This Week On ICE

Welcome back to This Week on ICE.

On Sunday, cartel violence swept Mexico following the killing of notorious drug kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka “El Mencho.” On Monday, whistleblower Ryan Schwank testified in front of Congress, claiming that ICE training programs were “deficient, defective, and broken.” On Tuesday, President Trump gave the longest State of the Union address in modern history. On Wednesday, we recorded this episode. Buckle up, folks. We’ve got a lot to share.

The top line: Immigration and migrant scapegoating dominated Trump’s State of the Union

President Trump’s 1 hour and 47-minute speech, riven with racist imagery against Somali immigrants and other communities, sent a full-speed-ahead message on immigrant crackdowns. He also anointed Vice President JD Vance as the leader of the so-called “war on fraud.”

“Trump didn’t use the term ‘ICE’ even once, and I think that’s because of the overwhelmingly negative polling we’ve seen regarding ICE that we talked about a few weeks ago. But he also didn’t give any impression that he had regretted what happened in Minnesota, or that there would be any slowdown in immigration crackdowns.” — Matt

The announcement comes amid Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that Somali immigrants in Minnesota had defrauded public coffers to the tune of $19 billion, with similar allegations leveled at Democratic-led states like California, Massachusetts, and Maine. Framing the issue as a crackdown on “fraud” rather than “immigration” allows Vance to take on a more prominent role without being directly tied to an unpopular policy area.

What else is on our radar: In Mexico, the last of the cartel old guard is out, sending a national shockwave that rivals the 2016 capture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Over the weekend, cartel-led violence broke out in 20 out of 32 states in Mexico following the Mexican military’s killing of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka “El Mencho”, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Over 250 roads were blocked with burning vehicles; businesses, schools and banks were forced to close and citizens were asked to shelter in place; and there were reported stand-offs between local security forces and cartel members near the airports in Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara.

Matt: What does this mean for migrants who have been deported from the United States to Mexico, or who are in transit via Mexico to the United States?

Kelly: It effectively serves on a silver platter this narrative of violence and drug trafficking coming from the southern border into the United States. This has been a narrative that the Trump administration has perpetuated since his first term, and what happened in Mexico this weekend may become the fodder for harsher border enforcement [and a] broader crackdown on migrants that are perceived to be from Mexico.

El Mencho’s killing punctuates a short list of ousted cartel leaders, including Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who led the Sinaloa cartel and was captured by authorities in 2016, and the 2024 arrest of Ismael Zambada García, AKA “El Mayo”, also of the Sinaloa cartel. He represented the last of the cartel leaders who militarized and professionalized cartel warfare.

This week in the New York Times, organized crime expert Vanda Felbab-Brown explained the future of this cartel will depend on “whether leaders of the Jalisco cartel have established a clear line of succession capable of holding the organization together.” If not, a new wave of bloodshed could occur in Mexico.

Interview Exclusive: Immigration lawyer Robin Nice

Robin Nice, an immigration attorney and partner at McHaffey & Nice in Boston, sat down with us to learn more about how she helped a detained man poised for deportation and his asylum-seeking partner arrange a wedding in the back room of an ICE field office.

“It was just me, the pastor, the couple, and then these two ICE people, just like, in the doorway watching. They were allowed to hug afterwards and give a smooch afterwards, and then he went back to detention, and that’s that.” — Robin Nice

Despite ICE stonewalling, an attempted surprise detention center transfer, and an about-to-expire marriage license, she used a habeas petition, pressure from the American Immigration Layers Association and a senator’s office, and coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to force ICE to make it work. But few clients in her caseload are given as bittersweet a circumstance.

“Even citizens — even the lawful permanent residents — are at risk of being detained. And even if it’s for a day while [ICE agents and DHS] figure it out — ‘Oh, you are a citizen,’ or ‘You’re right, you aren’t deportable’ — That’s a day too long.” — Robin Nice

On your way out: An ICE whistleblower just admitted that “cadets are not taught what it means to be objectively reasonable.”

Ryan Schwank, a former ICE academy instructor, testified in front of Congress this week and claimed that recruits were undergoing deficient training, with crucial elements of instruction on detentions and weapons safety being left out of academy classes. While ICE denies these claims, DHS later acknowledged in a statement that it had “streamlined” the training process.

“These cutbacks in training are not for lack of money. We’ve talked about the DHS mini-shutdown, but we also talked about how the Big Beautiful Bill gave ICE tens of billion dollars to spend on itself. The purpose of cutting down on this training is to speed up and accelerate the immigration crackdown: They want thousands more officers on the street. They want to kick up the rate of arrest from around 1000 a day in 2025 to a stated goal of 3000 per day.” — Matt

That’s all for now. Please keep sending your questions, comments and thoughts to [email protected]. Catch you next time.

— Kelly and Matt

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

Welcome to the inaugural episode of This Week on ICE.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what we covered (with sources!) organized around three core stories.

The top line: ICE agents withdraw from Minneapolis following robust community action and a cratering of ICE approval ratings.

On Thursday, border czar Tom Homan announced that the Trump administration will end its immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota.

This punctuates growing discontent with ICE operations following the murders of Minneapolis locals Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti: A recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that 65 percent of Americans believe ICE has gone too far in its enforcement actions, with sharp partisan divides. That’s not a marginal figure. It’s nearly two-thirds of the country.

“We see an overwhelming majority of Democrats [and] an overwhelming majority of Independents condemning these actions and feeling that they’ve gone too far, whereas Republicans are sticking by President Trump and the congressional leadership in backing up ICE.” — Matt

What else is on our radar: ICE detention centers are emerging arenas of bipartisan dissent.

ICE detention facilities — 224 and counting — are becoming focal points of bipartisan concern. Advocates, journalists, and lawmakers have raised alarms about overcrowding, a lack of due process, and horrifying detention conditions.

“The shape and behavior of ICE [facilities] is going to change in the future. For example, they are now going to have a “no release” model, meaning people that are detained in these facilities cannot get out on bond, and they’re basically at the mercy of the U.S. immigration apparatus, which remains a black box in many ways. Legal access to these facilities have been denied to the press and members of Congress. … There are some contracts that are agreeing to house as many as 8,000 detainees. For comparison, the largest federal prison in the United States houses about 4,000 inmates. So, this is an exorbitant amount of space that [ICE is] wanting to invest in.”— Kelly

Happening below the fold: What happens after deportation? A look at Tapachula, Mexico.

The U.S. deports roughly 23,000 people per month. The vast majority of deportees (10,000 in all) are sent to Mexico. Sources in Mexico told Kelly that the majority of these Mexico-bound deportees are sent to Tapachula, a southern Mexican city near the Guatemalan border.

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières/MSF) has referred to Tapachula as “the waiting city,” widely understood among migrants as a dead end that is highly dangerous, economically limited, and strained by humanitarian need.

“The United States is deliberately deporting people to the poorest, one of the most dangerous and the most geographically distant part of Mexico that they can.” — Matt

Faced with limited options, many deportees form caravans — sometimes in the thousands — to make their way through Mexico and, most time, toward the U.S. border. Experts explained to Kelly that migrant caravans have been an effective a way for migrants attempting to come to the United States to garner that media attention and have strength in numbers in what can be very unstable and insecure parts of the country.

In the Fall of 2025, “there were three migrant caravans in rapid succession that made attempts to walk together from Tapachula to Mexico City, and then from Mexico City to the U.S. Mexico border. Doctors Without Borders representatives told me that all three of them — one that began and formed on August 8, and then two others on October 1 and October 17 — all three of them left Tapachula and never made it to Mexico City. Doctors without Borders were closely monitoring these caravans, and they told me that they they simply disappeared, they dispersed. And that, to me, is not enough. I want to know more about what became of these caravans.”

Up Next:

* Tracking the draw-down of ICE agents in Minnesota, and discussing where the next ICE operation flashpoint may be

* Monitoring the DHS/ICE presence at the 2026 Milan–Cortina Winter Olympics

* An interview with The Cato Institute’s David Bier about his new study on the economic effects of migration in the U.S., which challenges right-wing narratives

That’s all for now. Catch you next time.

— Kelly and Matt