Welcome to another episode of This Week on ICE.
We are overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response to this show already. Thank you for being here, asking critical questions, and supporting this work of independent journalism. We’ve got a hell of an episode for you this week. Let’s get into it.
The top line: As DHS lurches from a partial government shutdown, most Americans won’t feel the impact at the airport. Here are the hinge points that could end — or prolong — this:
On Saturday, Feb. 14, congressional Democrats and the White House failed to reach a deal on legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through September, triggering a shutdown. But unlike the grueling 43-day shutdown last fall, the closures are confined to the DHS umbrella, including TSA and the Coast Guard.
Meanwhile, Democrats are floating reforms to rein in ICE, from banning the use of face coverings, to prohibiting enforcement at certain locations like schools, hospitals, churches, and courthouses, to requiring body cams. But the real game-changer would be passing a measure on judicial warrants, which would require a judge to sign off on ICE arrests and create a paper trail agents can’t just make disappear. (This measure would put the kibosh on a leaked ICE memo in January, which authorized ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant.)
“Counterintuitively, the body cameras, which are getting the most attention and which [United States Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem readily accepted early on … creates a mass surveillance network. … We know that ICE is using facial recognition technology from Clearview AI and Mobile Fortify to identify citizens. We know that they’ve subpoenaed tech companies like Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — Reddit, Google, [and] Discord, asking for personal information of people who criticize ICE, and they have a contract with Palantir that is supposed to be able to identify and track the real-time locations of individuals of interest to ICE.” — Matt
Due to the $85 billion windfall from the One Big Beautiful Bill, we should expect to see ICE and CBP continuing to operate uninterrupted despite being under DHS. If a deal isn’t reached in the next few weeks, we may start to see the impact from three key pain points:
* Bleeding FEMA Dry - The agency responsible for disaster triage only has enough relief funding through the end of April. But we are approaching (sorry) a perfect storm: Since the 1980s, May thru August tend to be the hardest-hit, and most expensive, months for natural disasters. If a deal isn’t reached soon, the agency that is already poised for a $1.6-2.3 billion deficit will be forced to shift costs onto states and localities.
* Less Cybersecurity - Federal workers responsible for overseeing cybersecurity and counterintelligence are down to a third of its manpower during this shutdown. Every year, the Council on Foreign Relations releases a report on the top conflicts to watch around the world, giving them a category of impact and likelihood. The United States is usually nowhere near the “red zone” – until this year. In 2026, seasoned CFR experts predict the U.S. might succumb to a highly disruptive cyber attack by a state or non-state entity on U.S. critical infrastructure. Republican members of Congress are rallying around this particular threat to blame Democrats for the shutdown, although
* Limited Oversight of ICE - The DHS inspector general office has eight active probes into the government’s immigration crackdown. In a report by POLITICO this week, due to the lapse in DHS funding, the Office of the Inspector General is suspending about 85 percent of its audits, evaluations and inspections.
What else is on our radar: ICE is withdrawing from Minnesota. But new frontlines could emerge in the coming weeks.
As we reported last week, border czar Tom Homan announced a significant drawdown of ICE and DHS personnel from Minneapolis, MN, a city that became a massive flashpoint of civil unrest against Trump’s immigration crackdown following the murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
There is no public confirmation from the U.S. government of a new ICE operation elsewhere, but it doesn’t mean that a surge won’t happen again. Here are two places on our radar, and why.
* Springfield, Ohio
“It has been said in multiple reports that the Trump administration is eyeing Ohio for immigration enforcement, specifically for Haitian immigrants. … [Meanwhile] temporary protected status [of Haitians] is on a knife’s edge.” — Kelly
On Feb. 3, the Trump administration tried to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of Haitians living and working in the U.S., but it was swiftly blocked by federal judge Ana Reyes, keeping the protections in place, for now. But, why Haitians, and why Springfield?
The U.S. is home to about 350,000 Haitians under this status, with an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 in Springfield, Ohio — one of the Midwest’s largest populations of Haitians. In 2024, the community was a lightning rod of scapegoating during the 2024 presidential election. JD Vance, the vice president and former Ohio U.S. Senator, suggested that Haitian refugees living in Springfield were stealing neighborhood pets and eating them, and that “Haitian illegal immigrants” are “draining social services and generally causing chaos.”. Trump repeated the claims during a debate despite the allegations being widely misleading and debunked.
As history suggests, wherever misinformation is seeded, crackdowns usually follow.
Q: What is Temporary Protected Status? And what does it do for immigrants in the U.S.?
A: TPS was passed by Congress as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 to provide temporary reprieve from deportation to immigrants who can’t return to their home countries because of war, natural disaster, or other extraordinary circumstances. TPS was granted to Haitians in 2010 when a 7.0 earthquake devastated the country. It has been extended ever since, following a cascade of national tragedies, from the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, to the compounding scourge of organized crime, gang violence and extreme poverty.
* Northern California
Last week, Kristi Noem, announced the termination of TPS for Yemenis despite there being an ongoing civil war in Yemen. The status will terminate in a couple of months unless it is blocked by a federal judge. The Yemeni diaspora is mostly located in Northern California, especially Oakland and Fresno.
California counties like Alameda County - home to Oakland - are “hoping to create a response plan” for any incoming ICE activities, reported KGO-TV San Francisco. This includes policy proposals to have “ICE-free zones” that would “prohibit ICE from county-owned and controlled properties, such as the courts and hospitals.”
Interview Exclusive: The CATO Institute’s David Bier on the economic case for supporting legal and undocumented immigrants in the United States.
In a groundbreaking report, Bier explained that over the last 30 years, immigrants have reduced federal, state, and local deficits by about $14.5 trillion, with undocumented immigrants alone accounting for about $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction.
"By keeping out immigrants, not redesigning a better legal immigration system, and deporting people… we likely have already hit [a point of population decline], given the amount of deportations and how low illegal immigration is. We're heading to negative territory quite rapidly under this administration." — David Bier
On your way out: Are foreign adoptees at risk of deportation?
Quick answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Let’s look at Korean Americans specifically. After the Korean War, severe poverty in South Korea led to mass international adoption; about 109,000 Korean children were adopted into the U.S. between 1953 and 2008. But the U.S. often didn’t clearly inform adoptive parents they needed to separately register their children for U.S. citizenship, and many parents assumed adoption itself conferred citizenship. As a result, somewhere between 8,500 and 70,000 Korean adoptees may lack citizenship, despite growing up in the U.S., not speaking Korean, and having weak ties to Korea. Congress later granted automatic citizenship to those adopted before 1983, but this still left many in limbo, and ICE has already harassed and detained some lawful citizens.
“I have been contacted by frustrated adoptees who say that they voted for Trump both the first and second time, but now question whether that was the right decision, and it has resulted in fear and insecurity regarding their own situation.” — Peter Møller, KoRoot
Up Next:
* Inside the court case forcing the Trump administration to return all Venezuelan migrants detained by the U.S. and transferred last year to CECOT, one of the Western Hemisphere’s most notorious prisons in El Salvador.
* How and why ICE is failing to pay the private medical contractors to treat detainees.
* An immigration lawyer explains the hoops she jumped through to allow her client to get married in the back room of an ICE facility.
That’s all for now. Please keep sending your questions, comments and thoughts to [email protected]. Catch you next time.
— Kelly and Matt
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