Back in two weeks. Deuces, fam.

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Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., wants voters to see her as the woman who told ICE “not one penny more.” But as you’ll read below, her anti-ICE position is newfangled. Before opposing ICE was cool, Stevens voted multiple times to support the rogue agency terrorizing American communities.

On the other hand, Stevens’ opponent in the Michigan Senate primary, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, has opposed ICE from the jump; but his is a position untested by any voting record. That is, El Sayed’s never had a job that required him to chose Aye or Nay on things like, say, federal appropriations for the department of Homeland Security. Stevens has that job and like many Democrats, voted Aye for ICE until it was more po…

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WASHINGTON — If you ever want to see what systemic, calculated hostility looks like in real time, take a trip to the Arlington Immigration Court.

You won’t find loud, theatrical outbursts or cartoonish movie villains. Instead, you will find Judge Paul A. McCloskey: a mild-mannered, career-long bureaucrat with no Googleable photos of himself on the Internet whose quiet, procedural precision serves as a highly effective deportation machine.

For years, local advocates have known McCloskey as the place where asylum hopes go to die. But now, his brand of institutional cruelty has been exported nationwide. His promotion to serve as a Temporary Appellate Immigration Judge on the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA)—the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration law—is a major blow to…

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The number is small. The consequences aren’t. Across five separate actions — a DHS rule, two Board of Immigration Appeals decisions, a USCIS alert, and a CMS bulletin — the federal government spent the back half of July quietly rewriting the terms under which immigrants, asylum seekers and their children live, work and access care in this country. None of it happened in a hearing room with cameras. All of it will reach kitchen tables by fall.

Here’s what Migrant Insider found.

DHS puts a clock on every foreign student and journalist in America

DHS has finalized a rule ending “duration of status,” the decades-old system that let F-1 students, J-1 exchange visitors and I-visa foreign journalists remain in the U.S. for as long as their program lasted. In its place: a hard admission date, capped at four years, with language-training students limited to 24 months total. The 60-day grace period that once cushioned the end of a program is now 30 days — after which unlawful presence starts accruing and future immigration benefits can be barred.

Buried in the rule are tighter restrictions on school transfers and changes of academic objective, especially at the graduate level, plus new biometrics requirements and stricter rules for keeping work authorization continuous. The effect: categories that functioned for generations as stable, multi-year statuses now require recurring federal sign-off, with a paperwork miss carrying real legal consequences. Foreign correspondents holding I-visas are swept in alongside students.

The BIA tells Russian draft dodgers: conscription alone won’t save you

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The governor signed Executive Order GA-57 on Monday, directing the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, its Office of Inspector General, the Texas Medical Board, the Board of Nursing, the Department of Licensing and Regulation, and the Department of State Health Services to investigate hospitals, birthing centers and medical staff accused of marketing so-called “birth tourism” — trips by pregnant travelers to the U.S. to give birth. The order lets those agencies revoke licenses, cut off state contracts, deny benefits, and refer cases for criminal prosecution.

Eo Ga 57 Birthright Tourism Image 2026 07 21

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What triggered it

The order leans on a Texas Health and Human Services Commission probe Abbott ordered on July 7 after reports surfaced that hospitals were advertising birth packages abroad. HHSC has already referred two Texas hospitals to the state attorney general over billboards placed in a foreign country…

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FBI field offices nationwide were told in writing that the bureau will no longer take the lead on “assault on a federal officer” cases involving ICE and other Department of Homeland Security agents. Those cases — the routine paperwork that follows any claim an officer was attacked — have long doubled as the FBI’s primary window into ICE shootings, since they generate the witness statements, video evidence and forensic work that can later support a civil rights case against an agent who used deadly force.

Under the new guidance, that work moves instead to Homeland Security Investigations — ICE’s own investigative arm, operating inside the same department as the agents whose conduct would be under review.

DOJ …

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In an amicus invitation posted July 14, the nation’s highest immigration appeals body — the court of last resort for hundreds of thousands of deportation cases before they ever reach a federal judge — is soliciting outside legal briefs on whether it must follow Supreme Court and circuit court precedent on constitutional law, even in cases where doing so would mean striking down a statute or regulation as unconstitutional.

Amicus Invitation 26 14 07 Constitutional Law Due Date 08 13 26

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Why It Matters

The BIA is not a court in the Article III sense. It’s part of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency housed inside the Justice Department. Agencies typically can’t declare acts of Congress unconstitutional — that power sits with the judiciary. But immigration law runs on statutes and regulations that get challenged on constitutional grounds constantly: due process at…

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“I have to, well, all the world has to know, who are the... assassins that killed my dad,” his son told Univision’s Lidia Terrazas this weekend, the family’s first extended interview since ICE agents shot Salgado Araujo during a Houston traffic stop. “Because if that would have happened to any... crime... they would have investigated who was the suspicious, right? But what we have heard is that the agents that were involved... they have moved them to another state.”

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In a brief interview with Migrant Insider on Monday afternoon at the Capitol, the congresswoman pointed to the recent death of a motorist in Biddeford, Maine—the second such ICE-involved fatality in a single week—as a direct consequence of an enforcement system operating with insufficient oversight and rapidly expanding authority.

The incident in Maine, which resulted in the death of a 26-year-old Colombian man, has triggered intense scrutiny from lawmakers and advocacy groups. Reports suggest that the individual may not have been the intended target of the warrant, and video evidence of the encounter has further challenged official claims that the use of lethal force was necessary.

This tragedy follows a fatal shooting in Houston, Texas, just days prior, underscoring what critics describe as a mounting pattern of violence within federal immigration operations.

These public encounters occur against a backdrop of historic instability within the detention system itself. Since the start of the second Trump administration in January 2025, deaths in ICE custody have surged to levels not seen in over a decade.

With over 70,000 people currently held in detention facilities and a mortality rate that has more than doubled since early 2025, advocates are calling for immediate congressional intervention to address what they term a “systemic failure” of transparency and accountability.

Migrant Insider is the only news source in our nation’s capital that hold’s ICE accountable on the daily. This interview with AOC is one of several from today that you can see as we upload them this evening on YouTube, X, and right here on Substack. Shoe leather reporting like this is rare but essential, so consider subscribing to support us:

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“I saw it, I saw his foot,” she told the Portland Press Herald.

A person was killed Monday morning in a shooting involving an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Biddeford — the 11th fatal shooting tied to ICE or Border Patrol agents since President Trump’s second term began, according to Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford.

“A person was killed. ICE was involved. State Police and the Department of Public Safety are now on scene to gather details and would expect the FBI to investigate as well,” Fecteau said in a statement. “These are the details that I have at this time. I will provide further updates, as they are relayed to me.”

The shooting happened around 8 a.m. near the intersection of Hill and Pool streets. Pool Street was closed at Phillips Lane; a red crime-scene tent went up at the corner. Biddeford Police Chief JoAnne Fisk declined to answer questi…

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That’s not an isolated ruling. It’s a pattern — and almost nobody outside the immigration bar has connected the dots.

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ICE says Araujo tried to flee a traffic stop, rammed an agency vehicle and attempted to run over an officer — the same justification the agency has offered in at least three other fatal or near-fatal shootings by immigration agents since Trump’s second-term deportation push began. In every one of those cases, video or the paper trail eventually cut against the government’s version. As of Tuesday night, no video of the Araujo shooting has been made public. That absence is the story.

What ICE says happened

Federal agents say they stopped Araujo, described only as an undocumented Mexican national “not authorized to be in the United States,” around 6:50 a.m. in the 6800 block of Canal Str…

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WASHINGTON — Sister Letty’s rosary is still in an ICE evidence bag somewhere. Nobody at the Department of Homeland Security will say where, or why agents took it off her in the first place.

Three days after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja steps from Our Lady of Sorrows Church in McAllen, Texas — handcuffed her, confiscated her rosary, and drove her toward a detention facility an hour up the road — the agency that ordered it has offered exactly zero words of public explanation. Migrant Insider texted DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin directly Monday for an update on the Sister Letty situation. He has not replied. This story will update if and when he does.

What ICE Won’t Explain

Sister Letty, 56, is a member of the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy who has worked as a registered nurse in the McAllen area for roughly a decade. She was on her way to Sunday Mass, in her habit, when agents stopped her near the …

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WASHINGTON — Eleven months old. That’s how old Melat Kiros was when her family landed in Denver, having fled Tigray, Ethiopia, weeks after a genocide there that Washington still hasn’t fully reckoned with. On Tuesday night, at 29, she became the Democratic nominee to represent that same city in Congress — unseating Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., an incumbent who has held the seat since before Kiros was born.

The Associated Press called Colorado’s 1st Congressional District primary for Kiros at 10:03 p.m., with unofficial returns showing her ahead of DeGette by roughly six points, 49% to 44%, as University of Colorado Regent Wanda James finished a distant third with just over 7%. It was a rebuke of Colorado’s longest-serving member of Congress — delivered by a first-generation immigrant who spent the campaign’s final stretch pulling espresso shots at a Denver coffee shop

.From Tigray to Denver

Kiros was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and immigrated to Denver with her fam…

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WASHINGTON — The promise was always the same. Say it loud enough, say it often enough, say it on Fox News and Newsmax and Truth Social until the words become gospel — and the man in the Oval Office will believe it, too.

Stephen Miller has been saying it for years. End birthright citizenship “one way or another,” or “this country doesn’t have a future.” Clear out the undocumented workers, and American workers get their jobs back. Win the Supreme Court nine to zero, “convincingly and categorically,” because the law is so clear it practically decides itself.

On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 to uphold birthright citizenship, leaving Stephen Miller looking like a loser who completely miscalculated. A West Wing source tells Migrant Insider that “everyone is making fun of Miller,” whose grip on the immigration portfolio has slipped after repeatedly failing to deliver on his batshit promises to a president who has grown bored of Miller, his increasingly isolated deputy chief of staff.

Miller Overpromised, Then Underdelivered (Again)

Chief Justice John Roberts — a conservative appointed by George W. Bush, joined by two of Trump’s own picks — called citizenship “the right to have rights” and wrote that “the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today.’” The court held that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment — and that Trump’s Day One executive order, the one Miller built, is unconstitutional.

Miller called the ruling “one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the long history of the Supreme Court.” That is the response of a man who told the president this was a layup.

The Architecture of a Promise

To understand what happened Tuesday, you have to understand what Miller has been saying — not once, not occasionally, but consistently and loudly, in terms designed to leave no room for doubt.

“There should be a 9–0 ruling in a functioning democracy,” he told Fox News, just days before the ruling landed. He called birthright citizenship “the biggest, costliest scam in financial history” and “an atrocity flatly and flagrantly incompatible with any concept of nationhood.” He told Newsmax in June 2025 that the administration would “prevail and prevail completely, because the question is so clear legally.”

The question was not so clear. The ruling was not nine to zero. Two of Trump’s own appointees joined the majority.

Roberts was direct about why: “Words appearing frequently in the Executive Order — ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘lawful,’ ‘temporary’ — are absent from the Clause. For a simple reason: they did not matter.”

Trump attended oral arguments in April — the first sitting president in modern history to do so — because Miller had convinced him this was worth the investment, that sitting in those marble chambers was outweighed by the certainty of the win. He reportedly suspected he might lose anyway. Miller had walked him into a fight he was not going to win. It is now the second of Trump’s marquee second-term initiatives the Court has struck down, after the tariffs fell in February. Both bear Miller’s fingerprints.

The Jobs That Disappeared

The birthright ruling is not the only promise the data just finished burying.

For years, Miller’s mass deportation argument rested on a second pillar: clear out the undocumented workers, and American workers get their jobs back. Wages rise. The blue-collar men who voted for Trump in 2024 feel it in their paychecks.

In May, Migrant Insider reported on the first comprehensive, causal national study of the labor market effects of Trump’s immigration enforcement surge, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Its finding: there is no evidence that heightened ICE activity has produced job gains for U.S.-born workers. None. Not in agriculture, not in construction, not in manufacturing, not anywhere. What the enforcement surge actually produced is a chilling effect so severe it is contracting entire industries.

In high-enforcement areas, likely undocumented workers who were not arrested, not deported — simply frightened — reduced their employment by four percent. Among men, the drop was five percent, with two fewer hours worked per week. And for every six undocumented male workers who stopped showing up, one U.S.-born man with a high school degree or less lost his job, too.

Think of it this way: ICE raids a neighborhood. The men actually arrested are gone. But six other workers on the same crew stop showing up — not because they were caught, but because going to work now feels like walking into a trap. The laborer disappears. The foreman, the framer, the whole crew slows down. The employer doesn’t raise wages to find American replacements. The industry just gets smaller.

The researchers can rule out employment increases for U.S.-born workers of more than 0.1 percentage points. There is no wage increase. There is no flood of American workers taking the freed-up jobs. Miller had promised jobs. The peer review came back. The jobs just disappeared.

The Trooper Nobody on Team Miller Picked

The Court wasn’t the only surprise this week. Three separate sources told the Daily Beast’s PunchUp that Miller was “blindsided” by Trump’s pick to run ICE: Richard “Lance” Schroyer, an Oklahoma highway patrolman with no immigration enforcement record, who now sits atop a $78 billion budget and 32,000 employees. He isn’t Miller’s pick. He isn’t even Tom Homan’s pick. He is Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s old security-detail buddy — the kind of man who gets invited in for dinner.

PunchUp

Stephen Miller ‘Blindsided’ by Trump Move Causing DHS Revolt

Got a story from inside the heart of U.S. politics? Contact Tom in complete confidence on Signal, Threema, or at punchuptom@proton.me…

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a month ago · 61 likes · 4 comments · Tom Latchem

“He may be getting boxed out,” one ICE veteran told PunchUp. A White House official insisted Miller had been “aware” and “very supportive.” Insiders don’t typically use the word blindsided to describe a man who was in the room.

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In Trump v. Barbara, the Court split 6-3, with Roberts joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson finding the president’s executive order unconstitutional, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately that the order violates federal law. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

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