“Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s plan to use border funds for an almost $300 million luxury jet fleet has horrified top Trump officials,” Axios reports.

“Until last year, DHS owned zero luxury jets. Soon it could have three.”

McKay Coppins: “On a winter night last year, shortly after Donald Trump was sworn into office, senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security assembled discreetly at a private home in Washington, D.C., to discuss what they saw as a gathering crisis inside the agency: the relationship between their new boss, Kristi Noem, and Corey Lewandowski, her adviser, enforcer, and rumored boyfriend.”

“The officials were under enormous pressure. Trump had recaptured the presidency amid a popular backlash against illegal immigration, and had promised a shock-and-awe program of mass deportations once he returned to power. Now DHS—conceived after 9/11 to protect the country from terrorist attacks—was being ordered to shift its focus and resources toward delivering on the president’s campaign pledge. This project, already controversial and logistically fraught, was being complicated by Lewandowski—a menacing, omnipresent operator who had no experience in immigration enforcement, but who was nonetheless quickly consolidating power at the agency.”

“The officials had gathered that night to map the ways his relationship with Noem could destabilize the department. The conversation ran six hours.”

“Republicans inside the White House and around the country spent Wednesday amplifying a clip that they hope will become a campaign salvo in this year’s midterm elections,” the Washington Post reports.

“The moment, about an hour into President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday, was conceived by Trump and his top advisers as a trap for Democratic lawmakers, asking them to stand if they agree that ‘the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.'”

“The effort to highlight the contrast between Republicans’ robust clapping and Democrats’ decision to stay in their seats began immediately on social media and carried into Wednesday, as House Republicans’ campaign arm held meetings to discuss how they could use the moment in ads.”

“A federal judge in Boston ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration’s policy of deporting undocumented immigrants to countries where they are not citizens is unconstitutional, saying the government must provide more time for people to legally challenge their removals over concerns that they could face imminent danger,” the Washington Post reports.

“A former instructor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday accused the agency of dramatically slashing training standards for new officers and lying to Congress about it as the Trump administration seeks to rapidly expand its mass deportation operation,” the Washington Post reports.

Arizona Republicans want to require ICE officers to be stationed at polling places this year, the Arizona Mirror reports.

This week, the Arizona Senate will take up a proposal to force all 15 of the state’s counties to sign an agreement with ICE “to provide for a federal immigration law enforcement presence at each location within this state where ballots are cast or deposited.”

Approval of President Trump’s immigration policies fell to the lowest level since his return to the White House — 37% — amid signs he is losing support among American men on the issue, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Top ICE officials knew as early as March of last year that officers were using dramatically more force against civilians and the targets of their enforcement operations, Politico reports.

A federal judge ruled that ICE cannot re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, the AP reports.

“One of the Trump administration’s most vocal defenders of its aggressive immigration crackdown is leaving as public opinion sours against the hardline approach,” Politico reports.

“Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s spokesperson, is expected to inform colleagues Tuesday about her plans.”

Time: “Trump campaigned in 2024 on overseeing ‘the largest deportation in the history of our country.’ He has frequently said that his Administration is deporting ‘the worst of the worst criminals.’ Yet those two goals have proven to be incompatible.”

“In reality, tens of thousands of people with no criminal record or pending criminal charges have been being pulled off the streets by immigration agents and put into detention centers. If that pattern were to stop, the Trump Administration’s deportation stats would likely plummet.”

The federal courts have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that the Trump administration has detained immigrants unlawfully, “a sweeping legal rebuke of Trump’s immigration crackdown” as the administration continues to hold some immigrants despite court orders, Reuters reports.

Former President Barack Obama criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ conduct in Minnesota as dangerous, saying “the rogue behavior” is akin to what “we’ve seen in authoritarian countries” and “in dictatorships,” CNN reports.

He added that American citizens should be commended for engaging in “peaceful protests and shining a light on the sort of behavior that, in the past, we’ve seen in authoritarian countries and we’ve seen in dictatorships, but we have not seen in America.”

ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said that two federal agents appear to have lied about an incident last month in Minneapolis that ended with one of them shooting a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg, Politico reports.

The two officers are under investigation by the Justice Department.

“A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Trump administration has been violating the rights of people detained by ICE in Minnesota, saying the agency had stashed them in an ill-equipped, overcrowded facility without access to attorneys,” Politico reports.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants,” the Washington Post reports.