talented musician who liked to serenade him on the piano while he cooked dinner. The burden of caring for the younger siblings had fallen on her. Since Cruz had been taken, she hadn’t touched the piano once.

During one conversation, Dhelainy let it slip that they were coming to Mexico. Cruz surged with joy, then shuddered at the thought of having to say goodbye again. He picked them up at the airport.

That first evening, they shared pizza and laughed and cried. Gabriel, the only family member who had never been to Mexico, was intrigued by the thick forest and the climate, playing outside in the monsoon rain. For the first time in months, Dhelainy slept through the night.

“We finally felt like a happy family again,” Ciau said. But as soon as she and the kids arrived, they started counting the hours to when they’d have to go back.

During the heat of the day, the family hid inside, lounging in hammocks. They were also dodging unwanted attention. It seemed everywhere they went, someone asked Cruz to relive his arrest, and he would oblige, describing cold nights in detention with nothing to keep warm but a plastic blanket.

But at night, after the sky opened up, and then cleared, they went out.

It was fair time in Kini, part of an annual celebration to honor the Virgin Mary. A small circus had been erected and a bull ring constructed of wooden posts and leaves. A bright moon rose as the family took their seats and the animal charged out of its pen, agitated, and barreled toward the matador’s pink cape.

Cruz turned to his kids. When he was growing up, he told them, the matador killed the bull, whose body was cut up and sold to spectators. Now the fights ended without violence — with the bull lassoed and returned to pasture.

It was one of the ways that Mexico had modernized, he felt. He felt pride at how far Mexico had come, recently electing its first female president.

The bull ran by, close enough for the family to hear his snorts and see his body heave with breath.

“Are you scared?” Esther asked Gabriel.

Wide-eyed, the boy shook his head no. But he reached out to touch his father’s hand.

Later, as the kids slept, Cruz and Ciau stayed up, dancing cumbia deep into the night.

The day before Ciau and the kids were scheduled to leave, the family went to the beach. Two of Ciau’s nieces came. It was the first time Gabriel had met a cousin. The girls spoke little English, but they played well with Gabriel, showing him games on their phones. (For days after, he would giddily ask his mother when he could next see them.)

That evening, the air was heavy with moisture.

The kids went into the bedroom to rest. Cruz and Ciau sat at the kitchen table, holding hands and wiping away tears.

They had heard of a U.S. employer who, having lost so many workers to immigration raids, was offering to pay a smuggler to bring people across the border. Cruz and Ciau agreed that was too risky.

They had just paid a lawyer to file a lawsuit saying Cruz had been coerced into accepting voluntary departure and asking a judge to order his return to the U.S. so that he could apply for relief from removal. The first hearing was scheduled for mid-September.

Cruz wanted to return to the U.S. But he was increasingly convinced that the family could make it work in Mexico. “We were poor before,” he told Ciau. “We can be poor again.”

Ciau wasn’t sure. Her children had big — and expensive — ambitions.

Dhelainy had proposed staying in the U.S. with her grandparents if the rest of the family moved back. Cruz and Ciau talked about the logistics of that, and Ciau vowed to explore whether the younger kids could remain enrolled in U.S. schools, but switch to online classes.

When the rain began, Cruz got up and closed the door.

The next morning, Cruz would not accompany his family to the airport. It would be too hard, he thought, “like when somebody gives you something you’ve always wanted, and then suddenly takes it away.”

Gabriel wrapped his arms around his father’s waist, his small body convulsed with tears: “I love you.”

“It’s OK, baby,” Cruz said. “I love you, too.”

“Thank you for coming,” he said to Ciau. He kissed her. And then they were gone.

That afternoon, he walked the streets of Kini. The fair was wrapping up. Workers sweating in the heat were dismantling the circus rides and packing them onto the backs of trucks.

He thought back to a few evenings earlier, when they had celebrated Dhelainy’s birthday.

The family had planned to host a joint sweet 16 and quinceñera party for her and Esther in July. They had rented an event hall, hired a band and sent out invitations. After Cruz was detained, they called the party off.

They celebrated Dhelainy’s Aug. 8 birthday at the house in Kini instead. A mariachi played the Juan Gabriel classic, “Amor Eterno.”

“You are my sun and my calm,” the mariachis sang as Cruz swayed with his daughter. “You are my life / My eternal love.”

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By MATT BROWN and KEVIN FREKING

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House rejected a resolution to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., and remove her from a committee that oversees immigration and national security as she faces federal charges stemming from a visit to an immigration detention facility.

The House voted 215-207 to table the measure, a sign that some were uncomfortable moving forward with censure while McIver’s case is still pending in the courts. A trial in her case has been scheduled for November.

Democratic lawmakers unanimously voted to table the resolution, which was sponsored by Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La. Five Republicans joined them and two others voted present. As the resolution was being read, some Democrats were incensed. “Liar,” some shouted; “Shame,” yelled one Democratic lawmaker. Many Republicans streamed out of the chamber before the vote concluded. Democrats cheered and hugged at the final tally’s reading.

“The censure attempt against me has failed. Rightfully so. It was a baseless, partisan effort to shut me up,” McIver wrote on social media after the vote. “I was not elected to play political games — I was elected to serve. I won’t back down. Not now. Not ever.”

Republicans sought to punish McIver for a confrontation with federal law enforcement during a congressional visit to a new immigration detention facility in Newark, N.J. McIver has pleaded not guilty to federal charges accusing her of assaulting and interfering with immigration officers outside the facility.

The censure resolution recounted how McIver is alleged to have interfered with Homeland Security Investigations officials’ ability to arrest an unauthorized visitor. It said she is alleged to have slammed her forearm into the body and forcibly grabbed an HSI officer. The resolution also said body camera and other video evidence supported the allegations made in the federal indictment.

The measure said such actions did not reflect credibly on the House and that her continued service on the House Homeland Security Committee was a significant conflict of interest. The committee’s portfolio includes oversight of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which operates the detention center that McIver tried to enter.

The effort had the backing of GOP leadership. Some Republicans expressed dismay with the outcome.

“We have a member of Congress who assaulted an ICE officer. I don’t even know what we’re doing anymore,” said Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida.

Donalds said he did not know why some Republicans broke ranks to back the motion to table the censure resolution.

Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the McIver vote was “a breath of fresh air in such a toxic environment.”

McIver won a special election last year after Democratic Rep. Donald Payne Jr. died in office. She won a full two-year term in November.

McIver was joined by two other New Jersey Democrats, Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez, during a visit to a privately owned 1,000-bed facility that ICE is using as a detention center. Newark’s mayor, Democrat Ras Baraka, was arrested after officials determined he was not authorized to enter. That charge was later dropped. Baraka is suing over what he said was a malicious prosecution.

Parts of the confrontation can be seen on a nearly two-minute video clip from the visit released by the Department of Homeland Security.

The video shows McIver on the facility side of a chain-link fence just before Baraka’s arrest on the street side of the fence, where other people had been protesting. She and uniformed officials are seen going through a fence gate, and she joins others shouting that they should circle the mayor. The video then shows McIver in a tightly packed group of people and officers. At one point, her left elbow and then her right elbow push into an officer wearing a dark face covering and an olive green uniform with the word “Police” on it.

McIver was indicted on three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials. Two of the counts carry a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison. The third is a misdemeanor with a maximum punishment of one year in prison.

Higgins said he would not have moved forward with the resolution if McIver had withdrawn from the Homeland Security panel pending a resolution of the federal charges against her. He said it was a conflict for her to serve on a panel with oversight authority over the agencies at the center of her criminal investigation.

“We didn’t expect it to fail. We knew it would be close, but it’s quite disappointing,” Higgins said.

The House has censured members on 28 occasions before, but the punishment has increasingly been delivered on a partisan basis in recent years.

Democrats retaliated just hours before the McIver vote with the introduction of a censure resolution against Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., who has been accused by a beauty pageant titleholder of threatening to release intimate videos and private images of her after she ended their romantic relationship, according to a report filed with law enforcement. Mills has denied the allegations.

Mills is also facing an ethics investigation into whether he violated campaign finance laws or held federal contracts while in office.

Democratic efforts to put the spotlight on Mills seemed to serve as a warning to Republicans that they were prepared to undertake similar censure resolutions in response to the targeting of McIver.

“There are colleagues on the other side of the aisle that have very serious charges against them, and we don’t want to have to unpack that for the American people,” Clarke said.