Latest news with #ToddM.Lyons
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Leaked Memo: ICE To Block Bond Hearings for Millions of Undocumented Immigrants. Detentions To Skyrocket.
An internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo sent on July 8 "declared that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court," The Washington Post reported on Monday. The new policy means millions of undocumented immigrants may be detained by ICE, potentially for years, as they await a resolution to their immigration case. In the memo reviewed by the Post, Todd M. Lyons, acting director of ICE, directed officers to detain immigrants who entered illegally "for the duration of their removal proceedings." The policy change will significantly impact immigrants currently living in the United States who have been historically allowed to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge if detained by ICE. "Lyons wrote that the Trump administration's departments of Homeland Security and Justice had 'revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities' and determined that such immigrants 'may not be released from ICE custody,'" according to the Post. Only in rare exceptions may immigrants be released on parole, a determination that will be left "up to an immigration officer, not a judge." "This is their way of putting in place nationwide a method of detaining even more people…without any real review of their individual circumstances," Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Post. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has not been shy about wanting to increase immigrant detention numbers. The administration has experimented with controversial methods of detaining immigrants in both state-run detention facilities, like Florida's Alligator Alcatraz, and other countries, like El Salvador, to meet Trump's deportation goals. "Detention is absolutely the best way to approach [immigration], if you can do it. It costs a lot of money, obviously," Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for fewer immigrants, told the Post. The cost of detention is not lost on Trump, who recently signed legislation appropriating $45 billion to nearly double the country's detention capacity to 100,000 beds. "You're pretty much guaranteed to be able to remove the person, if there's a negative finding, if he's in detention," Krikorian added. Until recently, ICE detained immigrants only "when necessary" and in FY 2024 had over 7.6 million noncitizens on its nondetained docket. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, ICE must detain immigrants without bond if they are convicted of certain crimes, including certain drug crimes, aggravated felonies, and terrorist activity. The Laken Riley Act, passed by Congress earlier this year, added charges for theft-related crimes to the list. According to ICE's detention policies, anyone deemed "a public safety or flight risk during the custody determination process" could also be held in detention and not released. But under the direction of Lyons, millions more undocumented immigrants who pose no threat to public safety will be held in custody awaiting immigration proceedings—a process that can take months or even years due to court backlogs. The new policy is expected, even by Lyons himself, to face legal challenges over immigrants' rights. The post Leaked Memo: ICE To Block Bond Hearings for Millions of Undocumented Immigrants. Detentions To Skyrocket. appeared first on Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE Plans to Ramp Up Deporting Immigrants to Countries Other Than Their Own
A memo reveals the federal government is planning to deport immigrants to countries where they hold no citizenship, with as little as six hours' notice and without any guarantees that they'll be protected from torture or persecution when they get there. In the memo, obtained by The Washington Post, Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailed plans for deportations following a Supreme Court decision that cleared a path for rapidly deporting immigrants to places to which they have no prior ties. If the plans are implemented, many more immigrants may soon find themselves sent to countries where they know no one and do not speak the language — and they will have little to no opportunity to legally challenge their removal before it takes place. Lyons wrote that the Supreme Court's ruling in June allowed immigration officials to 'immediately' begin deporting immigrants to 'alternative' countries, a term used to describe a country where the deportee is not a citizen. This policy will apply to immigrants who have final removal orders but whom a judge has ruled cannot be sent back to their home country because it would put them in danger. It will also apply to immigrants from countries with whom the U.S. does not have strong relations, like Cuba or China. How much notice an immigrant gets, the memo said, depends on where they are being sent. If the U.S. has received 'diplomatic assurances' that immigrants sent to a particular country will be safe, and the State Department 'believes those assurances to be credible,' then immigrants will be deported there without any prior notice. If the immigrant is being sent to a place where the government has not secured such assurances, they could be deported there with hours' notice. According to the memo, 'in exigent circumstances' immigration officers could give immigrants as little as six hours' notice that they were being deported somewhere they have no protections against prosecution or torture. In other cases, immigrants will get 24 hours' notice. Immigration officers will not ask each immigrant if they have concerns about being sent to another country, but immigrants who do express a fear of being sent to a third country will be screened within approximately 24 hours to see if they are eligible for humanitarian protection according to federal law and the Convention Against Torture, a United Nations convention that Congress ratified in 1994 that protects immigrants from being sent to a country where they could be subject to torture. 'It puts thousands of lives at risk of persecution and torture,' Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, told The Post. All of this is part of the administration's plans for mass deportations. Although Trump promised during the campaign to deport criminals — 'the worst of the worst' — recent ICE data reveals that 72 percent of immigration detainees have zero criminal convictions. The government appears to be moving full steam ahead on deportations even though public opinion has recently pivoted, with one poll showing more Americans oppose than support Trump's immigration policies by a 27-point margin. Already, the Trump administration has been deporting immigrants to third countries, and it seems those numbers will only increase after the Supreme Court's ruling. Hundreds of Venezuelans are being detained at CECOT, a notorious prison in El Salvador known for inhumane and torturous conditions. Eight men from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan, and Vietnam have been sent to war-torn South Sudan. The administration also illegally deported Salvadoran immigrant, Kilmar Abrego García, to his home country in violation of a judge's order. Abrego, who said he was tortured while in El Salvador, returned to the U.S. in June because the Supreme Court ordered the administration to bring him back. However, the government has recently considered sending him to a third country before he is able to stand trial on criminal charges. More from Rolling Stone Jordan Klepper Charts Trump's Long History With Jeffrey Epstein on 'The Daily Show' Why the Trump Administration Is About to Set Fire to 500 Tons of Emergency Food Speaker Mike Johnson Splits From Trump, Calls for Release of Epstein Files Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence Solve the daily Crossword
Yomiuri Shimbun
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
ICE Memo Outlines Plan to Deport Migrants to Countries Where They Are Not Citizens
Federal immigration officers may deport immigrants with as little as six hours' notice to countries other than their own even if officials have not provided any assurances that the new arrivals will be safe from persecution or torture, a top official said in a memo this week. Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in a memo to the ICE workforce Wednesday that a Supreme Court ruling last month had cleared the way for officers to 'immediately' start sending immigrants to 'alternative' countries. People being sent to countries where officials have not provided any 'diplomatic assurances' that immigrants will be safe will be informed 24 hours in advance – and in 'exigent' circumstances, just six. Those being flown to places that have offered those assurances could be deported with no advance notice. If the State Department 'believes those assurances to be credible,' then ICE may deport someone to that country 'without the need for further procedures,' he wrote in the memo, obtained by The Washington Post. The United States has rarely deported people to countries where they are not citizens, and lawyers warned that thousands of longtime immigrants with work permits and families in the U.S. could now be uprooted and sent to places where they lack family ties or even a common language. Among those who could be targeted are thousands of immigrants with final removal orders who have not been deported to their native countries because a judge found that they might face danger there. Others are those with deportation orders to countries such as China or Cuba that do not always cooperate with deportations because of their frosty relationship to the U.S. Immigrants who state a fear of being deported will be screened for possible protection, Lyons wrote, but immigration lawyers said the government's plan does not give immigrants enough time to assess the danger they might face in a country that the government has selected for them. 'It puts thousands of lives at risk of persecution and torture,' said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which is challenging the third-country removals on behalf of immigrants in an ongoing federal lawsuit filed in Massachusetts. The alliance filed the lawsuit in March arguing that the U.S. government was violating federal law and sending immigrants to places where they could be harmed or killed, without giving them a chance to argue against it, including a Guatemalan man deported to Mexico, where he had been kidnapped and raped. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy barred the government from removing immigrants without giving them a 'meaningful' opportunity to challenge it. On June 23, the Supreme Court's conservative majority paused the judge's decision in a brief, unsigned statement that did not explain its reasoning, but it cleared the way for the removals to resume. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote a stinging dissent with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned that the court's decision would put people at risk. 'In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution,' she wrote. 'In this case, the Government took the opposite approach.' Since President Donald Trump took office promising mass deportations, officials have sent immigrants from Venezuela to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador, dispatched eight immigrants from Cuba, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Sudan and Mexico to a conflict zone in South Sudan, and illegally deported a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego García, to El Salvador even though an immigration judge's order forbade it. The Trump administration brought Abrego back to the U.S. last month after the Supreme Court ordered them to facilitate his return, but in recent days government lawyers have said they could deport Abrego to a third country instead. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the memo on Saturday, or say how many immigrants are at risk of being deported. Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, the lead lawyer on a federal lawsuit in Maryland that successfully fought to return Abrego to the U.S., said the deportation procedures in the Lyons memo are 'clearly inadequate' to prevent immigrants from being deported to countries where they might be at risk. 'It is definitely thousands upon thousands of people,' he said. 'This is a category of people who understood themselves to be out of the woods.' While in some cases immigrants could be deported to a country that has provided assurances that newcomers will be safe from torture or persecution, Lyons also outlines how officials should proceed if they are deporting people to a country that has not provided those guarantees. In those cases, officers must follow a more limited procedure than the one Murphy had laid out in federal court in May after ICE attempted to deport immigrants to South Sudan. The judge said officers should screen the men to determine if they have a legitimate fear of removal, give them access to a lawyer and at least 10 days to challenge their removals. The Supreme Court ruling set aside that process, and the men were deported to South Sudan in recent days. The Lyons memo says ICE can deport someone to a third country that has not offered any safety guarantees within 24 hours of notifying them where they are being sent. Officials will not ask immigrants if they fear being deported to that country, he wrote. Lyons's memo is based on guidance Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem issued in a March memo, but provides additional details. Immigrants who express a fear of being deported in the 24-hour period will be screened for possible humanitarian protection under federal law and the Convention Against Torture, which Congress ratified in 1994 to bar the government from sending immigrants to a country where they might face torture. The screenings will 'generally' occur within 24 hours to determine if migrants could merit immigration court proceedings, humanitarian protection, or if they should be deported to another alternate country. However, Lyons wrote that 'in exigent circumstances' immigration officers may deport someone as soon as six hours after notifying them of the third country. In such cases, immigrants must be provided 'reasonable means and opportunity to speak with an attorney' beforehand, he wrote, and the DHS general counsel or ICE's top legal adviser must approve it.
New York Post
10-07-2025
- New York Post
Violent MS-13 kingpin wanted for five murders and another gang member arrested by ICE in Omaha
EXCLUSIVE: United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations unit arrested an alleged MS-13 kingpin and MS-13 associate in Nebraska on Wednesday. The kingpin is on El Salvador's 'Top 100 Most Wanted' list, but his name is not yet being released by authorities. He is wanted for 'aggravated homicide of five victims, attempted aggravated homicide, deprivation of liberty and terrorist organization affiliation,' according to an ICE press release. 'These illegal aliens didn't just sneak into our country, they brought with them a legacy of violence, terror, and death,' Mark Zito ICE Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge of Kansas City, stated. 'They thought they could hide in America's heartland, but they were sadly mistaken, not on our watch.' 4 ICE swoops in on MS-13 kingpin hiding in America's heartland after investigation. ICE 4 ICE arrested two member of the violent gang known as MS-13. ICE In addition, an alleged 'MS-13 gang member and foreign terrorist' associate who is also wanted in the Central American nation for allegedly 'giving orders' to members of the gang to commit a range of serious crimes such as murder and drug trafficking was also taken into federal custody, according to ICE. The arrest was considered 'targeted enforcement action' in Omaha, with authorities saying the two were a 'serious threat' to the area. The two were both living illegally in the U.S., and the investigation is being done by ICE and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. 4 Inmates remain in a cell at the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) mega-prison in El Salvador. AFP via Getty Images 'When ICE agents move in to make an arrest, it is extremely important that the public not interfere,' ICE acting Director Todd M. Lyons said in a statement. 'The misinformation, and sometimes blatant lies, being spread around the country could result in someone stepping into a federal operation and suddenly finding themselves face-to-face with a killer who has nothing to lose.' 'Our ICE officers and agents are protecting your neighborhoods, even when you don't know the threat is there, so either support them, or get out of the way,' Lyons added. In a video of the arrest on the road, one of the men is seen putting their hands up quickly after being stopped by agents wearing 'ATF Police' and 'Homeland Security Investigations' on their backs. 4 Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem toured CECOT. Getty Images The news release from ICE said that arrests went 'without incident.' The arrest comes as ICE has been doing enforcement operations all over the country, as the agency continues to highlight arrests of those with criminal charges and convictions.
Newsweek
09-07-2025
- Newsweek
Mask Snatched Off ICE Agent by California Protester
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A protester in California appeared to snatch off a federal agent's mask during an altercation last week, according to new footage. The video, released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), shows a woman confronting federal law enforcement officials behind a police line in San Diego. After an officer holds her by the arms, she can be seen pushing him in the face, removing his face covering. ICE said the protesters were "defending" Denis Anderson Chicoj Yacon, a Guatemalan national who has no official record of being legally present in the United States. ICE said investigators are looking into his situation after they "discovered several foreign monetary transactions, which are a major red flag." ICE said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter: "Last week, an unhinged illegal alien in San Diego could have killed federal officers by repeatedly ramming his car into a government vehicle. "A crowd of agitators began screaming obscenities and threatening to dox federal law enforcement officials, and three of them physically attacked the officers." Acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons added: "This dangerous anti-ICE rhetoric has to stop before it's too late." A federal agent stands outside an apartment complex during a raid in Denver in February. A federal agent stands outside an apartment complex during a raid in Denver in February. David Zalubowski/AP This is a developing story. More to follow.
