- DHS once against showed its propensity towards violence this week when ICE officers drew their weapons on a peaceful protestor. Following what would now seem to be standard operating procedure for the agency, DHS immediately accused Carolina Molina of “weaponizing her vehicle” during the incident in Northern Virginia on Monday. But as has repeatedly happened in the past, video evidence (this time from Ms. Molina’s dashcam) directly contradicts the administration’s fantasy narrative. Ms. Molina is a licensed mental health counselor who works with people trying to navigate the byzantine immigration system and was on her way to a meeting with an immigration attorney at the time. She had been heckling ICE officers during an enforcement operation.
- Not content with its current level of violence, DHS is looking for new and creative ways to inflict pain on people. Their newest idea is to spend $20 million dollars on gloves that can deliver a painful electric shock. Civil rights advocates worry that these gloves will provide a way for DHS to surreptitiously deliver pain with the flick of a switch that witnesses and cameras are unlikely to spot, with the ACLU calling this, “a recipe for harm to the public.”
- On Wednesday, the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the Department of Justice, issued a new ruling that could put many immigrants with lawful status at risk of removal. Under previous interpretations of the law, an individual with temporary status could often leave the country under “advance parole” and re-enter to rectify a prior inadmissibility issue. This is frequently necessary for those who are trying to adjust status in the US or obtain an immigration visa through consular processing. Under the new interpretation, those with temporary status such as TPS or DACA who leave the country under advance parole could now become inadmissible. MIRA strongly urges anyone considering advance parole to consult an attorney before making any decisions.
- Last week, the Trump Administration announced that they had contracted with a small private Texas law firm, the Burke Law Group, to provide legal services to unaccompanied minors. The contract worth $150 million, arose after the administration let lapse a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, a non-profit which had been providing these services for nearly two decades. In a confusing development this week, the Burke Law Group states that they, “declined to apply and has not been awarded any grant. Even before the announcement from Burke, the administration had also announced another contract that could be worth over to $240 million with a disgraced non-profit organization. Our Rescue, formerly known as Operation Underground Railroad, purports to conduct sting operations against sex traffickers, but it’s founder resigned in disgrace in 2023 after numerous accusation of sexual assault and sex trafficking by former employees. The current CEO of the “non-profit” has an annual salary of over $400,000.
- Private prisons are raking in cash as Congress and the president dump billions into increased immigration enforcement. GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two largest private prison contractors, reported revenue of $1.4 billion just in the second quarter of this year. This number does not include an additional $1.6 billion that CoreCivic made by selling four detention facilities to DHS.
- Earlier this week, the State Department bragged that it has canceled over 175,000 visas since Trump returned to office, far exceeding the rate under previous administrations. Such revocations numbered about 40,000 in the last year of the Biden Administration, but jumped to 100,000 in 2025 and is on pace to reach 120,000 this year. While the administration claims that such revocations are for public safety and national security, we know that the administration has been using visa revocations to attack free speech, going so far as to monitor social media accounts. The administration refused to offer a breakdown of visa rescissions by category, only offering anecdotal evidence of criminal behavior.
- Continuing their attack on those with legal status, USCIS terminated TPS for South Sudan and Burma effective August 7. These terminations had been announced under former DHS Secretary Krisiti Noem, but were on hold due to legal challenges. The Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v Doe, which allowed for the termination of TPS for Haiti and Syria, also allowed the administration to move forward with these terminations.
- The ACLU of MA won a brief legal fight with Plymouth County Correctional Facility over access to immigrant detainee medical records. The ACLU had been seeking anonymized medical records of detainees from the Plymouth facility, the only one in the state that houses civil immigration detainees, through a public records request. The County had argued that federal law prevented them from releasing the records, but the judge disagreed, finding that this was not about federal law but about the state’s ability to regulate its own policing powers. The County intends to comply with the judge’s decision, saying that they, “appreciate the court’s guidance.”