Beyond the Border: Targeting activists, more detention deaths and a fake deportation hotline
Here's what happened this week in immigration news.
Written by Kate Morrissey, Edited by Lauren J. Mapp
Welcome to another edition of Beyond the Border, which summarizes immigration news from across the country in a weekly roundup. Did I miss something? Message me via kate@daylightsandiego.org or on Instagram.
Targeting San Diego immigration activists
I wrote two pieces for Daylight San Diego this week about ways in which the federal government seems to be targeting local activists who document Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
In one piece, I wrote about a revelatory court document that detailed Operation Road Flare, which, since October, has been tracking certain activists who monitor ICE in communities.
In a breaking news piece on Thursday, I wrote that Federal Protective Service officers detained and cited a group of volunteers who were there to either document ICE arrests inside the downtown San Diego federal building or pray with immigrants before their check-in appointments or court hearings.
Custody-related deaths and killings by immigration officials
An eighth person died in ICE custody so far this year, this time a Guatemalan man in Florida. ICE issued a press release four days after Jairo Garcia-Hernandez died.
ICE fatally shot a Texas man and U.S. citizen in March 2025 and didn't say anything to the public until the news broke this week, Newsweek reported. The witness to that shooting just died in a car crash, the New York Times reported.
ICE quietly updated the cause of death for a man in its custody in Texas to “spontaneous use of force,” the Texas Tribune reported. A medical examiner has found that the death was a homicide. ICE deported one of the witnesses to that death, the El Paso Times reported.
Border Patrol agents released a blind Rohingya refugee miles from his home in Buffalo, New York, and he was later found dead, Investigative Post reported.
Immigration detention conditions
People held at Adelanto ICE Processing Center have sued over conditions there, Los Angeles Public Press reported.
The Los Angeles Daily News gathered letters from people held at Adelanto ICE Processing Center that show what conditions are like inside.
An opinion piece for The Philadelphia Inquirer included a blueprint of ICE's plans for a warehouse detention facility.
GEO Group, a private prison company that runs many immigration detention facilities, rejected a shareholder vote for a human rights review brought by a group led by activist investor priests, Reuters reported.
Deportations
A father died of pneumonia shortly after ICE deported him to Mexico, his family told KPTV. The Oregonian profiled the man, who worked as a handyman.
The Associated Press reported that ICE deported a gay woman to Morocco, where homosexuality is a crime punishable by imprisonment.
Human Rights Watch reported that “Cameroonian authorities are arbitrarily detaining non-Cameroonian nationals deported from the United States and detaining and abusing journalists who tried to interview them.”
Court orders and other legal actions
A federal judge issued a scathing ruling finding that the Trump administration had failed to follow her previous orders to provide detained immigrants with bond hearings, the Associated Press reported.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restart processing of the early stages of Special Immigrant Visa applications, which give people from Afghanistan and Iraq who assisted the U.S. military the ability to come to the U.S.
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration sued the state of New Jersey over the governor's executive order restricting federal immigration officials’ access to non-public areas of state property.
ICE is still in Minnesota
Sahan Journal reported that immigration officials in Minnesota are using stealthier tactics after agency leaders said they were winding down operations in the state.
An immigration official accidentally fired his gun in a Minnesota hotel room, the bullet lodged into the headboard of the neighboring room, Sahan Journal reported.
Mother Jones reported that immigrants detained in Minnesota aren't getting their documents back once they get out of ICE custody.
Resistance
The Washington Post published a video on Instagram of a group of dancers performing a protest piece about ICE outside the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Memorial.
Religious groups in Athens, Georgia, held a candlelight vigil for people held in immigration custody, Georgia Public Broadcasting reported. Activists in Calexico, California, similarly held a vigil for people who recently died in ICE custody, the Calexico Chronicle reported. An interfaith group in Indiana is also holding vigils outside a facility where someone recently died, WFYI reported.
Other stories to watch
A former instructor for ICE's training program said the agency lied to Congress and that it cut important parts of new officer training, the Washington Post reported. This Instagram video shows some of his testimony.
I reviewed documents about the Department of Homeland Security's contracts with the city of Escondido, California, to use its police department's gun range to train ICE officers. I wrote for Daylight San Diego that Border Patrol also used the facility in 2018.
A Nashville comedian made a fake deportation tip line, which received nearly 100 submissions, including from a kindergarten teacher reporting parents of a student, the Washington Post reported.
Customs and Border Protection asked San Diego County for information about all of its property owners, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The Department of Justice filed charges against a ring of con men who tricked immigrants into thinking they were attorneys, judges and other federal officers, the New York Times reported. At least one of their victims was deported.
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