DHS is currently targeting 5,600 refugees in Minnesota as a first step in an expansive plan aimed at reviewing — and presumably restricting — the legal status of refugees admitted since the start of the Biden administration. Read my Law Dork report on Trump admin memos filed in court Thursday:

CBP didn’t give her or anyone any water; she asked 3 times accg to other reports. CBP killed a 7yr old. “8 hours after the girl & her father were taken into custody, she began having seizures & her body temperature was measured at 105.7 degrees by emergency medical technicians. shorturl.at/d2OTJ

In other words, long enough that habeas petitions can be filed on their behalf in Minnesota before they're whisked off to an immigration detention facility somewhere in the Fifth Circuit (where, under that court's current law, they wouldn't be eligible for a bond hearing).

You’re right of course but they’re trying to scare people in a way that far exceeds their ability to actually denaturalize citizens. For an in-depth analysis of what they can and can’t do in this area, see my @lawfaremedia.org piece from July: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what...

BREAKING: Judge Nancy Brasel, a Trump appointee, has issued a TRO in the Minnesota access-to-counsel case about treatment at Whipple. "It appears that in planning for Operation Metro Surge, the government failed to plan for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees."

“The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights.”

Today, UGHE stands as an example to what partnership, purpose, and equity can achieve. We are proud to celebrate this milestone and the future it continues to shape. Learn more: https://www.pih.org/article/decade-progress-ughe-reaches-10-year-milestone

There is a feed for call for papers related to law. It's mostly used for events outside the US. More people in the US should use it. A tip of the hat to @jacobdcharles.bsky.social, who recently posted about the Firearms Law Works-in-Progress conference there. bsky.app/profile/did:...

Read this entire thread

I had two clients moved within an hour of ICE learning we were looking for them and advising us there was not plan to move them. A family of four moved 36 hours after a court order forbidding them from being moved. 3 other clients moved within a day of court-ordered injunctions. 20/

Legal status doesn’t matter: if you exceed ICE’s melanin threshold, you get snatched. It is ethnic cleansing. There is no other word for it. The news has shown you video of these often violent detentions. What you don’t see is what happens to these individuals after. I’ve had a front row seat. 7/

Right, another key thing that historians do is working with important records that have not been digitized. And the vast majority of the world’s records *have not been digitized* and thus do not exist in any format that LLMs/AI can work with.

Absolutely unsurprising there are reports of sexual abuse at ICE detention facilities. I am sure there are many more incidents than in this article. www.pbs.org/newshour/amp...

A majority of cases will never be reported, either. Hundreds of immigrants have reported sexual abuse at ICE facilities. Most cases aren't investigated www.pbs.org/newshour/amp...

NEW: Opening up the Trump admin's attack on Minnesota refugees to greater public scrutiny. On Tuesday, Law Dork, with Public Justice, filed a motion to improve access to a key court case challenging ICE's new effort to detain thousands of law-abiding refugees.

Our Statelessness Knowledge Platform is up and running! If you are a stateless person living in Canada, or a legal practitioner working on issues related to statelessness, email [email protected] to get involved. Project Site: www.statelessness.ca/skp.html Website: www.statelessness.ca

“These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cutthroat practices and the oathbound societies, are to us a pest without mitigation. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they.”NYT editorial 1891

We have received numerous credible reports of torture, killing, and inhumane treatment of detained individuals at the Camp East Montana migrant detention facility, located within Fort Bliss. #txlege

When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I hoped to keep the US from ending up here. That didn't work out! But now it's critical to understand how much is already in process and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we'll save.

During a congressional visit, Congressman Joaquin Castro discovered that babies as young as two months old are being held at the Dilley, Texas Family Concentration Camp. (February 10, 2026)

This is the 38th time that the U.S. military has unlawfully killed civilians on the orders of Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. At least 130 people — never charged with crimes, their identities unknown to their executioners — are now dead.

NEW: Immigrants claiming their detention is illegal have filed more than 18,000 challenges in federal court. The cases, known as habeas petitions, total more than were filed under the last three administrations combined, including Trump’s first term.

ICE now detains 70,766 people, the highest on record. The surge is driven mostly by people with no criminal history, not “serious offenders.” Meanwhile, ICE arrest totals have barely changed since October. Learn more on my substack: austinkocher.substack.com/p/ices-delay...

The U.S. currently has more prisoners and a more sophisticated system of concentration camps than Nazi Germany had on the eve of World War II in 1939

PSA

ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps. If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...

"They write about missing their friends and teachers, falling behind at school, having unreliable access to medical care when they’re sick — some say they’re sick a lot — and feeling scared about what comes next." https://bit.ly/4qrpPYW

My latest article with the one and only @spenceroverton.bsky.social called “Digital Ethnonationalism” forthcoming in University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Here is the papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

“If passed, the SAVE Act will disenfranchise 20 million voters.” Trump has pushed the Republicans to hold a vote in the House this week. Call your Rep and your Senators. 202-224-3121

Over the past three weeks, the "nightmare scenario" for November's midterms has grown more plausible www.vox.com/politics/478...

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken. Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

This promises to be fun! Join @jdickerson.bsky.social and me tomorrow night (Tues., Feb. 6 at 7 PM ET), as part of the National Writers Series, online. Sign up here: www.tickettailor.com/events/natio...

*Green card application in process and work permit, married to US citizen *Lived in US for 20 years, no criminal record *In detention for five months with no charge, despite judge approving release *He disputes ICE claim that he signed forms agreeing to deportation

In Boston ICE randomly pulled over this huge white Irish guy with a Mass drivers license, 20 years in the states, legal status, pending green card and have held him for 5 months, his citizen wife paid a $4k bond that was ignored(!) ICE forged his signature on deportation agreement, no appeal

Concentration camps: “For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick."

Proud to play a role in helping get this together for @justsecurity.org. It provides you with details from the sworn declarations filed in support of the ACLU's lawsuit in Minnesota, Hussen v. Noem. The details of abuses by federal agents across the 29 declarations we looked at are chilling.

go off jack white

The SAVE Act would require American citizens to show documents like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. Our research shows that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents. bit.ly/4rA2p4R

TB and Covid active in a troubled El Paso immigrant tent camp where 3 people have died over a 6 week period ( including one ruled a homicide) & following a measles outbreak at the Dilley family detention center. Reach out if you have info on Dilley/ East Montana www.texastribune.org/2026/02/07/i...

Quintessential example of the sorts of relationship to the U.S. that should entitle one to citizenship wholly independent of other grounds.

HAPPENING NOW: DHS just expedited Liam Conejo Ramos' asylum hearing to this morning, meaning it's possible the five-year-old and his family could be deported as soon as today. Rep. Joaquin Castro: "The Trump administration is trying to take him away again." www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

“Every single woman had been in the facility about three weeks and had been living in the same articles of clothing for three weeks…Their clothes had not been washed. They had not been offered fresh underwear or fresh clothing. Some of them were literally still in their snow boots from Minnesota."

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Marko Milanovic does not mince words.

BREAKING: The federal government has filed a motion seeking to end asylum claims for the family of Liam Conejo Ramos, according to the lawyer representing the family.

We just published database: @aclu.org plaintiffs' sworn declarations of ICE enforcement actions in Minnesota Devastating Racial profiling-arrests-headlock-handcuffs-shackles Mostly US citizens A big lesson here for Justice Kavanaugh. I believe he'll get it www.justsecurity.org/130745/minne... 🧵

I know this is kind of spitting into the wind, but I'd like to make an effort: Just because ICE calls them "administrative warrants" doesn't make that the most accurate term for them. They are forms. ICE forms. Signed by an ICE employee. Authorizing an arrest, but still, a _form._

Castle High School students in Kaneohe, Hawaii walk out to oppose ICE trying to destroy their communities. Multiple levels of bravery from bullies in the school admin who threatened to suspend them and in their peer groups. #Solidarity

Hey, so, I don’t do civil litigation, is it generally considered good when the judge does this? storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...