SAN DIEGO — U.S. Customs and Border Protection San Diego Field Office advises the traveling public that, to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a brief halt in northbound traffic operations at the land ports of entry…
HIDALGO, Texas- U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Office of Field Operations, Hidalgo Port of Entry officers apprehended a man wanted in Hidalgo County for an alleged sexual crime against a child.“CBP officers continue to maintain their vigilance…
HIDALGO, Texas—U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Office of Field Operations officers at the Hidalgo International Bridge, intercepted $890,700 in alleged cocaine concealed within a vehicle. “Our frontline CBP officers encountered a driver…
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the Port of Buffalo, Rainbow Bridge border crossing, arrested a United States citizen who had an active warrant out of Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey…
This notification is being issued to the public pursuant to the CBP policy regarding Notification and Review Procedures for Certain Deaths and Deaths in Custody and the Department of Homeland Security FY 2021 Appropriation (H. Rept. 116-458)…
This notification is being issued to the public pursuant to the CBP policy regarding Notification and Review Procedures for Certain Deaths and Deaths in Custody and the Department of Homeland Security FY 2021 Appropriation (H. Rept. 116-458)…
Washington DC, July 1, 2025 — On July 1, the U.S. Senate passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes an unprecedented allocation of funds for immigration detention and enforcement while simultaneously stripping healthcare from millions of Americans.
The bill, passed today with Vice President JD Vance contributing the tie-breaking vote, earmarks some $170 billion for immigration- and border enforcement-related funding provisions. The bill includes:
- $45 billion for building new immigration detention centers, including family detention facilities. This represents a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget. It is a 62 percent larger budget than the entire federal prison system and could result in daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens.
- $29.9 billion toward ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, increasing ICE’s annual budget three-fold.
- Alongside this increased spending in immigration enforcement, between 12 million to 17 million people are at risk of losing their healthcare.
- Caps the number of immigration judges to 800 despite record backlogs in the immigration court system.
- $46.6 billion into border wall construction—more than three times what the Trump administration spent on the wall in its first term, despite the failure of the wall to improve or contribute in any meaningful way to border management strategy
- A new $10 billion fund to reimburse DHS for costs related to “safeguard[ing] the borders of the United States to protect against the illegal entry of persons or contraband.” This funding is nearly 50 percent of CBP’s FY 2024 budget. However, unlike a normal budget, this funding would provide very few guardrails and little guidance to DHS on how the funds must be used. As a result, this would become a slush fund for CBP to largely use however it determined.
For full analysis about what is included in the bill, see the Council’s explainer here.
Altogether, this marks the largest investment in detention and deportation in U.S. history; a policy choice that does nothing to address the systemic failures of our immigration system while inflicting harm, sowing chaos, and tearing families apart.
“This bill will deprive 12 to 17 million Americans of basic health care while investing unprecedented levels of funding in the president’s increasingly unpopular mass deportation agenda, which undermines public safety and creates chaos in American communities,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “At a time when polls show more Americans rejecting mass detention and deportation, this bill ignores what Americans want and doubles down on punitive policies that do nothing to address the real problems in our immigration system including court backlogs, a lack of legal pathways to citizenship, and a broken U.S. asylum system.”
The bill’s enforcement-heavy provisions come at the expense of urgently needed investments in asylum processing, legal representation, community-based alternatives to detention, and support for local governments and nonprofits serving new arrivals.
“Throwing billions at detention centers and enforcement agents is short-sighted. Instead, we should be investing in a system aimed at welcoming immigrants that contribute billions to our economy,” said Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. “We don’t need more jail beds and indiscriminate raids. We need balanced solutions that strengthen due process and keep families together.”
The bill will now return to the House of Representatives, where members are expected to vote on final passage later this week. Experts at the American Immigration Council are available to talk more in-depth about the specifics of what’s included in the bill, including immigration court, border funding, what happens to unaccompanied children, the increase in ICE agents, and more.
For additional analysis about what is included in the bill, see the Council’s full explainer here.
The post Senate Approves Unprecedented Spending for Mass Deportation, Ignoring What’s Broken in our Immigration System appeared first on American Immigration Council.
Ilia is a 24-year-old pro-democracy activist who recently fled a threatening environment in his native Russia. But after escaping, he was taken into custody and put into jail-like detention by the very country he believed would protect him: the United States.
“I fled Russia because of increasingly harsh laws, because of a government that started persecuting me for my political views and my sexual orientation,” says Ilia. “I believed the United States would help me.”
Like many critics of the Putin regime, Ilia was outraged when Russian authorities arrested pro-democracy opposition leader Alexei Navalny in January 2021. In response, he joined nation-wide protests and began putting up “Free Navalny” fliers around Krosnodor, the city in southern Russia where he was a university student. The government response was brutal, with thousands of people detained and many beaten or tasered by police. In February 2024, Navalny died under suspicious circumstances in a Russian prison camp.
By then, Ilia had already fled the country, after receiving threats from Russian intelligence officials. Being nonbinary, he faced additional risk under Putin’s increasingly repressive laws; his mere existence could mean persecution or imprisonment.
Ilia made his way to Mexico, where he followed the asylum process to the letter. He spent eight months near the border, waiting for a CBP One appointment. In May 2024, he arrived for his appointment, ready to make his case. Instead, he was taken into custody on the spot and put into detention, ending up at a Louisiana facility known for abuse and neglect.
“I applied for asylum because I believed the U.S. would help me,” Ilia says. “But once I was sent to Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, I faced horrible treatment. The way officers treat detainees is awful. They yell at them, sometimes go as far as to discriminate, make racist remarks, and even subject detainees to sexual abuse.” Ilia has filed multiple complaints over the year he’s spent at Winn, but they go unanswered.
Though detained before President Trump came into office, Ilia has experienced the Trump administration’s hardline immigration stance firsthand. In March 2025, Ilia won his asylum case after an immigration judge considered 900 pages of evidence, including threats from Russian intelligence and letters of support from people who’d witnessed his activism. At this point, Ilia should have been released from detention and allowed to start building his life here. Instead, the Trump administration is refusing to let him out.
Ilia has no criminal history and does not pose a threat to his community. In fact, he won his asylum case, because he was targeted for upholding the very democratic ideals of free speech—upon which this country was founded. The result is prolonged, needless suffering, even for those the system has already deemed worthy of protection.
“The situation [in the detention centers] has gotten worse,” Ilia says, explaining that the facility where he is being kept has been at maximum capacity since Trump took office. “People have started to realize there’s no way out, that they’re just waiting here to be deported, and they’re losing their minds.”
The post Ilia, young Russian dissident facing never-ending detention appeared first on American Immigration Council.
Since President Trump’s election, Axel Herrera has seen a growing number of local police traffic checkpoints popping up across his North Carolina community. As a DACA recipient, Axel has legal protection from deportation, but some of his friends and family members have already been detained or deported following random traffic stops, and many undocumented members of his community now live in constant fear. “It’s creating a hostile environment,” Axel says. “It’s pretty clear what the government is trying to do.”
Axel is 27. He has lived here since age seven, after his family left Honduras in search of a better life. When Axel received DACA status, he felt he’d finally achieved his family’s dream. He won a scholarship to Duke University, became the first in his family to attend college and graduated with multiple awards and a prestigious Congressional internship.
He went on to become North Carolina’s civic engagement director for Mi Familia en Acción, a nonprofit group supporting Hispanic communities. He’s spent the past few years registering citizens to vote, creating youth programs, and mentoring immigrants as they seek educational and professional opportunities. “All I ever wanted was to belong, and to give something back,” he says.
But the new political reality has been a blow. Ongoing challenges to DACA’s legality could jeopardize Axel’s protection from deportation. Axel has to renew his DACA status and employment authorization every two years—and while he rushed to process his paperwork just before Trump took office, he has no way of knowing if that will still be possible when his current status expires in 2026. He knows that some Dreamers are now struggling to get their papers processed, and the Trump administration has already deported at least one DACA holder after claiming they had an outstanding deportation order. “Right now, everything is up in the air,” Axel says. “I’m very concerned about the future.”
One possibility is that courts could leave DACA in place, but revoke DACA recipients’ right to work. Because of that uncertainty, Axel is walking away from his hard-won job and returning to school. This fall, he’ll leave North Carolina for Yale, where he’s won a scholarship to study business and public policy. “It’s a great opportunity, but also a hedge against losing my status,” he explains. “If I lose my work authorization, then being a student might buy me some time and let me find a different path forward.”
He feels torn about leaving his community behind. Everyone he knows is constantly on WhatsApp, assessing police conditions anytime they leave the house. He knows many young Venezuelans whose humanitarian parole was recently revoked, leaving them unable to work or study. Over the past 6 months he’s also seen families torn apart by raids and deportations, or who are simply too afraid of ICE to go to school. “I speak all the time with young people whose whole future is on the chopping block,” Axel says.
But despite Axel’s current protections, “there’s this looming sense that things could get worse fast,” he says. Under Trump, anti-immigrant sentiment and policy has become more entrenched. He’s especially worried about the long-term impact of a new state law requiring sheriffs to cooperate with ICE. And he fears for his and his family’s future. “After 20 years, we’re barely scratching the surface of dealing with our status issues,” he says. “It never ends—and the Trump administration is rolling back so much of the progress we’ve made.”
The post Axel, a DACA recipient trying to protect his community appeared first on American Immigration Council.
Last summer, Kaelyn was at a Latin club in Wilmington, North Carolina when a handsome stranger asked her to dance. She wasn’t in the mood, but the man was just so charming. “If anyone else had asked, I would’ve said no, but Yapa is so genuine,” she says, using his pseudonym to ensure his privacy. At the end of the night, they exchanged numbers; over the following months, they dated and developed a deep friendship. They had no idea that what began with a dance would end in a desperate fight for Yapa’s freedom.
Yapa is an asylum seeker who fled violence in Venezuela in 2022. He attended regular court hearings and had a legal work permit. He drove for a delivery service and hoped to get his commercial trucking license. He was building a life here—one that Kaelyn had become part of.
They spent Thanksgiving together. Yapa played pool with Kaelyn’s dad. Yapa’s sisters started calling Kaelyn “reina”—queen—what Yapa had called her the night they met. In their spare time, they watched the Fast and Furious movies and coached each other through the language barrier, relying on translation apps and Kaelyn’s college Spanish. Every morning, without fail, Yapa would text to ask about her day.
Before she met Yapa, Kaelyn rarely thought about immigration policy. She is originally from Connecticut, and had moved to Wilmington to work in film location scouting. But after President Trump was elected and began to crack down on asylum seekers, she began to worry.
“People would tell me, Oh, you’re overreacting,” she says. “This isn’t 1930s Germany. And I’d say, Yeah, but it’s starting to feel that way. Looking back now, while people were telling me I was being dramatic, I was actually underreacting.”
On February 22, 2025, ICE showed up without warning in the early morning hours while Yapa was headed to work. ICE officers offered no explanation as they handcuffed him. One agent reached into his pocket and took his ID and work permit, documents that have not been seen since. They didn’t tell him where he was going, only that he was being deported—and soon.
Kaelyn was gobsmacked when his sister called to tell her ICE had “abducted” Yapa. He’d been staying with Kaelyn until the previous evening, when he’d moved in with friends. Kaelyn hadn’t wanted him to leave; as a U.S. citizen, she felt better positioned to push back against ICE and help ensure his rights were protected. “I couldn’t explain it, but I was so emotional,” Kaelyn says of their final night together. “And he told me, ‘There’s no reason for them to take me.’” Now, her worst fear had happened. They didn’t know where he was, but they knew they had to act fast to save him.
By then, ICE had already transported Yapa out of state to Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center. It wasn’t until two months later, at his hearing, that ICE first alleged Yapa was part of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA). “Shocking is not even the word,” Kaelyn says. “I was shaking.”
In a recent court filing, ICE admitted it has no evidence linking Yapa to any gang. But a ruling from the Trump administration makes it more challenging for immigrants like Yapa who recently entered the country to make a case for release from detention. Now, Yapa faces up to a year behind bars while his fight for asylum continues, with little control over where he’ll be deported to if he loses.
That’s why Kaelyn’s reaction to the TdA allegations was so physical—she knew the accusations could land Yapa in CECOT, the brutal El Salvador prison where the Trump administration has sent many Venezuelan asylum seekers accused of gang affiliations. “I thought, I’m going to have to live the rest of my life knowing he’s in there, and there’s nothing that we can do to get him out of there,” she says. The reality that he—and so many other innocent men—could be locked away in what many have called a modern day concentration camp is an “atrocity,” she says.
All of this has taken a terrible toll on Kaelyn. She’s hired multiple attorneys for Yapa and has gone into debt over legal fees. Meanwhile, Yapa is being held nine hours away from Wilmington and has limited phone access. In April, attorneys with the American Immigration Council and the ACLU took up part of Yapa’s case pro bono; in May, they secured a decision from a judge that says the Trump administration cannot remove Yapa to CECOT or anywhere on the basis of the Alien Enemies Act without a fair chance for him to contest the allegations of TdA membership against him. It’s a relief, but Kaelyn barely recognizes her life these days.
Every time she talks to her sister, they mostly discuss updates on Yapa’s case and the latest immigration news. “We can’t be happy when there’s literally a member of our family who’s been taken from us,” she says. “I’ll never let this go. The administration thinks they’re sowing fear—but they’re creating activists. You can’t destroy someone’s life and expect us to stay quiet.”
The post Kaelyn, going into debt to keep her partner from deportation to El Salvador appeared first on American Immigration Council.