How does education affect the proclivity to emigrate to the U.S? The case of Mexico

The desire of Mexicans wanting to emigrate stands at about 20% of the population. That share is not greatly different from many other countries. But the share of Mexican workforce age working residing outside Mexica is high – 10%, of which almost all in the United States. Mexico is part of the American basin of workers, mostly with little formal education.

It’s unclear whether improvement in education status translates into lower propensity to emigrate.  Costa Rica’s high school graduation rate (60%) is higher than Mexico’s (40%) but Costa Ricans are more inclined to emigrate.  That said, a look at progress in education in Mexico is worth a look.

In 2000, only 20% of Mexican adults had completed what is called high school in the United States. Now, 40%. A lower education threshold also saw substantial gains, from under 70% to around 90%.

Higher education is almost entirely at state colleges. Attendence grew about 50% between 2011 and 2022.   About a half million graduate a year. (Putting that in perspective, that 500K is equivalent to somewhat less than 1% of the total workforce of Mexicans, in the U.S the annual number of graduates is about 1.5% of the work force. (But the HS graduation rate in the U.S. is above 90%.) This flows a lot more advanced educated persons into the Mexican workforce than in the past, but the absorption rate is low – to be sure, the wages are higher than for high school graduates by the quality of work is the lowest among all OECD countries. Half of college graduates are overqualified for their jobs.

If access to migration to the U.S. were easier, would college educated Mexicans wish to migrate? Would they have a better chance of getting work for which they are qualified, considering both wage and desired social status? Compared to less educated, who take many jobs Americans don’t want? The median wage of Mexican in the U.S. is $19 vs the national median wage of $27.

Where Haitian TPS workers work

Note that on June 25 the Supreme Court allowed the administration to proceed with terminating Haiti’s TPS designation.

Haitian TPS workers are heavily concentrated in a small number of occupations. Of the estimated 200,000 Haitian TPS beneficiaries who are employed in the United States, about 11% work as cooks or restaurant servers, compared with 2.4% of the total U.S. workforce. Another 11% work as stockers, warehouse workers or packers, compared with 2.7% of all U.S. workers.

Agricultural workers account for 7.5% of employed Haitian TPS beneficiaries, while about 0.6% percent of total U.S. employment is in agriculture.  Retail employees represent 7% of Haitian TPS workers, compared with 3.2% of the overall workforce. Nursing assistants account for 6.5% of employed Haitian TPS beneficiaries, compared with 0.9% of all U.S. workers.

Together, these five occupational groups employ roughly 43% of working Haitian TPS beneficiaries, compared to 10% of the total workforce.

The median hourly wages of these jobs is slightly under $20 an hour. The median wage of all high school graduate worker is about $24.50.

Much of this data from the American Immigration Council.

3% of unauthorized persons detained have violent crime history

A tiny share of persons detained by Dept, of Homeland Security are violent criminals.

ABC has examined DHS databases on persons detained or deported. I am skeptical of the accuracy of all official DHS data. But here are some figures from the media network’s analysis.

Of the 438,537 people detained between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 11, 2026, 13,018 had a violent felony conviction in the United States. “Violent felony” was defined as homicide, sexual assault, robbery, or assault.

Consistent with past disputes over data and interpretation of law, DHS said that “Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are criminal illegal aliens”…..”We are continuing to go after the worst of the worst — including gang members, pedophiles, and rapists. Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”

Elsewhere in the government’s response was a statement that illegal entry into the U.S. is a crime. That would suggest that 1005 of unauthorized persons in the U.S. who were not visa overstays are criminal. But, as this posting lays out, entering illegally is a misdemeanor and being in the country illegally is a civil violation (go here).

This in no way means that 3% of unauthorized persons have committed a violent crime. The figures are skewed by ICE depending on local jails to find persons to detain.

If one includes both reported and unreported violent crimes, about 2% of the total adult population in the U.S. commit a violent crime every year.  The figures are too gross and summery to draw conclusions about the rate of crime among unauthorized persons. But studies have consistently shown that unauthorized persons are less likely to commit crimes.

For example, using data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, researchers reported in 2021 that unauthorized persons have a lower rate of crime than do authorized persons. “We observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years. Our findings help us understand why the most aggressive immigrant removal programs have not delivered on their crime reduction promises and are unlikely to do so in the future.”

What unauthorized farm workers said in a survey

Farm labor particularly in the California produce industry is heavily foreign born and unauthorized. The USDA’s national crop workforce estimated as of January, 2025: “In 2020–22, 32% of crop farmworkers were U.S. born, 7% were immigrants who had obtained U.S. citizenship, 19% were other authorized immigrants (primarily permanent residents or green-card holders), and the remaining 42% held no work authorization. (Go here.)

The United Farmworker Foundation issued a report in July based on a survey of 2,250 farm workers, most of them in California. The survey was conducted in mid 2025. The surveyors did not ask the legal status of respondents, but it appears that virtually all were unauthorized to be in the country

Some highlights:

Tenure in the U.S.: 80% had been in the U.S. for at least ten years;40% over 20 years. 40% had been in farm work in the U.S. for over 20 years. 65% work at least ten months a year in agriculture.

Their undocumented status’ most painful aspect is inability to visit family members in their country of origin. At the same time, 69% said that if they were deported, they would lose family attachments in the U.S. If their status were made legal, 87% would visit family members in their country of origin.

92% said that ICE was affecting their employment. 88% reported fearing detention or deportation. 61% had reduced their shopping, 29% had avoided medical attention.

42% did not know their rights if approached by ICE. Only 20% said they knew their rights and how to get legal representation.

 

 

Mayor Zohran Mandami address July 4

Excerpt:

What American Exceptionalism Really Means

There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here.

And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional.

For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had.

We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures and it belongs to us all.

It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel, the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power, the power to determine what America means.

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin.

 

More insights into the H-1B workforce.

Classify this posting as yet another view of a 30 years plus phenomenon of the transnational Indian IT workforce.

Despite a formal cap of 85,000 on new H-1B workers, the entirely actively working H-1B workers today appears to be about 700,000. A new paper provides some insights into this workforce.

The size of the active workforce compared to annual entrants is due to these workers not only being able to extent their three year stay to six years, but also to extend beyond that

This is an overwhelmingly Indian workforce. India provides about 70% of H-1B workers; China, about 10%.

From a quarter to a half of these workers in a single sector, Computer Systems design. The size of this workforce engaged directly in computer and math (the core technical section) is about 1.3 million. Of these, about 1/10th are H-1B workers.  But they are concentrated among the more highly educated ranks of the total 1.3 million workers, according to this study.

However, note this: Congressional Research Service data show that in about the past 10 years, 69% to 92% became green card holders. As most H-1B workers thus gain green card status, the presence of foreign born computer systems high end workers is very likely to be much more than 1/10th of this workforce.

The employment impact on U.S. born workers is selective. It appears that  U.S. born workers in this core technical segment has not grown, which to me is a sign that H-1B workers are partially blocking the entry of Americans into this workforce.  However, when H-1B workers are present, the non-STEM trained workers in the computer sector increase in size.

the article, focused on the United States, does no address how former H-1B workers populate American and India IT firms.

Justice Thomas’ dissent in Trump v Barbara

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Neil Gorsuch, argues in Trump v Barbara the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship not to everyone born on American soil, but to persons born here who are also domiciled here—that is, whose permanent legal home is the United States.

Thomas begins with Dred Scott v. Sandford. That decision denied citizenship to Black Americans by treating them as an inferior caste. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause overturned that result. In Thomas’s account, they did so because formerly enslaved people were Americans: they lived here permanently, owed allegiance to no foreign country, and were subject to the full authority of the United States. The Reconstruction Congress eliminated race as a barrier to citizenship; it did not, he says, establish citizenship for children whose parents were merely visiting or remained legally attached to another nation.

The organizing concept in Thomas’s dissent is domicile, meaning a person’s legal home and intended permanent residence. Nineteenth-century American law treated citizenship and domicile as closely related. Domicile determined national character, allegiance, taxation, the law governing personal affairs, military obligations, and the government entitled to protect a person abroad. Minor children ordinarily inherited their parents’ domicile. A temporary visitor therefore remained subject primarily to the visitor’s home country, even while required to obey American laws during the visit.

Thomas reads the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment together. The 1866 Act declared citizens those born in the United States and “not subject to any foreign power.” The Citizenship Clause soon afterward covered persons born here and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Thomas argues that the phrases conveyed the same requirement: full and complete jurisdiction, not merely the territorial authority to enforce criminal and civil laws. He relies on statements by Senators Lyman Trumbull and Jacob Howard and Representative John Bingham, who described citizenship as excluding temporary residents and persons owing allegiance elsewhere. The treatment of tribal Indians reinforces his reading: although born within American territory, members of sovereign tribes were initially excluded because the United States did not exercise complete jurisdiction over them.

Thomas also invokes early governmental practice. Congress reenacted the Civil Rights Act’s “not subject to any foreign power” language in 1870. Executive officials repeatedly denied citizenship to children born here while their families remained domiciled abroad. Early Supreme Court opinions, including the Slaughter-House Cases and Elk v. Wilkins, spoke of complete political jurisdiction and freedom from foreign allegiance. Legal scholars likewise distinguished permanently domiciled immigrants from transient visitors. Thomas considers this evidence far stronger than the majority’s historical account.

He rejects the majority’s reliance on three authorities. Calvin’s Case, a 1608 English decision, rested on perpetual feudal allegiance to the sovereign; Thomas argues that Americans rejected, rather than adopted, that conception. Lynch v. Clarke, an 1844 New York inheritance decision supporting broad territorial birthright citizenship, was an isolated lower-court ruling, rarely mentioned during Reconstruction and later undermined by New York precedent. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, he says, held only that a child born to parents permanently domiciled in the United States was a citizen. Because Wong’s parents were settled residents rather than temporary visitors, broader language in the opinion was dicta and does not decide the present question.

Thomas adds three procedural objections. The certified class includes unidentified persons extending indefinitely into the future, raising standing problems. Neither the Citizenship Clause nor the immigration statute expressly creates a cause of action, and the plaintiffs challenged no final agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act. Most importantly, the plaintiffs brought a facial challenge, which requires proving that the order has no lawful application. Yet Thomas believes it is constitutional as applied to children of lawful temporary visitors and at least some undocumented immigrants who are not domiciled here. He leaves open whether children of long-term undocumented residents may acquire American domicile, saying that issue should be resolved through individual, as-applied cases.

Finally, Thomas argues that the citizenship statute did not broaden the Constitution when Congress codified nationality law in 1940; it merely adopted the Citizenship Clause’s language. He closes on a historical note. The Fourteenth Amendment was designed to secure equal citizenship for freed Black Americans. By transforming it into a guarantee for every child of a temporary visitor, “birth tourist,” or undocumented immigrant, the majority, in his view, detaches citizenship from permanent membership, allegiance, and national belonging—and thereby diminishes the “dignity and glory” of American citizenship.

Majority opinion on birthright citizenship

In Trump v. Barbara, announced June 30, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees American citizenship to children born in the United States even when their parents are undocumented immigrants or are here only temporarily. The decision invalidated President Trump’s Executive Order 14160, which declared that such children were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore were not citizens at birth.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a five-justice majority. The Court began with the text of the Citizenship Clause: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The central question was the meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction.” The administration argued that a child lacked the required connection to the United States when the parents were unlawfully present or maintained a permanent home elsewhere. The Court rejected that interpretation. Jurisdiction, it said, means the government’s legal power over people within its territory. Undocumented immigrants and temporary visitors must obey American law and may be arrested, prosecuted, or sued here. They—and children born to them—are therefore subject to American jurisdiction.

Much of the opinion traces the rule to English common law. Under the doctrine of jus soli, or “right of the soil,” nearly every child born within the sovereign’s territory became a natural-born subject. Citizenship rested on a reciprocal relationship: the sovereign provided protection, and the person born under that protection owed allegiance. The rule applied even when a foreign mother’s presence was “momentary and uncertain,” and even when the parents could be expelled. The traditional exceptions were narrow: principally children of foreign diplomats, enemy forces occupying territory, and people born within territories controlled by another sovereign.

The American states inherited this rule after independence. In the majority’s account, birth on American soil generally made a person a citizen regardless of the parents’ nationality or intentions. The Court quoted an early American authority stating that “[t]he child of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen.”

The majority then placed the Fourteenth Amendment in the shadow of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott had rejected the common-law principle and held that people descended from enslaved Africans could not be national citizens. In the majority’s phrase, “blood, not soil, was made the rule.” The decision provoked intense condemnation. Frederick Douglass insisted, “By birth, we are American citizens,” while Abraham Lincoln called Dred Scott an “astonisher in legal history.”

The Civil War and Reconstruction reversed that judgment. In 1862, Attorney General Edward Bates wrote that “every person born in the country is, at the moment of birth, prima facie a citizen . . . without any reference to race or color.” Congress adopted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then placed the citizenship rule in the Constitution through the Fourteenth Amendment. The Amendment’s principal Senate sponsor described its language as “simply declaratory of . . . the law of the land already.” According to the Court, the purpose was not merely to protect formerly enslaved people but to settle the national rule of citizenship permanently and place it beyond ordinary political change.

The majority also relied heavily on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 decision recognizing the citizenship of a San Francisco-born man whose Chinese parents were not eligible for naturalization. Wong Kim Ark described the Fourteenth Amendment as “declaratory” of the “fundamental rule of citizenship by birth.” The present Court said that precedent covered children of permanent residents, temporary visitors, and undocumented immigrants alike. Foreigners who enter for “business or pleasure” receive no exemption from American law.

The administration and the dissents argued that citizenship should depend on the parents’ permanent allegiance or domicile. The majority found little historical support for that theory. Domicile and citizenship, it explained, are different: a person may live permanently in a country without becoming its citizen and may remain a citizen of a country while living elsewhere. A domicile test would also replace a clear rule based on birthplace with difficult inquiries into each parent’s legal status and intentions.

Finally, the Court emphasized what the constitutional text does not say. The words central to the Executive Order—“mother,” “father,” “lawful,” and “temporary”—are “absent from the Clause. For a simple reason: they did not matter.” A child born on American soil and governed by American law is a citizen at birth. Only the historically recognized, exceedingly narrow exceptions remain.

An Abrego Garcia timeline through July 2026

Updated timeline on Abrego Garcia case from the start through July 31:

El Salvadoran Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was legally residing in the United States. He crossed the border illegally in 2011 but received in 2019 a stay of removal due to immigration court finding over his application for asylum, stating likelihood that he would be persecuted by gangs in El Salvador.  An allegation by a police officer in 2019 that Abrego Garcia by virtue of tattoos was a member of the M-13 was not pursued.  He is married, with a child, and lived in the Baltimore area.

On March 12, 2025 he was pulled over driving his car by ICE personnel and taken into custody, being told that his legal status in the U.S. was revoked. On March 15 he was flown with many Venezuelans to El Salvador’s CECO (Terrorism Confinement Center) prison. (A dispute over the legality of this and other March 15 flights is being addressed in D.C. District Court- James Boasberg.)

On March 24 Abrego Garcia’s spouse sued the government in U.S. District Court in Maryland (Judge Paula Xinis) to return Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. (Go here for the March 24 suit and here for The Atlantic article.)

On March 31 The government told Judge Xinis in court that Abrego Garcia’s deportation resulted from an “administrative error,” knowing before his deportation that an immigration court had approved his stay pending an asylum decision.

On April 4 Judge Xinis issued an initial ruling ordering the U.S. government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador by midnight April 7. She criticized the government’s lack of evidence for its claims and described his deportation as a “grievous error” that violated federal law. “As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador – let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.” (Go here.)

The Trump administration appealed in the early hours of April 5 Judge Xinis’ order and requested an emergency stay of her decision. Among its arguments, the government said that the court has no power to force the government to retrieve a person in the custody of another country and asserted that Abrego Garcia had a “prominent role” in the M-13 gang. The government was relying solely on the assertion by a police officer in 2019. (Go here.)

Later on April 5 the government removed its attorney, Erez Reuveni, from the case and put him on administrative leave, cutting him off from email contact with the DOJ, criticizing him for displaying doubts about the case and expressing frustration with the failure of the government to respond to his requests for information. (Go here.)

On April 6, Judge Xinis reaffirmed her ruling in a scathing opinion. She rejected the administration’s argument that it lacked jurisdiction or authority to secure Abrego Garcia’s return. She emphasized that his detention in CECOT was “wholly lawless” and “shocks the conscience”. (Go here).

On April 10 the Supreme Court unanimously rules that District Court Judge Xinis can order the government to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. The order requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.  The court ruled that the scope of the term “effectuate” used by Xinis is unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive. The Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.

In 2012, the ICE had issued Policy Directive 11061.1, titled “Facilitating the Return to the United States of Certain Lawfully Removed Aliens.”  The directive does not describe the scope of “facilitating.” It does refer to return travel, which is the basis for the government to say that its obligations for facilitating are only to arrange for return travel..

During April 11 – 14  Judge Xinis amends her order, instructing the administration to “take all available steps to facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and demands daily updates on their efforts. ​The government stalls, submits de minimis reports, some late, and misrepresents the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying that it has no legal power to acquire another government to return a prisoner under its own control.

On April 14 in a meeting between Presidents Trump and Bukele, Bukele told reporters it was “absurd” to ask if he would return Abrego Garcia. Bukele said, “Are you suggesting I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? How can I return him to the United States, like I smuggle him into the United States? Of course, I’m not going to do it.”

On April 15 Judge Xinis describes and severely criticizes the government’s failure to respond to her and the Supreme Court’s rulings and orders “expedited discovery.” By April 21, the government must respond to up to 15 written questions and provide up to 15 relevant documents. Depositions of four named officials must be completed by April 23. Plaintiffs can request to interview up to two more people if needed. Warning the government, she wrote: “Plaintiffs’ request for expedited discovery focuses on securing compliance with this Court’s amended order at ECF No. 51 and other related directives, and in the face of ongoing refusal to comply, to assist the Court in determining whether contempt proceedings are warranted….Should Defendants fail or refuse to engage in the above-described discovery in good faith, Plaintiffs are free to seek separate sanctions on an expedited basis.”

On April 17, ruling on an appeal by the government to Xinis’ discovery order, Appeals Court Judge Harvie Wilkinson blasts the government: “It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

On April 18 DHS issues a report saying that Abrego Garcia is a suspected trafficker, based on a incident in 2022: “Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a MS-13 gang member, illegal alien from El Salvador, and suspected human trafficker. The facts reveal he was pulled over with eight individuals in a car on an admitted three-day journey from Texas to Maryland with no luggage…The facts speak for themselves, and they reek of human trafficking. The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal gang member has completely fallen apart. We hear far too much about the gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims.”

On April 24 Border Czar Tom Homan spoke to reporters:  “We are not acting in bad faith. We removed a demonstrable public safety threat, a wife beater, a designated terrorist from the United States. He’s home, a citizen of El Salvador, who had two orders of removal by two separate immigration judges in the past. If he actually gets back, he will be detained again…I don’t think any court can order another nation, a sovereign nation, to take a citizen of its country and return him. I think he’s got plenty of due process (some paraphrased).

On April 24 Judge Xinis, after accusing the government on April 23 of “willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations,” orders a stay until April 30 given confidential discussions between the plaintiffs and the government.

During May: Judge Xinis oversees confidential discussions between plaintiffs and the administration, including discovery. On May 16, she expresses frustration that the administration is dragging out the case.

On May 16 D.C District Judge James E. Boasberg, presiding over the case J.G.G. v. Trump gave the Trump administration one week to identify its efforts to return García, as well as 137 Venezuelan men deported to an El Salvador prison under the wartime Alien Enemies Act.

On May 21 a grand jury at the Nashville Division of the Middle Tennessee Federal District Court indicted Garcia for conspiracy to smuggle persons in the U.S. and conspiracy to smuggle within the U.S. over 1,000 undocumented person, with one hundred separate trips from the southwest (mainly Houston, it appears) to other destinations. The indictment also alleges that Garcia had at least five co-conspirators. Substantially all evidence tying Garcia to smuggling that is held be the prosecution appears to be based on interviews with co-conspirators in American prisons. The indictment mentions no fact directly showing action by Garcia is a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, which appears to be the reason the case was brought in that state. The Indictment alleges that Garcia is a member of M-13, but does not charge him with any criminal acts associated with M-13. (Go here for the indictment and here for detailed analysis of the case.)

The indictment reportedly led to the resignation of federal prosecutor Ben Schrader, wjo led the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Nashville. Schrader reported objected to what he reportedly thought was the political nature of the indictment. (Go here.)

On June 6: Attorney General Pam Bondi announces that Garcia has been returned to the United States from El Salvador and faces criminal charges. She alleges that Garcia was involved in illegal transportation of guns and drugs but no such charges were filed.

On June 7: Garcia appears in court in Nashville.

On July 31: Judge Crenshaw responds to comment by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reference to Garcia as a “horrible human being” and a “monster” who “should never be released.”

On December 11: Judge Xinis grants Abrego Garcia habeas petition and orders him released from custody.

2026

March, 2026:  U.S. continues to seek to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia. A court bars his deportation.

May 22, 2026 Judge Crenshaw dismisses the criminal indictment against Abrego Garcia. Crenshaw finds the government reopened a closed investigation, then rushed an indictment against Abrego Garcia only after his lawsuit forced his return from El Salvador. He found prosecutor McGuire wasn’t independent, but closely directed by DOJ official Singh. Throughout his decision, Crenshaw uses terms such as “vindictive prosecution” “tainted investigation” and “abuse of prosecuting power.”

As of July 31, 2026: bar against deportation remains, but can be lifted by Judge Xinis.

Hispanic support of Trump continues to fall

After a surge of voting for Trump, Hispanic voters continue to pull back their support.

In November, 2025, I wrote that in the 2024 presidential election that the American Electorate Voter Poll put Trump’s support among Latino men at 43%. The Navigator Research post-election survey said received 50% of Hispanic men. According to Edison Research, 38% of Hispanic women voted for Trump in 2024, up from 30% in 2020.

Now, in June 2026, according to Reuters/Ipsos (access behind paywall) 27% of Latino voters approve of Trump, down from 36% at the beginning of his second term. An April/May poll Trump’s performance was approved by 30% and disapproved by 67% (UnidosUS/BSP also behind paywall).

The size of the eligible to vote Hispanic population grows 3% a year, while the white eligible population is slightly declining. But Hispanic propensity to vote in much less. 40% of Hispanics get around to register vs 55% for whites. And the voting rate for elderly American is around 80%.