ICE funds tech billionaires to produce hyper-invasive technology
Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.
This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.
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Trump administration asks Supreme Court to OK its unprecedented immigration detention policy
Rejected by federal district court judges across the country, the Trump Administration’s Justice Department is now asking the supreme court to sign off on its massive expansion of ICE detention.
At the moment, five appellate circuit courts have ruled 3-2 against the administration’s prolonged detention without bond hearing policies, with six more circuit courts expected to drop decisions at any moment. Congress’s law on immigrant detention made it primarily for people who had just crossed the US border or very recently crossed it. But as we know, the Trump administration has radically reinterpreted this mandate, capturing people who have lived here for years and throwing them into ICE detention without bond hearings.
The heart of this argument is a war of semantics around the phrase “seeking admission.” Most judges, including Justice Samuel Alito in a 2018 supreme court ruling, agree that the term “seeking admission” does not apply to those already in the US, only people in the process of crossing the border. But with the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on asylum and TPS, it doesn’t look good.
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‘We should be worried’: report sheds light on ICE’s booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools
The Guardian highlights a report from a collaboration between groups including Mijente and interviews one of the authors from Just Futures Law, regarding the increasingly incestuous relationship between tech companies and ICE/DHS. Companies like Palantir and Anduril (whose leaders either don’t realize or don’t care that they are the villains in the story they are referencing) have co-opted large parts of ICE’s budget in the name of developing surveillance technologies.
This tech includes developing facial recognition software, high-tech surveillance towers, and drones that could theoretically hover outside the windows of a home. Funding for Palantir started under Obama in 2013, quadrupled under Trump, decreased slightly under Biden, and more than doubled from where it already was since 2025.
The Guardian quotes Paromitah Shah, one of the report’s authors: “People need to realize that DHS is not merely a police force – but we’re standing in a moment where tech oligarchs have captured key parts of the DHS budget and are using it to fund their own companies.”
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US: Türk alarmed at deaths in ICE custody, calls for urgent preventive action
Twenty people have died in ICE custody so far this year, over 50 since this cruel regime of white supremacy took office. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has called out this inhumanity, demanding an outside investigation of conditions in the ICE gulag. He said: “Those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account, and the rights of the victims’ families to truth, justice and reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld.”
Recently, protesters inside ICE concentration camps like Delaney Hall, NJ and Adelanto in California have led hunger and labor strikes to protest their treatment. Conditions in ICE jails include denial of necessary medical care, rancid food, and so much overcrowding that inmates are often forced to sleep on the floor. Most ICE facilities are run by private, for-profit companies like GeoGroup and Core Civic, which are reaping exceptional profits from the current administration’s war against immigrants.
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Supreme Court allows Trump to remove protections from thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has traditionally been extended to people fleeing intolerable conditions in their home countries. The theory is that these people stay in the US for a while, conditions improve, and they are able to return home safely. Except sometimes things don’t improve. The U.S. Department of State maintains its highest warning level, Level 4: Do Not Travel, for both Haiti and Syria today. Apparently it’s OK for refugees but not US citizens to go there.
Approximately 350,000 Haitians will now be forced back to a country that is in a national state of emergency due to rampant violence and the collapse of governmental security systems. In fact, regular commercial flights into Port-au-Prince are suspended due to safety risks that include gangs shooting at airliners. It’s entirely unclear what airline our government thinks will fly that many people into that kind of carnage.
The estimated 6,100 Syrians who will be expelled also face severe dangers upon return. In addition to the massive number of unexploded munitions and destroyed infrastructure, the country still experiences ongoing military operations that pose large-scale risks and local terrorist groups that carry out routine kidnappings and executions of civilians.
How we got here: the Supreme Court chose to overlook overwhelmingly documented evidence that the termination of Haitian TPS was driven by unconstitutional racial and ethnic discrimination. These include the President’s own statements about the country and about the Haitian people sheltering here.
Justice Kagan’s dissent acknowledged that while the TPS program does not promise “never-ending humanitarian protection,” the law does prevent it from ending “as it likely did here without the required consultations about country conditions and, as to Haiti, with impermissible race-based considerations tainting the decision.”
This supreme court decision takes a severe step backward for judicial independence and the principle of equal protection. The regime is now free to continue ending TPS for any number of the up to 1.3 million people who are or have been in the US with that designation. As our hearts break for the suffering inflicted on our Haitian and Syrian neighbors, we also remember that the regime has systematically moved to terminate 13 of the 17 TPS designations that were in place before 2025. According to June 2026 reporting from the Migration Policy Institute and NPR, there are only about 270,000 people whose active, un-terminated TPS status is secure through the end of the year.
Action item: Support Temporary Protected Status (TPS) Extension for Haitians
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Frustrated by inaction on ICE warehouse, activists move to dissolve their town altogether
In Surprise, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has purchased a warehouse in which to detain up to 1,500 immigrants. Frustrated by a city council that has refused to oppose the detention center, community activists in Surprise are hoping residents will agree to disincorporate the city.
Dissolving Surprise would place it under the control of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which may be more amenable to local calls to act against the federal plan.
State officials have stepped into the fray, in opposition to the Surprise City Council’s inaction. The Arizona Attorney General has argued that federal law prohibits converting the warehouse into a detention center because it is located across the street from a hazardous chemical storage facility.
The petition will need to garner signatures from around 70,000 Surprise residents to be successful. If it does succeed, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors may decide to disincorporate the city or hold an election to give voters a chance to weigh in.
The warehouse lies just a mile away from a public high school whose student body is over 60% Hispanic.
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Political Ed Corner: The So-Called US at 250
The 250th Anniversary of the founding of the so-called US is this weekend. This past week, Eddie Glaude, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University was interviewed on the podcast On The Media about his new book, America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. The interview starts at 13:09. You can also watch an interview with Glaude about his book on Democracy Now!
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Action items:
Support Temporary Protected Status (TPS) Extension for Haitians
Help Miss Rachel shut down Dilley Detention Center
Linktree to support detainees at Delaney Hall
Toolkit to support the Adelanto hunger strikers
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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for next week’s roundup, drop us a line at neveragainaction@gmail.com.