Human Impact Project

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended work authorization for approximately 350,000 Haitian immigrants with Temporary Protected Status by 14 days to July 24, following the Supreme Court's decision in June to allow the Trump administration to terminate Haiti's TPS designation. Despite the extension, many employers have already suspended employees without pay and issued notices telling workers not to return, citing the impending end of TPS protections. Community advocates and healthcare workers express deep anxiety about imminent deportations to Haiti, which is experiencing escalating violence and a humanitarian emergency.

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU released a joint 84-page report documenting systemic abuse at Camp East Montana, an immigration detention facility at Fort Bliss with capacity for 5,000 people. The investigation, based on interviews with 80 people detained there from October 2025 to June 2026, found widespread cruel and degrading conditions, including detainees held indoors for weeks without sunlight, housed in cramped pods with up to 72 people, bathrooms covered in feces, no access to hygiene supplies, inconsistent meals with spoiled food, and beatings by masked guards in response to hunger strikes, medical requests, and complaints. Researchers documented severe medical neglect, including prolonged delays in treatment, interruptions in prescribed medications, and inadequate medical assessments. More than 60 people interviewed said they were arrested despite displaying documentation of lawful presence, and detainees reported being transferred through facilities without meaningful communication with family members or lawyers, in circumstances that may amount to enforced disappearance under international human rights law. Some detainees described coercive pressure to accept removal to third countries, including threats of violence, criminal prosecution, and indefinite detention.

A lawsuit filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen Litigation Group alleges that the Trump administration violated federal law by sharing confidential asylum application information with the Iranian government starting in March 2025. The suit claims that during monthly meetings between ICE and the Iranian Interests Section, federal officials mailed or hand-delivered immigration files containing identifying data, family relationships, political opinions, and reasons asylum seekers feared the Iranian government. The lawsuit alleges this practice endangers pro-democracy protesters, LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and their families in Iran, and violates federal regulations requiring confidentiality of asylum applications. According to the complaint, more than 100 people have been deported to Iran under the second Trump administration, with others deported to Panama and the Central African Republic.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is pursuing enforcement actions against noncitizen military veterans and active service members without treating military service as a mitigating factor, according to veterans' advocates. Historically, ICE has considered military service when making enforcement decisions, but the Trump administration appears to have reversed this policy. The Migration Policy Institute estimates approximately 117,000 U.S. military veterans are neither native born nor naturalized citizens and are now at risk of detention and deportation. Recruiters have promised immigration benefits to service members and their families, but the administration is not honoring these commitments.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers executed a massive multi-state enforcement sweep over 48 hours, arresting dozens of undocumented immigrants with prior criminal convictions. The operation involved 10 named individuals from El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, and Senegal, with convictions ranging from murder and sexual offenses to drug trafficking. ICE attributed the expanded enforcement capacity to 12,000 newly deployed law enforcement officers funded under recent federal legislation.

A federal appeals court panel ruled that the Trump administration must offer immigrants who are indefinitely detained the opportunity to argue for their release, retreating from a previous 5th Circuit decision. The ruling addresses a July 2025 ICE policy that broke with decades of precedent by denying bond to noncitizens who entered without inspection, intending indefinite detention for the duration of removal proceedings. The new panel distinguished the government's statutory authority from individuals' constitutional rights, limiting—though not formally revoking—an earlier February 2026 panel decision that had upheld the government's detention authority.

A divided 2-1 panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on July 3, 2026, that ICE cannot detain individuals for more than 90 days without providing a bond hearing opportunity. The case involved three migrants—two Mexican citizens and one Honduran national—who had each lived in the United States for more than a decade, had no criminal records, and were fathers of U.S. citizen children. All three were detained by ICE following traffic stops in Texas and challenged their continued detention through habeas corpus petitions. The decision, grounded in Fifth Amendment due process protections, contradicts the Trump administration's interpretation of federal immigration law that had allowed mandatory detention of non-citizens without bond hearings. The ruling could affect thousands of people detained in Texas and Louisiana.

The Trump administration secretly ordered a surge in immigration enforcement that resulted in more than 10,000 people being detained in five days, with daily arrest numbers roughly doubling from approximately 1,000 to a new benchmark of 2,000 detentions per day. Border Patrol and ICE agents conducted arrests at routine immigration check-ins, traffic stops, and in public spaces across the country. The detained population in ICE facilities jumped by nearly 4,000 to over 63,000 people as of the article's publication date.

Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley documented 412 incidents where federal and local agencies misused crowd-control weapons against demonstrators protesting immigration enforcement from June 2025 through May 2026. The incidents occurred across 16 cities in 13 states. DHS agents were responsible for 265 incidents (64%), with state and local agencies responsible for 123 (30%). Victims included 209 demonstrators, 177 journalists, 12 minors, 7 bystanders, and 4 healthcare workers or legal observers. Of 412 incidents, 119 involved documented injuries including 19 traumatic brain injuries, 12 fractures, 10 ocular injuries, 7 permanent disabilities, 1 partial hand amputation, and 1 hearing loss. The report found 86% of incidents occurred during four named DHS operations: At Large (Los Angeles), Midway Blitz (Chicago), Black Rose (Portland), and Metro Surge (Minneapolis).

Between July 1-4, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a series of enforcement operations across Gallatin County, detaining an estimated 100+ people through traffic stops, home raids, and workplace sweeps. Local immigrant resource center Bienvenidos documented approximately 25-30 detentions on Monday-Tuesday, followed by more than 80 on Wednesday, with additional arrests continuing through Thursday. Attorneys and community organizations reported that many of the detained individuals had no criminal records and were already participating in the legal immigration process with pending applications and scheduled court appearances. People detained were rapidly transferred between facilities including the Helena Hold Room, Cascade County Detention Center, and facilities in Idaho, Washington, and Nevada, with limited transparency about their locations or conditions.

Sister Leticia Ugboaja, a 56-year-old Nigerian-born nun and registered nurse with the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy, was arrested by ICE agents on June 28-29, 2026, while walking to Mass in her religious habit at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in McAllen, Texas. Despite being a legal resident with valid immigration status and having worked more than a decade at local Texas hospitals, she was detained and transferred to an ICE detention facility in Raymondville, where she was not allowed to access needed medication. After parish officials and colleague Sister Norma Pimentel contacted local leaders, including U.S. Representatives Monica De La Cruz and Henry Cuellar, Ugboaja was released from ICE custody on June 30. The Catholic Diocese of Brownsville and civil rights organizations called for an investigation into the detention. Ugboaja was distraught upon release, crying and taking time to recover from the arrest. Her detention occurred during a broader ICE enforcement surge in which the agency detained more than 10,000 people in five days.