PICK THREE (No time for all the reporting? Here are three important stories from the past week that you might have overlooked):
What I Saw at the Epicenter of Trump’s War on “Illegals” (Tim Röhn, Politico, October 31, 2025): Migrants thought they were following the rules. Then the rules changed.
ICE Plans Cash Rewards for Private Bounty Hunters to Locate and Track Immigrants (Sam Biddle, The Intercept, October 31, 2025): Companies hired by ICE would be given bundles of information on 10,000 immigrants at a time to locate.
ICE and the Smartphone Panopticon (Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, October 29, 2025): A new wave of digital tools has emerged to help citizens monitor Trump’s crackdown. But internet surveillance can also be used against you.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK
Photo Credit: David McNew, National Immigration Law Center
LOCAL AND OHIO NEWS
Haitians Helped Boost Springfield’s Economy – Now They’re Fleeing in Fear of Trump (Guardian, October 28, 2025): Ohio city’s economic fortunes spiral and local businesses suffer as Haitians leave due to administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.
EMERGING POLICY AND THREATS TO IMMIGRANTS
Detention and Deportation
How a Former Trump Gold Club Worker Was Mistakenly Deported to Mexico (New York Times, October 30, 2025): When Alejandro Juarez was returned to his homeland, federal agents told him that they were just following orders. Those orders were wrong.
Trump Administration Makes Misleading Case in High-Stakes Asylum Hearing (Washington Post, October 30, 2025): Homeland Security asked a judge to deport a man to Afghanistan, where he expects the Taliban to kill him. What happens next could affect thousands.
ICE Violates Its Own Policy by Holding People in Secretive Rooms for Days or Weeks (Guardian, October 30, 2025): Guardian analysis finds ICE increasingly keeps people in holding rooms with little oversight, as some facilities see a 600% rise in detention length.
Camouflaging Cars and Swapping License Plates: How Agents Make Immigration Arrests (NPR, October 29, 2025): Vehicles being used in what appear to be immigration-related arrests do not have license plates, or have traded license plates.
‘We Have to Be Good or ICE Will Get Us’: Takeaways from Chicago Chilcren Caught in Immigration Raids (AP, October 28, 2025): In the weeks since an ICE raid hurled tear gas at a group of children, a two-year old remains fixated on his nanny, a U.S. citizen from Guatemala. He asks where she is and when she’s coming. He jumps at the sound of sirens. His mother called their pediatrician for a referral to see a therapist.
Trump Administration Shakes Up ICE Leadership Across the Country in Major Overhaul, AP Sources Say (AP, October 28, 2025): The Trump administration is reassigning at least half the top leadership at Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices around the country in a major shake-up of the agency responsible for carrying out the president’s vision for mass deportations, according to one current and one former U.S. government official.
Nearly 3K Arrested in Chicago Immigration Crackdown, CBP Chief Bovino Says Ahead of Testimony (ABC News, October 27, 2025): Attorneys are now asking a judge to block immigration agents from using tear gas in Chicago.
ICE Is Detaining Indiscriminately. And Releasing Almost No One (Heidi Altman, National Immigration Law Center, October 21, 2025): Through a series of legal, policy and bureaucratic machinations, the Trump administration is ensuring there is almost no way out of immigration detention other than death or deportation.
Profiles in Authoritarianism, Racism, and Cruelty
ICE and Border Patrol’s Use of Tear Gas Injures, Sickens and Tests the Law (Washington Post, November 1, 2025):
How Stephen Miller Is Turning the US State Department into an ‘Anti-Immigration Machine (Guardian, October 31, 2025): Miller is one of the most powerful officials in Trump’s White House, illustrating how it has sought to overcome a ‘deep state’ of professional diplomats.
ICE Made Expansive Request for Taxpayer Data Amid IRS Pushback (Danny Nguyen, Politico, October 30, 2025): New court filings reveal previously undisclosed details of officials’ discussions over a controversial information-sharing agreement.
‘To Scare People to Death’: Former ICE Director Reviews Trump’s Immigration Tactics (Jesse Bogan, The Marshall Project, October 29, 2025): “It has never been done in this way before,” said Sarah Saldaña, who led ICE when Obama was nicknamed the “Deporter-in-Chief.”
JD Vance: ‘Totally Acceptable’ To Want Neighbors Who ‘Speak the Same Language’ (Huffpost, October 29, 2025): “It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’
ICE Is Using a University Building as a Deportation Office and the University Says It Can’t Do Anything About It (404media, October 28, 2025): The Milwaukee School of Engineering is largely powerless to kick ICE out of a building it wanted to turn into a new academic center, according to audio of a meeting obtained by 404 Media.
Stephen Miller Claims ICE Agents Have Immunity. Is That True? (Time, October 28, 2025): No. “The federal government absolutely retains the ability to prosecute federal law enforcement officers who break the law, even in the course of carrying out their duties,” according to law professor Stephen Vladeck.
Being Latino in the United States Should Not Be a Crime (Editorial Board, New York Times, October 27, 2025): The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration has become a campaign of discrimination against Latinos.
THE COURTS
Judge Permanently Bars Trump From Requiring Proof of Citizenship for Voter Registration (New York Times, October 31, 2025): The ruling on Friday found that Trump had usurped the power vested in Congress and the states to administer and oversee elections protocols.
Judge Orders Border Patrol’s Bovino to Return to Court Daily, Wear a Bodycam, Follow Rules on Tear Gas (Chicago Sun Times, October 28, 2025): Although a Federal Appeals Court soon blocked that order.
PUSHING BACK
Chicago’s Cardinal Cupich Calls Out ‘Hypocrisy’ in US Immigration Enforcement (National Catholic Reporter, October 30, 2025): “I encourage people at the local level to take initiative,” the Cardinal said.
300 Little Village [Chicago] High Schoolers Walk Out to Protest Immigration Raids (Block Club Chicago, October 28, 2025): “This is not political. This is personal. Our people are under attack,” one student said.
The Soccer Mom Who Strikes Fear Into the Heart of ICE (Malavika Kannan, The Nation, October 28, 2025): Meet Angelica Vargas, one of the most prominent of a new kind of activist: the ICE chaser.
2 Illinois National Guard Members Speak Out: “I Won’t Turn Against My Neighbors” (CBS News, October 27, 2025): Two Illinois National Guard members told CBS News they would refuse to obey federal orders to deploy in Chicago as part of President Trump’s controversial immigration enforcement mission — a rare act of open defiance from within the military ranks.
How Activists Are Fighting Trump’s Immigration Crackdown in Chicago (Andre Gee and Meagan Jordan, Rolling Stone, October 26, 2025): The president wants to replicate his Washington, D.C., “success” in Chicago. Targeted communities have found similar ways to resist in both cities.
IMMIGRANTS AND THE ECONOMY
Fear Grips Coachella Valley Over Trump Deportations (Axios, October 26, 2025): Immigration raids in California’s Coachella Valley — a key source of the nation’s produce — have upended daily life, keeping parents from fields, children from school and multiple families crowded into shared homes.
Iowa Businesses Brace for Impact from Changing Immigration Policies, Enforcement (The Gazette, October 26, 2025): Immigrant workers make up roughly 7.4% of the state’s workforce. Now, some might be at risk.
ATTACKS ON AUTHORIZED IMMIGRATION, US CITIZENS
US Will Limit Number of Refugees to 7,500 and Give Priority to White South Africans (Guardian, October 30, 2025): Low number represents a dramatic drop after US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution.
Feds End the Automatic Renewals of Most Immigrants’ Work Permits (WGBH, October 29, 2025): Attorneys say the shift is likely to impact thousands of immigrants of varying statuses who already have a legal way to work and will need to renew their work permits.
JD Vance Calls for Reduction in Legal Immigration at Turning Point Event (AP, October 29, 2025): “We have to get the overall numbers way, way down.”
US Citizens on the Threat of Being Racially Profiled by ICE: ‘I Carry My Passport Card at All Times’ (Guardian, October 28, 2025): Trump’s immigration crackdown is upending the daily routines of US citizens and permanent residents of color.
The Trump Regime Wants to Make America White Again (Freddie Hayward, The New Statesman, October 22, 2025): MAGA is calling for naturalized citizens to be denied the same rights as US-born ones.
BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS
Chicago, ICE, and the Lie of the American Pastoral (Lauren Michele Jackson, New Yorker, November 1, 2025): The city has often been spoken about as a war zone in need of saving from itself. But at home, as abroad, America’s enemies are so often of American invention.
Shake-up at ICE Will Boost Immigration Numbers – Just Not the Ones that Matter Most to Trump (Myah Ward, Politico, October 29, 2025): Trump officials are eager to ramp up arrests and removals, but continually run up against resource and operational challenges amid an overloaded deportation system.
How Dangerous Is It Really to Work for ICE? (Noah Lanard, Mother Jones, October 29, 2025): According to ICE’s own data, none of its officers have been killed by an immigrant in the agency’s history.
America’s Impending Population Collapse (Idrees Kahloon, Atlantic, October 29, 2025): This year, for the first time in nearly a century, more foreign-born people will likely leave the United States than will enter.
These Judges Are Warning Us We’re on the Fast Track to Martial Law (Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, October 25, 2025): Can the judiciary impose meaningful checks on President Donald Trump’s ability to deploy the National Guard in American cities to retaliate against political protests?
ACTION ITEMS
Join the National Immigration Law Center to take action on behalf of three beloved communities members trapped in ICE’s deadly detention system:
1) For organizations: Join AKIN’s organizational letter calling on ICE to release community leader and organizer Alejandro Guizar Lozano. Alejandro is a twenty-year resident of Knoxville, TN and a beloved advocate for immigrant and workers’ rights.
2) For individuals: Write to ICE to demand they release Ali Faqirzada, a 31 year-old champion for women’s and human rights who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban threatened to kill him and his family, and instead was arrested and detained by ICE.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT Oberlin Community Supporting Immigrants (OCSI): https://oberlincommunitysi.org/
IF YOU KNOW OF OTHERS WHO WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE THIS WEEKLY BULLETIN: Send an email to: [email protected]