Media monitoring by Susan Manuel
More courts uphold bond hearings, for now
On 30 July, media reported that two more federal appeals courts rejected the Administration’s bid to subject millions of immigrants to mandatory detention without bond. “The appeals court dam is breaking against ICE’s unprecedented mass detention policy,” Politico wrote.
The previous week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed Trump a victory when it remanded three immigrants in Texas back into detention, allowing the government to keep them without bond. The three had been freed on habeas petitions by Texas federal judges earlier this year who found that such immigrants have the right to bond hearings within 90 days of being detained. However, the decision was reversed on July 21 by the full Fifth U.S. Circuit, Veritenews wrote.
But the following week, in a pair of 2-1 decisions, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (West Coast) and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (Illinois) found that the administration misinterpreted a 1996 law it used to justify detaining migrants without bond hearings. The case is headed to the Supreme Court, probably in October. “Appeals courts have now split 6-2 against the administration as the issue hurtles toward the Supreme Court, while the overwhelming majority of lower-court judges have ruled against the administration as well.” (Politico).
Trump appointee justice Daniel Aaron Bress penned the Ninth Court ruling: “’The government’s change in policy has resulted in detained aliens filing thousands of habeas petitions in federal courts across the country, seeking bond hearings and possible release from detention The implication of the Government’s position is that Congress in 1996 made a major change to the immigration laws by subjecting millions of unadmitted aliens present in the U.S. to mandatory detention, but that this change then went unnoticed and unheeded, with the Executive Branch for the next three decades…. We accordingly do not think that Congress in 1996 made such a large-scale change to our established system of immigration detention in the way that the government now contends.”
Courthouse News quoted Bress as saying, “That no administration has ever found a duty mandatorily to detain unadmitted aliens present in the interior of the country is strong evidence that it does not exist.” The recent decision does not apply to immigrants arrested at or near the border or to those who have committed certain criminal offenses, Courthouse reported.
The issue of immigrant detention has been litigated all over the country. The 2nd, 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th Circuits have sided with the habeas petitioners, while the 5th and 8th Circuits have sided with the government. Rulings are pending in three other circuits. More than 460 federal judges have rejected the administration’s approach in some 10,000 cases, while 54 judges have backed the policy in about 1,100 cases, Politico reported.
Delaney Hall death
Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo, 41, died in Delaney Hall, where he had been held for six weeks, on 1 August, media reported. He became the 22nd person to die in ICE custody this year and the second in Delaney Hall. His mother, who could not visit him due to her own lack of status, said she last spoke to him Friday when he was complaining of numbness. He’d had diabetes and high blood pressure but had not been given medication regularly. The hospital where he was taken called her Saturday evening saying he arrived without a heartbeat. Gov. Mikie Sherrill and the NJ congressional delegation are working to understand what happened. U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12) said, “if indeed he was denied his medication as his family reports, the operators at Delaney Hall should be charged with homicide.”
An ICE statement said that Cornejo died in hospital after a medical emergency. Delaney employees had “responded immediately and called 911 for emergency medical services.” Border patrol agents had arrested Cornejo in 2006 for illegally entering the US. He was removed back to El Salvador but re-entered the US at some point. He was given a work permit in 2022. He was detained on June 18 while walking to work from his home in Plainfield NJ. His mother said agents dismissed his work authorization. Newark Mayor Ras J Baraka again called for the closure of the facility, “GEO Group and ICE have repeatedly demonstrated a disregard for transparency, public oversight and the laws designed ot protect the health, safely and dignity of those in their custody. When accountability is absent, tragedies become all to common.”
ACLU fights rights violations
The ACLU has filed 54 claims in 17 states against the federal government on behalf of people whose rights have been repeatedly violated, reported Vanguard News, NBC 4 NY. The claims have been filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which seeks justice for victims and their families through financial compensation. “Federal law enforcement have abused and terrorized countless people,” the ACLU stated. “We demand justice for their victims.”
In terms of our area, the claims include one on behalf of a New Jersey nurse who says she was attacked by ICE agents outside Delaney Hall in May while operating a mobile health clinic for families visiting detainees. She said ICE agents threw her to the ground, cracking her head on the sidewalk, while she was approaching a woman who needed help. DHS is currently reviewing the claims.
The Texas Tribune reported on claims by the ACLU alleging that immigration officials and subcontractors neglected detained immigrants’ medical and food needs. A recent tort claim was filed by Elton Purvis, a legal permanent resident originally from Trinidad and Tobago, who was deported last year. Purvis is seeking $10 million from the Trump administration claiming medical neglect and mistreatment during the seven months he spent in different facilities, mostly in Texas. “Individuals are left in inhumane conditions for months on end without access to adequate medical care, edible food, potable water, or a way out,” said, Caro Rivera Nelseon, an attorney with the ACLU in Texas. “While in detention, Mr. Purvis filed over 100 grievances to ICE and followed every channel available to ask for medical help—nothing worked.”
The Daily Beast reported that a 29-year-old man with aggressive leukemia died days after ICE released him from custody to lie in a coma intensive care. Prisciliano Trejo Ricano had come to the U.S. from Mexico at age three. He spent weeks pleading for help inside the Stewart detention center in Lumpkin, GA. DHS stated that “When an individual is no longer is ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them.”
Abuses and hunger strikers
The Guardian reported that a detainee at Delaney Hall who had been on hunger strike last year was subjected to forcible medical treatment that health associations and international human rights groups have described as torture. According to an ICE Health Service Corps document, an unnamed patient was “subject to force feeding, hydration, or forced urinary catheterization or involuntary blood draw.”
At least 300 detainees began a hunger and labor strike in Delaney Hall in New Jersey from May to June, drawing sustained crowds of supporters outside. Other abuses of hunger strikers have been reported at the Adelanto center in California. The IHSC data on hunger strikers covers the first quarter of 2026. DHS said in a statement that “all detainees are provided with three meals a day.” ICE has not otherwise addressed the issue of hunger strikes, “because no one goes on hunger strike unless they are really desperate,” said Sarah Houston, attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
Lives in the Balance
Journalists from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications along with six universities across the country have been examining the federal immigration court system and detention facilities. See the full project and its look at “Life Inside Upstate New York’s ICE Detention Center,” at LivesInTheBalance.news and reported by Spectrum News on their website. Reporters found that in the “mass incarceration of immigrants,” ICE contracts with private companies result in workers getting lower pay, less training and weaker oversight, while detainees have fewer protections (than in government run facilities).
“At the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia—the only ICE-run detention center in the state—detainee accounts and official documents challenge the idea that immigration detention is intended to ensure court appearances or facilitate removal, rather than punish those caught in the system.” Even DHS’s Inspector General found serious concerns in Batavia, particularly around use-of-force, delays in medical care and grievance processing. Private companies like Akima Global Services, which runs the Batavia facility, rely heavily on detainees for cleaning, cooking and maintenance via a “Voluntary Work Program. Those earnings can become a detainee’s only means of getting basic necessities such as toiletries, food, and phone calls. The project found that at Batavia, men are sinking into despair without legal help. In the past, those without a criminal record could negotiate a bond through their attorney. “That pathway has disappeared,” said David Rasmussen, a retired attorney working pro bono for Batavia detainees.
DHS now requires a detainee to go through federal court to obtain an order for a bond hearing, and then to return to immigration court to argue for release. “The result is a far more complex and time-intensive process.” Detainees without an attorney are handed a list of pro bono lawyers to contact on their own. “Those who succeed are among the few.”
Women transferred
WAMC Northeast Public Radio reported on 30 July that while most immigrants detained by ICE were men, women who are detained are more likely to be transferred out of state since there is no ICE detention facility for women in New York. As ICE picks up immigrants they focus on men, stripping families of the breadwinner. Women who were apprehended usually go first to county jails then to ICE facilities in Louisiana or the Dilley ICE center in Texas.
The Deportation Data Project found that in 2025, outside of New York City and Long Island, ICE deported 904 people (NYS residents?). Of them, 835 were men and six women. Vera Institute found that 86 percent of the women detained in NY state were transferred to facilities out of state. 37 percent of men were transferred. Transfers out of state make accessing legal representation more difficult, said Shayna Kessler of Vera Institute. She expects transfers to increase as New York state moves to ban formal cooperative agreements between ICE and local law enforcement.
“In 2024, 82 percent of those departed after first being detained in upstate NY had a criminal conviction and 5% were in violation of their immigration status. In 2025, 46.4 percent of those deported had immigration violations,” WAMC reported. Ivy Hest, co-executive director of the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement, says the demand for legal representation is overwhelming for advocacy organizations. But the need for financial support for immigrant families has also increased as more women are having to support their families as single parents.”
Children without lawyers
A federal contract that provides attorneys for some 25,000 undocumented minors who entered the US without parents or guardians expired Friday, media reported. The US has been required by law to protect children who crossed the border alone, to protect them from possible abuse or trafficking. Such children are usually sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement which until November paid for legal services after attorneys refused to provide the agency with confidential information about the children, according to NPR. The ORR then did not renew the contract with a network of legal providers, which expired 31 July.
Empty but expensive jails
The Daily Beast cited PunchUp’s analysis of detention data showing that ICE is spending some $1.2 million a day on empty jail beds while private prison companies post record profits. ICE data shows that some 8200 beds were not filled in July. The beds are funded whether they are occupied or not.
Call them camps
John Washington, a writer for The Guardian who has covered immigration enforcement for a decade, wrote an op-ed published on July 30 which argues that detention facilities should be called camps. “We don’t have concentration camps today in the U.S., but we have something close,” he begins. “More than 65,000 people are currently confined in demeaning, often dangerous, sometimes torturous and increasingly deadly conditions not because they have committed a crime but because they have committed the civil infraction of being on the wrong side of a border.”
Later in the piece he says, “Calling such facilities ‘detention centers’ sanitizes their brutal and increasingly deadly reality.” The word ‘camp’ best captures the political function they serve: concentrating, immobilizing and excluding populations deemed unwanted. A concentration camp , in its most basic definition, is a place where a targeted civilian population, not necessarily accused of a crime, is detained and at least some of their basic rights are suspended. That’s precisely what’s happening in the US today.” Immigration camps in the US today disappear people politically before, all too frequently, they disappear them physically To combat the suffering we should use language that reveals the inhumanity rather than conceals it. The word camp is just that.”
Immigration crackdown tracker
The Guardian posts a regularly updated immigration crackdown tracker, giving the latest counts on arrests detentions and deportations since Trump’s inauguration, using ICE and CPB data, which is usually updated every two weeks. As of August 2…
Arrests: 582,040 (up 123,590 since April 4)
People currently in detention: 65,770 (up 5,450)
Total deportations: 590,600 (up 122,150)
Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images
Madhuri Shukla, Detention Watch Network, via JustSeeds.org