#immigration

The New York State Capitol in Albany, seat of the legislature that passed the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, photographed in 2019.

Immigration enforcement

Federal judge refuses to block New York's ban on sheriff deals with ICE

The Harris County Criminal Justice Center, the county's criminal court building, in Houston, Texas.

Immigration enforcement

A Houston grand jury indicts an ICE officer who struck a Mexican construction worker with his SUV

The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C., in 2014.

Justice Department charges 63 people with election crimes one day before the midterms

The sign outside the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, headquarters of the US Department of Health and Human Services, in Washington, DC, in October 2026.

Health coverage

Obamacare sign-ups open for 2027 with premiums up about 13% and refugees and TPS holders cut off from subsidies

An ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations team during an arrest in Boynton Beach, Florida, in January 2025.

Immigration enforcement

More than 29,000 state and local officers are now deputized to enforce immigration law, over twice ICE's own deportation force

A vehicle-mounted Active Denial System, the U.S. military's directed-energy "heat ray," in an Air Force photograph from 2007.

Pentagon lends its "heat ray" to Homeland Security for seven months of testing at the southern border

The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, the agency's headquarters in Washington, in March 2026.

Midterm elections

Justice Department asks a judge to set aside 20,000 California ballots, and Los Angeles County says the list is unreliable

The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, the headquarters of the U.S. Justice Department, in Washington, D.C., in 2026.

Midterm elections

The Justice Department sues California to keep 20,000 mail ballots uncounted, 19 days before the midterms

The Supreme Court building in Washington, seen from the Library of Congress in 2023.

The Supreme Court takes up the case of a Brazilian jailed without a bond hearing after a decade in the United States

The west facade of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., at dusk, in 2011.

Supreme Court lets third-country deportations resume and will hear the case in December

The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston, seat of the First Circuit Court of Appeals, in September 2024.

Appeals court ban on third-country deportations takes effect, and the administration runs to the Supreme Court

The sign outside the Harry S Truman Building, the State Department's headquarters in Washington, D.C., in December 2025.

Brazilians are among the 43,000 immigrant visa refusals the United States now has to reopen

Court blocks the rule that would have capped foreign students at four years in the United States

President Donald Trump's official portrait, released by the White House in 2025. His administration's new public charge rule took effect on September 18, 2026.

Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C. sue to stop the public charge rule now in force

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers make an arrest during a vehicle stop in Manassas, Virginia, in April 2022. Archive photo; not the Austin incident.

Immigration enforcement

ICE agent shoots Venezuelan delivery driver in Austin, and the government's account clashes with his lawyer's

President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on September 4, 2026. He signed the H-1B order and proclamation two weeks later, on September 18.

Trump renews the $100,000 H-1B fee for another year — a fee the courts have already voided