Tag: ice

California-Based Biden Judge Issues Nationwide Block on ICE’s Policy of Arresting Illegals at Courthouses

A federal judge on Tuesday issued a nationwide block on ICE’s policy of arresting illegal aliens at courthouses.

California-based US District Judge Casey Pitts, a Biden appointee, ruled that ICE cannot detain illegal aliens at immigration courts.

The Supreme Court previously ruled that federal district courts lack the statutory authority to issue nationwide injunctions.

However, Judge Pitts says he was able to issue a nationwide injunction in this case because the plaintiffs satisfied the requirements for class certification.

In January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order called “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.”

“It is the policy of the United States to faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens, particularly those aliens who threaten the safety or security of the American people. Further, it is the policy of the United States to achieve the total and efficient enforcement of those laws, including through lawful incentives and detention capabilities,” Trump said in his executive order.

Judge Pitts vacated the Trump Administration’s policy targeting illegal aliens at courthouses.

“For 80 years, Congress has commanded federal agencies to think before they act,” Judge Pitts wrote in a 70-page opinion. “That instruction—codified in the Administrative Procedures Act—does not require an agency to make the choice that a reviewing court might deem preferable.”

“Because the record before the Court demonstrates that ICE and EOIR failed to provide reasoned explanations for their actions, the Court concludes that each of the challenged policies is arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the APA,” the judge said.

This is the second time Judge Pitts has blocked the Trump Administration from making arrests at immigration courthouses.

Earlier this year, Judge Pitts blocked ICE from making arrests in his district in the Northern District of California.

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ICE Says 51 People Died in Custody Under Trump. Experts Say That’s an Undercount.

amuka Artmeladze, a 43-year-old Georgian national, was found dead on June 4, 2026, in federal immigration custody. Though his name did not appear in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) online death records by the time this article was published, Artmeladze was reported as the 50th person to die in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office. One of two recent deaths at a notorious immigration prison in Louisiana, Artmeladze’s death is one of the latest signs that the president’s mass deportation campaign has predictably created a human rights crisis inside a sprawling system of immigration jails and camps.

At least 51 people have died while in ICE custody since Trump began his second term, federal records show. At least 19 deaths occurred between January 1 and June 4, 2026, an average of about one death every eight days over the first six months of this year.

Additionally, at least two disabled people died this year from exposure shortly after being released by immigration officials in freezing winter weather, including a 31-year-old Haitian woman who died after being left at a Pittsburgh bus stop for 30 hours in early March. While medical examiners determined both deaths to be homicides, ICE does not include them in its official tally, and experts say the 51 deaths reported since January 2025 could be an undercount.

For months, protesters, federal inspectors, and Democrats in Congress have sounded the alarm about the dangerous conditions of confinement faced by more than 68,000 adults and children swept up in Trump’s crackdown. While ICE claims to provide proper care for detainees, oversight data shows a clear pattern of abuse, medical neglect, and preventable deaths inside its jails and camps. Critics say the unprecedented number of deaths is the predictable result of Trump administration policy, including fighting in court to incarcerate immigrants for as long as possible while aggressively expanding privately run jails and prison camps.

“Using the windfall in funding from Congressional Republicans, they are inflicting as much pain as possible no matter the cost,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigrant rights group America’s Voice, in a statement on June 22.

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Trump loyalist Jim Jordan linked to group that received ‘dark money’ from ICE detention contractor

Jim Jordan is among the most famous names in this stretch of Ohio.

The congressman and chair of the powerful House judiciary committee is considered among the most conservative and influential members in Congress, and is a longtime loyalist of Donald Trump.

But a report released last month by Pogo Investigates, a nonprofit newsroom, highlighted the close ties between Jordan and a company profiting from the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown, which has sometimes been violent and even deadly.

The report found that the American Liberty Foundation, a political action committee (Pac) tied to Jordan, last year received $250,000 in “dark money” payments from Geo Group, the Florida-headquartered company that runs dozens of detention centers on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the country.

The money transfer came 11 days after the passing of the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July, which saw the federal government’s budget for ICE and other immigration enforcement efforts trebled to $170bn – an amount greater than the GDP of Morocco.

“A company and or a company’s political action committee is permitted to contribute funds to a Super Pac, but a federal contractor [such as Geo Group] is not,” says Nick Schwellenbach, the author of the Pogo Investigates report.

“Geo Group’s Pac had not disclosed this. Only American Liberty Foundation had. Both have legal obligations to disclose. This raises a lot of questions about the broader universe of dark money contributions from Geo Group or other private prison companies.”

Campaign Legal Center, a litigation advocacy organization, has since filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Geo Group, alleging it violated federal campaign finance laws by making an illegal, misreported contribution.

Critics say that taxpayer money is helping to create a “deportation-industrial complex” that puts Geo Group, which runs ICE detention facilities across 16 states, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey, at the forefront of the benefactors.

All the while, conditions at many of the 52 detention centers that Geo operates on behalf of ICE have been reported as being very poor. Detainees at Delaney Hall last month launched a hunger strike to protest against the state of their living conditions and accused the contractor of denying them access to medical care. This month, the state of New Jersey sued Geo Group, seeking full access in order to inspect the facility.

In Michigan, family members and friends of the estimated 1,500 immigrant detainees held at the North Lake Processing Center have reported being verbally abused by staff and refused permission to see their detained family members.

Repeated emails sent by the Guardian to Geo Group asking why the company donated to Jordan’s Super Pac and if it believes the money represents a conflict of interest were not responded to.

Some rights groups have suggested that the poor living conditions are a tactic to force immigrants to self-deport. Trump’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, previously worked as a lobbyist for Geo Group before joining the Trump administration.

According to reports, ICE is Geo Group’s biggest source of revenue, with 41% of its 2024 income coming from ICE. That figure is likely to have risen significantly under the Trump administration, with a host of new contracts signed.

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Trump-Appointed Judge Orders ICE to Release Hamas-Linked Milwaukee Mosque President Salah Sarsour Despite Terror Convictions and Immigration Fraud Allegations

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the immediate release of Salah Sarsour, the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque. Sarsour had been locked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who flagged him as a serious foreign policy and national security threat.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, ICE arrested Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee (Wisconsin’s largest mosque) and board member of the pro-Palestinian group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), on March 30.

DHS labeled him a terrorist. He was convicted by an Israeli military court of throwing a Molotov cocktail at Israeli forces and later attempting to possess weapons and ammunition. He allegedly lied on his U.S. immigration forms to secure a green card under President Bill Clinton.

Sarsour also raised funds for the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), the Hamas front group convicted of funneling over $12 million to terrorists. An FBI memo from 2001 listed him as a Hamas fundraiser in the U.S. through HLF. His brother Imad was similarly flagged.

Now a federal judge has set him free.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon, nominated to the bench by President Trump in 2018, ordered ICE to immediately release Sarsour from the Indiana county jail where he was being held, according to CNN.

Hanlon ruled that Sarsour raised a “substantial” claim he was targeted for speaking out in favor of Palestinian rights. The judge said ICE and DHS failed to provide enough evidence to refute allegations of retaliation for protected speech or explain why Sarsour suddenly became a national security threat after more than three decades as a legal permanent resident.

“The mere invocation of foreign relations concerns does not automatically trump First Amendment rights,” Hanlon wrote in the decision, according to CNN.

Sarsour was released within hours. He returned to Milwaukee, where supporters greeted him as he headed back to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.

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Former Judge’s ICE Obstruction Conviction Upheld

A federal judge in Milwaukee refused Tuesday to throw out former Wisconsin Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan’s felony obstruction conviction, clearing the way to sentencing in a case that became an early flash point in the Trump administration’s courthouse immigration arrests.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman denied Dugan’s motion for reconsideration in a 32-page order, ruling that her conduct on April 18, 2025, when she led Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican national, out a private jury door while federal immigration agents waited in the corridor, obstructed a “pending proceeding” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. Section 1505.

Adelman, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, did not reset a sentencing date.

Dugan’s lawyers had pressed Adelman to reconsider after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals split 2-1 in April to vacate a conviction in United States v. Hernandez, holding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s execution of an already-issued removal order did not count as a “pending proceeding” under the statute.

Dugan’s legal team called Tuesday’s decision “wrong.”

Adelman, however, drew a sharp factual line.

In Hernandez, ICE was finishing the job after another agency had ordered removal.

Here, Adelman wrote that ICE was still investigating, securing probable cause, and seeking to arrest Flores-Ruiz before any removal order had been reinstated.

“This case did not involve some random encounter on the street,” Adelman said in the order. “It was a targeted operation, conducted pursuant to agency procedures, including the issuance of an arrest warrant for a specific person, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz.”

The judge also rejected the defense’s broader claim that ICE arrests are indistinguishable from routine police work.

“Unlike, say, the FBI, ICE can issue its own warrants and adjudicate and effectuate a removal, as it did with Flores-Ruiz, without the involvement of a court,” Adelman wrote. “This makes a difference under section 1505.”

A jury convicted Dugan, 67, on Dec. 19 of the obstruction felony and acquitted her of a misdemeanor concealment charge.

She resigned from the Milwaukee County Circuit Court two weeks later, after nine years on the bench, amid impeachment threats from Republican state lawmakers.

She faces up to five years in prison, though federal guidelines typically call for probation for first-time, nonviolent offenders.

Flores-Ruiz pleaded guilty to illegal reentry and was deported on Nov. 13, 2025.

The case is widely expected to reach the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after sentencing.

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15 Tied To Antifa Charged With Violently Interfering With ICE Operations In Minnesota

Fifteen suspects are accused of conspiring with two Minneapolis-based Antifa groups to violently interfere with federal immigration enforcement, authorities announced on Tuesday.

Daniel Rosen, who heads the U.S. attorney’s office for Minnesota, told reporters at his Minneapolis headquarters on June 16 that agents arrested 12 of the 15 suspects; one was already in custody for other offenses.

Two defendants remain at large. Rosen said both are aware that federal agents are seeking them in connection with an indictment that was unsealed just before the news conference.

“We expect they will surrender peacefully,” he said.

The 15 suspects—all from Minnesota—are charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, interstate threats, interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property.

“These defendants have been charged not for what they said, but for what they did. They all joined an agreement, a conspiracy to interfere with lawful immigration enforcement operations,” Rosen said.

“The conspiracy was not to interfere by their voice, but to do it by force. That’s a crime, and it will not be tolerated in the United States.”

A group called “Direct Action Minnesota” is tied to many of the allegations, Rosen said, while another group, Black Cat Workers Collective, is connected to other allegations

The new cases are part of a “broad federal effort to address organized lawless behavior,” he said.

Michael McCarthy, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, said the announcement followed “a thorough and months-long investigation into a deeply concerning trend—coordinated violence targeting federal law enforcement officers and facilities.”

“There is a clear line that cannot be crossed” between peaceful protesting and violence, he said, adding, “some groups have crossed that line.”

He noted that many of the violent actions opposed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.

The new charges were filed months after President Donald Trump’s administration announced that it was probing Antifa groups.

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Chaotic car chase ends with ICE nabbing alleged foreign terrorist leader accused of holding wife captive

 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested a Brazilian illegal immigrant, who authorities say previously served as the commander of two designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, after allegedly attempting to flee a North Carolina traffic stop while preparing to escape to Mexico.

Felipe Linares de Oliveira Dell Aquilla, known as “Don,” was arrested June 5 in Mooresville, North Carolina, after allegedly leading law enforcement on a vehicle pursuit that ended in a crash before his arrest, according to a Department of Homeland Security press release obtained by Fox News Digital.

Federal authorities say Dell Aquilla was wanted in Brazil on charges of criminal association and extortion and had been preparing to leave the United States for Mexico.

Dell Aquilla previously served as a commander within the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV), two Brazil-based criminal organizations that were recently designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the Trump administration, according to DHS.

“This arrest demonstrates the unwavering commitment of HSI to protect our communities from dangerous international criminals,” Mark M. Zito, special agent in charge of HSI in North and South Carolina, said in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital.

“By removing a known leader of violent foreign terrorist organizations — wanted for serious crimes including criminal association and extortion — we have prevented further harm to innocent people here and abroad,” Zito said.

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Two Former Utah Clerks Arrested for Helping Illegals Evade ICE – Defiant Clerks Flip Off Surveillance Camera After Sneaking Illegals Out Back Door of Courthouse

Two former Utah clerks were arrested and charged with helping illegal aliens evade ICE.

Jennifer Joma, 27, and Lauren Kelsey Morrow, 26, both of Logan, Utah, were indicted June 3, 2026, the DOJ announced on Wednesday.

“Joma and Morrow are charged with conspiracy to transport and harbor illegal aliens, harboring illegal aliens, and obstruction of proceedings before departments and agencies. Joma is also charged with transporting illegal aliens,” the DOJ said.

According to authorities, Joma and Morrow were working at the Logan City Municipal Justice Court when ICE agents arrived at the court to arrest an illegal alien.

The two female clerks learned that ICE was at the court and helped the illegal aliens slip through the back door to evade arrest.

After sneaking the illegal aliens out the back door of the courthouse, Morrow and Joma laughed as they flipped off the surveillance cameras.

According to the DOJ, on the second trip, Joma drove off with three illegal aliens in her car before returning alone to the courthouse for work.

Per the DOJ:

An indictment was unsealed, and two former Utah state court clerks have been arrested after they allegedly helped an illegal alien evade U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest. The clerks also allegedly obstructed immigration proceedings and the lawful enforcement of United States immigration laws by helping at least one of three other illegal aliens escape out a backdoor of the Logan City Municipal Justice Court so that ICE could not arrest or deport them.

According to allegations in court documents, on April 9, 2026, Joma and Morrow were working at the Logan City Municipal Justice Court in Logan when an ICE Enforcement and Removal Officer (ICE-ERO) entered the justice court to arrest an illegal alien for immigration related charges. The ICE officer had an administrative warrant for the illegal alien who was at the justice court for a court hearing. The ICE officer left the secure area and eventually went outside and waited in his car for his target to leave the courthouse before trying to make the lawful arrest.

As alleged in court documents, after Joma and Morrow learned that ICE was there to arrest an illegal alien, they took steps to identify ICE’s target. These steps included misusing court databases to determine the alienage of everyone who was listed on the court docket. During their searches, they identified multiple non-U.S. citizens, and before those non-citizens would leave the courthouse, Joma and Morrow intercepted them.

ICE’s intended target was among the unauthorized aliens whom Joma and Morrow helped slip out a backdoor of the courthouse. Joma and Morrow led the individuals down a secure area, several hallways, and eventually out of the courthouse without being seen by ICE.

After sneaking out the back door of the courthouse for the first time with an alien, Morrow and Joma were spotted on a surveillance camera waving and smiling at it, and Morrow used her middle finger in an obscene gesture at the camera. On the second trip, Joma drove off with three aliens in her car before returning alone to the courthouse for work.

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House passes GOP’s $70B border security and immigration bill

The House of Representatives officially passed a roughly $70 billion budget reconciliation package on Tuesday, securing a major legislative victory that guarantees three years of dedicated funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Clearing the chamber in a razor-thin 214–212 party-line vote, the enforcement package bypassed traditional filibuster hurdles in the Senate through the reconciliation process, effectively cementing long-term fiscal resources for enhanced border operations, detention center expansions, and thousands of new field agents.

Having now successfully cleared both chambers of Congress following an intense final hour of floor debate, the spending bill officially heads to President Trump’s desk, where it is expected to be signed into law.

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Calif.: Man pleads guilty to ‘doxing’ ICE lawyer

A California man pleaded guilty to a federal criminal charge for doxing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyer.

According to a Friday press release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Gregory Curcio, 68 years old, shared personal information about an ICE attorney on social media.

The office defined doxing as “publishing private or identifying information about an individual on the internet with malicious intent.”

“In February 2025, Curcio created a Facebook post in which he identified the victim — an ICE attorney — as an ICE agent, posted her home address, and directed others to ‘swat’ her at that address,” the release stated.

“Curcio also posted the victim’s home address on another social media account with instructions to swat her,” it continued.

It noted that “swatting” is a form of harassment that often includes a false emergency call being made that is meant to provoke a “significant” response from law enforcement.

According to previously filed court documents, the victim said Curcio was a former resident at her mother’s apartment building in Santa Monica, California, per the release.

“The victim said she never met Curcio, but that he had harassed and threatened her mother for years and engaged in a campaign to harass the victim and her family beginning from at least January, 2024,” the office stated.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 21st, and Curcio could face up to five years in federal prison.

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