U.S. Immigration & National Security March 2025-

PROTECTING THE UNITED STATES FROM FOREIGN TERRORISTS
AND OTHER NATIONAL SECURITY AND PUBLIC SAFETY THREATS

‘Can I travel?’: U.S. green-card holders cancel trips, on edge after detentions
Lawful permanent residents fear they are not immune from President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
(WaPo) Several recent federal enforcement actions against green-card holders have gained widespread notoriety and cast a cloud of fear and anxiety over many of the nation’s estimated 12.8 million lawful permanent residents whose legal rights to live and work in the country once gave them confidence that they were immune from President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The number of confirmed detentions appears limited to a handful of highly publicized incidents, including the arrests of a pair of campus activists in New York, a German national returning to New England from an overseas trip, and a Filipina woman in Seattle who has lived in the United States for three decades.

26 March
HELL ON EARTH
Inside the Trump Regime’s Mass Detention Nightmare—Where Women Are Chained, Men Die in Custody, and the Machine Keeps Grinding
(Closer to the Edge) Three people are now dead in ICE custody. Three. In just over a month. Genry Ruiz-Guillen, 29, from Honduras, died January 23. Serawit Gezahegn Dejene, 45, from Ethiopia, died January 29. Maksym Chernyak, 44, from Ukraine, died February 20.
No convictions. No due process. No protection. Just death under fluorescent lights.
And while the bodies pile up, the architects of this system are laughing.
Tom Homan—now officially Trump’s Border Czar—is no longer just shouting from Fox News panels. He’s in charge. And he’s promising “deportations every day,” vowing to expel millions. He’s pushing to build new detention camps on military bases and at Guantanamo Bay, to outsource incarceration to local jails, and to lower federal detention standards across the board. He wants to hand over human lives to any sheriff with a cage and a budget. This isn’t law enforcement—it’s a national purge.
… ICE has 46,269 people in custody—far above its legal bed count of 41,500. Congress just rewarded them with another $430 million. Detention centers are overflowing. Guards are whispering, “It shouldn’t be like this.” But they keep turning the key. They keep locking the doors.
Because this system wasn’t designed to rehabilitate. It wasn’t designed to deter. It was designed to break people.
And it’s working.

25 March
DHS suspends green card processing for refugees, asylees
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it is pausing review of green card applications for some refugees and asylees, leaving in limbo those who came to the U.S. after fleeing unrest.
The directive from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) would impact refugees already approved to come to the United States, as well as those who were granted asylum after petitioning for the protection in immigration court.

Lawyers advise Canadians working in U.S. to avoid travel amid border crackdown
(Globe & Mail) U.S. immigration lawyers are warning foreigners working and studying in America – including Canadians – to refrain from international travel, saying that crossing the U.S. border has become significantly more unpredictable since U.S. President Donald Trump took office and that they run the risk of being detained or refused entry.
Don’t visit the US – it just isn’t worth the risks right now
Arwa Mahdaw
Minor visa infractions have seen tourists detained, shackled and deported by overzealous US border staff. There are many more welcoming places to go on holiday
(The Guardian) There have been a number of recent incidents where white westerners – people who aren’t normally targeted by overzealous US immigration authorities – have been detained, deported or denied entry for obscure reasons.
Take the 28-year-old Welsh artist Rebecca Burke, for example. She was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) for 19 days in what her father described as “horrendous conditions”. Now, to be fair, Burke had the wrong paperwork: she hadn’t realised that she needed a working visa instead of a tourist visa in order to exchange domestic chores for accommodation with a host family. But getting imprisoned for almost three weeks over a mix-up and then being led on to a deportation flight – in chains! – back to a country that is supposedly a close ally, is obviously extreme. A Canadian woman also made headlines after being detained by Ice for two weeks when immigration enforcement officers flagged her visa application paperwork. And two German tourists were similarly held for almost two weeks in a detention centre.
19 March
Jasmine Mooney: I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped
I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky

13-15 March
Judge blocks Trump administration from implementing Alien Enemies Act
(The Hill) A federal judge expanded his ruling temporarily blocking the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 on Saturday preventing the removal of Venezuelan undocumented immigrants presumed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
The order issued by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg will halt deportations for all individuals deemed eligible for removal under President Trump’s proclamation for 14 days as a result of the lawsuit filed by Democracy Forward and the ACLU.
Trump Wants to Speed Up Deportations With Alien Enemies Act: What to Know
(NYT) President Trump is planning to invoke an obscure wartime authority in the coming days to rapidly accelerate the deportation of immigrants from the United States, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump could invoke the law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, as soon as Friday.
What is the Alien Enemies Act Trump invoked to speed deportations?
(The Hill) President Trump is invoking an 18th-century wartime law that will allow the federal government to detain or deport people who are natives and citizens of countries deemed foreign adversaries — a move that’s seen as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown effort.
The Alien Enemies Act — part of the Alien and Sedition Acts that Congress adopted in 1798 — gives the federal government additional authority to regulate non-citizens in times of war. It has been used just three times in the past, during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, as the Congressional Research Service detailed in a February report.

15 March
B.C. woman detained by U.S. immigration officials for nearly 2 weeks returns home
A statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week said [Jasmine] Mooney was detained because she did not have legal documentation to be in the country.
The agency said she was processed in accordance with U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order that subjected “all aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law” to possible arrest.
Canadian woman detained by ICE being used as ‘example,’ immigration experts warn
Immigration experts are warning Canadians to make sure they have the correct forms and documentation if they want to cross the border into the United States..
Jasmine Mooney, originally from Vancouver, tried to enter the U.S. from Mexico at the San Diego border last Monday.
“I was reapplying for my work visa and with no warning about what was about to happen I was taken by ICE”… Mooney was applying for a TN Visa, which is a nonimmigrant visa that allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the United States in specific professional occupations.

Trump’s Immigration Machine: Turning Legal Residents into Targets
(Closer to the edge) …the immigration system under Donald Trump’s second term is no longer just about catching criminals. It’s about breaking people — legal residents, green card holders, people who once believed they were safe.
Schmidt’s detention wasn’t some rogue act by an overzealous ICE agent. It’s part of a calculated effort to expand immigration enforcement beyond the undocumented population and into a new class of targets: lawful residents who, under the right circumstances, can be just as vulnerable.
[His] story is one example in a growing pattern — one where green card holders are facing aggressive scrutiny, detentions, and deportation threats over things that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow five years ago.
If Schmidt’s ordeal felt arbitrary, Mahmoud Khalil’s situation was outright political. A Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University and a lawful U.S. resident, Khalil became a target after participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The system doesn’t need you to break a major law anymore. Trump’s immigration crackdown has turned green card holders into potential targets for things as small as missing a court notice or being affiliated with the wrong political cause.
Even Canadian snowbirds…staying more than 30 days in the U.S. are now required to register with immigration authorities. The warning? Failure to comply could result in deportation or reentry bans — a thinly veiled threat wrapped in bureaucratic language.

How a Columbia Student Fled to Canada After ICE Came Looking for Her
Ranjani Srinivasan’s student visa was revoked by U.S. immigration authorities. That was just the start of her odyssey.
(NYT) Ms. Srinivasan, a Fulbright recipient who was pursuing a doctoral degree in urban planning, was caught in the dragnet of President Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrators through the use of federal immigration powers. She is one of a handful of noncitizens that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has targeted at Columbia in recent days.

14 March
Draft List for New Travel Ban Proposes Trump Target 43 Countries
A draft circulating inside the administration lists three tiers of countries whose citizens may face restrictions on entering the United States.
(NYT) A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said.
Officials at embassies and in regional bureaus at the State Department, and security specialists at other departments and intelligence agencies, have been reviewing the draft. They are providing comment about whether descriptions of deficiencies in particular countries are accurate or whether there are policy reasons — like not risking disruption to cooperation on some other priority — to reconsider including some.
The draft proposal also included an “orange” list of 10 countries for which travel would be restricted but not cut off. In those cases, affluent business travelers might be allowed to enter, but not people traveling on immigrant or tourist visas.

Almost 100 arrested during protest occupying Trump Tower over Mahmoud Khalil
Demonstrators led by Jewish Voice for Peace demanding release of Palestinian activist stood in US president’s New York City building.
9-10 March
Trump warns that arrest of Palestinian activist at Columbia will be ‘first of many’
(AP) — President Donald Trump warned Monday that the arrest and possible deportation of a Palestinian activist who helped lead protests at Columbia University will be the first “of many to come” as his administration cracks down on campus demonstrations against Israel and the war in Gaza.
Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful U.S. resident who was a graduate student at Columbia until December, was detained Saturday by federal immigration agents in New York and flown to an immigration jail in Louisiana.
Immigration agents arrest Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University protests
(AP) — Federal immigration authorities arrested a Palestinian activist Saturday who played a prominent role in Columbia University’s protests against Israel, a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s pledge to detain and deport student activists.
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until this past December, was inside his university-owned apartment Saturday night when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told The Associated Press.
Greer said she spoke by phone with one of the ICE agents during the arrest, who said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that instead, according to the lawyer.
Khalil’s arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined protests against the war in Gaza that swept college campuses last spring. The administration has claimed participants forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting Hamas.

Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order Reaches the Supreme Court
Trump administration lawyers asked the justices to limit the sweep of decisions by three lower courts that issued nationwide pauses on the policy.
(NYT) Lawyers for President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift a nationwide pause imposed on the president’s order ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreign residents.
The move represents the first time the legal wrangling over the president’s order to end birthright citizenship has reached the Supreme Court. If the Trump administration succeeds, the policy could immediately go into effect in some parts of the country.
Three federal courts, in Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington State, had issued directives temporarily pausing the order, which was signed by Mr. Trump on his first day in office and declared that citizenship would be denied to babies who do not have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.

7-10 March
Snowbirds, take note: The U.S. says these foreign nationals must register
Foreign nationals visiting the U.S. for more than 30 days will have to register with the government in order to avoid penalties, a shift that could impact millions of Canadians who head south every year, including snowbirds.
The rule was part of U.S. President Donald Trump‘s “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order, which he signed on Jan. 20 and applies to anyone who isn’t a permanent resident.
Failure to comply could result in criminal or civil penalties, the post reads.
… ‘Canadians who have entered by land and are in the United States for 30 days or more [must register].’”
That includes the approximately one million Canadian snowbirds who often travel to warmer destinations in the U.S. to escape the cold, according to the Canadian Snowbirds Association.