President Trump defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in American cities in a 60 Minutes interview.

Said Trump: “I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back… by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama.”

When questioned about his approval of the tactics in these raids, Trump said: “Yeah, because you have to get the people out.”

“It’s one of the most thorough legal rebukes in recent memory,” Politico reports.

“More than 100 federal judges have now ruled at least 200 times that the Trump administration’s effort to systematically detain immigrants facing possible deportation appeared to violate their rights or was just flatly illegal.”

“The rulings come from judges appointed by every president since Ronald Reagan, including 12 appointed by President Donald Trump. One of those appointees took the bench just last month.”

“A federal judge took Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to task Monday for their incendiary, out-of-court statements about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran native who was illegally deported from the U.S. to his home country before being brought back to face immigrant-smuggling charges,” Politico reports.

“U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled the Trump Cabinet members violated a local court rule limiting comments by government officials relating to an ongoing criminal case.”

A new memo from centrist think tank Third Way finds an “electorate caught between two unsatisfying extremes: the cruelty of Trump’s policies and the perception that Democrats can’t maintain order at the border,” Politico reports.

“Support for Republicans’ handling of immigration slightly dropped from the last polling in March to September, down to 56% from 62%. But trust for Republicans’ handling of border security held steady at 66%.”

Democrats, meanwhile, “made modest but significant gains: their 30-point deficit on trust in immigration shrank to 20 points. Yet, the 40-point deficit on border security persisted. That’s a crucial distinction — because while voters are softening in their views toward Trump and his party on immigration overall, they still don’t trust Democrats to manage the border responsibly.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) admitted during a podcast that President Joe Biden failed to establish “a secure border” where President Donald Trump succeeded, the Washington Examiner reports.

Said Sanders: “I don’t like Trump, you know, but we should have a secure border. And it ain’t that hard to do. Biden didn’t do it. Those before him did not do it.”

He added: “We should have a secure border period. I think most people in the Congress agree with that.”

“Gov. JB Pritzker said Thursday he would establish an independent commission to document aggressive federal immigration enforcement in Illinois and use the findings to hold agents and officials accountable,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Washington Post: “If the administration succeeds, almost all people admitted to the U.S. as refugees — as many as 7,000 from a maximum potential pool of 7,500 — could be Afrikaners, a group not traditionally eligible for the program but one that President Donald Trump says has been tyrannized by South Africa’s Black majority.”

“Erez Reuveni, a fired Department of Justice lawyer who’s now blowing the whistle, says he witnessed a disregard of due process and for the rule of law at the DOJ,” CBS News reports.

“Reuveni previously won commendations for his work and was so effective defending President Trump’s first-term immigration policy that he was promoted quickly in Mr. Trump’s second term. But he says he was put on leave and then fired after refusing to sign a brief in the mistaken deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.”

“Members of Congress are growing incensed with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, claiming that necessary government contracts are being slow-walked and that her office has become difficult to communicate with,” NOTUS reports.

“This frustration among the Republican conference on the Hill has made its way to both GOP leadership and administration officials, sources told NOTUS. It’s reaching a boiling point.”

ProPublica: “The government doesn’t track how many citizens are held by immigration agents. We found more than 170 cases this year where citizens were detained at raids and protests.”

“More than 20 citizens have reported being held for over a day without being able to call their loved ones or a lawyer. In some cases their families couldn’t find them.”

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the Trump administration Thursday to block steep new fees in the H-1B visa program, in its first legal action against the administration this term,” the Washington Post reports.

“The chamber’s lawsuit alleges that Trump’s new $100,000 visa fees for the H-1B program, widely used by Silicon Valley, violates the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

“Federal immigration officers in the Chicago area will be required to wear body cameras, a judge said Thursday after seeing tear gas and other aggressive steps used against protesters,” the AP reports.

“The Trump administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans and Europeans who oppose migration,” the New York Times reports.

“The proposals, some of which already have gone into effect, would transform a decades-old program aimed at helping the world’s most desperate people into one that conforms to Mr. Trump’s vision of immigration — which is to help mostly white people who say they are being persecuted while keeping the vast majority of other people out.”

“The State Department said it has revoked the visas of at least six people for their comments on the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The agency revoked visas from nationals of countries including Argentina, South Africa and Mexico… The department didn’t say if the people were in the country at the time their visas were revoked, and didn’t specify what kinds of visas they held or when the visas were revoked.”

“The Trump administration is asking the public to trust its math on what it promised would be the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history,” Axios reports.

“The Department of Homeland Security has used a highly unorthodox approach to reach its stunning figure of 2 million undocumented immigrants ‘removed or self-deported’ since Inauguration Day.”

Key takeaway: “80% of that total (1.6 million) is on the ‘self-deported’ side, based on government survey data that experts warn should be viewed with skepticism.”