Beyond the Border: Children held for weeks, record detentions of pregnant people and deaths after ICE release

Here's what happened this week in immigration news.

Written by Emma Chen, Edited by Kate Morrissey

Welcome to another edition of Beyond the Border, which summarizes immigration news from across the country in a weekly roundup. Did we miss something? Message us via kate@daylightsandiego.org or on Instagram.

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Immigration arrests 

ABC 10News reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained the parents of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old about a block from John Marshall Elementary School in San Diego shortly after they dropped their children off Wednesday morning.

The Boston Globe reported that ICE arrested a 29-year-old Brazilian asylum seeker as local police released her from custody less than two weeks after she suffered a miscarriage and underwent surgery. Her partner had originally called the police because he believed she was having a mental health crisis.

ICE detained a Haitian father minutes after he dropped off his 2-year-old daughter at a Head Start program in the San Diego neighborhood of North Park, ABC 10News reported.

Metro Detroit News posted a video on Instagram showing ICE officers pointing a gun at a young person who had run onto a residential roof in Michigan to try to escape them before taking him into custody. The person tells the officers that he is 16 years old in the video.

ICE has detained or deported relatives of U.S. service members even as the Pentagon increasingly recruits green-card holders to fill military ranks, ABC News reported.

Courier California reported that ICE arrests in San Diego and Imperial counties reached a record 1,952 in July, nearly three times the total from July 2025 and called the area the epicenter of the Trump administration's current enforcement efforts.

Detention conditions 

The Guardian reported that guards at Florida’s now-closed “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility repeatedly locked people in outdoor metal cages about the size of phone booths, according to a Department of Homeland Security watchdog report.

Sources described at least three suicide attempts over the past year at the California City Detention Facility, another facility where people in custody have long complained about conditions, L.A. TACO reported.

Government records show ICE detained record numbers of pregnant people while the agency stopped keeping miscarriage data after Oct. 3, 2025, The Guardian reported.

Border Patrol held migrant families with children for weeks in San Diego-area facilities despite federal guidelines that call for stays of no more than 72 hours, inewsource reported.

The Great Falls Tribune reported that ICE released two critically ill immigrants from custody while they were hospitalized shortly before they died, raising concerns from advocates and lawmakers that a new reporting policy could keep similar deaths out of ICE’s official count.

The partner of a 33-year-old Belarusian asylum seeker in ICE custody at a Leavenworth, Kansas, detention center said inadequate access to thyroid medication has put her health at serious risk, FOX4 reported.

Protecting ICE's critics

The Guardian reported that a federal judge barred the Department of Homeland Security from threatening a New York man with prosecution over an email criticizing ICE after the judge found that the warning chilled his protected speech.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sued seven ICE officers, alleging they harassed and intimidated a Springfield man for lawfully recording immigration enforcement activity.

Operation Midway Blitz

A Chicago family is trying to keep its Humboldt Park sandwich shop afloat after immigration officers detained the father during Operation Midway Blitz, and the government deported him to Pakistan after 30 years in the U.S., WBEZ reported.

The Chicago Tribune reported that a Department of Homeland Security attorney told a federal judge that officers recorded 16 body-camera videos tied to Operation Midway Blitz this year, raising questions in court about whether the Chicago immigration operation ever ended.

Chicago families, street vendors and businesses continue to cope with deportations, detentions and economic disruption one year after Operation Midway Blitz, Block Club Chicago reported.

Targeting Haitians 

The Guardian reported that Haitian students helped reshape schools, sports and the workforce in Springfield, Ohio, before the end of Temporary Protected Status and increased immigration enforcement disrupted the community.

Key West hotels, restaurants and other tourism businesses are losing Haitian workers after the federal government ended Temporary Protected Status and immigration officers detained some workers, The New York Times reported.

The Dayton Daily News reported that more than 80 people gathered in Springfield, Ohio, to remember 20-year-old college student Pierre Damas Bel and call attention to ICE ankle monitoring after his family linked his death to distress over the device.

Immigrant students 

Florida’s State University System Board of Governors voted to bar undocumented students from initially enrolling at public universities beginning in the 2027-28 academic year, Spectrum News 13 reported.

Reuters reported that a federal judge blocked a Trump administration rule that would have limited how long foreign students, exchange visitors and journalists could remain in the U.S. without applying for extensions.

Other stories to watch 

NPR reported that as many as 6,000 undocumented immigrants helped clean Ground Zero after the Sept. 11 attacks, and many now fear immigration enforcement as they cope with health problems from toxic exposure at the site. 

Nonprofit immigration advocacy group American Immigration Council reported that government data show U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ backlog reached 12.1 million pending cases even as filings fell 45% from a year earlier.

ICE sent a gay Brazilian man who had won protection from deportation to Brazil to Equatorial Guinea, where authorities restricted his movement and later cut off his contact with lawyers and journalists, LOOKOUT reported.

The New York Times reported that immigration lawyers say federal agencies increasingly redact or withhold records that some noncitizens need to prove their lawful status and fight deportation.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that federal prosecutors admitted they failed to tell a judge about an immigrant’s alleged criminal history before she ordered his release from immigration custody.

ICE has quietly fired some recent recruits after background reviews uncovered issues, including a Philadelphia recruit who died by suicide after the agency told him it planned to fire him, The Washington Post reported.

The Justice Department used the secretive Alien Terrorist Removal Court for the first time to secure the deportation of an Afghan woman and lawful permanent resident whom the government accused of helping conceal a 2024 terrorism plot, CNN reported.

An 11-year-old asylum-seeking child waited nine hours for a 15-minute virtual immigration hearing alongside 24 other children, many without attorneys, El País reported.

A federal whistleblower alleged that DHS officers may have violated state laws while searching voter databases for noncitizens and may have wrongly flagged U.S. citizens, The New York Times reported.

ICE gave newly recruited deportation officers access to restricted personal information through a Palantir app before they completed background checks, The Intercept reported.

The Everywhere Border Project argued in The Border Chronicle that CBP One and CBP Home use the same digital border infrastructure to manage migrants, shifting from asylum appointments under CBP One to encouraging self-deportation through CBP Home.

Thanks for reading. Take care and stay well.

—Emma