USA: The next step was citizenship. Then these immigrants were pulled out of line.

2025/12/23 Leave a comment

Cruelty personnified:

For immigrants, naturalization ceremonies represent the culmination of their yearslong effort to earn citizenship. In front of a federal judge, permanent residents raise their right hands, repeat the Oath of Allegiance to their new country, and usually wave a small American flag with pride once the judge confirms their citizenship.

On Dec. 4, inside Boston’s Faneuil Hall – a historic site where revolutionaries like Samuel Adams fostered the idea of American freedom – one such event took a turn. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers denied entry to several people who showed up for their naturalization ceremony, according to Project Citizenship, a nonprofit providing legal support for those seeking citizenship. Each of these individuals was from one of 19 countries the Trump administration identified as high-security risks under a Dec. 2 Department of Homeland Security memo, which mandated the immediate pausing and review of immigration applications from those countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, and Venezuela.

What happened at the Boston ceremony is part of a tightening of the naturalization process throughout the country. In late November, New York state Attorney General Letitia James wrote a letter to USCIS questioning its decision to cancel ceremonies in several counties in her state; USCIS said the counties “did not meet the statutory requirements.” On Dec. 9 in Indianapolis, 38 out of 100 prospective citizens were turned away at their ceremony, according to local news reports. Local outlets in Atlanta reported that, on Dec. 12, three immigrants had their oath ceremonies canceled.

The efforts to clamp down on legal immigration pathways follows the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, one fatally, just before Thanksgiving. An Afghan national, who entered the country legally in 2021 through a program for allies who served alongside the U.S. military, has been charged with first-degree murder. Following that attack, President Donald Trump quickly announced significant immigration restrictions, including a pause on all asylum decisions. This week, the Trump administration added 20 countries to a list of nations whose citizens face full or partial bans on entering the U.S.

Those who apply for naturalization are some of the most thoroughly vetted immigrants in the country. To be eligible, an immigrant must generally have been a lawful permanent resident for at least five years, be a “person of good moral character,” and pass tests in civics and English. The process can take decades, and the oath ceremony is largely seen as a formality.

Gail Breslow, the executive director of Project Citizenship in Boston, said that 21 clients of the organization had their naturalization ceremonies canceled this month. Clients were either pulled out of line at the Dec. 4 ceremony or notified via email that their ceremonies, scheduled for Dec. 4 or Dec. 10, had been canceled.

Source: The next step was citizenship. Then these immigrants were pulled out of line.

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More Canadians, including children, detained in U.S. for immigration violations, new data show

2025/12/10 Leave a comment

Not surprising, inevitable result of sweeping crackdowns:

A sweeping immigration crackdown in the United States is increasingly ensnaring Canadians who don’t have criminal records – including at least six children – new U.S. government data show. 

An estimated 207 Canadians have now been held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at some point since January, when President Donald Trump took office. The total number of Canadians held in 2024 was 130.

Earlier this year, an initial Globe and Mail analysis revealed that ICE had detained two Canadian toddlers in May at a remote facility in Texas. The analysis also showed that Canadians held by ICE were more likely to have criminal records than many other nationalities swept up in the White House’s mass deportation campaign, which has primarily targeted immigrants from Latin America. 

In the first half of 2025, almost 70 per cent of Canadians placed in immigration detention had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. 

Now, a growing number of Canadian detainees are being held on immigration violations alone, updated enforcement data covering late July to mid-October show.

Of the Canadians detained during this period, some 44 per cent had no criminal records or pending charges against them, The Globe has found. The detainees include four children ranging in age from under two years old to about 16 years old.

Source: More Canadians, including children, detained in U.S. for immigration violations, new data show

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Nearly 150 Canadians held in ICE custody this year, including two toddlers, data show 

2025/08/15 Leave a comment

Sigh…

At least two Canadian toddlers have been held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this year, including one who was detained for 51 days, more than double the legal detention period for migrant children in the United States, a Globe and Mail analysis of American enforcement data shows.

The children, who are under the age of four, were both detained at a remote Texas facility that has been the subject of a legal complaint alleging inadequate access to safe drinking water, medical care and legal assistance. At the time of detention, they appear to have been accompanied by adults who were also apprehended.

The toddlers are among 149 Canadians ranging between two and 77 years old who have been held at some point in ICE custody since January, when President Donald Trump took office and ordered an expansive immigration crackdown.

The anonymized ICE data are current to the end of July and disclose details about thousands of detention cases dating back to 2023, including detainees’ nationality, year of birth, time in custody and the reason for the detention. The information was obtained through a federal district-court lawsuit against ICE brought by the Deportation Data Project, which is run by a group of academics and lawyers in the U.S. 

Mr. Trump’s mass deportation campaign has focused heavily on immigrants from Latin America, raising significant concerns about due process – particularly for those at risk of removal to unsafe countries. 

The data set analyzed by The Globe provides the clearest picture yet of the degree to which Canadians have also been caught up in the White House’s efforts. As of the end of July, 56 Canadians arrested this year were still in ICE detention, the analysis shows. Overall, the number of Canadians detained is on pace to double that of last year. …

Source: Nearly 150 Canadians held in ICE custody this year, including two toddlers, data show

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ICYMI: ICE’s Shocking Midday Kidnappings Remind Me of Something I’ve Seen Before

2025/07/29 Leave a comment

Frightening times:

Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has kicked into high gear, employing a set of extreme methods in an attempt to reach Stephen Miller’s unrealistic deportation quotas. Many Americans have watched in horror as masked ICE agents, sometimes accompanied by other federal agents and even local police, have appeared on their television screens, looking for and detaining immigrants in their homes, in their workplaces, and on the street. Sometimes, small gangs of law enforcement appear in military gear and masks, resembling military police. Sometimes, a mix of federal agents and local police deploy in large groups to conduct workplace raids, in a strange hodgepodge of uniforms. In other instances, officers have confronted immigrants as they leave court or show up to renew their work permits, then take them away.

But the law enforcement strategy that may have garnered the most shock among members of the public is the jump-out squad: small tactical teams of armed officers not in uniform who jump out of unmarked cars and grab immigrants off the street with no warning, or pull immigrants over and surround their cars, suddenly, before taking them away. Described by advocates for detainees as “brazen, midday kidnappings,” jump-out squads use a combination of surprise, terror, and overwhelming force. When they stop individuals with no reasonable suspicion, they act in violation of federal law, and a court in California has enjoined this practice.

But if this particular technique—jumping out on potential suspects, searching them, and taking them away—seems entirely foreign, it should not. Nor should the overt racial profiling that always accompanies these sorts of methods. Many urban police departments—including those in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Memphis, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Louisville, and Washington—have used jump-out tactics as a means of crime prevention. And those are just the ones we know about.

Police jump-out squads drive around in unmarked cars, looking for people who they believe are breaking the law. Although they rarely mask, they are still difficult to identify because they don’t wear uniforms or show their badges. Like the ICE squads, they deploy overwhelming force and the element of surprise to intercept criminal activity and find people carrying illegal guns. Jump-out squads have become more taboo in the past several years because the confrontations they instigate have proved so dangerous for the people they stop: These tactical teams can spiral out of control, leading to deadly consequences. They have been responsible for countless acts of excessive force, some of which have resulted in tragedy. The SCORPION squadthat killed Tyre Nichols in Memphis was a jump-out squad, as was the task force that killed 12-year-old TJ Siderio in Philadelphia.

These squads often cultivate a kind of vigilante ethos among their officers. Their members frequently work outside the typical chain of police command, reporting directly to the brass. Often, the units intentionally recruit aggressive officers and fail to properly train them on the Fourth Amendment. A group of police officers in L.A., calling themselves the Jump Out Boys, described their work this way: “Jump out boys are alpha dogs, who think and act like the wolf. … They understand when the line needs to be crossed and crossed back. They need to work hard, they need to get guns, they need to take people to jail, and sometimes they need to do things they don’t want to do.”

Over the past 30 years, jump-out squads were used first as a tool to break up the drug trade (in Seasons 1 and 3 of The Wire, Baltimore police deploy a ragtag such squad), then, more recently, during a spike in violence caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, when urban police departments attempted to bring down the rate of gun violence by seizing illegal firearms. In the summer of 2020, 18 years after the tragic death of Amadou Diallo, New York City finally disbanded its infamous anti-crime unit, which frequently used aggressive jump-out tactics, but Mayor Eric Adams brought back a “modified plainclothes anti-gun unit” just a few weeks after taking office in 2022….

Source: ICE’s Shocking Midday Kidnappings Remind Me of Something I’ve Seen Before

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Canadians in ICE detention centres left in legal limbo as families try to secure release

2025/07/14 Leave a comment

Likely first of many comparable cases:

Relatives of Canadians detained by ICE in the United States say they’re furious and frustrated by the treatment of their loved ones and the battles they’re having to fight for even the most basic information. 

Global Affairs Canada said it’s aware of roughly 55 Canadians in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, though it said that the numbers can fluctuate. 

Cynthia Olivera — born in Mississauga, Ont., but living in Los Angeles — was arrested last month when she and her husband went to an immigration office to complete an interview for her U.S. citizenship application. Paula Callejas of Montreal was in the process of finalizing a work visa when she was arrested for a misdemeanor — and then transferred to an ICE facility…

Source: Canadians in ICE detention centres left in legal limbo as families try to secure release

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Sullivan: Trump’s Deportation Stormtroopers

2025/07/12 3 Comments

Accurate take:

….I cite all this not to diminish any of today’s awfulness, but to see it more clearly. We have been a brutal deportation nation long before our Trumpian 21st Century gambit. What’s different now, it seems to me, are four things: the sheer scale of it; the frantic pursuit of quantity over quality; the relative paucity of resources for courts and judges; and the fact that the enforcers are anonymous, masked, and unknowable — and will soon be on every street in America.

ICE will now have more resources than all but 15 countries’ military budgets, and is set to grow from an annual budget of $10 billion to $150 billion over four years. This is a ramp up of mind-boggling size and speed. Some of it will be helped by deputizing the military to some tasks, including, as we saw in Los Angeles this week, performative acts of intimidation. Garrett Graff notesthe inevitable result of such spurts;

“Hiring standards fall, training is cut short, field training officers end up being too inexperienced to do the right training, and supervisors are too green to know how to enforce policies and procedures well. … [We’ll likely see] a tidal wave of applicants who are specifically attracted by the rough-em-up, masked secret police tactics, no-holds-barred lawlessness that ICE has pursued since January.”

And indeed the evidence of such recruits exists. From a recent ICE jobs fair:

“I spoke to a gregarious New York police officer who was fed up with patrolling Times Square and all “the savages” there. Another applicant said he was sick of installing office furniture in properties subleased by the United States Marines.”

And the order is now a simple one: arrest and detain as many as you can: old, young, criminal, lawful, children, those who have lived here for decades with no incident — alongside drug traffickers. Child rapists alongside landscapers. Gang members alongside church regulars. And the percentage of violent criminals is quickly dwindling — only 8 percent of all detainees this year, according to CBS.

Miller is demanding that ICE beat Obama’s record of 438,421 removals in one year, by any means necessary. In fact, he wants Operation Wetback’s numbers in one year rather than ten. Trump’s daily quota was initially 1,800; then Miller pushed it to 3,000; and now Tom Homan says, “Do the math, we have to arrest 7,000 every single day for the remainder of this administration just to catch the ones Biden released into the nation.” And that’s a sky-high goal made much, much, much harder when there are so few deportations at the Southern border. No wonder ICE officers are drained.

Resources to speed up trials and shorten detentions by adding more immigration courts and judges? A mere $3.3 billion. A 2023 analysis by the Congressional Research Service found we need more than 1,300 judges to make progress on the backlog of cases. But the bill actually caps the numberat 800. You mean we could process deportations too quickly? E-Verify is off the table. So what this policy represents is actually a dramatic increase in the backlog of cases, meaning ever-more arrests, and ever-more people in custody, for ever-more years. Why, one wonders? Why not make real progress on the backlog in the courts, and leave less need for mass detention?

And those tasked with enforcing all this will be anonymous. That is utterly new — and a deeply authoritarian and un-American development. Thousands of men and women with the power to seize anyone off the street will have no faces, no badges, no identification, and often no uniform. We are told the reason for this is that the families of the “brave” ICE officers can be doxxed by enraged citizens and potentially harassed or threatened. In the words of one officer:

“We wear masks not to scare people, but to protect our families. If our faces are known, our children and spouses could be threatened at school, at church, or even at the grocery store.”

But this logic applies to every single law enforcement officer anywhere — to anyone in public anywhere — and yet only the ICE officers get to look like Putin’s thugs. If cops can’t wear masks, and must have ID, neither should ICE cops. Threats to and assaults of them — 79 incidents this year out of a workforce of 20,000, we’re told — can and should be strongly prosecuted. But masks have to go. If we’re going to call ICE officers brave, then showing their faces in public is the least they can do. …

America not as a shining city on a hill, nor as a republic diligently enforcing its immigration laws as humanely as possible. But as a potential gulag for the ages. 

Source: Trump’s Deportation Stormtroopers

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Immigrants with no criminal convictions represent sharpest growth in ICE detention population

2025/07/07 Leave a comment

Not surprising, unfortunately, no respect for rule of law, due process and competence:

President Trump is enacting a mass deportation campaign promised to be the largest in U.S. history. New data is giving a clearer picture of exactly what that looks like: at least 56,000 immigrants are being held in ICE detention.

According to the Deportation Data Project, a group that collects immigration numbers, about half the people in detention don’t have criminal convictions. That’s close to 30,000 people in detention, without a criminal record — the group that has grown the most in recent months.

“You listen to Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, they’re saying things like they are going after the worst of the worst, the people who are murderers,” says UCLA Professor Graeme Blair, referring to President Trump’s ‘Border czar’ Tom Homan and key White House Aide Stephen Miller. “That’s just not what the data says about the people that they are actually arresting.”

Source: Immigrants with no criminal convictions represent sharpest growth in ICE detention population

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MPI: Seeking to Ramp Up Deportations, the Trump Administration Quietly Expands a Vast Web of Data

2025/06/03 Leave a comment

The surveillance state in action:

To help accomplish its aim of mass deportations, the Trump administration is tapping into numerous federal, state, and local databases at an unprecedented scale, and making more of them interoperable. The reach into and communication between information storehouses—including ones containing sensitive information about all U.S. residents’ taxes, health, benefits receipt, and addresses—allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other authorities to harvest, exchange, and share a vast trove of data. The aim of tapping government and commercial databases appears twofold: attempt to secure large-scale arrests and deportations of removable noncitizens, and instill a sense of fear so that others “self deport.”

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), launched by Elon Musk, has played an oversized role in this data-leveraging mission, accessing sensitive databases across government agencies and breaking down long-standing silos erected for operational and privacy reasons. And the software company Palantir, a longtime ICE contractor, has been awarded a new contract initially for $30 million to build a “streamlined” database to aid immigration enforcement.

Palantir’s Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (ImmigrationOS) will add to an already formidable arsenal of data available to ICE, including from the private sector. The agency is believed to be among the largest government purchasers of commercial credit, utility, motor vehicle agency, and other information—including airline passenger data, according to recent reporting. By one estimate, in 2022 ICE was able to know the addresses of three out of four U.S. adults—citizen and noncitizen alike.

ICE was established as part of the U.S. counterterrorism and homeland security machinery that was expanded in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. While the post-9/11 enterprise was aimed at foreign terrorists, today’s principal enforcement mission across a range of government agencies is to assist the Trump administration’s quest to carry out 1 million deportations annually.

The government’s tapping into databases with sensitive personal information—including databases never before used for large-scale immigration enforcement, such as voter information—has raised alarm among civil libertarians and security experts, who fear the potential for privacy violations for all U.S. residents and possible exploitation by nefarious actors.

This article looks at the recent efforts to expand ICE’s domestic surveillance and arrest capabilities by giving it access to new databases to build a vast, interoperable data network that can be used for immigration enforcement purposes, with the possibility of future implications for U.S. citizens. It places the current moves within a 25-year legacy of information-sharing initiatives in the immigration realm…

Source: Seeking to Ramp Up Deportations, the Trump Administration Quietly Expands a Vast Web of Data

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Immigration advocates take Ottawa to court over refugee treaty with U.S. 

2025/05/27 Leave a comment

As was expected and they have a case, no matter how inconvenient, as it gets stronger day-by-day with clear incidents of USA and ICE over-reach and undermining protections:

The federal government is facing a legal challenge arguing that its oversight of a two-decade-old refugee treaty with the United States is “fundamentally flawed.”

The bilateral agreement is premised on both countries being safe for asylum seekers. It prevents refugee claimants passing through the U.S. from seeking protection in Canada and vice versa. 

Canada is legally required to regularly review its neighbour’s human-rights record and refugee protections as part of the treaty, the Safe Third Country Agreement, or STCA. Ottawa has not publicized its findings since 2009. 

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a sweeping immigration crackdown that has heightened asylum seekers’ risk of detention and deportation. Immigration rights groups have asserted that migrants and asylum seekers have been held in “secret” detention at the northern border. 

In an application for judicial review, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL) and the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) argue that the lack of publicly available information about Ottawa‘s refugee monitoring process shields the government from accountability − and could violate the Constitution.

“This is so crucial because what we see happening at the Canada-U.S. border is quite troubling,” said lawyer Maureen Silcoff, who is representing CARL in the legal challenge.

Advocates in Canada have long maintained that cracks in American refugee protections leave asylum seekers at risk, raising concerns about the legality of the STCA treaty. Executive orders issued by the U.S. President in January, which initiated drastic immigration changes, have heightened fears over detention conditions for asylum seekers and rapid deportation without due process. 

Sujit Choudhry, who is representing SALCO in the case, said that without detailed evidence of how Ottawa determines its neighbour is safe for asylum seekers, it is impossible to know if Canada is complying with its legal obligations to refugee claimants.

An inaccurate designation – one that results in refugee claimants at the Canadian border being returned to the U.S. and then deported to a country where they would face torture – would violate the Canadian Constitution, he added. …

Source: Immigration advocates take Ottawa to court over refugee treaty with U.S.

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Mooney: I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

2025/03/20 Leave a comment

Horrific example of bureaucracy at work, implementing the cruel and flawed policies of the Trump administration:

There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer….

And that’s when I made a decision: I would never allow myself to feel sorry for my situation again. No matter how hard this was, I had to be grateful. Because every woman I met was in an even more difficult position than mine.

There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.

If someone is a criminal, I agree they should be taken off the streets. But not one of these women had a criminal record. These women acknowledged that they shouldn’t have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration wasn’t about being held accountable; it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they had been trapped in.

The real issue was how long it took to get out of the system, with no clear answers, no timeline and no way to move forward. Once deported, many have no choice but to abandon everything they own because the cost of shipping their belongings back is too high.

I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.

I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.

Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadn’t had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?

One woman had a 10-year visa. When it expired, she moved back to her home country, Venezuela. She admitted she had overstayed by one month before leaving. Later, she returned for a vacation and entered the US without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to Los Angeles, she was picked up by Ice and detained. She couldn’t be deported because Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees. She didn’t know when she was getting out.

There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her master’s degree and was handed over to Ice due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.

There were women who had been picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes. All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months. One woman’s daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release….

The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.

Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.

This is not just my story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people still trapped in a system that profits from their suffering. I am writing in the hope that someone out there – someone with the power to change any of this – can help do something.

The strength I witnessed in those women, the love they gave despite their suffering, is what gives me faith. Faith that no matter how flawed the system, how cruel the circumstances, humanity will always shine through.

Even in the darkest places, within the most broken systems, humanity persists. Sometimes, it reveals itself in the smallest, most unexpected acts of kindness: a shared meal, a whispered prayer, a hand reaching out in the dark. We are defined by the love we extend, the courage we summon and the truths we are willing to tell.

Source: I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

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