Sarah Stillman: “The Trump Administration is deporting people to countries they have no ties to, where many are being detained indefinitely or forcibly returned to the places they fled.”

“A federal judge Wednesday ordered the release of more than 300 people detained by the federal government as part of the federal immigration enforcement operations being conducted in the Chicago area,” Politico reports.

“Joe Ceballos has been winning elections in this tiny ranching town for more than a decade, securing his second mayoral term in a landslide earlier this month,” the Washington Post reports.

“But Ceballos’s version of the American Dream — a Mexican immigrant who became an integral part of a close-knit Kansas community — has run smack into a newer American phenomenon: the aggressive prosecution of alleged voter fraud by noncitizens.”

A new New York Times/KFF survey of immigrants — both documented and undocumented, and varying widely in how and when they arrived — “found that about half of all immigrants say they feel less safe since President Trump took office.”

“Still, large majorities also say their own future, and that of their children, remains bright, with the concept of the American dream retaining its powerful appeal. About 70 percent said that if they could go back in time, they would still make the choice to migrate to the United States.”

Charlotte Observer: “About 15 to 20 church members were doing yard work on the property off Albemarle Road while their children played games and their spouses cooked meals. Agents parked just outside a closed gate leading to the church parking lot and ran into the yard…”

“The agents asked no questions and showed no identification before taking one man away, whose wife and child were inside at the time… They attempted to grab others, too.”

“The Department of Homeland Security has diverted thousands of federal agents from their normal duties to focus on arresting undocumented immigrants, undermining a wide range of law enforcement operations in response to mounting pressure from President Trump,” the New York Times reports.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told McKay Coppins that ICE agents should refuse unlawful orders. 

KELLY: Don’t have bad interactions with people. Do the job in a respectful way and follow the law. By the way, you don’t have to follow unlawful orders. That’s true for the military. I think it’s true for federal law enforcement, too. Nobody can tell you to break the law. You can’t be told to violate people’s constitutional rights. People have to stand up and say, no, I’m not going to do that.

COPPINS: Would you like to see more of that among ICE agents?

KELLY: Yeah, of course I would. I’d like to see them wearing an ID, not wearing masks and telling Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem that we will follow the law and there are limits to what we will do.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has instructed U.S. diplomats to consider obesity alongside various chronic medical conditions as among the reasons to reject foreigners seeking U.S. visas, Politico reports.

The Trump Organization requested 184 foreign workers to work across various company properties, a record number that has increased over the years, The Hill reports.

“America’s Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday rebuked the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign in a rare and near-unanimous statement that framed the immigration crisis in starkly moral terms,” the New York Times reports.

“As the Trump administration intensifies a nationwide mass deportation campaign, immigrant parents are scrambling to secure emergency caretakers for their children — flooding legal clinics and naming friends, acquaintances or teachers as temporary guardians,” the Washington Post reports.

“Pressure from the White House to speed up the pace of deportations has spawned infighting at the Department of Homeland Security over which tactics to use to remove more people from the U.S.,“ the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Longtime immigration officials, led by President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and Todd Lyons, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, want to rely on traditional methods including using police research to develop target lists, and to give priority to people with criminal histories…”

“Their approach has collided with that of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and top adviser Corey Lewandowski, who have opted for large, attention-grabbing operations such as the one in Chicago that are meant to push migrants to self-deport.”

“As President Trump’s federal agents conduct large immigration raids in Democratic cities, New York City has watched with apprehension, wondering when the president might set his sights on his hometown,” the New York Times reports.

“This week, Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor appeared to solidify the worry that the city is careening along an uncertain collision course, between a White House spoiling for a fight and a young democratic socialist eager to serve as a progressive bulwark.”

Pope Leo called for “deep reflection” on how migrants are treated in the United States, where he said many people were deeply affected by the controversial policy of mass deportation, the BBC reports.

Speaking in English, and reaching a U.S. audience directly, he reiterated the Catholic belief that every Christian will ultimately be judged on how they welcomed “the foreigner.”

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.”