Latest news with #CriminalAlienProgram
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Men arrested in Madison among dozens of immigrants detained in South Dakota
The Minnehaha County Jail in Sioux Falls on May 15, 2025. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight) It's unknown how many immigrants have been held for removal in South Dakota since President Donald Trump took office in January promising mass deportations, but public jail rosters in the state show more than two dozen being held now. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told South Dakota Searchlight that arrest statistics will be updated soon. The most recent figures on its website are from December. A high-profile ICE operation Tuesday in Madison resulted in the arrests of eight people accused of being in the country without legal permission. Before that, ICE was already using jails in South Dakota as waystations for immigration actions more often since Trump took office, according to Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead. 'They're not only doing what's been reported on in Madison,' he said. 'They're doing investigations around the clock, with other federal agencies.' As of Thursday morning, there were 22 people detained at the Sioux Falls jail with pending immigration issues, according to Milstead, who said the figure can change by the hour as inmates come and go. About half of the current detainees with ICE holds came to the attention of immigration agents after being arrested on state-level criminal charges. The others arrived at the jail for removal actions alone, and Milstead said that activity has increased. Eight targeted in Madison immigration operation appear in federal court The jail holds federal inmates for both ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees people accused of federal crimes, including those related to immigration. The feds pay the county $112 a day per federal inmate. People targeted by ICE for removal who don't have criminal charges can only be held at the jail in Sioux Falls for 72 hours before being transferred to an ICE detention facility, Milstead said. Those facilities are themselves local jails, but Sioux Falls is not designated as a long-term detention facility for ICE. Unlike inmates targeted for removal alone, inmates with ICE holds and criminal charges can stay in Sioux Falls until their case concludes. An inmate who comes in on an ICE hold and is later charged with a crime is transferred to the U.S. Marshals Service. 'If they're Marshals prisoners, we've held them for years sometimes,' Milstead said. Milstead's jail has cooperated with ICE for more than a decade as part of the agency's Secure Communities Program, under which participating local jails send booking fingerprints to both the FBI and ICE. The FBI uses the fingerprints to check for federal warrants and federal criminal charges. ICE checks for prior interactions with immigration agents. The Minnehaha County Jail also sends the names of every foreign-born detainee to be cross-checked for legal status by ICE's Criminal Alien Program. CONTACT US The jail has agreed to step up its cooperation. Milstead recently signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE, which will require some of his deputies to take about eight hours of training, after which they'll be able to serve ICE warrants for removal actions. There are several types of 287(g) agreements, all of which enable some measure of cross-deputization to allow local law enforcement to work on behalf of ICE. Milstead and Hughes County Sheriff Patrick Callahan, in Pierre, both signed up for the warrant service program through 287(g) this spring. It won't be a large change operationally in Sioux Falls, said Milstead, who expects to train around a dozen people. Inmates brought to the jail by ICE on removal proceedings have already been served removal warrants by ICE agents. Those who come to jail on criminal charges and are later alleged to be in the country illegally are served removal warrants by ICE agents after those agents obtain warrants from a judge. The Minnehaha County Jail's 287(g) agreement will allow trained deputies to serve those warrants, eliminating the need for an ICE agent to return to the jail for that purpose after asking for them. Callahan told South Dakota Searchlight he'll be the local officer trained to serve removal warrants. His jail has no inmates with immigration holds. Pennington County, South Dakota's second-largest county by population, had four inmates with ICE holds as of Thursday afternoon, spokesperson Helene Duhamel said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
These are the facilities holding migrant detainees in Central Texas
Under President Donald Trump's renewed administration, Texas has emerged as a key frontline in the push for aggressive immigration enforcement and widespread deportations. Texas residents – regardless of immigration status – feel the ripple effects in the economy, schools, healthcare systems, courts and public safety services. To better understand these challenges, KXAN spent the first 100 days of Trump's second term producing 'Undocumented,' a comprehensive project diving into the real-life consequences of related policies and proposals. AUSTIN (KXAN) — In the months since President Donald Trump resumed office, federal immigration enforcement has ramped up across the country, with evidence of it popping up in and around Austin. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detention facilities temporarily hold immigrants awaiting court proceedings to determine their immigration status. This includes asylum seekers and refugees fleeing prosecution in their home countries, and those suspected of unauthorized arrival, illegal entry and visa violations. In January, a high-level source confirmed the J.J. Pickle Federal Building in downtown Austin was being used to house migrants. At that time, roughly a dozen immigrants had been brought to the center. Source: Downtown Austin federal building used as ICE detention center More recently, the Trump administration said it was considering selling the building in an effort to cull underutilized federal spaces. Meanwhile, earlier this year, protesters gathered outside a building in Pflugerville with razor wire and Homeland Security vehicles outside. An ICE spokesperson confirmed this month the building is being used as an administrative office and processing center. The agency issued the following statement: The facility in Pflugerville, Texas, is leased by the U.S. General Services Administration and will be a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement resident office scheduled to open in late May. The employees working at this Enforcement and Removal Operations resident office will oversee programs, such as the Criminal Alien Program, fugitive operations, and will manage the non-detained docket. Aliens who are arrested may be brought to this office to be processed which can take up to 12 hours and will then be transferred or released as appropriate. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Neither the J.J. Pickle Federal Building or the Pflugerville facility appear on the ICE webpage that lists its detention and processing facilities. ICE has not yet responded to our questions about their absence from the page. The longstanding detention center for migrants awaiting due process in the Austin area has been the T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor. Originally designed as a medium-security prison, the center holds around 500 detainees and opened in 2006. Private prison company CoreCivic has been contracted to run the facility since its inception. A lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union in 2007 accused the center of providing poor living conditions for families, including young children detained there. Legal, public and political pressure eventually lead the center to take exclusively women detainees in 2009. Employing undocumented workers in Texas is illegal, but rarely enforced Over the next decade, there were at least three accusations of improper sexual activity between guards and detainees at T. Don Hutto. ICE reported firing a guard for alleged improper conduct with a detainee to Williamson County officials, while another guard admitted to groping women in custody and was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison. The FBI investigated a third claim of sexual abuse by a guard, but no one was charged. Pressure from human rights group Grassroots Leadership over that last case led Williamson County to end its contract agreement with ICE and CoreCivic. The term of that contract ended in 2019. Little to no local oversight at ICE facility in Taylor Activists said they thought the end of that agreement meant the end of the facility, but the detention center continued through a new partnership between ICE and CoreCivic. The terms of that agreement not set to expire until 2030. In April, ICE released the number of detainees at each of its facilities over the last fiscal year. That data showed no women listed at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center. Migrant detainment varies by county in Texas. Scroll over the map to see where migrants are being housed. Source: ICE (KXAN Interactive/Christopher Adams & Dalton Huey) Combing through the last few years' data shows the facility stopped taking women in 2022 and started exclusively detaining men. Employing undocumented workers in Texas is illegal, but rarely enforced CoreCivic deferred questions about that change and how emergencies and assaults are reported to its government partner. 'ICE is committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments under appropriate conditions of confinement,' an ICE spokesperson said in a statement. KXAN Digital Data Reporter Christopher Adams, News Director Haley Cihock, Graphic Artist Wendy Gonzalez, Director of Investigations & Innovation Josh Hinkle, Investigative Producer Dalton Huey, Digital Special Projects Developer Robert Sims and Digital Director Kate Winkle contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge blasts Trump administration's student visa terminations as 'arbitrary and capricious'
A federal judge blasted the Trump administration's termination of immigration records for thousands of foreign students in the United States as "arbitrary and capricious," demanding that the government provide detailed explanations as to why and how the records were terminated and what this means for students. "I think we all agree it was arbitrary and capricious," Judge Ana Reyes said about the Trump administration's move to terminate records of foreign students in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a database that schools and government agencies used to confirm if foreign students are abiding by the conditions of their stay, during a court hearing for an international student's case in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "This was not ideal by any stretch of the imagination," she continued. Akshar Patel, a computer science student from India, sued the Trump administration after his SEVIS record was recently terminated based on a speeding ticket from a few years ago. On the heels of the Trump administration's recent announcement that it is reinstating SEVIS records for some international students whose records had been terminated, Patel sought a preliminary injunction to ensure he can maintain his status and won't be detained or deported. "It still boggles my mind that we're firing tens of thousands of federal workers on no notice and then take 10 to 20 of them to run a bunch of names through a database to see if there are students -- if they have a speeding record," Reyes said. Reyes, who is overseeing Patel's case, did not rule on the motion for a preliminary injunction from the bench on Tuesday after hearing from the government that Patel's legal status as a student has not been terminated and that he's not facing any immediate threat of deportation. The judge suggested that the plaintiff and the government could come up with language to ensure Patel's status in the United States. During the court hearing, Andre Watson, a senior official at the National Security Division of Homeland Security Investigations, explained that Patel was terminated due to a speeding ticket from a few years ago, was one of roughly 6,400 international students who were referred to the State Department after his team checked the records of nearly 1.3 million international students through the National Crime Information Center as part of its Criminal Alien Program initiative, which is aimed at identifying and removing migrants lacking legal status to be in the U.S. who also have criminal records. MORE: Trump administration restores status of international students after abrupt terminations The thousands of international students who were referred to the State Department, and subsequently returned to the Department of Homeland Security, including Patel, came up on the NCIC database but did not necessarily have criminal records. Watson did not elaborate on how exactly the government combed through the names to decide whom it flagged. The judge was highly critical of the administration's process of terminating these students' immigration records and visas, taking particular notice of the sweeping nature of the mass terminations. "After careful consideration for 15 minutes, terminate everybody, right?" the judge questioned as she walked through the government's process of filtering through students' records and determining whose records to terminate. "Can you and I agree that nowhere in this entire process has anyone done an individualized determination of any of these individuals before their names were terminated in SEVIS?" "I mean, no one looked at Mr. Patel's case and said that, yeah, here's somebody who should no longer be in the United States, right?" Reyes continued. Noting that Patel had only received a citation in Texas for reckless driving but was never charged, Reyes said, "You and I both agree that if we deported every single individual in this country who's been tasked for speeding, there'd be very few people left, and almost all of them would not have driver's license." "You and I both know that Mr. Patel is not a criminal, right?" she said, adding that Patel had even disclosed the speeding ticket in his visa petition. "The United States government had already assessed this speeding ticket and had found it not to be a reason to kick him out of status." U.S. attorney Johnny Walker maintained that the SEVIS termination was merely a "red flag" to the school notifying it of the student's record, saying it is up to the school to terminate his student status. MORE: International students sue after Trump administration terminates their legal status While Patel, who is scheduled to graduate in a few weeks, has continued to attend classes to finish his degree, lawyers representing other affected international students have said some schools saw it as more than a red flag -- thinking this meant their students needed to leave the country. While declining to rule from the bench after assurances from the government that Patel's student status is active, the judge criticized the administration's actions, describing it as an "utter lack of concern for human individuals." "Aside from the utter lack of concern for human individuals who we have invited into our country and who have made our communities richer by being students who have contributed to our colleges and who have paid our colleges -- the reason I'm concerned and particularly troubled is because those plaintiffs lawyers, like all lawyers, have to get paid, and so now we've got thousands of people who are having to pay plaintiff's attorneys to have litigation, to file briefs, to appear in court, prepare for court, to get the information, and that's not cheap, right?" Reyes said. "And all of this could have been avoided if individuals had taken a beat and instead of just rushing things," she continued. Judge blasts Trump administration's student visa terminations as 'arbitrary and capricious' originally appeared on
29-04-2025
- Politics
Judge blasts Trump administration's student visa terminations as 'arbitrary and capricious'
A federal judge blasted the Trump administration's termination of immigration records for thousands of foreign students in the United States as "arbitrary and capricious," demanding that the government provide detailed explanations as to why and how the records were terminated and what this means for students. "I think we all agree it was arbitrary and capricious," Judge Ana Reyes said about the Trump administration's move to terminate records of foreign students in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a database that schools and government agencies used to confirm if foreign students are abiding by the conditions of their stay, during a court hearing for an international student's case in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "This was not ideal by any stretch of the imagination," she continued. Akshar Patel, a computer science student from India, sued the Trump administration after his SEVIS record was recently terminated based on a speeding ticket from a few years ago. On the heels of the Trump administration's recent announcement that it is reinstating SEVIS records for some international students whose records had been terminated, Patel sought a preliminary injunction to ensure he can maintain his status and won't be detained or deported. "It still boggles my mind that we're firing tens of thousands of federal workers on no notice and then take 10 to 20 of them to run a bunch of names through a database to see if there are students -- if they have a speeding record," Reyes said. Reyes, who is overseeing Patel's case, did not rule on the motion for a preliminary injunction from the bench on Tuesday after hearing from the government that Patel's legal status as a student has not been terminated and that he's not facing any immediate threat of deportation. The judge suggested that the plaintiff and the government could come up with language to ensure Patel's status in the United States. During the court hearing, Andre Watson, a senior official at the National Security Division of Homeland Security Investigations, explained that Patel was terminated due to a speeding ticket from a few years ago, was one of roughly 6,400 international students who were referred to the State Department after his team checked the records of nearly 1.3 million international students through the National Crime Information Center as part of its Criminal Alien Program initiative, which is aimed at identifying and removing migrants lacking legal status to be in the U.S. who also have criminal records. The thousands of international students who were referred to the State Department, and subsequently returned to the Department of Homeland Security, including Patel, came up on the NCIC database but did not necessarily have criminal records. Watson did not elaborate on how exactly the government combed through the names to decide whom it flagged. The judge was highly critical of the administration's process of terminating these students' immigration records and visas, taking particular notice of the sweeping nature of the mass terminations. "After careful consideration for 15 minutes, terminate everybody, right?" the judge questioned as she walked through the government's process of filtering through students' records and determining whose records to terminate. "Can you and I agree that nowhere in this entire process has anyone done an individualized determination of any of these individuals before their names were terminated in SEVIS?" "I mean, no one looked at Mr. Patel's case and said that, yeah, here's somebody who should no longer be in the United States, right?" Reyes continued. Noting that Patel had only received a citation in Texas for reckless driving but was never charged, Reyes said, "You and I both agree that if we deported every single individual in this country who's been tasked for speeding, there'd be very few people left, and almost all of them would not have driver's license." "You and I both know that Mr. Patel is not a criminal, right?" she said, adding that Patel had even disclosed the speeding ticket in his visa petition. "The United States government had already assessed this speeding ticket and had found it not to be a reason to kick him out of status." U.S. attorney Johnny Walker maintained that the SEVIS termination was merely a "red flag" to the school notifying it of the student's record, saying it is up to the school to terminate his student status. While Patel, who is scheduled to graduate in a few weeks, has continued to attend classes to finish his degree, lawyers representing other affected international students have said some schools saw it as more than a red flag -- thinking this meant their students needed to leave the country. While declining to rule from the bench after assurances from the government that Patel's student status is active, the judge criticized the administration's actions, describing it as an "utter lack of concern for human individuals." "Aside from the utter lack of concern for human individuals who we have invited into our country and who have made our communities richer by being students who have contributed to our colleges and who have paid our colleges -- the reason I'm concerned and particularly troubled is because those plaintiffs lawyers, like all lawyers, have to get paid, and so now we've got thousands of people who are having to pay plaintiff's attorneys to have litigation, to file briefs, to appear in court, prepare for court, to get the information, and that's not cheap, right?" Reyes said.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE arrests over 32,000 migrants in US illegally in 1st 50 days
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has arrested over 32,000 migrants who are living in the United States without legal status since Jan. 21, a day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, according to Department of Homeland Security officials. Those numbers include at-large arrests made by ICE, arrests made in the Criminal Alien Program and a partnership program called 287g, according to a senior ICE official. In the first 50 days of the Trump administration, immigration officials arrested over 14,000 convicted criminals, 9,800 migrants who have pending criminal charges 1,155 suspected gang members and 44 foreign fugitives, according to a senior ICE official. MORE: US to require Canadians who are in the country for longer than 30 days to register with government But on a call with a group of reporters on Wednesday, senior ICE official called the remaining 8,718 "immigration violators." During previous interviews with ABC News and other outlets, ICE has referred to these arrests as "collateral damage" -- people who are not necessarily the target but get swept up in the process. "We ended catch [and] release, and we have returned ICE to its core mission, which is arresting people who violate our immigration law," acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said. "Secretary Noem and I are changing the culture of ICE to one of action and accountability." During the call, ICE officials were pressed on future detention space and deportation numbers. They didn't given any new details on deportations but did admit some people have been released under their watch due to "judicial release" and through "medical conditions and other humanitarian factors." ICE also said it is maxed out on detention facilities, with approximately 47,000 beds taken, and the official said ICE is growing potential space through partnerships with the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It is also pushing Congress to act and provide more funding for its efforts. This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. ICE arrests over 32,000 migrants in US illegally in 1st 50 days originally appeared on
