This Week On ICE

Team TWOI
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A weekly podcast covering the latest developments of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies, hosted by journalists Kelly Kimball and Matthew Kendrick. thisweekonice.substack.com

  1. Oct 21

    The stories behind the deadliest year for people in ICE custody

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. Feds raid a Congresswoman’s home — Agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) raided Representative Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, DC, this week as part of a controversial and ongoing investigation into Omar’s immigration status. The Minnesota lawmaker, who came to the U.S. as a child refugee and is currently running for re-election to the U.S. House to represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional district, has faced repeated attacks from President Trump, including racist rhetoric targeting Somali immigrants. The raid comes amid longstanding Justice Department guidance against taking investigative actions against political candidates so close to an election.  “We saw [former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán do similar things in Hungary. We see China do this all the damn time, and it’s happening here in the United States: A prominent opposition leader from an ethnic minority having her house raided amid the encouragement of a racist pogrom against Somalis that the President has been conducting for years.” — Matt There’s a lot to cover this week. Let’s get into it. Support This Week on ICE Podcast The top line: Reporting from the frontlines of third-country deportations The U.S. Supreme court made an emergency ruling last month that will allow the Trump administration to continue its fast-track deportations of those detained by ICE to countries other than their places of origin — for now. The court intends to pick this case back up in December and issue a final ruling early next year, but the damage continues in the meantime: A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) looks deeply into how the administration is using an opaque system of third-country deportation destinations — including at least a dozen countries across Africa — to intimidate migrants into self-deporting. “What's significant here is the speed with which third-country deportation agreements with African countries have come about. One of the earliest third-country deportation agreements the U.S. established was with Costa Rica back in March. The agreement maintains that Costa Rica will receive 25 deportees per week, which adds up to over 600 deportees received so far. But some African countries that have signed MOUs with the U.S. government much later in the year, including Ghana, have already agreed to receive up to 1,200 deportees. Some countries have received upwards of 100 so far … with not enough time for lawyers and human rights watchdogs to really brace for impact.” — Kelly [Catch up: How SCOTUS might weigh in on the legality of lengthy stays in ICE detention facilities.] Support This Week on ICE Podcast Human rights watchdogs like HRW have hotly contested the legality of the conditions faced by deportees upon their arrival to African countries such as Eswatini, South Sudan, Rwanda and others. “This is a classic violation of the principle of non-refoulement in international law, which bans countries from returning people to places where they may face a high risk of torture, persecution, and other irreparable harm. That is happening here. Many of the deportees that have been sent to third countries have already been protected by a U.S. judge from being returned to countries in which they face heightened risk. The U.S. sent at least a dozen LGBTQ people to African states that criminalize same-sex relations. So, even if [it] is not happening in a return to their country of origin, [it] is happening in the third country that they are being sent to.” — Kelly Meanwhile, Kelly is just back from a reporting trip to Costa Rica, where she spoke with several deportees, and at ~11:53 she gave us never-before-seen insight into the many conditions they’ve faced. One of the individuals that Kelly met — a young man from Vietnam whose identity must remain anonymous for his protection — underscores the end result of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on deportations. To reach the U.S., the man told Kelly he spent several years saving thousands of dollars while working in a factory in Vietnam. He then traveled through five other countries and spent two months in Mexico before crossing the Rio Grande into Texas by boat, where he was immediately apprehended by immigration authorities at the U.S. border. According to his account, during his detention in the U.S., he spoke only with ICE agents — not a lawyer — and was never asked about asylum or given a credible fear interview. Instead, he was met by a translator only to communicate about processing his return to Vietnam. Ten days later, he was put on a plane and, upon his arrival, he was told he had been sent to Costa Rica. “I sensed this tense rock in his chest and in his throat when describing what he had gone through and not knowing what he can do now. When we think about these decisions made in the highest court in the land, when we think about the calculus that the Trump administration is constructing with its immigration crackdown and the enforcement of immigration-related executive orders, we also have to think about the rock in the throat of this man who doesn’t know what to do next.” — Kelly Also on our radar: An ICE shooting in the Bronx. Last Thursday, ICE agents once again shot a man during a traffic stop in New York City’s Marble Hill neighborhood near the Bronx, leading to large citywide protests. The victim, Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican man, sustained injuries to his neck but survived the assault — which occurred while his 5-year-old child was in the car with him. ICE agents claim not to have been aware that a minor was in the car and blamed Belgal for endangering the child. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called for ICE to withdraw from the city, and for a full investigation into the latest senseless shooting of an unarmed civilian. “This is a very clear example of Trump's absolute hatred for migrants and for people of color, as well as the limits of [New York Mayor Zohran] Mamdani’s relationship with Trump.” — Matt [Catch up: Journalist Ava Sasani on her investigation into ICE-involved shootings, and the new law enforcement agencies cooperating with ICE.] Support This Week on ICE Podcast On your way out: Martín Soto, leader of the Delaney Hall strikes, is finally freed. Soto spent eight months in ICE detention, including four months in solitary confinement at the facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He remains under surveillance through an ankle monitor. [Catch up: The human rights organizations suing ICE for its indiscriminate use of ankle monitors.] While ultimately failing its original mission of freeing all detainees, the strike at Delaney Hall sparked a national movement, inspiring a spell of hunger and labor strikes at ICE detention facilities in California, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. With his freedom, Soto has signaled a bold new intent. To close our show this week, we want to leave you with something Martín said at a press conference a few days ago: “We will share our story and everything that has happened to us. We will fight until this bad government is out.” — Martín Soto That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 14

    Agents raid Ilhan Omar’s home, ICE shoots a man in the Bronx, and deportations to Africa

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. Feds raid a Congresswoman’s home — Agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) raided Representative Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, DC, this week as part of a controversial and ongoing investigation into Omar’s immigration status. The Minnesota lawmaker, who came to the U.S. as a child refugee and is currently running for re-election to the U.S. House to represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional district, has faced repeated attacks from President Trump, including racist rhetoric targeting Somali immigrants. The raid comes amid longstanding Justice Department guidance against taking investigative actions against political candidates so close to an election.  “We saw [former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán do similar things in Hungary. We see China do this all the damn time, and it’s happening here in the United States: A prominent opposition leader from an ethnic minority having her house raided amid the encouragement of a racist pogrom against Somalis that the President has been conducting for years.” — Matt There’s a lot to cover this week. Let’s get into it. Support This Week on ICE Podcast The top line: Reporting from the frontlines of third-country deportations The U.S. Supreme court made an emergency ruling last month that will allow the Trump administration to continue its fast-track deportations of those detained by ICE to countries other than their places of origin — for now. The court intends to pick this case back up in December and issue a final ruling early next year, but the damage continues in the meantime: A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) looks deeply into how the administration is using an opaque system of third-country deportation destinations — including at least a dozen countries across Africa — to intimidate migrants into self-deporting. “What's significant here is the speed with which third-country deportation agreements with African countries have come about. One of the earliest third-country deportation agreements the U.S. established was with Costa Rica back in March. The agreement maintains that Costa Rica will receive 25 deportees per week, which adds up to over 600 deportees received so far. But some African countries that have signed MOUs with the U.S. government much later in the year, including Ghana, have already agreed to receive up to 1,200 deportees. Some countries have received upwards of 100 so far … with not enough time for lawyers and human rights watchdogs to really brace for impact.” — Kelly [Catch up: How SCOTUS might weigh in on the legality of lengthy stays in ICE detention facilities.] Support This Week on ICE Podcast Human rights watchdogs like HRW have hotly contested the legality of the conditions faced by deportees upon their arrival to African countries such as Eswatini, South Sudan, Rwanda and others. “This is a classic violation of the principle of non-refoulement in international law, which bans countries from returning people to places where they may face a high risk of torture, persecution, and other irreparable harm. That is happening here. Many of the deportees that have been sent to third countries have already been protected by a U.S. judge from being returned to countries in which they face heightened risk. The U.S. sent at least a dozen LGBTQ people to African states that criminalize same-sex relations. So, even if [it] is not happening in a return to their country of origin, [it] is happening in the third country that they are being sent to.” — Kelly Meanwhile, Kelly is just back from a reporting trip to Costa Rica, where she spoke with several deportees, and at ~11:53 she gave us never-before-seen insight into the many conditions they’ve faced. One of the individuals that Kelly met — a young man from Vietnam whose identity must remain anonymous for his protection — underscores the end result of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on deportations. To reach the U.S., the man told Kelly he spent several years saving thousands of dollars while working in a factory in Vietnam. He then traveled through five other countries and spent two months in Mexico before crossing the Rio Grande into Texas by boat, where he was immediately apprehended by immigration authorities at the U.S. border. According to his account, during his detention in the U.S., he spoke only with ICE agents — not a lawyer — and was never asked about asylum or given a credible fear interview. Instead, he was met by a translator only to communicate about processing his return to Vietnam. Ten days later, he was put on a plane and, upon his arrival, he was told he had been sent to Costa Rica. “I sensed this tense rock in his chest and in his throat when describing what he had gone through and not knowing what he can do now. When we think about these decisions made in the highest court in the land, when we think about the calculus that the Trump administration is constructing with its immigration crackdown and the enforcement of immigration-related executive orders, we also have to think about the rock in the throat of this man who doesn’t know what to do next.” — Kelly Also on our radar: An ICE shooting in the Bronx. Last Thursday, ICE agents once again shot a man during a traffic stop in New York City’s Marble Hill neighborhood near the Bronx, leading to large citywide protests. The victim, Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican man, sustained injuries to his neck but survived the assault — which occurred while his 5-year-old child was in the car with him. ICE agents claim not to have been aware that a minor was in the car and blamed Belgal for endangering the child. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called for ICE to withdraw from the city, and for a full investigation into the latest senseless shooting of an unarmed civilian. “This is a very clear example of Trump's absolute hatred for migrants and for people of color, as well as the limits of [New York Mayor Zohran] Mamdani’s relationship with Trump.” — Matt [Catch up: Journalist Ava Sasani on her investigation into ICE-involved shootings, and the new law enforcement agencies cooperating with ICE.] Support This Week on ICE Podcast On your way out: Martín Soto, leader of the Delaney Hall strikes, is finally freed. Soto spent eight months in ICE detention, including four months in solitary confinement at the facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He remains under surveillance through an ankle monitor. [Catch up: The human rights organizations suing ICE for its indiscriminate use of ankle monitors.] While ultimately failing its original mission of freeing all detainees, the strike at Delaney Hall sparked a national movement, inspiring a spell of hunger and labor strikes at ICE detention facilities in California, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. With his freedom, Soto has signaled a bold new intent. To close our show this week, we want to leave you with something Martín said at a press conference a few days ago: “We will share our story and everything that has happened to us. We will fight until this bad government is out.” — Martín Soto That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Oct 7

    How immigration debates are shaping midterm elections

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. Counting down the clock: We are officially less than a month away from the midterm elections that have loomed over our coverage all year — and survey after survey indicates that the Democrats are looking strong enough to seize control of both the House and Senate. If they clinch both chambers of Congress, it could trigger a tidal change in a number of hot-button issues, from inflation and the cost of living to the Iran War and federal corruption allegations. That’s not to mention the dozens of gubernatorial and state legislative races that could also contribute to limiting President Trump’s wide-ranging political agenda, should Republicans fold. But do voters want Democrats to take action on immigration specifically? Or are they sending Washington a different message about their priorities? We dove into what polling can tell us — and where it falls short.  “ Donald Trump has the worst presidential approval rating going into a midterm election since 1990.” — Matt While Trump is underwater with likely voters on almost every issue, he is the least underwater on immigration.  “If I'm putting myself in the seat of a staffer, and I'm advising a congressperson on what their priorities should be, even though [I may personally care] about immigration … I think that the danger here is that Democrats will read the numbers and make the politically astute, if cynical, choice to not push that hard on immigration and instead push much harder on the economy.” — Matt Support This Week on ICE Podcast While immigration may rank among the issues with the lowest approval ratings among likely voters this election, growing public concern over government corruption may keep immigration at top of mind in specific contexts: A Gallup poll released last month reports that 89% of Americans view corruption as widespread ahead of midterm elections. “ There’s ample evidence of corruption within Trump’s immigration crackdown. In terms of whether we will see immigration become a Congressional priority post-midterms due to federal corruption allegations, I see that data point as a silver lining,” said Kelly. [Catch up: Track our coverage of ICE-related corruption here, here and here.] So, we know the top issues for voters. But how are they feeling about heading to the polls in the first place? Trump and the U.S. Department of State have threatened to send ICE and FBI agents to polling sites, then subsequently denied that they would do so, in the name of “national security.” Despite the likelihood that deploying federal law enforcement to polling sites would be both a logistical nightmare and a deeply unconstitutional move, a tangible impact remains. “The narrative that the Trump administration is trying to construct is twofold. On the one hand, they’re saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want any noncitizen voting to happen at the polls.’ … [And on the other hand], they’re alleging that voting mechanisms themselves could be fraudulent. They have seen relative success in this bucket:  The FBI took 2020 election ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, earlier this year alleging — but not proving — voter fraud. That’s worrisome.” — Kelly Support This Week on ICE Podcast Yet in the administration’s long-tail pursuit of federal control of elections, Trump has been stymied on some major fights: Congress didn't pass the Save America Act, which would have required voters to prove their citizenship, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the U.S. Postal Service from imposing new rules on mail-in ballots, and the Justice Department has lost over a dozen lawsuits seeking to force states to turn over sensitive voter data. On your way out: Support our independent journalism. Individual pledges on Substack and Buy Me a Coffee from the TWOI community. Thank you to our supporters! Thanks to you, the community behind our reporting and analysis has grown by leaps and bounds: We are #38 among Substack newsletters in Mexico, a “rising” news and politics newsletter globally, and a recipient of reporting grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and Gold House. We’re incredibly grateful for all of your attention and dedication to a beat that we believe has become the most consequential in U.S. politics today. But we could use your help to keep our engine going. Pledge a donation here on Substack or via our Buy Me a Coffee page Forward this newsletter to a friend Email us at thisweekonice@gmail.com with tips, comments, collaborations or grant/funding opportunities to deepen our original, dogged reporting That’s it for us this week. You’re welcome to keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Oct 2

    Fractured is diving deep into the stories that matter most to detainees and immigrants

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. An ICE killing in Houston: On Tuesday, armed ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston, Texas, as he was driving a work crew to a homebuilding site. The killing has sparked an international incident, with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum vowing to pursue “legal measures” beyond mere diplomatic complaints. While fighting back tears during a press briefing on Thursday, Salgado Araujo’s 29-year-old son, Ronaldo Salgado, conveyed the grief and devastation experienced by his family:    “At 6:55, unbeknownst to all of us, my dad had been shot inside his van near the intersection of Wayside and Canal by ICE agents in unmarked cars. … By 8:35 a.m., I arrived in the East End to find Canal Street blocked off. I saw my dad's van, but no sign of him. I frantically called family, friends, loved ones to see if they can find any information. I saw a video posted on Facebook that he had been shot. I recognized him immediately, not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street bleeding out.” — Ronaldo Salgado [Catch up: The investigative team tracking the full story of ICE-linked deaths.] After being shot, Lorenzo died in a nearby hospital, incidentally the same hospital where Ronaldo was born. Locally, the League of United Latin American Citizens is offering a $5,000 reward for information and videos from witnesses to the shooting, and demanding an independent investigation along with other civil rights groups. “We know that a man is dead — a man who was in the process of pursuing U.S. citizenship, who had U.S. citizen children, who had never had a criminal conviction, and was a hardworking person his entire life. This is a guy who put his sons and a grandchild through college by building houses. And it’s an absolute tragedy.” — Matt Lorenzo is at least the eighth person killed by federal agents during enforcement actions since President Trump took office last year. Some news outlets, including The Guardian and L.A. Taco, documented Lorenzo’s killing as the tenth made by ICE officers. There’s much more to cover. Let’s get into it. Also on our radar: ICE just made 10,000 arrests in five days. Here’s what it says about DHS’s new calculus. Leaked ICE records show the agency arrested about 10,000 people between June 26 and June 30, a rate of roughly 2,000 people per day in cities across the United States. That’s nearly double the previously highest known rate of ICE arrests in December of 2025. Kelly brought us up to speed on the new DHS playbook. “[It] speaks to the shift in calculus between former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and the current DHS Secretary, Markwayne Mullin. [He] said himself: ‘My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day.’ It indicates these arrests are not going to happen in massive citywide surges like what we saw in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Rather, these arrests are going to happen everywhere, all at once.” — Kelly Meanwhile, quieter policy shifts are unfolding beneath the surface, many of them reflecting an expansive definition of what the government considers a national security threat. In March, the FBI expanded its national security concerns to include anti-capitalist or anti-Christian ideology, extremism related to migration, race, gender, and gender identity, as well as threats against ICE employees. [Catch up: We unpacked the FBI’s $166 million budget request, which hinges on a broader definition of “national security concerns.”] A Wired investigation published this week offers a glimpse into how that broader framework is being applied. The U.S. government’s Office of Professional Responsibility — an agency originally established to investigate internal government misconduct — has opened more than 130 cases involving individuals accused of doxxing or threatening ICE employees. The story leads with the case of Syracuse resident Paigelynne Gonyea, who was investigated after sharing an Instagram post that ICE alleged amounted to doxxing an agent. But her post simply cited a Minnesota Star Tribune article that had already publicly identified ICE agent Jonathan Ross in connection with the fatal shooting of Renee Good, raising questions about where authorities draw the line between the sharing of publicly reported information and conduct they consider an imminent threat. “When I think about DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullins’ promise that ICE will become a quieter organization, have quieter tactics, I think about the ways his department is building the legal and governmental infrastructure against those criticizing ICE. He’s laying the groundwork so that he can enact change in ways that we’re going to see explode in a matter of weeks to months.” — Kelly Support This Week on ICE Podcast Exclusive interview: Reagan Williams on the human rights crisis during Operation Metro Surge Kelly spoke with Reagan Williams,  who is a researcher in the Crisis, Conflict, and Arms  Division of Human Rights Watch. Her team just published a 180-page report that investigates the rash of human rights abuses at the hands of ICE officers deployed to  Minneapolis and St. Paul during Operation Metro  Surge between December 2025 and March. At around 22:19 of the episode, we talked about the most damning findings, and how ordinary citizens are demanding oversight. “People [in Minneapolis and St. Paul] were so terrorized by Operation Metro Surge that they restricted their movements, particularly immigrants and people of color. In some cases, sheltering in their homes for weeks or months. … All of this is leading to human rights abuses on a new scale, and I think, at this moment, requires rapid intervention by Congress to rein it in.” — Reagan [Catch up: Track our reporting of Operation Metro Surge here, here, and here.] On your way out: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s unexpected wedding guest On July 3, American pop star Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce were married at Madison Square Garden in New York. Amid the star-studded celebration, however, controversy emerged over one of the reported guests: Steven J. Dimitriou, executive chair of Amentum, the company that operates Camp East Montana, an ICE detention facility located at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. The facility is the nation’s largest ICE detention center and is situated on the grounds of a former World War II-era Japanese American internment camp. Fans of the couple have since speculated about why Dimitriou was included on the reported 1,000-person guest list. According to online speculation, Dimitriou is the adoptive father of Reggie King, reportedly one of Travis Kelce’s closest childhood friends, which could explain the connection. For now, however, neither Swift nor Kelce has publicly addressed his reported presence at the wedding. “In inviting this man, who runs and operates one of those brutal ICE detention facilities in this country, there is a nod to complicity that is particularly egregious, and one that I do feel is worthy of discussion amid everything else going on right now.” — Kelly That’s it for us this week. Please keep sending us your questions, comments, or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 24

    An ICE shooting in Texas — and a look inside a major SCOTUS immigration case

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. Support This Week on ICE Podcast The top line: An ICE shooting in Texas and an ICE attack on a U.S. Citizen in Illinois. On Sunday, ICE agents in Austin, Texas, rammed their vehicle into Venezuelan asylum seeker Wilber Rafael Garcés Perez as he was making a DoorDash Delivery. They then proceeded to shoot him at point blank range, injuring him. Miraculously, Perez survived but may be permanently paralyzed on one side of his body and remains in ICE detention at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas. But it’s not the only major incident of ICE-related violence this week. Days later, on Wednesday, ICE agents assaulted an unnamed U.S. citizen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois. After beating him severely, resulting in injuries to his head, neck, and teeth, the officers realized they had attempted to arrest the wrong person and abandoned him in the street. “The officer who shot Garcés Perez was reportedly new to the force, and he did not turn on his body camera. I feel like we're repeating ourselves on our show: While body cameras are part of the solution [to hold ICE accountable], there are also many problems with them. One of them being that officers can decide whether or not they want to turn them on.” — Matt The shooting of Garcés Perez in Texas marks the 20th reported ICE-involved shooting since the start of Trump’s second term. But a former guest of our show, Ava Sasani of The Trace, has come up with an even higher number under: By her count, there have been at least 31 ICE-involved shootings since January 2025. She also identified another 49 incidents in which ICE agents held bystanders, protesters, or others at gunpoint under questionable circumstances. Nine people were killed in these incidents, while another 15 people were injured. [Catch up: Listen to our interview with The Trace’s Ava Sasani on her investigation into ICE-involved shootings here.] A screenshot of The Trace’s tracking of gun-related incidents involving ICE agents as of Sept. 24, 2026. / Source: The Trace Support This Week on ICE Podcast Also on our radar: SCOTUS begins its new term next week. Here’s one major immigration case they’re poised to examine. The 2026-2027 U.S. Supreme Court term begins on October 5. Last season, the court handed down major decisions impacting the lived experience of immigrations, including ending Temporary Protected Status for many persecuted people such as Haitians and Syrians. They also ruled that the Trump administration could not eliminate birthright citizenship by executive action. Looking ahead, more immigrant rights hang in the balance.  On Sept. 11, the U.S. government proposed a new stand-in migrant detention case to the Supreme Court called Genalo v. DC. The Supreme Court dismissed the original detention case after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned the key migrant, making him no longer deportable. The new case, like the old one, will provoke a key question: At what point, if any, do non-citizens have the right to a bond hearing during a lengthy detention, and what must the government do to justify their detention, if anything?  “The U.S. government wants to believe that it can detain people for as long as it wants, without having to prove why they're there. At the heart of SCOTUS case is, actually, maybe you do need to prove why you’re detaining people, and why they're being detained for a prolonged period of time." — Kelly  Since the start of Trump 2.0, ICE agents have detained an average of 66,000 people per day nationwide, peeking in mid-January 2026 with over 73,000 people detained. The few pathways available for immigrants to be released from detention is if they volunteer to self-deport, they are deported, their case is dismissed, or — crucially — they're able to file a habeas corpus petition to challenge the lawfulness of their client's detention in federal courts. “ This is something that Robin Nice brought up when she was on our show recently. I asked her, ‘Is there any functional system for habeas corpus?’ And she said 'it's completely broken down and that the courts are completely overloaded.” — Matt Habeas filings have become a kind of “final domino” in defense of people detained by ICE. If the Supreme Court were to weigh against the favor of the U.S. Government , it may well open up the current habeas filings bottleneck. [Catch up: We spoke with Robin Nice twice to learn more about Trump’s immigration crackdown from a lawyer’s perspective. Listen to them here and here.] Support This Week on ICE Podcast On your way out: How to support our independent journalism. In the seven brief months we have been producing This Week on ICE, the community behind our reporting and analysis has grown leaps and bounds: We are #38 among Substack newsletters in Mexico, a “rising” news and politics newsletter globally, and the recipient of reporting grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and Gold House. We’re incredibly grateful for all of your attention and dedication to a beat that we believe has become the most consequential in U.S. politics today. But, we could use your help to keep our engine going. Pledge a donation here on Substack or via our Buy Me a Coffee page Forward this newsletter to a friend Email us at thisweekonice@gmail.com with tips, comments, collaborations or grant/funding opportunities to deepen our original, dogged reporting That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Sep 16

    New green card rule faces litigation — and a look inside an “unprecedented” Alligator Alcatraz report

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. Gute reise, Matt! — This Week on ICE co-host Matt Kendrick is headed to Vienna, Austria, this month to begin not one but two (2!) Master’s programs where we will study  East Asian society and culture. But don’t worry; he’s not going anywhere: Matt will still be a loyal co-host, an ace producer, and a grreat friend of the show,. Best of luck to you, Matt! We have important stories to cover today. Let’s get into it. The top story: DHS internal watchdog found “Alligator Alcatraz” violated numerous federal standards On Monday, a Department of Homeland Security internal watchdog called the Office of Inspector General (OIG), released a shocking new report describing egregious conditions at the now-closed “Alligator Alcatraz” ICE detention facility in Florida. OIG found that the open air, soft-tent-laden complex built upon an airstrip in the middle of the Everglades sequestered many detainees in cages the size of a phone booth; they also documented at least one case where a migrant was put in these small cages as a punishment. Many detainees were only allowed to shower three days a week in bathrooms that were infested with bugs and vermin, and while some were given small plastic cups to drink with, they had no means for cleaning the cups or accessing consistently clean drinking water.  “The particularly egregious aspect of this report is that the unannounced inspection was conducted in January. Then DHS held onto OIG’s findings and their recommendations for improvement of the facility this entire year. Six months after the inspection, in June, Alligator Alcatraz shut down. So, even in the final report that DHS published this week, OIG admitted that their recommendations to improve the facility are now moot.” — Kelly Support This Week on ICE Podcast [Catch up: Listen to our coverage of Alligator Alcatraz here, here, and here.] DHS officials placed much of the responsibility for the conditions of the facility on the State of Florida, despite it being constructed with billions of dollars in federal funds and managed by ICE agents, and despite several other ICE detention facilities — including Adelanto ICE Detention Facility in Los Angeles and Delany Hall in Newark, New Jersey — displaying similar conditions. Also on our radar: 22 states sue DHS for a new green card rule set to activate on Friday  A change to DHS’s “public charge” rule that would apply to green card applications could make it tougher for immigrants to obtain green cards if they use or are deemed likely to need public benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, or housing vouchers. In response, nearly two dozen states and local governments filed a lawsuit on Monday to challenge it, declaring the rule unlawful.  If the Trump administration gets its way, over 500,000 people stand to lose their green cards.  “This is just another legal tactic we have seen in this administration to reduce even the pathways to legal migration. This rule change goes well beyond the issue of undocumented migration or irregular migration. It's going much more into a nationalist space.” — Matt [Catch up: We speak to the author of a groundbreaking Cato Institute study that explains the economic benefit of both legal and uncodument immigrants remaining in the United States.] On your way out: Our grateful and honest reflections of 30 episodes of TWOI In the seven brief months we have been producing This Week on ICE, the community behind our reporting and analysis has grown leaps and bounds: We are #38 in Substack newsletters in Mexico, a “rising” news and politics newsletter globally, and the recipient of reporting grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and Gold House. We’re incredibly grateful for all of your attention and dedication to a beat that we believe has become the most consequential in American politics today. But, we could use your help to keep our engine going. Pledge a donation here on Substack or via our Buy Me a Coffee page Forward this newsletter to a friend Email us at thisweekonice@gmail.com with tips, comments, collaborations or grant/funding opportunities to deepen our original, dogged reporting Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Sep 9

    What an immigration lawyer wants you to know about ICE

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. An immigration lawyer answers your biggest questions — This week, we welcomed back immigration attorney Robyn Nice of McAfee & Nice Law in Boston to talk about how the rapidly changing immigration enforcement landscape is impacting attorneys, immigrants, and families. We encourage you to listen to the full episode, but we’ve included a few highlights below. [Catch up: Listen to our first interview with Robin Nice here.] Take action: How to help yourself and your neighbors when ICE comes knocking Robin lined up a few concrete steps we could all take to uplift our communities. If you find this helpful, share it with your networks. For immigrants and families: If Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has ended for your country of nationality (you can check here), seek qualified immigration legal assistance as soon as possible, and look into whether another immigration pathway is available, particularly asylum or another form of relief. Know your rights, including the right to remain silent and request an attorney. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center has a vast collection of helpful webinars on these rights. “Unless ICE is coming at you with a judicial warrant, which is signed by an actual judge, you don’t have to talk to them. … You can carry around evidence of your immigration status or your citizenship if you want to. … Just shut your mouth. Don’t open the door if you’re in your car or your house or your building . And ask for a warrant. If you say anything, say, ‘I want a warrant,’ or, ‘I want an attorney,’ and that’s it.” — Robin Support This Week on ICE Podcast Do not assume that having lawful documents or a pending immigration case will prevent detention. Recent data reveal that ICE held over 65,000 in detention, with more than 70 percent having no criminal conviction. Reliable month-to-month ICE data tracking this can be found here. If detained or facing deportation, ask an attorney about possible federal court remedies, including challenges involving detention or due process. For nonimmigrant members of the public Learn basic immigration-rights information and share reliable resources with your community. On this show, we love the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the Immigrant Defense Project, and the National Immigration Law Center. Look for reputable local organizations offering immigration-rights training. We have attended the Hands Off NYC trainings and a smattering of other local NYC immigrant-rights workshops. “The immigrants themselves get exhausted. The number of times I’ve had clients just tell me, ‘I just don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t feel welcome here. … The barriers are huge.” — Robin Support nonprofits financially or help cover legal filing fees for people who cannot afford them. Consider volunteering in support of people at immigration courts, detention/processing centers, and community organizations. It is your First Amendment right to document ICE activity in a public space without interfering with enforcement operations. Support This Week on ICE Podcast On your way out: To close out our show, we asked Robin how she stays afloat when seemingly every option for immigrants and their families is being pushed to its limit. While Robin worries things will “get worse before they get better,” she has been putting more stock “in seeing those little glimmers of hope.” “It’s the judge who buys his own box of tissues because the court-provided ones either don’t exist or are too scratchy. … Judges who post a call for all immigration judges to resign. It’s talking to people who talk back in master hearings and push back on the judges when they’re deporting children or giving them a hard time. Every single one of those is just what sustains me. I think I have become more appreciative of those little tiny bits of human kindness or just humanity in general.” — Robin That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Sep 2

    An ICE surge in Springfield, and a third-country deportation gambit in Africa

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. An “ask me anything” with immigration lawyer Robin Nice. — Next week, we’re inviting a former This Week on ICE guest and seasoned immigration lawyer Robin Nice to answer your most pressing questions about how immigrants are building their best defense against ICE surveillance, arrest, detention and deportation. Email us at thisweekonice@gmail.com with your questions before this Thursday, Sep. 3, at 3 pm ET, and we’ll incorporate them into our chat. There’s a lot to cover this week. Let’s get into it. Support This Week on ICE Podcast The top line: A new ICE surge in Springfield, OH On July 27, the Department of Homeland Security ended Temporary Protected Status for Haiti, Syria and Yemen — which allowed hundreds of thousands of people from these countries to live and work legally in the U.S. due to their home countries experiencing immense turmoil. Since then, federal immigration officers have surged in communities with large populations of people from these countries, including Springfield, which boasts between 10,000 and 15,000 Haitian refugees. We talked about the new frontline of ICE’s ongoing surveillance, detention and deportation scheme — including a surge in the use of ankle monitors. “This is a narrative decision. Springfield is not a place where the most Haitian refugees are located in the country. …  [The ICE surge is happening here] to undergird the racist misinformation Trump had said of Haitians during his 2024 presidential campaign. If he’s able to go into Springfield and the surrounding towns and arrest and deport a bunch of Haitians, he could then demonstrate to his base, ‘Look at what we did to make your country so-called ‘safe.’” — Kelly [Catch up: Inside the class action lawsuit attempting to protect immigrants from mandatory ankle monitors.] Support This Week on ICE Podcast Springfield and its surrounding towns are not the only places experiencing heightened ICE activity. Since June, immigrants across the five New York City boroughs — especially Queens, where the immigrant population is significant — have reported increased ICE activity. At 16:05, Kelly explained the current playbook ICE is using in the Big Apple. An “ICE Sighting Map” from NYC ICE Breaker [Catch up: We discussed a potential Springfield ICE surge in February. You can listen to that episode here.] Also on our radar: The Trump administration’s third-country deportation gambit in Africa Over a 10-day period last month, the Trump administration sent more than 100 deportees to eight countries across Africa, expanding its "third-country" deportation campaign. At 21:12, Matt explained  the scope of the government’s clandestine agreements with countries like Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Eswatini, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. “These agreements would allow the U.S. to deport people who are not from those countries to those countries. And this month really seems to be the month where all of these things kicked off.” — Matt [Catch up: We sat down with Refugees International to discuss the legal wrinkles in these third-country agreements and their human impact here and here.] Interview: A new Trump rule will make it harder for foreign journalists to work in the country. This labor union is suing DHS to fight back. Support This Week on ICE Podcast At 26:37, we sit down with Jon Schleuss, who is the president of The NewsGuild-CWA. The union has joined a coalition challenging a new DHS rule that changes how long international students, exchange visitors and foreign journalists can remain in the United States. The lawsuit argues that DHS exceeded its authority. If the rule is put into force on Sep. 15 as planned, the student and exchange visa periods would be no longer than four years, and the visa for journalists — which currently can last years — would be up to just 240 days or, in ​the case of Chinese nationals, only 90 days. Legal experts warn this new rule would be "catastrophic" for universities. Jon says this new rule is “an attack on journalists.”  “ It’s all part of a large, disturbed authoritarian push to try and silence a free press.” — Jon [Catch up: Listen to our episodes covering ICE’s threat to First Amendment freedoms here and here.] That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt P.S. - We’re building a community with official TWOI Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts. Give us a follow if you’d like to get to know other fans of the show! Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

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Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

A weekly podcast covering the latest developments of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies, hosted by journalists Kelly Kimball and Matthew Kendrick. thisweekonice.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Team TWOI
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © This Week On ICE
  • Show Website
    This Week On ICE

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