Greetings. This installment of immigration disclosures highlights a Wall Street Journal article discussing the Council’s lawsuit on the transfers of individuals in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, a new production from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on the suspension of processing green card applications for refugees and asylees, new productions received from our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on the Family Expedited Removal Management Program (FERM), and new FOIA requests with ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) to seek the agencies’ policies for arrests occurring at immigration courts throughout the country.
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Frequent transfers between detention centers, across the country or to multiple locations in a few days, has become more prominent during this second Trump administration. Migrants in detention are disappearing into a detention system that often obstructs their ability to access counsel or other important resources. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the effects of ICE transfers and highlighted the Council’s recent lawsuit to try to get records on updates to ICE’s transfer policies. Read about our lawsuit here.
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"We’ve seen the weaponization of these transfers from areas where individuals may be more likely to access resources like attorney help. Where they may be closer to family," said Raul Pinto, a deputy legal director for the American Immigration Council, which is suing to try to get records on any updates to ICE transfer policies. Read the WSJ article here.
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In April 2025, the Council and AILA filed FOIA requests with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USCIS following media reports that the agencies had stopped processing green card applications filed by refugees and asylees. As part of this ongoing litigation, USCIS disclosed key information. One email dated March 21, 2025, confirms the suspension “a temporary hold on ‘all’ asylee/refugee I-485 adjudication.” A second email dated April 10, 2025, from the Field Operations Directorate (FOD) Associate Director to FOD Leadership, states that FOD is lifting the temporary pause, a fact that was not reported by the agencies or the media. Read our FOIA request and take a look at the new productions here.
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In November 2023, the Council filed a FOIA request with ICE and CBP on information about ICE’s FERM. During its implementation, the program required heads of households to be placed in ankle monitors to ensure families enrolled attended their credible fear interview among other restrictions. The Council filed a lawsuit in April 2024 to compel disclosure of the records. The Council has now published all documents obtained through the lawsuit on our website, which includes confirmation that people enrolled in FERM may have been paroled into the United States for urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons. Take a look at our documents here.
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The Council Seeks Records About Immigration Court Arrests and Corresponding Case Dismissals |
Between July 28, 2025, and July 29, 2025, the Council and LatinoJustice PRLDEF filed 11 requests under FOIA with ICE and EOIR seeking to uncover policies, communications, other information on arrests happening at immigration court, and dismissal of immigration proceedings. The requests seek to understand the extent to which ICE prosecutors and EOIR immigration judges retain discretion to consider dismissal on a case-by-case basis and assess the extent to which ICE and EOIR are coordinating arrests and dismissals.
In May 2025, ICE began arresting noncitizens at their court hearings and asking immigration judges to dismiss their court cases so that they could funnel noncitizens into expedited removal, which has fewer due process protections. Reports suggest that the agency initially targeted individuals whose immigration cases had been dismissed by the immigration judges at the government’s request. But ICE has since started to arrest people with pending court cases too.
These arrests have prompted massive public outcry, media interest, and concern that ICE and EOIR—the agency that administers immigration courts—are engaged in a coordinated effort to deprive immigrants of due process and deport them. Hundreds of people have been protesting arrests outside immigration courts across the country while others, including clergy and some political leaders, are accompanying noncitizens to their immigration court appointments to try to prevent their arrest, document arrests that occur, and help arrestees inform their families before ICE removes them.
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Access to these records is critical to inform the ongoing public debate about ICE arrests in immigration courts.
- Communications between agency officials may show whether the courts have improperly played a role in the Trump administration’s mass deportation regime.
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government accountable on immigration issues. We harness freedom of information requests, litigation, and advocacy to expose the wrongdoing and promote transparency within immigration agencies. Make a donation today.
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