A supermajority of the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus has asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to deploy body cameras to all federal immigration officers, following deadly shootings of immigrants in Texas and Maine.

In a July 19 letter addressed to Mullin, 38 Senate Democrats and Maine’s Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, requested information about the shootings this month in Houston of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and in Biddeford, Maine, of 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero.

Neither man was the initial enforcement target when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stopped their vehicles, the Department of Homeland Security has said.

“The unnecessary loss of life in these incidents demands immediate, thorough, independent, and transparent investigations (including the full involvement of local and state law enforcement personnel), along with a comprehensive examination of enforcement protocols, training, and operational approaches necessary to prevent such tragedies,” the senators wrote.

The lawmakers pressed Mullin about providing body cameras to immigration officers, pointing out that Congress has allocated $175 billion to the department since last year. From that funding, DHS planned to hire up to 10,000 ICE officers.

“While DHS has previously acknowledged that body-worn cameras promote public trust and increase officer and public safety, accountability, and transparency, the Department has clearly not prioritized acquiring cameras,” the senators wrote.

None of the ICE officers involved in the shootings were wearing body cameras.

“Contrary to recent statements made by the Department and the White House, DHS has had more than sufficient time and funding to procure and deploy a body-worn camera for every officer before the end of 2025,” they wrote.

Enough funding

Congressional Republicans last year used a special legislative maneuver to allocate roughly $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detainment and deportations, without needing Democratic support.

They used the same move following the shutdown this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol through September of 2029.

Republicans used the maneuver that allows party-line votes after Democrats refused to provide more funding for DHS unless restraints were placed on ICE and Border Patrol officers following the killings of two U.S. citizens — Alex Pretti and Renee Good — by federal immigration agents in Minnesota in January.

Among Democrats’ demands at the time was that immigration officers wear body cameras. Top Trump officials, including then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said body cameras would be provided to immigration agents.

“The recent tragedies confirm that neither of these commitments were honored,” senators wrote in the letter.

Traffic stops unpaused

White House border czar Tom Homan said over the weekend that ICE officers will wear “at least one body camera” during traffic stops.

Following the two killings this month, DHS instructed immigration officers to pause vehicle stops, but President Donald Trump quickly instructed the department to continue the policy.

During the second Trump administration, federal immigration officers have shot 22 people and killed six, including three U.S. citizens. Most of the shootings stemmed from traffic stops.

In the letter, senators also sought information about DHS’s plan to have an independent investigation into the killings, the vetting process for new immigration officers, the department’s procedures for vehicle stops and any additional oversight and reporting requirements DHS is implementing.

(This article was originally published by Ariana Figueroa of The States DC Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, and is republished by US Border News with permission.)

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Joey Sanchez, the chair of the All Pueblo Council of Governors, stood outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday with dozens of tribal leaders and New Mexico’s entire federal delegation to protest a Bureau of Land Management proposal to unwind mining protections around Chaco Culture National Historical Park as just a week remains for the public to weigh in on the plan.

The Bureau of Land Management recently opened a two-week period for the public to comment on a proposal to eliminate or shrink the 10-mile mining protections around Chaco, a spiritually and culturally significant site for many of New Mexico’s pueblos and tribes.

Members of New Mexico’s federal delegation quickly denounced the plan when the comment period opened last week, and many noted that BLM and U.S. Department of the Interior officials had not visited with the Indigenous communities that the decision would impact.

As a chorus of Indigenous leaders and politicians spoke at Wednesday’s event, they urged New Mexicans to submit a public comment on the BLM plan through its online portal.

“Chaco is not a museum…it is a living cultural landscape,” Sanchez said Wednesday. “The pueblos have protected Chaco for thousands of years, and we’re not going to stop today.”

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined Sanchez in Washington, D.C., Wednesday and said that Chaco Canyon “is not for sale.”

New Mexico has already positioned itself as a national leader in oil and gas production, and it’s done so without sacrificing sacred sites, Heinrich, who serves as ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said.

“We produce far more electrons than we consume and we have never had to sacrifice our most sacred places to do that,” he said. “And we should not do that going forward.”

Each of New Mexico’s U.S. senators and representatives, all Democrats, spoke out against the proposal at Wednesday’s event and said it was an “insult” that the federal government would allow just two weeks for public comment on a plan that could undo years of work to install Chaco’s current protections. In 2025, they proposed legislation that would make those protections permanent.

U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) questioned whether it’s necessary to drill any closer to Chaco than what is currently allowed. The BLM’s current proposal lists three options: eliminate the 10-mile buffer zone; cut it in half; or keep it intact.

Chaco sits in northwest New Mexico, near the Navajo Nation and the Four Corners region. About 1,000 years ago, it was the San Juan Basin’s cultural and economic hub, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

“A molecule of gas from Chaco is the same as a molecule of gas outside that 10-mile buffer zone,” Leger Fernández said. “That molecule of gas could be easily, easily developed outside and without disturbing the 4,700…archaeological sites within that 10 miles. If we let the bulldozers of the oil and gas companies destroy any of those 4,700 sites, they can never be reconstructed.”

State leaders push back on BLM plan

State lawmakers have also taken up the fight against the BLM’s plan. Rep. Derrick J. Lente (D-Sandia Pueblo) on Tuesday called on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and several state agencies to present a unified front against the federal plan.

“Chaco is not a bargaining chip, and it is not an ordinary parcel of federal land. It is the ancestral home of our people and a place of continuing ceremony and prayer,” Lente said in a statement. “As a Pueblo person and as a legislator, I refuse to stay quiet while our tribal sovereignty is ignored and our sacred lands are opened to extraction.”

In a statement to Source NM, a spokesperson for Lujan Grisham wrote that she is “fiercely opposed” to the Trump administration’s proposal and noted that state Cultural Affairs Secretary Debra Garcia y Griego wrote a letter to BLM officials, urging them to keep the current protections in place.

The governor “is working through appropriate channels to push back on this terribly shortsighted and reckless plan, including submitting official administration correspondence in opposition back in April and communicating with New Mexico’s congressional delegation,” Lujan Grisham’s Communications Director Michael Coleman wrote in an email to Source NM. “She encourages Rep. Lente, other members of the New Mexico Legislature and the general public to also submit letters in opposition to help protect Chaco Canyon.”

(This article was originally published by Source New Mexico, part of the States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, and is republished by US Border News with permission.)

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More than a hundred buoys installed to prevent illegal crossings of the Rio Grande broke free when the river rose to flood stage following heavy rain across Southwest Texas. Each buoy measures about 15 feet long and 5 feet wide (their weight has not been publicly disclosed), and as floodwaters swiftly propelled them south, this set off alarm bells downstream.

Two International Bridges between Texas and Mexico were temporarily closed due to concerns that the massive buoys could damage bridge columns if they struck them. According to “The Maverick Times News” of Eagle Pass, Texas, a “Mexican news outlet reported a buoy struck a bridge support pillar, with no visible damage observed.”

Authorities further downstream in Laredo said they were prepared to close the six International Bridges there should the buoys (some of which have beached along the Rio Grande shoreline) make it that far.

(UPDATE: The buoys did cause bridge shutdowns in Laredo)

Texas Public Radio reported that “Customs and Border Protection previously said the system was engineered to withstand a 100-year flood. But river experts and environmental advocates warned that sections could detach during extreme flooding and become trapped against bridges or other infrastructure.”

The Department of Homeland Security has issued more than a billion dollars in contracts to fully construct the floating border barrier system, with hundreds more buoys staged ashore along the Rio Grande, awaiting installation. There is no estimate of how much it will cost taxpayers to recover and reinstall the buoys that broke free.

Do you support the installation of this massive barrier system on the Rio Grande?

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Large protests erupted in the small town of Biddeford, Maine, on Monday, July 13, 2026, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents fatally shot a 26-year-old Colombian-born man in what appears to be a horrible case of mistaken identity.

A Ring doorbell camera near the shooting scene captured the audio of at least five gunshots fired by the ICE Agents. None of the agents were wearing body cameras, according to Maine Senator Angus King and Congressman Chellie Pingree.

(UPDATE: It has since been reported that Agents DID have body cameras, but did not turn them on).

A video shot by an eyewitness passing by in a car shows ICE Agents alongside a car slowly driving in a circle. Agents eventually stopped the car by ramming it with their vehicle.

Although several video clips have been released showing the scene shortly after the shooting, none have surfaced showing the shooting as it happened.

The New York Times reports that Mia Covino heard the shots and looked out her window to see “two law enforcement agents in plain clothes and green vests in the street, as well as a white car slowly spinning in circles in the intersection. One of the agents was holding onto one of the car’s door handles, Ms. Covino said, “yelling, ‘He tried to run me over.’” The other agent was telling his colleague “to stop, to relax, to calm down.”

A video clip taken shortly after the shooting shows one agent appearing to console a fellow officer.

Daniel Boucher - who stepped outside his home after hearing the gunshots, told the Portland Press Herald that, as he watched the agents pull the driver from the car, he heard the man tell them “I tried to stop,” just before he collapsed.

The identities of those who shot the clips (which have been reposted many times on social media) are difficult to determine, although several reposters have indicated that their clips were released by the Portland Press Herald.

A Press Herald photo clearly shows multiple bullet holes in the windshield of the shooting victim’s car.

WGME-TV said a witness described what happened next: “He was my neighbor,” neighbor Valerie Brinkman said. “And his wife came running out screaming, ‘Mi amor, mi amor!’”

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey released a statement that federal officials told him the shooting happened “as immigration agents were conducting an enforcement operation related to a final order of removal.” The agents told investigators that the victim “attempted to flee in a vehicle in the direction of the officer” when the shots were fired.

Protesters marched to the entrance to the Biddeford office of US Senator Susan Collins, who voted for a $70 billion package to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol through 2029, and released the following statement:

“The shooting in Biddeford requires a full and impartial investigation of what happened. It is my understanding that the Biddeford police have secured the site and that the FBI is investigating.” -US Senator Susan Collins

Maine Senator Angus King told the Portland Press Herald that he has informed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin that “we want a full, transparent and open investigation of this matter,’” and the ICE agents “should have been having body cameras two years ago when this whole thing started.”

Senator King also told reporters that Secretary Mullin contacted him later to tell him the man killed by ICE was not the intended target of the arrest warrant they were attempting to serve.

Neighbors and an immigrant rights group have identified the victim as 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero, originally of Colombia. He leaves behind a young wife and daughter, both of whom were at the scene of his killing.

Amidst all the inconsistencies cited, the Department of Homeland Security released the following statement, many hours after the fatal shooting occurred, which did NOT allege the victim attempted to run over an officer:

“On July 13, 2026, at approximately 7:00 AM ET, ICE was conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal. An illegal alien departed the residence in a vehicle. ICE law enforcement attempted to conduct a vehicle stop. The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.

The driver of the vehicle was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted. He passed away from his injuries.

The Biddeford Police Department and FBI responded to the scene. DHS OIG has been notified, and like all discharges of firearms, this will be investigated. This is a developing situation, and we will update the public when more information is available.”

Maine Governor Janet Mills is not buying the DHS accounts. She has posted the following statement via x.com:

“This development makes this tragedy even more disturbing and infuriating, and it underscores the reckless and haphazard manner in which immigration enforcement operations are being conducted in Maine and across the country. This has to end.” -Maine Governor Janet Mills

(Note to our readers: The Portland Press Herald is updating this story in real time outside its paywall as a service to the public. You can access their coverage HERE.

The Press Herald is owned by the non-profit National Trust for Local News and is also a member of the non-profit Maine Trust for Local News. If you wish to support them, donations can be made here).

What should the Department of Homeland Security do to prevent more shootings like this?

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A Task Force run by a small South Texas County has become a big problem for the large-scale cartels based in Mexico. So far this year, the Special Agents of the South Texas Specialized Crimes & Narcotics Task Force, operated by Kleberg County Attorney Kira Talip-Sanchez, have seized more than $1.1 million of cartel cash profits being smuggled by “money mules” headed for the Rio Grande border.

To add insult to injury, the South Texas Task Force is funded in large part by the cash it seizes, which means the cartels are (involuntarily) paying the salaries of the agents who arrest their smugglers and confiscate their profits.

Here’s a look at some of their biggest seizures in 2026:

On March 4, 2026, a South Texas Task Force Agent’s K9 took an interest in a “McDonald’s Happy Meal” bag inside a car the agent stopped as it headed south on US 77 in Kleberg County. Instead of burgers and fries, the agent found the “Happy Meal” bag contained $286,202 cash in vacuum-sealed packages.

On May 6, 2026, the driver of another southbound car told the South Texas Task Force Agent who pulled him over that he was headed from Houston to Matamoros, Mexico. That fact, along with other “multiple indicators of criminal activity” observed by the Agent, gave him reasonable suspicion to search the vehicle.

That led to ten vacuum-sealed duct-tape bundles containing $227,398 in U.S. currency being discovered concealed within the car’s rear seat and back wall.

On February 3, 2026, South Texas Task Force Agents conducting enforcement operations under “Operation Stonegarden” and “Operation Lone Star” along Highway 77 stopped a southbound vehicle displaying Mexican license plates.

An interview with the occupants, a mother and son from Matamoros, Mexico, led to a thorough search of their car. The agents’ suspicions were confirmed by the discovery of six bundles containing $165,921 in cash hidden in the dashboard.

Cartel cash isn’t the only contraband the task force targets being smuggled south through their county (and others they have agreements with, allowing them to conduct enforcement activity throughout South Texas).

South Texas Task Force Agents are increasingly arresting gunrunners and seizing small arsenals of high-powered weapons and ammo meant to arm the Mexican cartels. The guns are often discovered to have been reported stolen elsewhere in Texas.

How big of a hit do you think the cartels are taking from these big gun & cash seizures?

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Video of a Venezuelan official wanted by the US for “narco-terrorism” obstructing a US Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Team from reaching earthquake victims has ignited a political firestorm in the US, with lawmakers demanding his arrest. It also threatens to turn an international humanitarian effort into an international incident.

The man at the center of this controversy is Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. He has been indicted by the US, alongside Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and others, in what US prosecutors say was a “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy.”

Maduro was captured by US forces in January and is jailed in New York awaiting trial. Cabello has remained at large in Venezuela despite a $25 million reward offered by the US.

That Cabello feels secure enough to openly appear in public, despite the presence of nearly 1,000 members of the US military now in his country in response to the twin earthquakes that have killed more than 2,000 people, and is emboldened enough to confront US rescue workers, is infuriating many in Venezuela and the US.

The rescue worker confronted by Cabello is holding a helmet marked “VA-TF1” indicating he is a member of Virginia USAR Task Force 1. Rescuers from that Task Force have been digging through rubble in La Guaira, Venezuela, for days and have pulled five people (including a baby and a child) out alive so far.

Officers of agencies under Interior Minister Cabello’s command have been seen digging through earthquake rubble for apparently different reasons. The images below are screengrabs from video taken by La Guaira residents who confronted a federal police officer holding many US hundred-dollar bills they believe he removed from the rubble of their neighbors’ homes.

That officer was wearing a CICPC uniform, a national Venezuelan police agency that the US Treasury Department has accused of committing “systematic human rights abuses.”

The video provoked widespread outrage among Venezuelans online, as well as the arrests of four CICPC officers accused of looting. But it is the video of Interior Minister Cabello interfering in rescue efforts that is producing the most blowback.

Senator Rick Scott of Florida (home to the largest Venezuelan population in the United States) issued a statement declaring that “Anyone who gets in the way of (US and international rescue workers), including Diosdado Cabello, will be held accountable and face consequences.”

There is also a growing chorus of US lawmakers calling for Diosdado Cabello to be arrested in Venezuela and brought to the US to face the charges against him:

“It's time for Diosdado Cabello to be extradited from Venezuela to face justice for his crimes.” -US Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart

“While the US increases its presence in Venezuela, we should pick up thug Diosdado Cabello and bring him to justice so he can stop impeding the distribution of aid to those impacted by the earthquake.” -US Congressman Carlos A. Gimenez

However, so far, the Trump Administration has not responded to calls to arrest Cabello, who only days before was at the same table with acting Venezuelan President Delcy Eloína Rodríguez and US military officials discussing earthquake relief operations.

Should the US arrest Diosdado Cabello while we have 1,000 troops in that country?

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down President Donald Trump’s attempt to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.

In the decision, a majority of the justices upheld the country’s long understanding of automatic citizenship by birth on American soil, regardless of the immigration status of a newborn’s parents. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., found the president’s executive order violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

While six of the justices agreed — Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — that the president’s executive order was unlawful, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.

Only five of the justices agreed that the 14th Amendment extends citizenship to the children of immigrants, with Kavanaugh partially dissenting along with Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch.

Kavanaugh argued that Trump’s executive order did not violate the 14th Amendment, but instead violated federal statute. He added in his dissent that Congress could “enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But Congress has not yet done so.”

The White House did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment, but a day before the decision, Trump said in the Oval Office that he would accept the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“It’s up to them, but in terms of for the good of the country, it’d be great if they … didn’t allow it,” Trump, who in a highly unusual move for a president attended the oral arguments on the case, said of birthright citizenship.

After the ruling, the president called on Congress, which is controlled by Republicans, to pass legislation to codify his executive order into law, dismissing the need for a constitutional amendment.

However, a constitutional amendment would be needed, not legislative law, because a majority of the justices still found that any change to birthright citizenship violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Utah’s GOP Sen. Mike Lee, who previously clerked for Alito, noted that “we’re going to need a constitutional amendment.”

The opinion is a major blow to Trump, who has sought to redefine who is American as part of his broader immigration agenda.

But it also follows two decisions from the high court that vastly expanded the president’s authority over immigration policy by allowing him to limit asylum seeker claims at the Southern border and strip legal protections for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.

Tuesday’s decision is based on one of the first executive orders that the president signed on the first day of his second term. It aimed to deny citizenship to children born to parents who either do not have legal status, or hold temporary legal visas.

Experts warned if the order were to take effect, it could create an entire class of stateless people and cause chaos for hospitals and local governments.

Case brought by expectant parents

The case, Trump v. Barbara, was brought by expectant mothers who feared their children would not be American citizens because of their immigration status.

During oral arguments in April, a majority of the justices seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s arguments, presented by Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

Before the justices, Sauer argued that the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which is the basis for birthright citizenship, was meant to apply to newly freed African American slaves after the Civil War, not to children of immigrants.

Most legal scholars and historians disagree with that interpretation and have argued the Supreme Court in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark already settled the idea that automatic citizenship was granted to children born on U.S. soil.

Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents. When he left California, he was denied entry back into the United States after visiting relatives in China.

Officials at the time argued that because Ark’s parents were Chinese citizens in the United States on temporary visas at the time of his birth, and therefore were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., he was not a citizen.

Ark took the issue to the Supreme Court. In 1898, the high court affirmed that he, along with any child born on U.S. soil, were guaranteed citizenship, and rejected the argument that the 14th Amendment only applied to newly freed African American slaves.

American Civil Liberties Union lead attorney Cecillia Wang, who argued before the justices, said that when the federal government tried to strip Ark of his citizenship, “largely on the same grounds (the Trump administration) raised today,” the Supreme Court at that time rejected those efforts and upheld the 14th Amendment.

“This Court held that the 14th Amendment embodies the English common law rule (that) virtually everyone born on U.S. soil is subject to its jurisdiction and is a citizen,” Wang, who is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, said.

Her parents were in the U.S. on student visas when she was born in Oregon, meaning that if Trump’s executive order were in effect at that time, she would have been denied U.S. citizenship.

Roberts agreed that the Supreme Court made the correct decision in 1898 about Ark’s case.

“What the Court held in Wong Kim Ark was simple: the Citizenship Clause incorporated the common law and granted citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States,” he wrote. “Not surprisingly, then, in the 128 years since, we have repeatedly understood the rule of Wong Kim Ark to guarantee citizenship to all children born in the United States and subject to its power.”

“We see no reason to depart from that view today,” he continued.

14th Amendment argument

During April’s oral arguments, Sauer made that case that the phrase in the 14th Amendment “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means that children born to parents without legal status or temporary visitors are not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” and are instead subject to the laws of their home country.

The 14th Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Roberts rejected Sauer’s position, and wrote that the Trump administration’s “[a]rguments for limiting birthright citizenship to those domiciled in the United States fail.”

“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” he wrote. “Under the Constitution, they are citizens at birth.”

The 14th Amendment was passed to rectify the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which justices ruled that neither free or enslaved Black people could have citizenship or rights. The amendment was also meant to give African Americans citizenship while also denying citizenship to the mass migration of Chinese laborers not born on U.S. soil.

The “jurisdiction” language in the amendment, tribal scholars have said, was aimed to exempt Indigenous people who resided in Native nations — part of their tribal governments — from birthright citizenship, along with the children born to foreign diplomats.

Congress in 1924 specifically passed the Indian Citizenship Act to grant birthright citizenship to Indigenous people, regardless of their residence in Native nations.

Because of this, tribal scholars have explained the language “subject to the jurisdiction” was never meant to apply to immigrants and their home country, and instead refers to the political alliance of tribes.

Congress reacts

Following Tuesday’s decision, Democrats praised the decision.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that “despite Trump’s best efforts to bully them, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed that if you are born in America, you belong in America.”

“No matter how much President Trump tries to steal citizenship from people that the Constitution has said have earned it and reverse the grand American tradition of welcoming newcomers to our nation, the Supreme Court confirmed today that those born in America are American,” he said.

Chairs of the Congressional Tri-Caucus — the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus — issued a joint statement that the high court’s ruling was a rejection of “Trump’s dangerous and exclusionary vision of America.”

“We are American, we belong here, and we will continue to defend birthright citizenship for generations to come,” said New York Reps. Adriano Espaillat of the CHC; Grace Meng of the CAPAC; and Yvette Clarke of the CBC.

Wang, of the ACLU, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, said in a statement that Tuesday’s decision reaffirmed a core American principle.

“If you are born here, you are a citizen,” she said. “A president cannot change the Constitution by executive fiat.”

An immigration advocacy group that has also challenged the Trump administration’s efforts to redefine birthright citizenship, We Are CASA, said the decision was a victory for immigrant families.

“The Trump administration’s attempt to deny citizenship to United States-born children, threaten generations of children with legal uncertainty, and overturn more than a century of settled constitutional law has failed,” said Shana Khader, the deputy legal director at We Are CASA.

• (This article was originally published by the DC Bureau of the States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, and is republished by US Border News with permission.)

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The US Supreme Court could rule on birthright citizenship as early as next week.

US Border News is republishing the following article filed as the court heard arguments on the matter in April, to provide our readers with background on the issues to be decided before the court.

• (This article was written by Ariana Figueroa of the non-profit States Newsroom DC Bureau & is republished by US Border News with permission under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, seemed poised to reject the Trump administration’s attempt to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, and instead uphold the country’s long understanding of citizenship by birth on American soil.

If a majority of Supreme Court justices strikes down President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born to parents without legal status or temporary immigration statuses like visas, it will be the second recent major blow to the president via the high court. Earlier this year, a majority of justices struck down his use of sweeping tariffs.

Trump, who signed the executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship as one of his first acts after his inauguration in 2025, came to the courtroom to hear the oral arguments, a first for a sitting president.

‘Quirky’ administration argument

A majority of the justices during April’s oral arguments were skeptical of Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s arguments that the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment was only intended to grant citizenship to the children of newly freed African American slaves, not immigrants.

Chief Justice John Roberts called one of Sauer’s key arguments “quirky,” and questioned how it could be applied to an entire class of immigrants without legal status.

Sauer argued that the children born to parents without legal status or temporary visitors are not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” and are instead subject to the laws of their home country. He cited carve outs in birthright citizenship, such as the children born to foreign diplomats.

“You expand it to a whole class of illegal aliens,” Roberts said. “I’m not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples.”

Along with Roberts, the liberal wing of the court and conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett also did not seem swayed by Sauer’s argument.

Gorsuch asked Sauer if, under the Trump administration’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment, Native Americans would be considered birthright citizens “under your test.”

“Uh, I think so,” Sauer said.

Indigenous people were granted U.S. citizenship by Congress in 1924, but were not granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment because those children were born to parents who were citizens of tribal governments.

Sauer also contended the 1898 Supreme Court ruling that upheld citizenship based on birth on American soil, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, was wrongly decided.

He argued that the Wong Kim Ark case did not take into consideration “sojourn travelers,” who are temporary visitors in the U.S. and give birth.

Sauer also said the Trump administration was not looking for the justices to overturn that case.

ACLU arguments

Liberal justice Elena Kagan said that Sauer’s argument to the court was an effort to create a “revisionist history” of the Wong Kim Ark case.

“Everyone took Wong Kim Ark to say that, as a result of that, birthright citizenship was the rule,” she said. “And I think everybody has believed that for a long, long time.”

American Civil Liberties Union lead attorney Cecillia Wang said during oral arguments that when the federal government tried to strip Ark of his citizenship, “largely on the same grounds (the Trump administration) raised today,” the Supreme Court rejected those efforts.

“This Court held that the 14th Amendment embodies the English common law rule (that) virtually everyone born on U.S. soil is subject to its jurisdiction and is a citizen,” said Wang, who is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants.

Her parents were in the U.S. on student visas when she was born in Oregon, meaning that if Trump’s executive order were in effect at that time, she would have been denied U.S. citizenship.

“Ask any American what our citizenship rule is and they’ll tell you, everyone born here is a citizen alike,” Wang said. “That rule was enshrined in the 14th Amendment to put it out of the reach of any government official to destroy.”

Birthright citizenship has been a longstanding core principle in the United States, where nearly any child — regardless of their parents’ immigration status — born on U.S. soil is automatically granted citizenship.

The text of the clause is: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Experts have warned that if the constitutional right to birthright citizenship were struck down, it would effectively create a class of millions of stateless people, leaving them without a country to call home.

If the high court determines that Trump violated the Constitution with his executive order, it would be a major block to the president’s goal in defining who is American, as Trump has aimed to reshape the country’s racial and ethnic makeup through limits to migration and an aggressive immigration campaign of mass deportations.

A decision from the high court on the case, Trump v. Barbara, is likely not going to come until the end of the court term, in late June or early July. If the court decides to uphold the executive order, it would go into effect 30 days after the ruling.

New world, old Constitution

Sauer argued that birthright citizenship should not be applied to children of temporary visitors, such as foreigners who partake in what opponents call “birth tourism.”

Roberts asked Sauer how much of an issue birth tourism is – the idea that foreign visitors specifically travel to the U.S. for the purpose of giving birth and obtaining citizenship for their soon-to-be born children.

“No one knows for sure,” Sauer said, citing media reports that many Chinese tourists travel to the U.S. and give birth.

However, China does not allow its citizens to have dual citizenship.

Roberts seemed skeptical that birth tourism should be considered in Sauer’s legal arguments for the purpose of restricting birthright citizenship. He told Sauer that birth tourism “wasn’t an issue in the 19th century.”

“We’re in a new world now,” Sauer said. “Where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child as a U.S. citizen.”

But Roberts shot back, “Well, it’s a new world, it’s the same Constitution.”

Other countries

Sauer also argued that the U.S. should fall in line with the citizenship laws of other countries.

“Unrestricted birthright citizenship contradicts the practice of the overwhelming majority of modern nations,” he said. “It demeans the priceless and profound gift of American citizenship.”

Kavanaugh questioned why the U.S. should worry about the citizenship requirements of other countries.

“Obviously we try to interpret American law with American precedent based on American history,” Kavanaugh said. “I’m not seeing the relevance as a legal, constitutional interpretive matter necessarily, although I understand it’s a very good point.”

Shortly after oral arguments ended, Trump took to his social media site, Truth Social, where he falsely said the U.S. is the only country to have birthright citizenship. Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Mexico are among several countries that have birthright citizenship.

“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” he wrote.

Trump left Wednesday’s oral arguments after Sauer was finished presenting his argument to the justices, and about a few minutes into arguments from the ACLU’s Wang, according to White House pool reports. Oral arguments lasted for about two-and-a-half hours.

Earlier decision

This is the second time the Trump administration has brought a birthright citizenship case before the justices.

Last year, after federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Washington state struck down the president’s executive order, the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, but asked the justices to consider the lower courts’ use of universal injunctions, rather than the merits of birthright citizenship.

The justices took up the case, and in a 6-3 vote divided along ideological lines, the use of universal injunctions was curtailed by the conservative wing of the high court.

After the ruling, immigration advocates and the ACLU filed class action suits, which were successful in blocking the birthright citizenship executive order. The suits argued that future children born in the United States without gaining citizenship constituted a nationwide class.

“If you credit the government’s theory, the citizenship of millions of Americans past, present and future could be called into question,” Wang said.

(This article was originally published by the DC Bureau of the States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, and is republished by US Border News with permission.)

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The Trump Administration is facing tests on several levels as it responds to aid Venezuela following a pair of strong earthquakes that have killed 1,430 people, injured more than 3,200, and left more than 3,000 homeless, according to the Venezuelan government. An unknown, likely large, number of victims have yet to be found in the rubble. The quake has damaged 1,400 buildings, including 13 hospitals.

President Trump has cut 83% of the budget of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides US foreign assistance, and has deposed Venezuela’s President (Nicolás Maduro), replacing him with a more compliant leader, while promising better relations in exchange for easing economic sanctions that crippled its economy (despite remarks that the US will "take back" Venezuela’s oil).

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is aggressively responding by rushing aid to that South American country through US Military and Disaster Response assistance.

According to NPR, Rubio promised: "We have a whole-of-government response. It'll be big; it'll be fast; and it'll be effective."

Urban Search & Rescue (USAR) teams from California, Florida & Virginia were dispatched to Venezuela, along with US Military assistance and $150 million in disaster aid, as well as what the department is describing as a “robust, life-saving response to the earthquakes”.

The US Military’s Southern Command says that:

• Two C-17 Globemaster aircraft are delivering Urban Search and Rescue teams

• A C-17 is delivering load-movement equipment to Caracas

• USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD 28) and USS Billings (LCS 15) arrived in the waters near Venezuela
  

• MV-22 Ospreys are transporting an airfield assessment team

• Three U.S. Army CH-47 Chinooks have headed to support critical airlift
  

• Satellite imagery of devastated areas is being provided to disaster relief planners

The US Military’s Southern Command has also deployed a 250-person Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) to the country.

In addition to the US relief efforts, the New York Times reported the following personnel were sent to Venezuela from abroad:

• European Commission: More than 520 emergency responders from France, Czechia, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal, and the Netherlands flew to Venezuela. Officials said that 5 million euros would be allocated for relief efforts.

• United Kingdom: A 68-member crew was dispatched to offer assistance. The aid includes drones, seismic listening technology, and cutting tools. Some two million euros were also earmarked for humanitarian aid.

All told, Reuters reports more than 1,600 foreign disaster aid workers have arrived in that country.

Back in the US, the Trump Administration assigned military officers to aid Venezuela:

• The US Army dispatched a Major General to Venezuela after its government formally requested U.S. support following the deadly earthquakes.

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The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling on Thursday, June 25, 2026, allowing the Trump Administration to remove legal protections from hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants in the United States. That paves the way for their deportation. The following article was published by US Border News on Monday and provides background and additional context about today’s ruling:

• (This article was written by Megan Henry for the non-profit Ohio Capital Journal & is republished by US Border News with permission under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.)

The future of Haitians living in Ohio (and across the U.S.) with temporary protected status hangs in the balance of a United States Supreme Court decision that could come as soon as this week or next.

About 330,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians are living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that allows people from specific countries in conflict or facing natural disasters the chance to live and work in the United States for a set period of time.

About 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio, and an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians call Springfield home, with a mixture of temporary protected status, citizenship, and other legal status.

Springfield became a flashpoint in the 2024 Election when Donald Trump and JD Vance spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants there.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to make a decision either by the end of June or early July on whether the Trump administration can end the Temporary Protected Status program for Haitian and Syrian nationals.

Oral arguments for the case were made in April.

“If (TPS is) terminated, they will essentially immediately lose their work authorization in most states, their access to driver’s licenses, and then also protection against deportation, and they could be put in removal proceedings and subject to deportation,” - Emily Brown, director of the Ohio State University law school’s Immigration Clinic.

Attorneys for Haitian TPS holders filed a motion last week asking the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss the case, saying new evidence has come to light that shows the Trump administration unlawfully attempted to revoke TPS, according to the Springfield News-Sun.

“This new evidence raises profound concerns about the integrity of the process that put our Haitian neighbors at risk,” said Carl Ruby, pastor of Springfield’s Central Christian Church.

Haitians were initially granted temporary protected status after Haiti’s earthquake in 2010 killed 222,570 people.

The Biden administration extended Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in 2021 after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

Syria was first granted TPS in 2012, and the country continues to experience ongoing armed conflict, terrorist violence, kidnapping, hostage taking, and crime.

Haiti is currently plagued by gang violence and instability, with many fleeing the small Caribbean nation to the United States for their lives. Just last week, a top security official and chief of staff to the nation’s defense minister was kidnapped.

Many of the Haitian refugees in America have no homes to return to in Haiti, and are fearful for their families’ safety if forced to return.

“If TPS goes away, I don’t think most of them want to just get back on a plane and go to Haiti because the violence there is so severe at this point that they think anything is going to be better than going back there,” Brown said.

The U.S. Department of State currently has a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti and Syria.

“They’re certainly fearful,” Ruby said.

Haitians can apply for asylum, but the Trump administration put an indefinite freeze on processing all asylum applications at the end of 2025.

“It’s not really a solution for most people,” Brown said.

Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, came to the United States from Haiti in 2020.

“No matter what happens, I would be the last person to leave because so many people in the community are relying on me from both sides — from the Haitian community and from the American community,” said Dorsainvil, who is also a Master’s student at Wright State University.

He sees the U.S. Supreme Court ruling going one of three ways.

The justices could rule in favor of TPS holders, but he said that could still have consequences.

“There might be a possibility for the Trump administration to develop new policies to continue to make the lives of the immigrants miserable, so that they can leave or they can self-deport,” Dorsainvil said.

A decision could come down that gives the Trump administration a certain number of months to end TPS, he said.

“In that period, there will be some disturbance in the community, and folks will still be in limbo,” Dorsainvil said.

If the Supreme Court rules against TPS holders, “there will be some type of humanitarian crisis in the community,” he said.

“The schools will be disturbed, the manufacturers will be disturbed, and the whole economy of Springfield will be impacted,” Dorsainvil said.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue is “not providing any statements or interviews on the matter at this time,” a spokesperson for the mayor said in an email response to the Capital Journal.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who was born in Springfield, has spoken several times about how the Haitian people are helping Springfield’s economy.

“I’ve made myself pretty clear in regards to policy on what I think it’s best for Ohio and best for Springfield and these people who are working and helping the economy of Springfield moving forward and doing the things that we like people to do, which is their work,” DeWine said this week.

The DeWines helped support the Becky DeWine School in Haiti, named after their late daughter, but the school had to close due to gang activity in 2024.

Springfield experienced a shrinking population for decades as manufacturing jobs disappeared, but Haitian immigrants have grown Clark County’s workforce by more than 10,000 workers.

Deporting Haitians in Springfield would eliminate roughly $300 million in annual spending from Clark County, with an estimated economic loss projected to exceed $400 million.

Haitians have been making arrangements for power of attorney and custody of their children in case TPS ends, Brown said.

“If TPS does end, everyone expects that ICE will do big raids in Columbus and Springfield and other parts of the country where there are large pockets of Haitians, so you could really see this kind of indiscriminate policing … People are really, really scared about that, and knowing that it could come at any time,” she said.

Ruby said he expects targeted raids from the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Springfield and other cities with a big Haitian population if the Supreme Court rules against TPS holders.

“I think (the Trump administration is) going to rely more on unemployment and trying to get people to self-deport,” Ruby said.

“We think a more likely scenario is we’re going to have a humanitarian crisis with people just out of work and not being able to pay the rent and not being able to buy food.”

To prepare for that possibility, nonprofit agencies in Springfield are trying to anticipate the need for rental assistance and food, Ruby said.

“We’re trying to equip churches to be ready to respond; we are asking churches to provide sanctuary,” he said. He said they are discouraging people from going to immigration check-ins on their own.

TPS for Haitians was set to expire Feb. 3, but U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end temporary protected status for Haitians living in the United States.

The Trump administration quickly appealed the decision and lower courts blocked its efforts to end Haiti’s TPS.

“People were so scared leading up to Feb. 3, and I think it’s just the same thing now, but even worse because the Supreme Court, we can’t necessarily depend on them to do the right thing,” Brown said.

At the federal level, the U.S. House voted in April to extend TPS for Haitians through 2029. The bill is now in the U.S. Senate, but the White House said President Donald Trump would veto the bill.

The Trump administration has revoked TPS status for 13 countries — Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

• (This article originally appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal, which is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.)

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• (This article was written by Ariana Figueroa of the non-profit States Newsroom DC Bureau & is republished by US Border News with permission under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.)

An appeals court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to use fast-track deportations within the interior of the country and not just at the Southern border, a key pillar in the president’s mass deportation campaign.

The 2-1 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia means the Department of Homeland Security can continue with an expanded use of expedited removal after lower courts blocked the policy over concerns that immigrants were not receiving due process.

Last year, the Trump administration expanded the use of expedited removal to apply to immigrants in the interior of the United States who cannot prove they have remained in the country for more than two years, greatly expanding the number of migrants affected. Previously, the policy applied only to migrants at the Southern border, rather than those in the interior of the country.

Tuesday’s ruling, by Judge Justin R. Walker, argued that Congress allowed the executive branch to decide when to apply an expedited removal policy to immigrants. President Donald Trump appointed Walker, along with Judge Neomi Rao, who also ruled in favor of the government.

They found in addition that the Trump administration’s policy did not violate the due rights of immigrants. The judges vacated lower court decisions that blocked the Trump policy.

No immigration judge

The expanded policy allows the removal of some immigrants – sometimes within hours – without an appearance before an immigration judge, which is key to the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

Judge Robert L. Wilkins disagreed and said he would have kept the lower court’s decision in place that blocked the policy. Former President Barack Obama nominated Wilkins.

In a statement, James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, praised the appeals court ruling.

“For years, DHS has arbitrarily limited expedited removal to 14 days even though it applies to illegal aliens who entered the country illegally within the last two years,” Percival said. “Today, the DC Circuit vindicated our decision to apply the law as written.”

Due process questions

In December, the Department of Justice argued that due process is not guaranteed for immigrants in a fast-track deportation.

The immigrants’ rights group that sued the Trump administration, Make the Road New York, contended that the expanded policy did not give adequate notice to immigrants and that immigration officials did not provide proper information to an immigrant who may or may not fall under the policy.

Walker wrote that a notice of removal was satisfactory and that an immigration official notifying a migrant if they fall under the policy would be akin to providing them with legal counsel.

“Make the Road’s contrary reasoning would require immigration officers to provide what amounts to legal advice,” Walker wrote. “If due process requires the government to inform individuals of the two-year continuous-presence rule, it presumably also requires informing them of every other basis for contesting expedited removal.”

Wilkins, in his dissent, argued that immigration officials should inquire about how long an immigrant has been in the country before making a decision if expedited removal should be applied.

“A procedure that can result in persons being deported pursuant to the expedited removal statute without even being asked how long they have been in the country might satisfy due process for persons encountered at the border, but it is woefully inadequate for persons encountered in the interior of the country,” Wilkins wrote.

Make the Road New York did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

• (This article was originally published by the DC Bureau of the States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, and is republished by US Border News with permission.)

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U.S. federal authorities are intercepting a flood of counterfeit FIFA soccer gear worth around 10 million dollars arriving in the U.S. during the World Cup tournament.

Recent arrivals include the seizure of 8,400 counterfeit Nike soccer jerseys in Miami, bound for Brazil, worth $840,000; and 7,857 counterfeit Nike jerseys directly linked to a previous seized shipment of 7,857 counterfeit Nike jerseys, valued at $1,374,975.

One of the largest seizures occurred in Houston, where US Federal Officers on Thursday, June 18, 2026, reported seizing 12,000 Adidas Soccer Jerseys, 4,500 Adidas FIFA Soccer Balls, nearly 4,400 pairs of athletic shoes, 69 FIFA packages with over 2,200 counterfeit Apple watches and ear buds with FIFA trademark logo, and an array of toys and perfumes worth well over $6 million.

North of Houston in Dallas-Fort Worth, US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) officers also reported seizures of large quantities of counterfeit FIFA merchandise arriving from Mexico and China, which were easy to spot because of their obvious poor quality.

On June 8, 2026, CBP Agents in Los Angeles/Long Beach reported seizing fake World Cup merch worth almost $850,000.

All this adds up to millions of dollars in counterfeit World Cup merchandise seized by US authorities so far during the games.

Are you surprised at all the counterfeit gear being brought into the US from abroad during the World Cup games?

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Mexican Cartel human smuggling operations in Texas have suffered several significant hits at the hands of law enforcement officers who have been targeting their “stash houses” (where large numbers of people who have been illegally smuggled across the border await transport deeper into the state).

Since the beginning of May, federal and state officers have reported the arrests of 150 illegal aliens resulting from a series of stash house raids along the Texas border.

The latest stash house bust (pictured above) reported by authorities on June 9, 2026. occurred in Laredo. 42 illegal aliens - most of them from Mexico - were taken into custody and processed for deportation.

The day before, Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol Agents raided a Palmview motel whose rooms were being used as a stash house by a different cartel. An undisclosed number of people were taken into custody there.

On June 5, 2026, Border Patrol Agents raided another Laredo stash house. They found 14 illegal aliens (13 Mexicans and 1 Guatemalan) there and arrested another illegal alien, whom they determined was operating the stash house for a human smuggling group.

“Stash houses have no business in our neighborhoods! We are actively targeting and dismantling these illicit operations and will not allow criminal cartel networks to turn residential communities into criminal hubs.” -US Border Patrol Chief Rosario “Pete” Vasquez

On June 1, 2026, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Agents took 16 illegal aliens into custody (with the assistance of Mercedes, Texas Police) following a tip that a home there was being used as a stash house. According to BorderReport.com, those arrested were from Nepal, Albania, Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala.

That is a total of 72 arrests reported this month, which follows the reported arrests of 78 illegal aliens in a series of stash house raids by authorities along the Texas border in May.

Some of those raids resulted in the arrests of several gang members:

Two “Rollin’ 30s Crips” gang members were found among four illegal immigrants from Honduras inside a motel room in Eagle Pass that was being used as a stash house. Two US citizens in the room were also arrested for running that operation.

Several heavily-tattooed men (indicative of gang affiliation) were found among 29 illegal aliens arrested inside a stash house near Laredo. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) says one of those was linked to the violent “Tango Blast” gang, which is known to work with Mexican Cartels.

A confirmed member of the “Tren De Aragua” gang (who had been deported from the US multiple times before) was found among four illegal aliens from Venezuela inside an El Paso stash house raided by agents from the Border Patrol, Customs & Border Protection, and ICE.

As of May 21, 2026, the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol reported raiding 185 stash houses, resulting in the arrests of 1,800 migrants this year.

Their shrines to “Santa Muerte” (a popular religious figure in prisons), like the one shown below, found during a Laredo stash house raid last month, don’t seem to be working too well!

(The figures cited in this article are compiled from public reports by Texas state and federal law enforcement agencies.)

How much of a dent do you think these “stash house” raids have made in the Mexican Cartels’ human smuggling operations in Texas?

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25 illegal aliens who said they were Chinese citizens were apprehended by the U.S. Coast Guard while attempting to illegally enter the United States a mile south of Key Biscayne, Florida, on June 10, 2026.

This incident began when a Coast Guard crew from Coast Guard Station Miami Beach encountered a vessel that failed to comply with orders to stop. The crew fired warning shots, but the boat's captain continued. The Coast Guard then fired on the vessel’s engines, which rendered it dead in the water.

Special agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) & Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are looking into this.

Their arrests follow the apprehension of six other camouflaged Chinese men who were in Texas, north of the Rio Grande, by US Border Patrol Agents on Tuesday, May 26, 2026. They were among a group of twelve illegal aliens caught crossing a private ranch near the Mexican border.

Chinese citizens arrested entering the US illegally are classified as “Special Interest Aliens” (SIAs) who, based on travel patterns, country of origin, or other indicators, are flagged by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as potentially posing a national security risk.

The Chinese apprehended while attempting to illegally enter the US in Florida and Texas are not the only SIAs arrested recently.

On June 7, 2026, officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and U.S. Border Patrol Agents working an anti-smuggling operation in Starr County apprehended a group of 10 illegal immigrants near the Rio Grande border with Mexico.

One woman, who appeared to be dressed more appropriately for a dinner party than for an illegal border crossing, stood out among the group.

Officers determined she was a Russian citizen.

Besides the Chinese and Russian “Special Interest Aliens,” Fox News reported on June 24, 2025, that US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) apprehended 17 “Special Interest Aliens” from Iran in just one week.

Do the arrests of“Special Interest Aliens” from China, Russia, and Iran in the US worry you?

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The 5,525-mile International Boundary between the U.S. and Canada is known as the longest undefended border in the world. You’ll find no border wall here, mostly just pylons to mark the border like the one pictured between the flagpoles above.

At official International crossing points, you WILL find US & Canadian Customs & Immigration officers, but the level of scrutiny you will face varies. For example, when I crossed from Skagway, Alaska, into Fraser, British Columbia, earlier this year, Canadian Customs collected and examined the passports of everyone aboard my tour bus.

On our return trip, our bus was stopped by a US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) Agent, who exchanged a few words with our driver, but no passports were collected or examined, and, unlike our entry into Canada, no armed officers boarded the bus to question passengers (mostly those with non-US travel documents).

The US Northern Border may be considerably more laid-back than the Southern Border with Mexico, but that doesn’t mean there’s no human smuggling or drug smuggling here, as several recent cases illustrate.

On Tuesday, June 9, 2026, CBP Officers at the Buffalo, New York Peace Bridge border crossing checked the cargo of a large shipment of chocolate arriving in the US by commercial truck from Ontario and found the driver was hauling something else instead.

Inside dozens of boxes, the CBP officers found vacuum-sealed packages of marijuana. The drug load weighed in at more than 1,600 pounds with a street value of more than $4 million.

On Thursday, June 11, 2026, CBP Officers in Port Huron, Michigan, watching Canada-bound traffic crossing the Blue Water Bridge into Ontario, interrupted another large-scale drug smuggling attempt.

After a CBP K9 took an interest in an outbound semi-truck, officers took a closer look at what it was hauling and discovered 55 shrink-wrapped bricks of cocaine. The drug load weighed in at 133 pounds with a street value of $4 million.

Officers seized the tractor-trailer. The driver, who was found to be a citizen of India, is facing federal prosecution.

Three days earlier, US Border Patrol (USBP) Agents, along with Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) Officers, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Agents, apprehended a large number of illegal aliens across the border from Ontario in a suburb of Buffalo, New York.

The federal officers arrested 15 illegal aliens, including 8 Venezuelans (3 with criminal records for crimes including larceny and DUI).

Although there is not nearly as much drug and human smuggling activity along the US Northern Border with Canada as there is along the Southern Border with Mexico, these recent busts demonstrate why US Federal Authorities can’t let their guard down there.

Patrolling long stretches of International Boundaries without natural barriers or a border wall presents challenges to those agents that are unique to the Northern Border.

In many areas, agents have to contend with harsh winter conditions and heavy snow, and can only patrol their sectors after donning skis or riding snowmobiles.

The smuggling activity may not be as intense as it is along the Southern Border, but policing it is just as challenging.

Are you surprised that large human and drug smuggling activities like those outlined in this article are occurring along the US Northern Border with Canada?

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• (This article was written by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy for the Arizona Mirror & is republished by US Border News with permission under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.)

Gov. Katie Hobbs struck a budget deal with Arizona Republicans that hires 100 new state troopers, 50 of which will be dedicated to “immigration enforcement and border security,” though the governor’s office said they won’t be aiding federal agents enforcing immigration laws.

Instead, a spokesman for Hobbs said, the new troopers will be working to combat drug trafficking.

The $18.3 billion budget deal has been months in the making as lawmakers worked to avoid the June 30 deadline that would lead to a government shutdown in Arizona. The plan, which was made public Tuesday afternoon, includes $1.45 billion in tax cuts that will codify federal changes made by President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

It also includes $14.2 million for the hiring of 100 Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers — half of which are “to be used for immigration enforcement and border security” assisting the department’s Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission, known as GIITEM.

The budget says the 50 troopers will help GIITEM with four key areas:

• Enforcing all federal laws relating to “illegal aliens and arresting illegal aliens”

• Responding to or assisting any county sheriff or attorney investigating “complaints of employment of illegal aliens”

• Enforcing Arizona’s SB1070 law and investigating identity theft “in the context of hiring illegal aliens and the unlawful entry into this country”

• “Taking strict enforcement action” of federal immigration laws

But that doesn’t mean the operation is going to assist Trump’s mass deportation agenda, gubernatorial spokesman Christian Slater said in a statement.

“Repeating what the governor has said time and time again: the State of Arizona has not, and will not, participate in or fund mass deportations, indiscriminate round-ups of immigrants and violations of constitutional rights,” he said. “Under this administration, GIITEM will be used by local law enforcement to stop drug trafficking, human smuggling and cartel operations in Arizona. It will be laser-focused on drug interdiction operations, not immigration enforcement.”

And last year, DPS Director Col. Jeffrey Glover said that immigration is a federal responsibility to enforce, not the state’s.

“Unless a state crime has been committed that falls under AZDPS jurisdiction, our personnel — including GIITEM units — do not participate in immigration enforcement operations,” he said, adding that state troopers would “notify federal partners” as warranted if their investigations uncover someone in the U.S. unlawfully.

The GIITEM provisions and funding have been included in budgets since 2016.

GIITEM is set to receive more than $26 million in total, with $14.2 million of that for the new troopers. The budget also allocates $1.2 million from that fund to be placed in a separate subaccount that GIITEM can use to dole out funds to select sheriffs for border security related expenses.

Immigrant advocacy group Living United for Change in Arizona panned the spending, but said it’s important to note both that the overall funding for GIITEM — which it generally opposes — did not increase over last year and that the budget trims $5 million from the Local Border Support Fund.

“That reduction matters, and it’s a step in the right direction, but our position remains clear: Arizona should not be spending state dollars on immigration enforcement, helping an authoritarian federal government expand its vicious campaign of ICE enforcement, deportation and family separation,” LUCHA spokesman César Fierros told the Arizona Mirror. “Every dollar that goes toward programs like GITEM is a dollar not going toward housing, healthcare, food assistance, heat relief or the services families urgently need.”

The budget also allocates $13.2 million for “local border support,” which “shall be used to fund local law enforcement officer positions for border drug interdiction to deter and apprehend any individuals who are charged with drug trafficking, human smuggling, illegal immigration and other border-related crimes.” That figure is unchanged from the current budget.

That money can also be used for “grants to cities, towns and counties for costs associated with prosecuting and detaining individuals who are charged with drug trafficking, human smuggling, illegal immigration and other border-related crimes.”

The budget also says that the department “may fund all capital-related equipment.”

Border security related funds have been used by local police departments to purchase high-tech surveillance equipment, such as the Tucson Police Department’s purchase of a social media surveillance tool that has also been used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

• (This article originally appeared in the Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization).

What are your thoughts about Arizona dedicating state law enforcement resources to Border Security and Immigration Enforcement?

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Jack Beavers

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US authorities have apprehended 338 illegal aliens off both US Coasts since late May 2026, while intercepting five human smuggling boats at sea.

The most dangerous human smuggling run, by far, that was interrupted by the US occurred in the Atlantic Ocean on May 31, 2026, when a Jacksonville, Florida-based US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) patrol plane spotted a dangerously overloaded boat and alerted the US Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard aircrew who relieved the CBP aircraft determined that the vessel had lost one engine, was slowly taking on water, and its occupants were bailing 3–5 gallons of water per minute.

The situation went from dangerous to dire when the boat lost all power, leaving all aboard adrift and desperately bailing out water to prevent the vessel from sinking.

The US Coast Guard notified the nearest authorities, the Turks and Caicos Islands, 65 miles away. The British Overseas Territory dispatched four boats from its police and naval forces on a rescue mission, which reached the distressed vessel.

They determined that there were 240 Haitian migrants aboard: 191 men, 44 women, and 5 children.

“These journeys are extremely hazardous, frequently involving severely overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels that are often taking on water and lack basic life-saving equipment. We encourage all individuals to pursue safe, legal, and orderly avenues for migration rather than risking their lives at sea.” - Lt. Chelsea Garcia, US Coast Guard

The passengers and crew were taken to the Turks and Caicos Islands and did not reach U.S. soil.

Also in late May 2026 the US Coast Guard reported intercepting 36 illegal aliens from Mexico aboard a 30-foot cuddy cabin vessel 22 miles offshore of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean. All aboard (including the smuggler piloting the boat) were detained and transferred to U.S. Border Patrol agents ashore in California.

And on June 7, 2026, the US Coast Guard apprehended another 41 illegal aliens in two separate incidents off both US Coasts.

The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Heriberto Hernandez intercepted 40 people aboard a grossly overloaded 20 to 30-foot makeshift vessel, first spotted by CBP aircraft off Desecheo Island, Puerto Rico. Aboard were found to be 36 people from the Dominican Republic, three from Haiti, and one from Uzbekistan.

32 of the Dominicans aboard were transferred to the custody of a Dominican Republic naval vessel in the area, while the remainder of those aboard were transported by the US Coast Guard to Puerto Rico, where they were turned over to US Immigration Authorities.

On the same day, off the northernmost point of California’s Coronado Island, the US Coast Guard apprehended another nine illegal aliens, all from Mexico, after a CBP aircrew spotted a rendezvous between a small panga smuggling boat and a larger 24-foot vessel outfitted with fishing poles in an attempt to disguise it as a pleasure craft.

The smuggling vessel and all nine aliens found aboard were escorted to the nearby San Diego harbor. The illegal aliens were placed under arrest and transferred to U.S. Border Patrol personnel at Ballast Point, California.

UPDATE: On Saturday, June 13, 2026, the Coast Guard announced the seizure of another human smuggling boat near San Diego with 17 illegal aliens aboard. A Sacramento-based Coast Guard patrol plane notified Sector San Diego that they had spotted a small “panga” boat 10 miles west of Sunset Cliffs.

The Coast Guard Cutter Forrest Rednour intercepted the smuggling boat and found 16 Mexicans aboard, as well as an unaccompanied minor from Guatemala.

They were turned over to the US Border Patrol for processing.

Are you surprised by the large number of illegal aliens the US Coast Guard has apprehended at sea recently?

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Jack Beavers

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US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) Officers are up against a flood of counterfeit World Cup merchandise and forbidden foreign food arriving at US Border Ports of Entry. As of last week, the CBP has reported more than 900 seizures of knock-off World Cup clothing & other merchandise worth more than $13 million dollars.

Recent seizures of fake FIFA gear include a large shipment of knock-offs arriving in Los Angeles, worth around $850,000, that included counterfeit Nike, Adidas, FC Barcelona, and Argentine Football Association clothing.

At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, CBP Officers confiscated several large shipments of fake FIFA soccer jerseys and shorts arriving from Mexico & China. The DFW CBP Officers said they identified the merch as fakes right away due to their obvious poor quality.

And, on July 12, 2026, the CBP announced that its agents in Newark had seized 183 fake soccer jerseys from the luggage of a US citizen arriving from Peru. The CBP determined that the man who brought them into the country planned to sell them during the World Cup games for a few dollars apiece to make what he thought would be an easy and quick profit.

CBP Agents are also encountering more foreign travelers arriving at US Airports for the games, with food and other products forbidden from entry into America by the US Agriculture Department.

On May 28, 2026, CBP agriculture detector dog Valen, a 3-year-old female Beagle, alerted to the baggage of a traveler from Vietnam arriving in Washington, DC. During a secondary examination, CBP agriculture specialists discovered over 13 pounds of pork products and nearly 16 pounds of fruits and vegetables.

And this month, CBP Agriculture Canine Rubee detected a large load of undeclared pork and bananas in luggage arriving at Los Angeles International Airport from Vietnam.

Vietnam has experienced recent outbreaks of African Swine Fever, a highly contagious and deadly viral disease that could significantly impact the U.S. pork industry. The U.S. is the world’s third-largest pork producer and exports pork products to over 100 countries.

The fruits and vegetables in those travelers’ baggage were also seized and destroyed to prevent the entry of invasive insect pests that could impact our nation’s crop industries.

On June 2, 2026, CBP agriculture specialists discovered 15 pounds of canned ruminant meat within multiple cans in the baggage of a Tunisian traveler arriving at DC’s Dulles International Airport who declared that he had lamb and beef during a secondary examination. The traveler stated that his mother cooked and canned the ruminant meat before he traveled to the U.S.

Tunisia has experienced episodes of Lumpy Skin Disease, Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, and Bovine Tuberculosis, all highly contagious viral diseases of livestock.

CBP Agents are also increasingly seizing forbidden “African Bushmeat” being brought into the US by arriving International passengers. Recent large seizures have been reported by CBP Officers in Minneapolis (who seized bushmeat and fish from Ghana) and CBP Officers in Chicago (who seized bushmeat, fish, & forbidden fruit arriving from Liberia).

CBP Officers each day are averaging the seizure of 4,691 prohibited plant, meat, animal byproducts, and soil, and the interception of 222 insect pests at U.S. ports of entry.

Are you surprised at all the counterfeit gear and forbidden food being brought into the US from abroad during the World Cup games?

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Abrazos,

Jack Beavers

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Supporters of Gregory K. Bovino - who has been trolling the Trump Administration on social media since he left the US Border Patrol - have begun an effort to draft him for a 2028 run for President. Bovino has signaled his openness to that to reporters for both NewsNation and The Daily Beast, and has since further explained his thinking in post on x.com.

Bovino led large-scale urban immigration enforcement operations that sparked protests in both Los Angeles and Chicago beginning in mid-2025. By the time he rolled into Minneapolis in December of that year for “Operation Metro Surge” (and the protests it generated there), he had been named “Commander-at-Large” of the Border Patrol tactical operations.

In January 2027, federal agents under his command assigned to “Operation Metro Surge” shot and killed U.S. citizens Renée Good & Alex Pretti. Their deaths caused overall public approval of the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement operations to plummet, with polling showing nearly two-thirds of Americans felt U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had "gone too far."

They also gave President Trump the highest disapproval ratings since just after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Two days after Pretti’s killing, Bovino returned to the El Centro, California, Border Patrol Sector, where he had previously served as Chief, and retired from the agency two months later, ending nearly 30 years of service.

Markwayne Mullin, who has since taken over as head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since Bovino left, has expressed a desire to conduct immigration enforcement in a “more quiet way,” which Bovino objects to (and brings us to the movement to draft him to run for president).

The effort was first reported by The Daily Beast on Thursday, June 4, 2026. The publication described the group behind the “Draft Bovino” campaign as “political outcasts from MAGA’s far right.”

They launched a website whose copyright describes it as a “grassroots effort formed by Americans starving for true American sovereignty not affiliated with any candidate or candidates (sic) committee. Purely a volunteer effort hoping to draft Bovino for President in 2028.”

The Daily Beast published the following statement from Bovino, which they characterized as “a thinly veiled jab at Donald Trump, whom he has accused of backing away from aggressive immigration enforcement”:

“If I were President, I’d lead that [deportation] effort from the front and be on the front lines from time to time.” - Gregory K. Bovino

He has since posted a lengthy statement on x.com:

“My one and only priority is deporting the 106 million illegals who are here. That’s it.

The grassroots support I’m seeing tells me the polls are completely wrong…

If I’m getting this much energy, it’s probably because 90% of the country wants mass deportations and the media just isn’t asking the right questions.

My commitment is simple, liberate America from this invasion and restore our quality of life.

If running for President is what it takes to actually get it done, then all options are on the table.” - Gregory K. Bovino

And, while it is too early to guess who might also throw their hats in the ring for the 2028 Presidential election, Bovino is sparring online with members of the Trump Administration, like DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin:

In addition to trolling DHS Secretary Mullin, he is also taking on White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles for not shutting down protests that have been occurring outside a New Jersey immigration detention center since late May:

Meanwhile, Bovino is traveling like he’s already on the campaign trail.

He recently returned from Europe, where he headlined an international "Remigration Summit" in Portugal. At the event, he spoke to European and American far-right activists to advocate for mass deportations and to express alignment between U.S. and European right-wing movements.

What are your thoughts about the campaign to draft Bovino as a 2028 candidate for US President?

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Abrazos,

Jack Beavers

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Quick action by US Border Patrol Agents and Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Highway Patrolmen saved the lives of 39 illegal aliens locked inside a trailer being hauled by human smugglers driving a semi truck, which burst into flames at the end of a harrowing chase in South Texas on Thursday, June 4, 2026.

This emergency began at 8:36 PM, when a K9 at the Encino Border Patrol Checkpoint on US Highway 287 in Brooks County took an interest in the trailer. When Border Patrol Agents directed the truck driver to an inspection area, he hit the gas and pulled away from the checkpoint instead.

Border Patrol vehicles pursued the truck north to Falfurrias, Texas, where the driver made a U-Turn back toward the Mexican border, at which time Texas DPS officers continued the pursuit.

The DPS officers deflated the truck’s tires, but the driver continued as sparks flew from the truck’s rims. Those sparks eventually caught the truck afire, forcing the driver to stop. As officers arrested the pair found inside the cab of the burning truck, other officers discovered the trailer was locked and realized people were inside.

Fortunately, they were able to open the locked trailer and rescue the 39 illegal aliens inside before the trailer was engulfed in flames.

Although this method of human smuggling is demonstrably dangerous, and sometimes deadly, there is no shortage of truck drivers willing to make these smuggling runs, or Mexican cartels willing to risk so many lives at once because it is so profitable.

This week, the Texas DPS reported that, for the second time in less than 10 days, their officers apprehended 20 illegal immigrants being concealed inside a truck tractor during an Operation Lone Star traffic stop in Webb County. That’s 40 illegal immigrants from just two traffic stops.

A few weeks earlier, Border Patrol Agents in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas busted another trucker hauling a “load” of 24 illegal aliens locked in a trailer being hauled north from the Texas Border with Mexico.

Are you surprised so many truckers are willing to risk arrest, and so many lives on these dangerous cartel human smuggling runs through South Texas?

Share your thoughts in the comments to this story!

Abrazos,

Jack Beavers

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