Jul 24, 2019

American teenager freed by ICE after 26 days in immigration detention

Francisco Galicia hugs his lawyer after being freed from a dentention center in Pearsall, Texas. Photo: Kin Man Hui/The San Antonio Express-News via AP

Francisco Erwin Galicia, a Dallas-born 18-year-old American citizen, was released from immigration custody on Tuesday after being detained for 26 days, reports the Dallas News, which first brought his plight to attention.

Details: He left an ICE detention center in Pearsall, Texas, after being transferred there following 3 weeks in a Border Patrol facility, per AP. Galicia, who's from the border city of Edinburg, Texas, was stopped with his Mexico-born brother Marlon Galicia, 17, and friends at a checkpoint and detained despite having a state ID, the New York Times notes.

His brother was freed after signing papers agreeing to effectively self-deport and is staying with relatives in Reynosa, Mexico, the NYT said.

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Rebecca Falconer

ICE sued for failing to provide basic health care in detention centers

Immigration and Customs Enforcement says comprehensive medical care is provided to everyone in ICE custody. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

A class action lawsuit filed Monday by civil rights groups alleges there's been an "abject failure" by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide basic medical and mental health care to migrants in 158 U.S. detention facilities.

The big picture: The suit, filed against ICE and Trump administration officials in the U.S District Court for the Central District of California, alleges that the defendants are "fully aware of the deplorable conditions" inside the facilities, but they're "deliberately indifferent" to a series of systemic failures inside the centres.

Go deeperAug 20, 2019

Stef W. Kight

680 immigrants arrested in Mississippi ICE raids

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers gather for a debriefing after operations in 2018. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

680 immigrants were arrested Wednesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at 7 food processing plants in small towns in Mississippi, the AP reports.

Why it matters: ICE Acting Director Matthew Albence said these could be the largest workplace raids ICE has had in more than a decade, and likely the biggest for any single state, per the AP. This comes just a few weeks after ICE raids that reportedly targeted thousands of immigrants resulted in just 35 arrests. ICE detention facilities still hold thousands more migrants than Congress has approved funding for.

Keep ReadingAug 7, 2019

Stef W. Kight

Court ruling allows Trump asylum restrictions in Texas and New Mexico

An art exhibiton next to a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. Photo: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that an earlier injunction on the Trump administration's third-country asylum rule, which barred migrants from asylum in the U.S. if they did not first apply for protection in a country they travelled through, can only be applied within the Ninth Circuit.

Why it matters: The Ninth Circuit is located along the West Coast and includes the U.S.-Mexico border states of California and Arizona. That means that this decision will effectively block — at least for now — most Central Americans who cross into the U.S., legally or illegally, in New Mexico or Texas from asylum.

Go deeperAug 16, 2019