Immigrants are dying in ICE detention. A key watchdog office is now gone.

Deaths in ICE custody have reached a record high; 49 people since January 2025. As many as 29 just in this fiscal year. But the Trump administration is shutting down an independent DHS oversight office that handles complaints about conditions and treatment in detention facilities.

“I live in constant fear that I will be subjected to further baseless detentions just for going about my daily life." On May 2, Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a Florida-born US citizen, was detained by ICE in Alabama for the third time (!) in the span of a year. And he's suing the federal government.

A judge ordered her return after a wrongful deportation. Now comes the hard part. “I think a lot of people assume that the story ends when your loved one comes back. But that’s just the beginning of when the healing process starts.”

The "justices’ immigration histories span much of the American experience...In each case, these newcomers paved the way for a descendant to reach the privileged pinnacle of the country’s civic life. These nine men and women will now sit in judgment of citizenship for their fellow countrymen."

When the SCOTUS justices hear oral arguments over Trump’s effort to rewrite the Constitution and limit birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara tomorrow, they'll be considering arguments pushed by a handful of controversial legal scholars. @pemalevy.bsky.social and I unpacked their theories here:

NEW: The government is holding Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, a Sacramento DACA-protected mother deported after her February green card interview, at the San Ysidro port of entry despite an approaching court-ordered deadline to bring her back to the United States, advocates and her legal team say.

“I followed the rules and trusted the process, and I just want to return to my family and rebuild my life.” A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a Sacramento mother who was detained at her green card interview and deported to Mexico within 24 hours.

"What the government’s really trying to do here is muddy the waters enough so that we won’t notice that it is rewriting the clear text of the Constitution itself." I talked to Cody Wofsy, ACLU lawyer in the SCOTUS birthright citizenship case, about Trump's push to upend the 14th Amendment.

On February 18, Damaris Bello accompanied her mother to a green card interview in downtown Sacramento. By the next morning, Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez had been deported to Mexico, where she hasn't lived in 27 years and despite having valid DACA status.

SCOOP: In a January letter to Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), DHS says 270 DACA recipients have been arrested from January to September 2025. In addition, 174 DACA applicants have been deported, according to ICE records. Those numbers differ from what was shared with Sen. Dick Durbin in February.

My dispatch from the Jersey suburbs: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Immigrants are successfully challenging the Trump administration's mass detention policy and winning release from ICE custody—thanks to a centuries-old legal principle and constitutional right. My latest for @motherjones.com:

ICE took their papers—and won’t give them back

Steven Tendo is a pastor and asylum seeker from Uganda who has survived unimaginable harm and persecution back home. He has been fighting his case for years and reporting to ICE regularly. Yesterday, he was taken into custody—days before a scheduled check-in—and moved from Vermont to New Hampshire.

“It’s not at all surprising that this is happening with these ICE [removal] officers being sent out to basically treat people terribly,” a one-time deputy chief counsel with the agency told me, anticipating more escalation of violence. My latest for @motherjones.com:

“Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers,” Stephen Miller said in late 2023. But as I wrote here before Trump's re-election, researchers estimated that large-scale deportations would result in fewer jobs for Americans, not more.

"We have voted. We have protested. We have been killed. We have been persecuted. We have been imprisoned. We have been tortured. We have done everything in our power to have a path to democracy—and we deserve that opportunity.”

This year felt like a decade. I wanted to highlight some of the immigration reporting I've done over the past 12 months: In January, I wrote about the big money fueling the right's plot to end birthright citizenship.

All asylum decisions paused. Naturalization ceremonies canceled. Green card applications on hold. The Trump administration's blanket restrictions on legal immigration "don’t just disrupt paperwork, they derail lives.” My latest for @motherjones.com:

Reporter @dfriedman.bsky.social asked the Pentagon about Pete Hegseth’s mentor. Then the threats began.

“Asian wife sharing,” Pentagon press policy, and me: Journalism in the second Trump administration gets personal. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Much of the current immigration policymaking—if this rampant clampdown and unleashing of brutalizing force can be called that—seems to be now distilled to a simple modus operandi: we do it because we can. My reflection on a year of hell for immigrants and the Trump administration's casual cruelty:

After 20 years in the Navy, Buzz Grambo thought he'd spend his retirement playing video games and watching baseball. Instead, he patrols the streets of Baltimore to protect his neighbors from ICE. He even upgraded his scooter to a Segway that reaches 26 mph to keep up with the agents. My latest:

I’ve spent a lot of the last three years investigating the rise of anti-trans politics. Often, it came back to the controversy over trans women athletes. So I teamed up with @pablo.show to look into the leading figure on the issue: Riley Gaines. www.motherjones.com/politics/202... 1/

Then they came for the Dreamers. Read @isabelaalhadeff.bsky.social's heartbreaking look at the fear and chaos the Trump administration has wrought onto the lives of young people brought to the United States. "A real betrayal."

Some background on the absolute monarchy where the Trump administration is now paying to imprison people deported by ICE Story here: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Russ Vought's neighbors have strong feelings about him: "You asked what it is like living near such a man. Frankly, I'd rather not, but this is a wonderful neighborhood and, unlike Mr. Vought himself, we do not want our neighbors (even Mr. Vought) to be traumatized. So we just live with it."

@isabelaalhadeff.bsky.social wrote what remains the definitive profile of Russel Vought last year. He's going to try and use the shut down to further his dream of an imperial Christian presidency and "traumatizing" federal workers www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

It's the last day of our September fundraiser! Please consider supporting our non-profit newsroom as we double down on fearless reporting—just as corporate media caves to Donald Trump. Your donations will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Thank you so much!

"It’s a blueprint for authoritarianism wrapped in barbed wire and dressed up as local revival.” ICE has its eyes on an idle Core Civic-owned prison in Walsenburg. Local officials have welcomed the potential influx of money and jobs. But residents are pushing back. My latest for @motherjones.com:

In another loss in the courts for Trump, a federal judge just blocked the administration from revoking legal status from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians in the United States. Judge Chen ruled that the termination of TPS exceeded the DHS Secretary’s authority and violated the law.

Today, DHS announced the termination of the 2021 TPS designation for Venezuela, adding to the largest de-legalization push in modern US history: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

“They’re going to kill me here,” Neri Alvarado thought. Alvarado was allegedly targeted by the Trump administration because of his tattoo of an autism awareness ribbon. Now, free from El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison, Alvarado wants the world to know what they lived through.

Proud to announce that we’ve been nominated for six Online Journalism Awards, including General Excellence in Journalism! Here's a thread of some of our amazing stories that've been recognized this year. 🧵

“There’s no family here, there are no lawyers here, nobody exists here.” For four months, Neri Alvarado, Julio Zambrano, and so many others wondered if they were ever going to leave CECOT alive. Now, they want to clear their names and justice for what they had to endure. With @nlanard.bsky.social:

“You enter legally, and suddenly, because of someone else’s whim, you’re illegal. It doesn’t make sense.” I wrote about the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan TPS holders losing legal status overnight as a result of the Trump administration's mass deportation push.

"The female guards would count to 20 as they administered the beatings, and if the prisoners complained or cried out, they would start again...Tito Martínez, one of the inmates, recalled that a prison nurse was watching. 'Hit the piñata,' she cheered."

Late last night, Julio Zambrano's sister sent me this photo of him home with his mother in Venezuela.

Today, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate a legal representation program for detained immigrants with mental health issues who are deemed unfit to represent themselves in court. I wrote about how critical this government-appointed counsel service is here:

Maria Quevedo, the mother of Eddie Adolfo Hurtado Quevedo, told us she was feeling relieved but still scared. “Happy because God gave me the gift of seeing my son free on my birthday. Scared because my son is going to Venezuela, where he was threatened by the [paramilitary group] colectivos.”

"The bitterness is still there. The anger about what happened to him is still there.” After four months, more than 200 men sent to El Salvador have been released from CECOT and returned to Venezuela. @nlanard.bsky.social and I spoke with family members and friends waiting to be reunited with them.

NEW: Story from @isabelaalhadeff.bsky.social and me based on interviews with families of the men returned to Venezuela tonight after Trump disappeared them to El Salvador in March. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Earlier today, the mother of Julio Zambrano, one of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT, was told to go to Caracas for some "good news." She's at the airport in anticipation of her son's arrival after four long months. @nlanard.bsky.social and I are in touch with other families as they wait for more news.

“It was a perfect storm.” In Milford, MA, a town where 30 percent of the population is foreign-born, the arrest of 18-year-old Marcelo Gomes da Silva set off a chain reaction unlike anything the community had seen before. My latest for @motherjones.com:

$100 billion in new ICE funding is about to get unleashed thanks to this bill. Come process that crushing figure with me.

To mark the 3-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I published a guide on all the ways doctors, nonprofits, pilots, and ordinary people are helping people from banned states access reproductive healthcare. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Humanitarian parole is over. Now comes the fear. "This order gives ICE a green light to grab these immigrants and deport them to the hell they escaped from in a legal way.”

NEW: Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar was among the 238 Venezuelans removed to El Salvador without due process in mid-March. He has no criminal history or a final order of deportation. On Friday, a US immigration judge terminated his asylum case, effectively ejecting him from the legal system.

NEW: We obtained DHS data that shows the US knew only 32 of the 238 Venezuelans deported to a prison in El Salvador in March were convicted of US crimes, only 6 of those violent. Trump called them “savages,” “monsters” and "the worst of the worst.” www.propublica.org/article/trum...