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      How ICE Is Seeking to Ramp Up Deportations Through Courthouse Arrests

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      Officials had largely steered clear of arrests at immigration courts out of concern that they would deter people from showing up for hearings.A hearing on Tuesday at immigration court in Van Nuys, Calif., was supposed to be routine for a young family from Colombia, the first step in what they hoped would be a successful bid for asylum.To their surprise, the judge informed the father, Andres Roballo, that the government wished to dismiss his deportation case. Taken aback, Mr. Roballo hesitated, then responded: “As long as I stay with my family.”Moments later, as they exited the courtroom into a waiting area, Mr. Roballo was encircled by plainclothes federal agents who ushered him into a side room. Other agents guided his shaken wife, Luisa Bernal, and their toddler toward the elevator.Outside the courthouse, Ms. Bernal collapsed on a bench. “They have him, they have him,” she wailed. “We didn’t understand this would happen.”Mr. Roballo’s arrest was part of an aggressive new initiative by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants at immigration courts, the latest escalation by the Trump administration in its all-out effort to ramp up deportations.Agents have begun arresting migrants immediately after their hearings if they have been ordered deported or their cases have been dismissed, a move that enables their swift removal, according to immigration lawyers and internal documents obtained by The New York Times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Will ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Rubio Says

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      Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the students who will have their visas canceled include people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying in “critical fields.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.”He added that the State Department was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The move was certain to send ripples of anxiety across university campuses in the United States and was likely to lead to reprisal from China, the country of origin for the second-largest group of international students in the United States.Mr. Rubio’s brief statement announcing the visa crackdown did not define “critical fields” of study, but the phrase most likely refers to research in the physical sciences. In recent years, American officials have expressed concerns about the Chinese government recruiting U.S.-trained scientists, though there is no evidence of such scientists working for China in large numbers.Similarly, it is unclear how U.S. officials will determine which students have ties to the Communist Party. The lack of detail on the scope of the directive will no doubt fuel worries among the roughly 275,000 Chinese students in the United States, as well as professors and university administrators who depend on their research skills and financial support.American universities and research laboratories have benefited over many decades by drawing some of the most talented students from China and other countries, and many universities rely on international students paying full tuition for a substantial part of their annual revenue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Leader of Smuggling Ring Gets 10 Years After Indian Family Froze to Death

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      The family of four that used the network got disoriented and lost their way in 2022 while trying to reach the United States from Canada on foot in blizzard conditions.More than three years after a young Indian family froze to death trying to cross into the United States from Canada during a blizzard, a federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the convicted architect of the human smuggling network that they used to a decade in prison.Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, a 29-year-old Indian national who lived in Florida, was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison for his role in the operation that ferried Indians into the United States via Canada. He will be deported after serving time, the Justice Department said.His convicted co-conspirator, Steve Anthony Shand, 50, a U.S. citizen from Florida, was sentenced to six years and six months in prison followed by two years of supervised release.Prosecutors said during the trial that the men were part of a large-scale criminal operation that arranged for dozens of Indians to enter Canada on fake student visas, and then smuggled them into the United States over land.Mr. Patel orchestrated the logistics with other co-conspirators. Mr. Shand was the driver who met the immigrants south of the Canadian border and transported them to Chicago, according to the Justice Department. It said in a news release that the smugglers had charged $100,000 for passage from India to the United States.Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, left, and Steve Anthony Shand were sentenced on Wednesday.Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, via Associated PressFor Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife, Vaishali, 37, and their 11-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, the journey in January 2022 ended in tragedy. Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their ice-encased bodies in the desolate borderland between Manitoba and Minnesota.The Patels were part of a group of 11 Indians who had set out from the tiny Canadian town of Emerson with instructions on how to cross the border on foot.They expected to meet on the American side a person who would deliver them to their destination, most likely Illinois, where they had family or friends. But the family was separated from the rest of the group and most likely struggled to stay on course in the dark, buffeted by winds that whipped up blinding snow.The wind chill temperature was minus 36 degrees and lower, and wind gusts were as high as 50 miles per hour during their trek, the Justice Department said. An autopsy determined that the family had died from exposure to the cold. The seven other passengers survived.The investigation was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, a specialized unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.“The callous disregard for life that led to the tragic deaths of an entire family will not be forgotten,” Jamie Holt, the special agent in charge in St. Paul, Minn., said in a statement on Wednesday.The sentencing took place in the northwestern Minnesota town of Fergus Falls, where a jury convicted the two men last fall of four counts each related to human smuggling, including causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy. More

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      ICE, Shifting Tactics, Detains High School Student at N.Y.C. Courthouse

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      The detention of a 20-year-old Venezuelan appears to be the first reported instance of immigration officials apprehending a student in the city this year.When a 20-year-old from Venezuela was arrested last week at an immigration courthouse in New York, it was the first reported instance of a public school student in the city being apprehended by federal officials since the start of President Trump’s second term.It also signaled a shift in strategy by immigration authorities who are intent on expediting deportations.Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers last week began standing inside and outside of immigration courts across the United States in an effort to detain certain migrants who are appearing for scheduled hearings. Immigration lawyers said ICE officers — from San Diego and Los Angeles to Boston and Miami — were targeting migrants shortly after their cases were dismissed by judges. Government lawyers are requesting that the cases be dismissed in order to place the migrants in expedited deportation proceedings.Dylan, the New York student, was arrested on Wednesday in the lobby of a courthouse in Lower Manhattan by ICE officers who showed up at the city’s immigration courts in large numbers. Dylan’s last name was withheld at the request of his family, which fears retaliation from the government.Dylan, 20, was arrested after he showed up to court for what he thought would be a routine hearing.RaizaOn Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams fended off a barrage of questions about the student’s arrest.Mr. Adams, who oversees a school system serving thousands of immigrant students, sought to distance himself from Dylan’s apprehension, saying that the arrest was a federal issue beyond his purview because it did not happen on school grounds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Sues Four New Jersey Cities Over ‘Sanctuary’ Policies

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      Justice Department lawyers say in a lawsuit that Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson are shielding illegal immigrants from lawful prosecution.The Justice Department has sued four New Jersey cities and their leaders over so-called sanctuary policies that federal lawyers say are hindering the Trump administration’s enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. With their policies, the cities, Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson, are shielding illegal immigrants from lawful prosecution, Justice Department lawyers write in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Newark on Thursday. “While states and local governments are free to stand aside as the United States performs this important work, they cannot stand in the way,” the lawsuit says. “And where inaction crosses into obstruction, local governments break federal law.”The suit was filed a day after a judge dismissed federal trespassing charges that had been filed against Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark this month after his arrest outside a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center where people were protesting. Mr. Baraka said at a hearing last week that he had been “targeted” for selective enforcement. He was named as a defendant in the suit filed on Thursday, as were Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City, Mayor Andre Sayegh of Paterson and Mayor Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken. All are Democrats; Mr. Fulop and Mr. Baraka are candidates in the Democratic primary for governor. Mr. Fulop said he had learned of the lawsuit from a post on the social media app X. “I think it’s a political sideshow,” he said. “It’s a stunt.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can the Trump Administration Stop Harvard From Enrolling International Students?

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      The Trump administration is relying on an obscure bureaucratic lever to stop the school, the latest in a series of aggressive moves.The Trump administration wants to halt Harvard from enrolling international students. But how can the federal government dictate which students a private university can and cannot enroll?The government has enormous power over who comes into the United States, and who doesn’t. For college and universities, the Department of Homeland Security has a vast system just to manage and track the enrollment of the hundreds of thousands of international students studying across the country at any given time.But a school needs government certification to use this database, known as SEVIS, for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. And this vulnerability is what the Trump administration is exploiting against Harvard.Homeland Security says that effective immediately, it has revoked a certification that allows Harvard to have access to SEVIS. Oddly enough, the students may still have valid visas. But Harvard is no longer able to log them into this all-important database.The announcement was a significant escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure Harvard to fall in line with the president’s agenda.Here’s what we know so far.How does Harvard use the SEVIS database?For each international student, Harvard inputs data into SEVIS to show that a student is enrolled full time, and thus meeting the terms of the visa that the student was issued.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rep. McIver Charged With Assault Over Clash Outside Newark ICE Center

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      The Department of Justice also announced it was dropping a trespass charge against the city’s mayor stemming from the same episode.The Justice Department charged a New Jersey congresswoman with assaulting federal agents during a clash outside a Newark immigration detention center and dropped a trespass charge against the city’s mayor that arose from the same episode, the department said Monday.Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, disclosed the move in a post on X, saying that the congresswoman, LaMonica McIver, had been charged “for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” when she visited the detention center with two other Democratic members of Congress from New Jersey on May 9.“No one is above the law — politicians or otherwise,” Ms. Habba said in a statement. “It is the job of this office to uphold justice impartially, regardless of who you are. Now we will let the justice system work.”She added that she had sought a resolution without bringing criminal charges, but that Ms. McIver had declined.In a statement on Monday, Ms. McIver blamed federal law enforcement for instigating the clash, saying that “ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation.”“The charges against me are purely political — they mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tufts Student Returns to Massachusetts After 6 Weeks in Immigration Detention

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      Freed after her painful ordeal in a federal facility, Rumeysa Ozturk expressed joy, gratitude and continued faith in American democracy.Rumeysa Ozturk returned to Massachusetts on Saturday evening, eyes welling with joy and gratitude at the end of her six-week odyssey in federal custody, a case that stirred outrage over President Trump’s immigration crackdown.A flight carrying Ms. Ozturk, a Turkish citizen studying at Tufts University on a student visa, touched down at Boston Logan International Airport one day after a federal judge in Vermont ordered that she be immediately released from a detention facility in Louisiana.Speaking in a room at the airport, she flashed smiles and looked happy and relaxed, but also became visibly emotional at times. Ms. Ozturk thanked supporters for their kindness and expressed love for the country that imprisoned her and is still trying to deport her.“America is the greatest democracy in the world,” she said, adding, “I have faith in the American system of justice.”Ms. Ozturk, a fifth-year doctoral student, was among more than a thousand international students whose visas were canceled by the federal government and who have faced deportation. The moves came as the Trump administration escalated its attack on higher education, saying its goal was to root out antisemitism.Ms. Ozturk had written an opinion piece in the student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to pro-Palestinian demands. Her supporters denied that she was antisemitic, and said that she was detained in retaliation for her speech in violation of the First Amendment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More