Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr., of the Middle District of Tennessee, Nashville Division, dismissed on May 22  States v. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, on grounds that it was a case of retaliatory prosecution.  DHS remains committed to deport him, but the criminal case against him is dead. Here is what brought this case begun in March 2025 to May 2026

On May 21, 2025, in anticipation of his being returned from El Salvador per court order (which he was on about June 6),  he was indicted in Tennessee for conspiracy to smuggle persons in the U.S. and conspiracy to smuggle within the U.S. over 1,000 undocumented persons. The evidence against him appears to be that from others who were jailed or imprisoned for smuggling. A timeline of the case from March to June 7, when Garcia appeared in court in Tennessee, is here.

DHS had reopened a closed investigation into a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop. The court treated that reopening as the starting point of the vindictive taint: the government had previously closed the case after removing him, saying its goals were accomplished. After his successful lawsuit did it revive the matter.

The government was explicit about the connection. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche publicly linked the renewed investigation to a Maryland judge’s questioning of Abrego’s deportation.

Aakash Singh, a senior official reporting up the DOJ chain, then closely supervised the path to indictment. He pressed for charging information, asked about possible charges, requested drafts, monitored timing, and told the team to keep matters close until they got “clearance.”

The government used the criminal case to bring Abrego back to the United States—the very thing courts had already ordered it to facilitate. The judge concluded that, but for Abrego’s successful lawsuit to be returned, the government would not have brought the prosecution

On May 22, the administration issued a policy memo which was phrased in a way to say that, excepting extraordinary circumstances, persons residing in the U.S. and seeking a green card have to return to their country of origin and apply there. About half of all green cards are issued to persons residing in the U.S. at the time of the application or while the application is being reviewed.

Hours after the policy was issued, USCIS issued a confusing statement that appeared to qualify the draconian force of the memo.  Boundless, the immigration assistance firm, analyzed the actual wording of formal policy as it stands regarding “adjustment of status” of persons in the U.S.  Boundless says, as of early May 23, that the actual effect seems not so draconian, but rather an artless statement on a standing policy that conversion of a temporary visa to a green card is at the discretion of the USCIS.

Let’s look at what is at stake if people are in fact retuired to return to their country of origin.

The wait time for a green card is very roughly six to 18 months. Further, the applicant risks not being able to return to the U.S. during the application process and if the application is denied perhaps forever.

Typical instances of persons in the U.S. today who seek a green card.

Spouses, parents, and minor children of U.S. citizens. Spouses or children of green-card holders, adult children of U.S. citizens, or siblings of U.S. citizens.

Students, especially F-1 students, who later qualify through employment or family.

Example: a graduate student who marries a U.S. citizen, or a student who later obtains employer sponsorship.

H-1B and other temporary workers.  In all they account for the majority of employment based green card awards in a year (capped at 140,000).

Refugees and asylees. This is a catastrophic problem for these persons.

Crime victims, trafficking victims, and abuse survivors.

Diversity visa lottery winners already in the U.S.

Unauthorized persons.

 

The Illinois Accountability Commission (IAC) was established by Governor  Pritzker in October 2025, in response to the federal immigration enforcement surge in Chicago. The Commission issued report on April 30, 2026. Here are highlights, followed by a summary of the “Broadview 6” case which ended with charges withdrawn and the judge severely criticizing the prosecutor.

Some milestones in ICE engagement in Chicago

September 8, 2025: ICE launched Operation Midway Blitz, claiming it targeted “the worst of the worst” — individuals with criminal records.

ICE detained persons in the Broadview Processing Center in Broadview, Illinois. Detainees reported 80 people sharing one toilet, sleeping on concrete floors, no hygiene products, extreme cold, lights on 24 hours, food withheld as a threat, and pressure to sign voluntary deportation forms. People were transferred to out-of-state facilities with no notice to families or lawyers.

September 10, 2025: CBP Commander Gregory Bovino arrived in Chicago to oversee operations. Hundreds of ICE and CBP agents were deployed plus a counterterrorism tactical unit.

September 12, 2025: ICE agents shot and killed Silverio Villegas González during a traffic stop in Franklin Park. A Mexican national, he had lived in the U.S. since 2007and had just dropped his two young sons at school and daycare.

October 22–23, 2025: A two-day military-style occupation of Little Village (“La Villita”), the heart of Chicago’s Mexican American community and its second-highest retail district. CBP Commander Gregory Bovino led dozens of masked, armed agents. Tear gas, pepper balls, and flashbangs deployed against non-violent crowds; bystanders tackled; businesses locked their doors.

October 24, 2025: Stephen Miller told Fox News: “To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties… no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you.”

October 28–31, 2025: Gregory Bovino’s deposition in a court case. Judge Sara Ellis later found his testimony “not credible,” saying he was “evasive” and had “lied multiple times.”

December 23, 2025: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federalization of National Guard troops to protect federal personnel in Illinois was unlawful.

Late 2025 – early 2026: Aggressive ICE presence in Chicago ends.

Some findings:

ICE acknowledged to Congress that 81% of the persons arrested had no convictions and only 40% had a final order of removal.

There were 314 separate uses of physical violence by federal actors between September 2025 and January 2026, and at least 63 deployments of chemical weapons. Two people were shot — one killed. Multiple chokeholds were used. High-speed vehicle pursuits in residential neighborhoods occurred regularly.

Out of hundreds of criminal arrests made during Operation Midway Blitz, only one resulted in a conviction.

DHS issued false press releases about both shootings and numerous other incidents. Body camera footage consistently contradicted official accounts

The Broadview Six

On September 26, 2025, protesters confronted federal agents outside ICE’s Broadview. A grand jury indicted six defendants on a count of felony conspiracy for their involvement in the protest.  The case was before Judge April Perry of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, a former prosecutor in the office which had brought the case.  Federal prosecutors dropped the felony conspiracy charge. The remaining defendants faced a single misdemeanor count of forcibly impeding a federal agent.

Defense attorneys pressed for access to the grand jury transcripts. Judge Perry agreed to review them herself. Prosecutors wound up redacting portions of the transcripts they provided to Perry. She demanded unredacted copies — but moments into the April 29 hearing, prosecutors instead announced they were dropping the conspiracy charge altogether.

On May 21, 2026, Perry outlined misconduct by prosecutors. They communicated with grand jurors outside the jury room, excused dissenting jurors, and redacted misconduct acts from transcripts. U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros then dropped all remaining charges with prejudice, meaning they can never be refiled. Perry said:  “I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made. I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. [Attorneys].” She floated the idea of sanctions against the U.S. Attorney’s Office for prosecutorial misconduct and ethical violations.

The appellate court of DC has barred the Trump administration from a strategy to effectively wipe out the asylum program for many new applicants. In a nutshell: executive branch must use the removal and asylum procedures Congress enacted; it cannot replace them by presidential proclamation and agency guidance.

In Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, et al. v. Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of DHS, the D.C. Circuit ruled on April 24 that the government’s power to suspend entry under certain statutory provisions does not include a power to create new removal procedures for people already inside the United States.

President Trump’s Proclamation 10888, issued on January 20, 2025, described the southern-border situation as an “invasion” and sought to suspend entry for people crossing the southern border outside a “designated port of entry” and also for certain people entering at ports without sufficient documents. DHS guidance created a new procedure called “Direct Repatriation.”  The court ruled this illegal. The court emphasized the language in immigration law saying that any person who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States may apply for asylum “irrespective” of status and “whether or not” they arrived at a designated port.

Other initiatives to cut the asylum program:

work authorization A February 2026 proposed rule would change employment authorization for people with pending asylum applications by extending the waiting period to apply for a work permit to 365 days.  there is a multiyear backlog in immigration court asylum hearings.

More intensive screening, vetting, and prioritization of asylum-related applications. The February proposal also says USCIS could prioritize asylum adjudication when derogatory information appears during review of a work-authorization application.

Replacement of judges. More than 100 immigration judges have been terminated or pressured to resign from the approximately 750 serving  judges. In several high-profile cases, judges were fired immediately after ruling against the administration, including two judges who dismissed deportation cases involving pro-Palestinian student activists. The administration has appointed 143 new judges to replace those removed, including many former immigration prosecutors from the Department of Homeland Security and military attorneys. During training sessions for new judges in October 2025, top immigration court leaders instructed recruits that asylum “should be granted only in rare circumstances”. Former immigration judge Jeremiah Johnson characterized the changes as “a dismantling of the court system.”

The most important recent federal decisions on voter list acquisition have gone against the administration. Some courts said the Dept of Justice had not followed the statute correctly, others said the federal laws cited do not authorize this kind of sweeping access to sensitive state voter data. On April 10, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin dismissed DOJ’s suit seeking Massachusetts voter rolls. He wrote that the 1960 Civil Rights Act requires the Attorney General to state why the records are demanded, with an actual factual basis, and DOJ had not done that.

The Brennan Center has reviewed the Trump administration’s campaign to commandeer state voter data, as of April 9. Since May 2025, the DOJ has demanded that nearly every state and Washington, DC, hand over election-related records and data, such as full copies of statewide voter registration lists and ballots from previous elections, as well as access to voting equipment. The federal government has sued 30 states and Washington, DC, for refusing to provide voter files containing sensitive information such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

At least 12 states either provided or said they would provide full statewide voter files: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. Ten states sought clarification from federal officials about how the data would be used. Officials in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota refused requests involving voting equipment or same-day registration records.

On March 9 the FBI subpoenaed the Arizona Senate over the Cyber Ninjas Maricopa audit of the 2024 results. FBI asserted that the audit records, devices, chain-of-custody materials, and related communications were evidence needed for an ongoing criminal probe. It has not disclosed what crimes may have been committed.

The Trump administration in 2025 set a limit of 7,500 for refugees for FY 2026, but it then set a monthly target of 4,500 white South Africkaner refugees — that is, a an annual target of about 50,000. Go here. Also, here is the executive order. Settlement in the U.S. appears to be done independently of establishee refugee settlement infrastructure, which the administration, as it attempted in the first Trump administration, seeks to destroy.

It has been well known that arrests by ICE of unauthorized persons have been trending towards persons without a criminal record. This report provides clear evidence of how that trend evolved in 2025. The report looks at arrests through October 2025.

In October, 2024, an average of 200 persons a day were taken by ICE from local jails or other lock ups, versus about 75 from worksites and other locations.  By October 2025, the average daily arrest rate for each hovered around 550.

Throughout, DHS was saying that it was detaining the “worst of the worst.” It could loosely back that up with the arrests from jails and from the probably extremely low numbers of persons with a lurid criminal background that ICE arrested on the streets.

However, the trends documented in this report indicate that to boost arrests from the 1,000 person a day level to much higher requires either more states to agree to allow coordination between local jails and ICE, or to arrest a lot more outside of jails. This is not news.

A question: does this history in any way imply in any reasonable way that unauthorized persons are relatively more criminal than authorized persons?  One can firmly say no – but there is one characteristic that should be recognized.  I do not have the figures before me now, but I believe that, at least perhaps 15 years ago, the unauthorized populations contained relatively more poor, young men – whose run-ins with the law are higher in American society.   The studies showing that the crime rate among unauthorized is lower than among others I trust – but also note that the demographics, at least in the past, might suggest otherwise.

In a court case before an Alabama district court, attorneys say DHS has adopted a three-pronged policy of aggressive arrest and detention. The case involves Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S. citizen construction worker of Mexican descent, twice detained during immigration raids at private, non-public construction sites despite presenting an Alabama REAL ID:

The brief alleges DHS has adopted a Warrantless Entry Policy permitting officers to enter fenced, posted construction sites and partially built homes without judicial warrants, treating them as “open areas.” It also alleges a Preemptive Detention Policy under which officers detain Latino construction workers based on appearance and occupation alone, without individualized suspicion, effectively replacing targeted investigation with mass, location-based sweeps. Finally, it alleges a Continued Detention Policy authorizing officers to maintain custody even after individuals present documentation establishing lawful presence, including DHS-certified REAL IDs.

They assert there are  agency-wide directives reflecting a reinterpretation of DHS authority, constitute final agency action, and violate the Fourth Amendment, federal statutes, and binding regulations. The plaintiffs do not have smoking gun internal documents. They rely on public DHS press releases and memoranda, including references to a Lyons Memo authorizing use of administrative warrants, public statements, ICE training materials cited in other litigation, news reports, and repeated on-the-ground enforcement conduct, including the plaintiff’s own detentions.