Category Archives: US immigration

Ice detains superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district

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Fellow educators express shock at detention of ‘beacon of light’ Ian Roberts as DHS claims he had ‘no work authorization’

The superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents on Friday, prompting shock among fellow educators.

Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Des Moines public schools (DMPS), was apprehended on Friday morning, according to the district’s board chair. Roberts appears to be held at the Pottawattamie county jail, about two hours west of Des Moines, according to the Ice online detainee database. The database lists Roberts’s country of birth as Guyana.

This article was amended on 26 September 2025. An earlier version said Ian Roberts was born in Brooklyn, based on past interviews. However, a 2023 statement from the district says he was “born to immigrant parents from Guyana, and spent most of his formative years in Brooklyn”.

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Texas Ice facility shooting: Republicans blame ‘radical left’ as Democrats focus on victims and gun control

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Democrats say Trump allies are using incident for ‘political points’ against the left despite the victims being detainees

A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas has been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and that no federal agents had been injured. The president and his allies, however, were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.

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Ice targeted me for organizing, says farm worker who left US for Mexico

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Alfredo Juarez Zeferino spent a harrowing few months in Ice jail – and, under threat of deportation, chose to leave

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino spends much of his days outdoors, harvesting bananas and hiking vast, bramble-laden trails. But for more than a quarter of 2025, he barely saw the sun. After being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in March, the farm-worker activist was placed in a detention center in Washington state, where he remained until he agreed to voluntarily leave the US.

“I probably would say five times, in the three months and a half I was in there, they offered me to go outside,” he explained on a Zoom call from his family farm in Guerrero, Mexico, where he has been for over a month.

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California becomes first state to ban face coverings for most law enforcement

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Local and federal agents, including immigration officials, may not wear masks while conducting official business

California will be the first state to ban most law enforcement, including federal immigration agents, from covering their faces while conducting official business under a bill signed by the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, on Saturday.

The ban is California’s direct response to a recent series of immigration raids in Los Angeles where federal agents wore masks while making mass arrests. The raids prompted protests and led Donald Trump to deploy national guard troops and marines to the city.

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Trump again asks supreme court to end protections for Venezuelans in US

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Justice department urges court to overturn ruling that Kristi Noem lacked authority to end TPS program

The Trump administration asked the US supreme court on Friday to intervene for the second time in a case involving its bid to end deportation protections the former president, Joe Biden, granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States.

The justice department filed an emergency application asking the justices to lift a federal judge’s ruling that the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, lacked the authority to end the protections for Venezuelans under the temporary protected status, or TPS, program.

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Judges rule against Trump administration on deporting Guatemalan children and Venezuelans

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Double defeat protects Venezuelans with temporary protected status and Guatemalan minors

The Trump administration has been handed a double defeat by judges in immigration cases, barring the executive branch from deporting a group of Guatemalan children and from slashing protections for many Venezuelans in the US.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the administration to refrain from deporting Guatemalan unaccompanied immigrant children with active immigration cases while a legal challenge plays out.

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US judge orders Mahmoud Khalil deported citing ‘misrepresented facts’ on green card form

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Lawyers say pro-Palestinian activist remains protected from immigration enforcement while separate federal court case proceeds

An immigration judge in the US state of Louisiana has ordered the deportation of pro-Palestinian protest leader Mahmoud Khalil to Algeria or Syria, ruling that he failed to disclose information on his green card application, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

Khalil’s lawyers said they intended to appeal against the deportation order, and that a federal district court’s separate orders remain in effect prohibiting the government from immediately deporting or detaining him as his federal court case proceeds. The lawyers submitted a letter to the federal court in New Jersey overseeing his civil rights case and said he will challenge the decision.

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US border agent who led immigration crackdown in LA arrives in Chicago

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Gregory Bovino announces arrival as local immigration advocates say they have noticed an uptick in Ice operations

The border patrol agent who spearheaded the immigration crackdown that sparked widespread protests in Los Angeles announced in a social media post Tuesday that he has arrived in Chicago.

“Well, Chicago, we’ve arrived!” Gregory Bovino said in a post on X that included footage of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) vehicles and agents under Chicago street signs and views of downtown. “Operation At Large is here to continue the mission we started in Los Angeles.”

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US right capitalizes on fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina

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Far right points to lax criminal justice system and racist narratives, not mental health system failures as experts say

The random and unprovoked killing of a young woman in North Carolina several weeks ago has become a viral video, a political football, and a powerful rightwing talking point – even as the horror and anger her death has provoked obscures what experts say is a vital story about the failures of the American mental health system.

The alleged perpetrator, Decarlos Brown Jr, 34, has a long history of problems with the law and mental health issues. He had been arrested 14 times and served a five-year stint for armed robbery. Brown had also come to believe that there was something alien and malevolent inside him – a “man-made material”, he told people, possibly a computer chip implanted by the government that was fighting him for control of his body.

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Chicago suburb warns residents that federal agents may be about to arrive

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Evanston urges residents to report sightings of federal agents as Trump has threatened immigration crackdown

A Chicago suburb has warned its residents that federal immigration agents may be present in the coming days as Donald Trump continues to threaten an immigration enforcement crackdown and national guard deployment in the nation’s third largest city.

The city of Evanston issued a statement urging its residents to report sightings of federal agents, after local officials said they were informed over the weekend about the likelihood of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) activity.

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Supreme court lifts restrictions on Los Angeles immigration raids in win for Trump

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Conservative majority lifts restraining order from judge who found’roving patrols’ were conducting indiscriminate arrests

The US supreme court on Monday cleared the way for federal agents to conduct sweeping immigration operations in Los Angeles, the latest victory for Donald Trump’s administration at the high court.

The conservative majority lifted a restraining order from a judge who found that “roving patrols” were conducting indiscriminate arrests in LA. The order had barred agents from stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.

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300 South Koreans detained at Hyundai plant in US to be released, says Seoul

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Footage of raid by US immigration officials showed detained workers in handcuffs and with chains around their ankles

South Korea announced on Sunday that the roughly 300 of its nationals detained during an immigration raid in Georgia would be released and flown home, as the sudden detention of workers appeared to strain the longstanding diplomatic and economic relationship between the two nations.

Nearly 500 workers, among them at least 300 South Koreans and at least 23 Mexicans, were arrested at the Hyundai-LG battery plant in the city of Ellabell on Thursday.

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Trump administration begins new Ice operation in Massachusetts

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A Department of Homeland Security official confirmed the action in a statement, blaming mayor’s sanctuary policies

The Trump administration has targeted Massachusetts as its next location to begin arresting and deporting immigrants, a Department of Homeland Security official confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.

DHS and its US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm are calling the operation Patriot 2.0, modifying the name of a May deportation surge that led to the arrest of 1,500 people in the state, according to the reports.

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Judge blocks ending of legal protections for 1m Venezuelans and Haitians in US

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Homeland security had tried to end temporary protected status granted by the Biden administration

A federal judge on Friday ruled against the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections that have granted more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela the right to live and work in the United States.

The ruling by US district judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means that 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire on 10 September have status to stay and work in the United States.

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At least 475 workers detained in major Ice raid at US Hyundai factory

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South Korea concerned after hundreds were arrested at Georgia work site making batteries for Hyundai and Kia cars

Hundreds of workers at a factory being built in Georgia to make car batteries for Hyundai and Kia electric vehicles were detained in a huge raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) on Thursday that stopped construction.

The facility is part of what would be the biggest industrial investment in the state’s history and had been hailed as a huge boost for the economy by Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.

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Trump’s LA national guard deployment cost taxpayers $120m, Newsom says

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California governor condemns decision to deploy troops in response to anti-Ice protests as ‘waste, fraud and abuse’

Donald Trump’s deployment of the national guard in Los Angeles in response to protests in the city over immigration raids cost taxpayers nearly $120m, the California governor’s office said on Thursday.

The US president sent 2,000 national guard troops into the city in June amid clashes between federal immigration agents and protesters. This week a judge ruled that dispatching the military to accompany authorities on immigration enforcement operations violated federal law.

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Louisiana prison chosen for immigration detainees due to its notoriety, says Noem

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Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said she hoped it would encourage people in the US illegally to self-deport

The Trump administration purposefully chose a notorious Louisiana prison to hold immigration detainees as a way to encourage people in the US illegally to self-deport, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday.

A complex inside the Louisiana state penitentiary, an immense rural prison better known as Angola, will be used to detain those whom Noem described as the “worst of the worst” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainees. Noem was speaking to reporters as she stood on the grounds of the facility near a new sign reading, “Louisiana Lockup.”

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Only two more Republicans needed to force vote on Epstein files release, bill co-sponsor says – live

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Donald Trump calls clamor over Jeffrey Epstein files a ‘Democrat hoax that never ends’ as bipartisan group of lawmakers try to force vote on legislation

As part of the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportations, the defense department will soon have hundreds of military judges work on immigration cases, the Associated Press reports:

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the federal justice department to serve as temporary immigration judges, according to a memo reviewed by the Associated Press.

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California bill requires families to be alerted of immigration agents on school campuses

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Bill says state and community colleges must have ‘early warning systems in place’ amid Trump’s deportation push

California lawmakers have passed a bill requiring schools to alert families and teachers when immigration enforcement authorities are on campuses as the Trump administration continues its aggressive mass deportation campaign.

Under the bill, K-12 schools, state universities and community colleges must notify students, faculty and staff, “similar to early warning systems in place for other campus emergencies”, according to a statement from state senator Sasha Renée Pérez, who authored the legislation.

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Lawyers say men deported by US to Eswatini are being imprisoned illegally

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The men, who had been released after serving criminal sentences, are from Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Jamaica and Yemen

Lawyers for five men deported by the US to Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, said they are being denied proper access to their clients, who they said are being imprisoned illegally.

The men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Cuba have criminal convictions, but had all served their sentences and been released in the US, their lawyers said. The US deported them to the small southern African country without warning in July, claiming they were “depraved monsters”.

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