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.”

That demand — a name, a face, an agency willing to say who fired — is now colliding with a Capitol Hill that can’t agree on whether it’s even a fair question. Days later, ICE killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine.

Democrats push for subpoenas

Two ICE killings in less than a week — Salgado Araujo in Houston, and Guerrero in Maine — sent Democrats into the halls of the Capitol promising oversight muscle they don’t yet have the votes to use.

Sidney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) did not mince words when I asked her about the killings, framing the issue as an urgent need for federal accountability. "We’re talking about state-sanctioned murder, okay?" Kamlager-Dove said. "Why they have not stopped the folks that work at ICE, in ICE from killing citizens, neighbors, community members is beyond me. Obviously, full-blown, full-fledged investigation. I actually believe that at this point we should be charging these fools, we should be prosecuting these fools, and they should be going to jail. And we should be defunding all of ICE."

Rep. Johnny Olszewski, D-Md., called it “unconscionable that this is the world we’re living in today,” and pointed to a blockade: “we can’t get our Republican colleagues to even put in some common-sense reforms like body cameras so we know what the hell is going on.” He said Congress has “the power of a subpoena” and wants Oversight and Judiciary to use it.

Rep. Walkinshaw, D-Wash., went further, calling ICE “still recklessly terrorizing communities” and demanding “an independent fair investigation” into both shootings. Asked about the agents’ now-standard practice of masking during operations, he didn’t hedge: “There’s no reason for any law enforcement agency, federal, state, or local, to be masked as a matter of practice when they’re out in the community.” He added that the agents who shot Salgado Araujo “have not been identified yet publicly,” and said they should be.

Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., said she’s heard directly from local law enforcement who won’t work with ICE because “they are unprofessional and they are not trained enough.” Her ask of DHS Secretary was blunt: “If you stand by your story, Secretary Markwayne, if you stand by your story, then let us see all the documents. Period.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said she saw it coming the moment ICE funding was restored: “I would not be surprised if when ICE funding started up again, that we would start to see more civilian deaths at the hands of ICE. And that’s exactly what has happened.”

Republicans decline to engage

On the other side of the Capitol, there was no comparable urgency. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., hadn’t heard about the Maine shooting when I asked him about it hours after it happened. Told the details, his answer didn’t move: “Ice agents are here to protect this country and to get the illegals out. They need to be funded.” Pressed that agents are “shooting people down in their cars on American streets,” he repeated himself: “Ice agents are doing a job for the American people. They need to be funded. That’s your opinion.”

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., said he was “incredibly proud of our ICE officers” and suggested, without confirming any details, that the Maine shooting likely involved a breakdown between local and federal coordination — the same explanation he offered for a shooting in Minnesota.

The body they still can’t bury

For the Salgados, the politics are secondary to the wait. Days after the shooting, the family still doesn’t have Lorenzo’s body, his van, his tools, his phone, or his wallet back. “Todavía no pueden, no pueden,” his son said — still, they can’t, they still haven’t given us the body. What they do have is the video. And the question it raises will not go away.

The Salgado family wants a name. Congress wants a name. Migrant Insider is the only newsroom in Washington built to make sure that question gets asked at every hearing, every presser, every markup — until someone answers it. Subscribe to keep us there.

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 questions when reporters reached her Monday morning. Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security has commented.

Lucas Scott, 18, of Wells, told the Press Herald he was driving through the intersection when he saw unmarked vehicles and flashing lights. He said a driver put a car in drive and tried to hit the officer. “The agent then fired about four shots,” Scott said. “I just heard the popping, but I did see him draw his gun.”

None of that account has been confirmed by ICE, DHS or Maine State Police. The person killed has not been named.

The shooting lands in the middle of a Maine ICE surge that swept up nearly 200 people since January — only 11 with criminal convictions, by the administration’s own count — under an operation the agency named Catch of the Day. That surge was cut short after ICE agents fatally shot two people in Minneapolis. It also comes weeks after an ICE officer killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Houston homebuilder, in a shooting DHS called self-defense — a claim the family disputes and no video has settled.

Troy Jackson, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, said Monday his “heart is with Biddeford – and with all Mainers.”

Hayes was still shaking when she spoke to a reporter.

“We don’t expect this to happen here,” she said. “What have we come to?”

“Eleven fatal shootings by ICE or Border Patrol since Trump took office — and Migrant Insider is the outlet still counting. When DHS finally explains what happened on Pool Street, we’ll be the ones checking its story against the ones on the ground. Subscribe so you’re not waiting on someone else’s version.”

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1. ICE wants to charge $755 for a form that used to cost $155

DHS has proposed nearly quintupling the fee for Form I-246, the application people under final removal orders file to request a stay of deportation — from $155 to $755, a 387% jump. The agency says the fee hasn’t moved since 1989 and no longer covers adjudication costs, and it explicitly ties the increase to Trump’s “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders” executive order. The public comment period closed July 6, locking in the record. DHS concedes the hike may deter applications and says fee waivers “may” be available — with no data on how often those waivers are actually granted.

2. Judges are quietly chipping away at the no-bond policy

The Fifth Circuit’s July 2 ruling barring detention past 90 days without a bond hearing got some notice. What didn’t: a wave of district court habeas rulings undercutting DHS’s July 2025 reinterpretation that treats nearly all undocumented people as “applicants for admission” with no right to bond at all. In Cruz Hernandez v. Olson, a Kansas federal judge ordered DHS to give a man who entered the U.S. in 2012 a bond hearing or release him by July 2, flatly rejecting the government’s reading of the law. A Western District of Pennsylvania judge issued a nearly identical order in June, spelling out exactly which factors an immigration judge must weigh. Similar habeas grants have landed in other district courts this spring, each hammering the same point: long-term residents arrested in the interior don’t lose their due-process rights just because DHS relabeled them.

3. A new registration rule brings “papers-please” into the digital age

DHS finalized a rule on June 29 that, for the first time, designates Form G-325R as a general registration form for noncitizens who were never formally registered — and creates a new digital “Proof of Alien Registration” certificate. Adults 18 and older are required to carry it at all times; failing to do so is a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to a $5,000 fine or 30 days in jail. Immigration lawyers are already warning clients — Canadians entering by land, longtime visitors with no prior fingerprints, teenagers turning 14 — that this changes what they’re expected to carry, and what registering might expose them to.

4. USCIS can now keep your fee and deny you over a bad signature

An interim final rule taking effect July 10 lets USCIS accept a benefit request, then later decide the signature was invalid — and deny it outright while keeping the filing fee, no refund. It applies across family, employment and humanitarian filings alike, and lands the same week as a separate rule barring refunds when asylum applications are rejected at intake. Immigration bar groups are warning that pro se applicants and asylum seekers stand to lose the most — their place in line and their money, with no ruling on the merits.

5. A new asylum office opens in Atlanta

USCIS opened an asylum office in Atlanta this week, with interviews for Georgia and Alabama cases beginning July 8. Until now, those cases moved through circuit-ride interviews and existing field offices; the new office will split operations across three temporary sites before consolidating into a permanent location in 2027. Regional outlets have noted the opening. No one’s yet asked what it means for wait times, interpreter access or the legal-aid groups already stretched thin across the Southeast.

None of these five moves needed a press conference. That’s the point — and it’s why somebody has to read the Federal Register so you don’t have to.

Five stories, zero press conferences — because Homeland Security counts on nobody reading past the headline. This is why Migrant Insider exists: to read the Federal Register and the dockets so you don’t get blindsided by a $755 fee or a misdemeanor charge for a form you didn’t know you needed. Paid subscribers fund the follow-up reporting on every one of these. Tell one person who needs to read this.

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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17 days 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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The decisions, both written by Justice Samuel Alito and decided 6–3 along ideological lines, reshape the legal architecture of humanitarian protection in America. Taken together, they leave an estimated 356,000 Haitians and Syrians facing imminent loss of their legal status — and open the door to stripping TPS from up to one million people more.

What the Court Did — and What It Means

In Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, the Court ruled that a 1990 statutory review bar blocks virtually all non-constitutional court challenges to TPS terminations. Haitian TPS holders had argued the termination was driven by racial animus — pointing to statements by President Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about Haitians and other non-white migrants. The Court, applying the Arlington Heights framework, concluded the plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail, citing the administration’s across-the-board policy of ending TPS designations as a facially race-neutral rationale.

Justice Kagan, writing in dissent joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, warned that under the majority’s logic, TPS communities that have lived legally in the United States for decades can have their status revoked through flawed or pretextual processes with no meaningful judicial check.

In the metering case, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court held that asylum seekers physically standing in Mexico at a port of entry have not “arrived in the United States” under the Immigration and Nationality Act — and therefore have no statutory right to request asylum. Border officials may now indefinitely prevent migrants from stepping onto U.S. soil, eliminating the legal trigger for asylum processing altogether.

Justice Sotomayor read her dissent aloud from the bench — a signal reserved for decisions the dissenters consider most consequential. She invoked the St. Louis, the ship carrying Jewish refugees turned away before World War II, and accused the majority of allowing agents to evade Congress’s intent by the simple act of physically blocking a human being from crossing a line.

The Numbers Behind the Ruling

Roughly 350,000 Haitians hold TPS, many of them in the United States for more than a decade following the catastrophic 2010 earthquake. Approximately 6,000 Syrians received TPS amid civil war and the Assad regime’s repression. Both groups had seen their designations repeatedly extended — until the Trump administration, under Executive Order 14159, moved to terminate them in 2025 as part of a sweeping crackdown on humanitarian programs.

Advocates warn the logic extends far beyond Haiti and Syria. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Somalia, and Ethiopia all have long-standing TPS populations. The total exposure: roughly one million people.

The Border Door Closes

The metering ruling revives and expands a policy first formalized under Trump, briefly used under Obama, and rescinded by Biden in 2021. Under the ruling, Customs and Border Protection officers can station themselves at ports of entry — on bridges, in inspection lanes — and simply refuse entry. No step on U.S. soil, no asylum claim. No asylum claim, no protection.

In practice, that means asylum seekers wait in Mexican border cities — Juárez, Tijuana, Matamoros — in encampments long documented for kidnapping, extortion, and cartel violence. The wait is now potentially indefinite. The protection, legally, now nonexistent.

Advocacy groups including the American Immigration Council condemned the ruling as delivering a direct blow to rights Congress wrote into the INA. Lawyers are already signaling they will pivot to non-refoulement arguments, conditions in Mexican camps, and international law — threads the majority left unaddressed.

What Comes Next

DHS can now move ahead with TPS termination notices already published in the Federal Register for both Syria and Haiti. For the southern border, expect Trump’s DHS to formally reinstate and scale physical turnback operations at ports of entry — and watch for guidance from CBP field leadership in the coming days.

On Capitol Hill, advocates are pressing for a congressional fix that would clarify the asylum statute to include people seeking inspection at ports of entry. That fight starts Thursday — and it starts losing.

Justice Sotomayor’s bench statement closed with a question the majority never answered: what happens to the people turned back? The Court, having redrawn the line, offered nothing on what waits on the other side of it.

The Court ruled. The clock is running. Migrant Insider will be in the halls of Congress this week asking the questions these opinions leave unanswered — because someone has to. Paid subscribers are what make that possible. If this story matters to you, make sure we can keep reporting it.

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The Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule Monday that would raise the filing fee for Form N-400 — the application for U.S. naturalization — from $760 to $1,330 for paper filers, and from $710 to $1,280 for those filing online. The fee to appeal a denied citizenship application would jump from $830 to $1,475. The rule was published in the Federal Register on June 22 and opens a 60-day public comment period through August 24.

Those numbers alone would reshape the economics of naturalization for hundreds of thousands of people. But the fine print is where the real damage is.

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1. Starting today, seeking asylum costs money — every single year.

The Justice Department’s immigration courts started charging mandatory fees for asylum cases on June 11 — and there is no waiver. The Executive Office for Immigration Review finalized a rule imposing both an upfront filing fee and a $102 annual fee for every calendar year an asylum case remains pending before the courts or the Board of Immigration Appeals. Not one dollar of it can be waived, even for people who are broke. Cancellation of removal, a form of relief available to long-term U.S. residents without green cards, now costs $1,640 in combined fees. All payments must flow through an online portal.

The legal theory propping this up is thin. Congress has not passed a statute authorizing per-year asylum fees. The administration is doing this through regulation — pricing asylum out of reach one annual invoice at a time.

Attorneys handling pro bono cases are already running the math on clients who may owe multiple years of back fees the moment they try to move a stalled case forward.

2. Trafficking survivors now need a DOJ permission slip to get a green card on time.

Survivors of human trafficking who hold T visas have a path to permanent residence after three years — but Congress wrote in a shortcut: if the underlying trafficking investigation or prosecution is complete, they can apply sooner. On June 16, the Justice Department proposed formalizing who controls access to that shortcut. The answer is DOJ’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, which will now issue — or withhold — the certification letters survivors need to file early. DOJ estimates about 2,000 such requests a year. The comment window closes August 17.

This is a chokepoint, and it is new. Previously, that early-filing pathway existed on paper without a centralized DOJ gatekeeping process attached to it. Now there is one. A trafficking survivor who cannot get that letter — because prosecutors say an investigation isn’t “complete,” or simply because the bureaucracy moves slowly — stays in limbo longer.

Comments are due August 17. Immigration advocates should be in that docket.

3. A new BIA precedent tells people to ask ICE first before asking the court to pause their deportation.

The Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedent decision on June 12 that, going forward, will generally require people with final removal orders to first request a stay of deportation from ICE before the BIA will consider a stay request filed alongside a motion to reopen or reconsider. The case is Matter of Herrera-Nunez, 29 I&N Dec. 691 (BIA 2026).

The rationale is docket management. The result is a procedural default that redirects the most vulnerable people in the immigration system — those already ordered deported, trying to reopen cases based on new relief — directly toward the enforcement agency trying to remove them. ICE charges a fee for stay requests, though it can be waived. The BIA cited its crushing caseload. That caseload is real. But this rule means that for many people, the courthouse door only opens after ICE says no.

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That’s how federal agents from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations and the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General showed up at the Washington offices of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights — and two other nonprofits representing unaccompanied immigrant children — during a 48-hour sweep on or around June 11–12, 2026.

They wanted client files. They wanted financial records. They wanted information about children.

They didn’t get any of it.

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They arrived quietly — in court filings, regulatory agendas, and the dense columns of the Federal Register — the way most of the immigration system’s most consequential moves do. Not in a press conference. Not in a tweet. In the bureaucratic dark.

Here’s what you need to know.

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The new law splits the money explicitly between the two agencies at the center of the crackdown: $38 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection, and $5 billion for broader Department of Homeland Security operations.

Because it moved through reconciliation, Republicans cleared it with simple majorities in both chambers, sidestepping a Senate Democratic filibuster and resolving the multi-month funding impasse that triggered a partial DHS shutdown this spring. The Senate passed the package late last week. The…

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On Sunday, a federal judge in Boston confirmed what immigration lawyers, university counsel, and hospital HR departments had been arguing since September: the fee was never legal to begin with.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin struck down the $100,000 charge in a 42-page ruling, finding that President Trump had imposed a de facto tax on H-1B visa petitions without any authorization from Congress — and without following the basic rule-making procedures the law requires.

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