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    US lawmakers seek release of double amputee from Georgia ICE detention

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    Congress members write to Kristi Noem to express ‘grave concern’ over detention of Georgia barber Rodney TaylorRepresentative Pramila Jayapal and 20 members of Congress are seeking the release of Rodney Taylor from Stewart detention center in Georgia, several weeks after the one-year anniversary of when agents seized the double amputee outside his suburban home in Loganville, about 40 miles north-east of Atlanta.The representatives sent a two-page letter on 17 February to Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and Todd Lyons, the acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), drawing extensively from the Guardian’s reporting and quoting several stories in detail with “grave concern” due to Taylor’s “extreme hardship in detention and [because] his health is continuing to deteriorate”. Continue reading… More

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      Detentions and disappearances: how ICE has driven fear into Michigan’s Arab communities

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      Arab Americans in Dearborn and beyond are being swept up by ICE at places of worship and work, with devastating consequencesLorenda Lewis is so tired she can barely keep her head straight. Surrounded by her six young children at a cafe in Dearborn, Michigan, she recounts the nightmare of the past four months that saw her husband, Abdelouahid Aouchiche, an Algerian national, taken away.It was still dark when, at about 5.15am last October, her 61-year-old husband and 12-year-old son, Abdullah, arrived at the Furqan mosque for morning prayers. Abdullah recalls his father being approached by two men outside the mosque, grabbing him and asking for his papers. After a brief conversation, he says he was allowed to call his mother and told to go inside the mosque by the agents. When she arrived minutes later, her husband and the agents were gone. Continue reading… More

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      ‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks

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      Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone’When Karen Newton left home in late July 2025, she knew that international travellers were being locked up in immigration detention centres in the US. “I was aware,” she nods. “But I never thought it would have any impact on my holiday.” Karen, 65, had a British passport and a tourist visa. She hadn’t been abroad for eight years, and was keen for some guaranteed sun. “I really just wanted to get away from the house.”She and her husband, Bill, 66, had an ambitious itinerary that would take them through California, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and then on to Canada over two months. Las Vegas wasn’t to Karen’s taste: “Way too commercialised.” She much preferred Yellowstone, where they saw Old Faithful, the famous geyser, as it shot boiling water into the air, and got up close with some extraordinary wildlife. “There was a bison right next to the car. Another time, a wolf walked past.” Her eyes sparkle at the memory. “It was just amazing.” Continue reading… More

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      US citizen shot and killed by federal immigration agent last year, new records show

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      Shooting death of Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, in Texas was not publicly disclosed by Department of Homeland SecurityNewly released records show a US citizen was shot and killed in Texas by a federal immigration agent last year during a late-night traffic encounter that was not publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security.The death of Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, would mark the earliest of at least six deadly shootings by federal officers since the start of a nationwide immigration crackdown in Donald Trump’s second term. On Friday, DHS said the shooting on South Padre Island last March occurred after the driver intentionally struck an agent. Continue reading… More

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      Dear Kristi Noem: you’re tracking down ICE critics? I’m one of them | Robert Reich

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      The homeland security department is reportedly seeking information on critical social media accounts. Look no furtherThe New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security has sent Google, Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) and other media corporations subpoenas for the names on accounts that criticize ICE enforcement. The department wants to identify Americans who oppose what it’s doing.I’ll save them time.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now Continue reading… More

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      Conservative Georgia town pushes back against ICE detention center: ‘We are Americans after all’

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      Social Circle, a mostly Maga town, builds strange bedfellow coalition against plans to convert warehouseOn a recent morning Eric Taylor, city manager for a small Georgia town of about 5,000 residents called Social Circle, was contacted by a staffer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.“They asked me to turn on the water,” he said of a 1m sq ft warehouse nearby that the federal government recently purchased for $128m, with plans to use it for locking up as many as 10,000 detainees as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan. Continue reading… More

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      US judge blocks deportation of Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi

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      Mahdawi, arrested last year during US citizenship interview, says he is ‘grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law’An immigration judge has blocked the Trump administration from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist who was arrested by federal agents last year during a US citizenship interview in Vermont.Lawyers for Mahdawi gave details of the decision in a court filing on Tuesday with a federal appeals court in New York, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to his release from immigration custody in April. Continue reading… More

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      ICE holds people in disgusting conditions. Now it’s turning warehouses into camps | Moira Donegan

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      The Trump administration has bought warehouses across the US that could hold thousands. But resistance is growingThere is a vast building, reportedly the size of seven football fields, in Surprise, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix; ICE bought it for $70m. Another building, along the southern border in San Antonio, Texas, was valued at $37m; it’s 640,000 sq ft. In January, ICE bought a warehouse in Upper Bern Township, Pennsylvania, not far outside of Philadelphia, for $87.4m. In Williamsport, Maryland, outside Hagerstown, the cost of a facility on a nearly 54-acre plot was $102m.These are massive, industrial spaces, built for holding goods to be shipped elsewhere. Warehouses are drafty and difficult to heat, hard-floored and high-ceilinged, not meant for human habitation. But the Trump administration is aiming to convert them into vast detention camps for immigrants. Some of the buildings could house as many as 9,000 people at a time. The rapid slew of new warehouse purchases by deportation agencies brings to mind the words of the ICE director, Todd Lyons, who told a conference last year that he wanted the effort to operate “like Amazon Prime, for human beings”. Continue reading… More

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      ICE-free zones and blocked liquor licenses: US cities fight back against immigration raids

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      Cities across the US have developed novel tactics to protect their residents from federal immigration agentsAs federal immigration agents flooded the streets of Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles over the past year, cities across the US have been at the frontlines of strategizing over how to protect their residents, should Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents come to their communities.From Philadelphia to Oklahoma City and Oakland, California, many cities are developing new – and creative – tactics to prepare for and push back against ICE. Here’s a look at a few. Continue reading… More