By SOPHIA TAREEN and DORANY PINEDA

CHICAGO (AP) — To Jose Abel Garcia, a Guatemalan immigrant in the Los Angeles area, President Donald Trump’s latest promise to expand deportations in Democratic-led cities doesn’t change much.

The 38-year-old garment worker said Trump’s doubling down on Democratic strongholds while pausing immigration arrests at restaurants, hotels and farms doesn’t spare workers who are simply trying to make rent.

“He just talks,” Garcia said. “The raids keep happening and it’s going to be hard for him to follow through on that because he isn’t acting alone.”

In recent days Trump has vowed to shift immigration enforcement away from political allies and toward political foes, prioritizing deportations in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and cities at “the core of the Democrat Power Center.” At the same time, he’s reversed course and paused arrests in industries that heavily rely on a foreign-born workforce.

Garcia and other immigrants say, either way, fears remain high in their communities, while experts note the Trump administration’s pullback on work site immigration enforcement is a lesson other administrations learned long ago. Meanwhile, Democrats and activists insist Trump’s moves are calculated and something they’ll use as a rallying cry.

Escalating political fight

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been locked in a widening dispute with the Trump administration, said the motivation behind singling out Democratic cities is clear.

“Incite violence and chaos in blue states, have an excuse to militarize our cities, demonize his opponents, keep breaking the law and consolidate power,” Newsom posted Monday on X. “It’s illegal and we will not let it stand.”

Trump again fixed on New York and Chicago on Monday while pointing to Los Angeles demonstrations against his administration policies, and adding many of “those people weren’t from LA, they were from California.”

“I want to focus on the cities,” he said at the Group of Seven Summit in Canada.

The Trump administration has said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least3,000 arrests daily, up from about 650 daily during the first months of Trump’s second term. Already, the president and his allies have targeted so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions” with splashy live-streamed arrests, lawsuits and summoning mayors and governors to testify at the Capitol.

“It’s clear that Trump is escalating these attacks on Democratic cities because he’s threatened by the mass mobilizations,” said U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a Chicago Democrat. “I expect Democrats will push back harder.”

In the Los Angeles area, a group of advocates continued community-led patrols to watch for ICE arrests and warn neighbors.

Organizer Francisco “Chavo” Romero said they’re also patrolling Metro rail stations and other public transit hubs.

“They double down, we triple down,” he said.

Worksite arrests

Pulling back on worksite enforcement is new for Trump, but not in recent history.

Going after employers on immigration compliance has been a controversial issue, particularly in industries that rely on immigrant labor. For instance, nearly half of those in meatpacking are thought to be born abroad.

Under a 1996 immigration law, the Clinton administration investigated hiring practices to weed out employees without proper U.S. work authorization and to punish employers. But it didn’t last long. Investigations took months. Workers were afraid to come to work. Some farmers complained their crops were suffering. Elected officials began to intervene.

“It pretty much stopped,” said Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was the predecessor to ICE.

Now a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Police Institute, she said other presidential administrations have grappled with the same problem.

“That’s always the conundrum: How do you hold the employer accountable?” she said. “You can go and get the workers and in two weeks there are going to be more workers hired.”

Earlier this month, immigration authorities raided an Omaha meat production plant, angering company officials who said they followed the law. Trump’s first administration saw the largest workplace sting in a decade with arrests at seven Mississippi chicken plants.

That made his shift to pause such operations a surprise. He wrote on Truth Social that the arrests were “taking very good, long time workers” away and it was hard to replace them.

How the pause will play out is unclear. A message left Monday with the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.

Immigrants and activists left baffled

Still, Trump’s approach confused many.

“On one hand, he will stay away from certain industries and at the same time double down on Chicago,” said Lawrence Benito, head of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “I’m not sure how to reconcile those two comments.”

He said the group would continue to help immigrants understand their rights in the case of ICE arrests.

U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Chicago Democrat, accused Trump of trying to silence dissent.

In a lengthy post on his Truth Social site about cracking down on Democratic cities, Trump said, without any evidence, that Democrats were using immigrants living in the country without legal status to steal elections.

For others, the latest policies were simply another thing to worry about.

Jorge Lima, 32, said his immigrant parents from Mexico are only leaving home to go to their jobs as garment workers in California.

“They don’t go out anymore,” he said. “They’re afraid but they have to eat.”

Pineda reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed from Washington.

We’re coming off a powerful weekend of action. Millions of people in hundreds of cities were united in “No Kings” protests that swept the country. 

Americans were out to condemn what many see as President Donald Trump’s federal overreach, aggressive anti‑immigrant enforcement, and a military parade that celebrated him and the U.S. Army. 

In Los Angeles, protesters have been out for days and Trump responded with a page from the authoritarian playbook. He deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines onto the streets of L.A. On Friday, for the first time in recent history, military personnel temporarily detained a civilian.

Here in Detroit, thousands raised their voices at Clark Park, shouting “down with deportations.” Local advocates say ICE agents recently arrested a Venezuelan family in Southwest Detroit moments after their asylum hearing was dismissed. At the McNamara federal courthouse, asylum seekers were detained just as judges ended their proceedings. 

That tactic — attend your immigration hearing and risk arrest — is becoming common.

An almost-graduated Detroit high school student was also detained during a traffic stop on his way to a school field trip. He was deported last week despite many calls from the community urging officials to let him temporarily stay. 

To help us think about this moment, we’re joined by attorney and professor Sabrina Balgamwalla. She’s the director of the Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic at Wayne State University. 

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming  on demand.

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The post The Metro:Thousands protest to stand up for immigrant rights in Metro Detroit appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

By AAMER MADHANI and ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels, after President Donald Trump expressed alarm about the impact of aggressive enforcement, an official said Saturday.

The move follows weeks of increased enforcement since Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.

Tatum King, an official with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, wrote regional leaders on Thursday to halt investigations of the agricultural industry, including meatpackers, restaurants and hotels, according to The New York Times.

A U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to The Associated Press the contents of the directive. The Homeland Security Department did not dispute it.

“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokesperson, said when asked to confirm the directive.

The shift suggests Trump’s promise of mass deportations has limits if it threatens industries that rely on workers in the country illegally. Trump posted on his Truth Social site Thursday that he disapproved of how farmers and hotels were being affected.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” he wrote. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

While ICE’s presence in Los Angeles has captured public attention and prompted Trump to deploy the California National Guard and Marines, immigration authorities have also been a growing presence at farms and factories across the country.

Farm bureaus in California say raids at packinghouses and fields are threatening businesses that supply much of the country’s food. Dozens of farmworkers were arrested after uniformed agents fanned out on farms northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County, which is known for growing strawberries, lemons and avocados. Others are skipping work as fear spreads.

ICE made more than 70 arrests Tuesday at a food packaging company in Omaha, Nebraska. The owner of Glenn Valley Foods said the company was enrolled in a voluntary program to verify workers’ immigration status and that it was operating at 30% capacity as it scrambled to find replacements.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, has repeatedly said ICE will send officers into communities and workplaces, particularly in “sanctuary” jurisdictions that limit the agency’s access to local jails.

Sanctuary cities “will get exactly what they don’t want, more officers in the communities and more officers at the work sites,” Homan said Monday on Fox News Channel. “We can’t arrest them in the jail, we’ll arrest them in the community. If we can’t arrest them in community, we’re going to increase work site enforcement operation. We’re going to flood the zone.”

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By NICHOLAS RICCARDI

In one of his first acts of his second term as president, Donald Trumppardoned hundreds of people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to keep him in office, including those who beat police officers.

On Monday, Trump posted a warning on social media to those demonstrating in Los Angeles against his immigration crackdown and confronting police and members of the National Guard he had deployed: “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”

The discrepancy of Trump’s response to the two disturbances — pardoning rioters who beat police on Jan. 6, which he called “a beautiful day,” while condemning violence against law enforcement in Los Angeles — illustrates how the president expects his enemies to be held to different standards than his supporters.

“Trump’s behavior makes clear that he only values the rule of law and the people who enforce it when it’s to his political advantage,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.

Trump pardoned more than 1,000 people who tried to halt the transfer of power on that day in 2021, when about 140 officers were injured. The former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, called it “likely the largest single day mass assault of law enforcement ” in American history.

Trump’s pardon covered people convicted of attacking police with flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch. Many of the assaults were captured on surveillance or body camera footage that showed rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police as officers desperately fought to beat back the angry crowd.

While some who were pardoned were convicted of nonviolent crimes, Trump pardoned at least 276 defendants who were convicted of assault charges, according to an Associated Press review of court records. Nearly 300 others had their pending charges dismissed as a result of Trump’s sweeping act of clemency.

Roughly 180 of the defendants were charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement or obstructing officers during a civil disorder.

“They were extremely violent, and they have been treated as if their crimes were nothing, and now the president is trying to use the perception of violence by some protesters as an excuse to crack some heads,” said Mike Romano, who was a deputy chief of the section of the U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted those involved in the Capitol siege.

A White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, defended the president’s response: “President Trump was elected to secure the border, equip federal officials with the tools to execute this plan, and restore law and order.”

Trump has long planned to use civil unrest as an opportunity to invoke broad presidential powers, and he seemed poised to do just that on Monday as he activated a battalion of U.S. Marines to support the presence of the National Guard. He mobilized the Guard on Saturday over the opposition of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats.

The Guard was last sent to Los Angeles by a president during the Rodney King riots in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act. Those riots were significantly more violent and widespread than the current protests in Los Angeles, which were largely confined to a stretch of downtown, a relatively small patch in a city of 469 square miles and nearly 4 million people.

The current demonstrations were sparked by a confrontation Saturday in the city of Paramount, southeast of downtown Los Angeles, where federal agents were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office.

California officials, who are largely Democrats, argued that Trump is trying to create more chaos to expand his power. Newsom, whom Trump suggested should be arrested, called the president’s acts “authoritarian.” But even Rick Caruso, a prominent Los Angeles Republican and former mayoral candidate, posted on the social media site X that the president should not have called in the National Guard.

Protests escalated after the Guard arrived, with demonstrators blockading a downtown freeway. Some some set multiple self-driving cars on fire and pelted Los Angeles police with debris and fireworks.

Romano said he worried that Trump’s double standard on how demonstrators should treat law enforcement will weaken the position of police in American society.

He recalled that, during the Capitol attack, many rioters thought police should let them into the building because they had supported law enforcement’s crackdown on anti-police demonstrations after George Floyd was murdered in 2020. That sort of “transactional” approach Trump advocates is toxic, Romano said.

“We need to expect law enforcement are doing their jobs properly,” he said. Believing they just cater to the president “is going to undermine public trust in law enforcement.”

Associated Press writers Michael Kunzleman and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

Clashes between protesters and law enforcement bled into Orange County on Monday, as an anti-immigration rally in Santa Ana grew heated in the evening after a day of reported U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations around the region.

Reports of ICE activity came in from across the city, including outside Home Depot locations, at a business park near Warner Avenue and Garnsey Street and at a commercial area around Broadway and Warner, according to the Orange County Rapid Response Network, a mutual aid group that keeps watch for ICE activity in local communities. In Fountain Valley, agents were reported near a car wash and a fast food restaurant off Magnolia Street and near Fountain Valley Regional Hospital. Additional activity was confirmed in Huntington Beach by the network.

According to network coordinator Sandra De Anda, at least a dozen people were detained outside of a Home Depot on Harbor Boulevard, and community dispatchers logged several others being detained throughout the day.

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said immigration officials appeared to have targeted day laborers waiting for work. News of the raids sparked protests Monday at several locations in Santa Ana, including outside Santa Ana City Hall and near the Home Depot.

Ricky Dominguez, 36, of Santa Ana, said he went to the protest near the civic center after work because he had been left “speechless” that ICE was seen detaining people in Santa Ana.

“I saw what was going on with ICE and felt I had to be here,” he said. “They’re here in my backyard.”

Throughout the afternoon, the crowd of protesters grew along Santa Ana Boulevard in front of the federal building. At one point, when protesters tried to block a van from leaving a driveway from the federal building, police intervened to push the crowd back and used pepper spray as a deterrent.

Just before 6 p.m., the demonstration had grown to several hundred people and was at times blocking Santa Ana Boulevard and Civic Center Plaza, the former of which was shut down to traffic with barricades in place. The federal building was guarded by law enforcement members in tactical gear, some had patches that said Homeland Security Investigations or Homeland Security Police.

Dylan Carranca, 23, of Fullerton, said he was standing in front of the agents near the federal building when he saw three tear gas canisters get thrown into the crowd standing in the street.

“We were just standing there. I didn’t see anything get thrown by our side and then all of a sudden we saw three get thrown. One on the right, one in the middle and one on the left. I saw one land and I took off running,” Carranca said, whose eyes had turned red from the gas.

Protesters who had spent the afternoon in Santa Ana said police at first were using pepper bullets, but later switched to rubber bullets.

“Every time we move up, we don’t even do anything, they’re just there and tell us to stay. We get close and they keep trying to get us to get back with tear gas and they start shooting rubber bullets,” said Carla, 22, of Santa Ana, who did not want to give her last name. “It’s a cycle.”

Photos: Santa Ana Police declare riot as immigration raids spark day-long protest

Just before 6:30 p.m., someone from the crowd launched an object toward the agents, which triggered another round of tear gas and the crowd to move back.

After 7 p.m. law enforcement declared the gathering a riot and told people they needed to leave and be off the street or they would be arrested.

Across town, around 100 people gathered peacefully at the intersection of Harbor and MacArthur boulevards around 6:30 p.m. to protest the immigration enforcement actions that took place earlier in the day.

“ICE out of OC,” the protesters chanted, as passing cars honked in support. They held signs that read, “We celebrate sanctuary here” and “No one is illegal.”

Carlos Perea, executive director of the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice, said he hadn’t expected day laborers in Orange County to be targeted so soon, following the recent raids in Los Angeles.

Councilmember David Penaloza, who represents the area around the Home Depot on Edinger, condemned the timing and tactics of the enforcement activity.

“These actions are not about public safety,” he said in a statement. “They are about intimidation and sowing fear among some of the most vulnerable and hardest-working members of our community.”

“No city resources have been or will be used to assist ICE agents in any way,” Penaloza added. “However, if any individuals — whether federal agents or peaceful protesters — resort to violence, Santa Ana police will respond to help maintain public safety.”

The Santa Ana Police Department said in a statement that the department “does not and will not participate in immigration enforcement efforts.”

Sarmiento, who previously served as Santa Ana mayor, visited a Home Depot on Edinger Avenue on Monday morning and said he was told at least six people had been detained there.

“Our day laborers, they’re simply looking for work,” he said in a social media video. “These are people who are not criminals, these are people who are trying to feed their families.”

Councilmember Thai Viet Phan called the day’s events “unconstitutional, horrifying and inhumane,” and pointed to the broader pattern of enforcement she said is targeting immigrant families across Southern California.

“Separating families, raiding schools, invading hospitals and ambushing graduation ceremonies do not constitute public safety,” she said in a statement.

Monday’s events in Orange County follow a weekend of coordinated federal raids in the Los Angeles area. At least 44 people were detained across a handful of sites, and protests have quickly escalated across the area, with large crowds gathering at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A., Paramount and Boyle Heights. Over the weekend, the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles, a move California officials are now challenging in court.

In Orange County, some residents said they feared enforcement activity may intensify as focus shifts south. At the Magnolia Car Wash in Fountain Valley, the assistant manager said he saw federal agents arrive just before 11 a.m. in unmarked Suburbans, two Ford pickups and one Mercedes-Benz, park in the middle of the lot and begin making arrests inside the business.

“I went up to ask if they needed anything and they didn’t answer. Two of them went straight inside,” he said in Spanish for a Facebook livestream. “I said, ‘These are workers! Are you looking for immigrants or criminals?’ I got closer, and as I did, one of them scratched my face with his fingernail.”

He said ICE detained six or seven of his coworkers and described the scene as chaotic and aggressive.

“It felt like a kidnapping,” he said. “We’re hardworking people here to work, not to steal from this country.”

Victor Valladares, a local activist and former official with the Orange County Democratic Party, livestreamed from the scene and said he believes at least six people were detained.

“What happened here is unjust. People were just working, and they took six of them,” Valladares said in Spanish.

Tracy La, executive director of VietRISE, said her organization is tracking enforcement across Little Saigon. On Monday morning, La said a Border Patrol agent was seen tackling a Latino man near a bus stop in front of the Song Hy Vietnamese supermarket.

“This blatant act of racial profiling and militarized immigration enforcement aggression against our Latino and migrant neighbors took place down the street from VietRISE’s office,” she said in a statement. “Trump’s overtly racist immigration agenda has no place in Orange County. We condemn these unjust attacks by ICE and Border Patrol that are by and large terrorizing Latino communities.”

Law enforcement agencies in Orange County emphasized that while peaceful protest is protected, any violence or vandalism would be prosecuted.

“The Orange County Sheriff’s Department will always defend the First Amendment rights of those who peacefully protest, but criminal activity such as vandalism, destruction of property and assaults will not be tolerated,” Sheriff Don Barnes said in a statement.

District Attorney Todd Spitzer also said his office is monitoring the situation.

“Any evidence of criminal activity, including failure to obey lawful orders to disperse, will be investigated and thoroughly reviewed,” he said in a statement.

Santa Ana Councilmember Phil Bacerra urged protesters to avoid giving federal officials a reason to escalate enforcement.

“Exercise your constitutional right to express yourself peacefully. Do not engage in illegal activity,” he said in a statement. “Vandalism, looting and assaulting law enforcement are neither peaceful nor legal. Show your love for Santa Ana by not giving the federal government any excuse to send the National Guard to the Golden City.”

The total number of people detained in Orange County on Monday has not yet been confirmed. The Orange County Rapid Response Network’s De Anda said her team is still in the process of confirming a number.

Photos: Santa Ana Police declare riot as immigration raids spark day-long protest

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Unhappy with the Trump Administration’s arrests of undocumented immigrants, about 50 protesters demonstrated near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Detroit on Sunday.

Mass arrests and deportations, including some that continue to violate court orders, have sent many to the streets in protest.

Over the weekend, law enforcement in Los Angeles, CA attacked protesters and journalists with tear gas and projectiles injuring dozens.

The crowd was small but vocal, chanting “Summer’s here, melt the ICE, immigrants deserve their rights,” along with chants in Spanish that included expletives aimed at ICE.

Mike Barber, a special education teacher from White Lake, was among them. He says he’s troubled by the administration’s actions.

“This is against what America stands for,” Barber says. “America is a nation of immigrants and now they want to kick them out without even looking at their papers.”

“It could be us next if we’re disliked.”

“I mean, here at Wayne State, we had people that got their F1 visas canceled,” Pico says. “These aren’t criminals, and the fact that Trump wants to portray them like that, I mean, he’s just racist.”

Jo Pico was drawn to protest after seeing the police-initiated violence in LA.

Leah Checchini of Hazel Park says her father immigrated from Argentina and that she believes everyone should have the same opportunity that he did.

“I have a lot of friends that are in the process of getting their papers taken care of and everything,” Checchini says. “So just seeing what’s happening to people is enraging, to say the least.”

Nationwide protests are planned for Saturday. It coincides with a planned show of military might by President Trump.

The President is celebrating his birthday with a military parade in Washington D.C.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must give migrants sent to an El Salvador prison a chance to challenge their removals.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg said that people who were sent to the prison in March under an 18th-century wartime law haven’t been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges.

The ruling is the latest milestone in a monthslong legal saga over the fate of deportees imprisoned at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.

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By JACQUES BILLEAUD

PHOENIX (AP) — Twenty years ago, when Arizona became frustrated with its porous border with Mexico, the state passed a series of immigration laws as proponents regularly griped about how local taxpayers get stuck paying the education, health care and other costs for people in the U.S. illegally.

Then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio gladly took up the cause, launching 20 large-scale traffic patrols targeting immigrants from January 2008 through October 2011. That led to a 2013 racial profiling verdict and expensive court-ordered overhauls of the agency’s traffic patrol operations and, later, its internal affairs unit.

Eight years after Arpaio was voted out, taxpayers in Maricopa County are still paying legal and compliance bills from the crackdowns. The tab is expected to reach $352 million by midsummer 2026, including $34 million approved Monday by the county’s governing board.

While the agency has made progress on some fronts and garnered favorable compliance grades in certain areas, it hasn’t yet been deemed fully compliant with court-ordered overhauls.

Since the profiling verdict, the sheriff’s office has been criticized for disparate treatment of Hispanic and Black drivers in a series of studies of its traffic stops. The latest study, however, shows significant improvements. The agency’s also dogged by a crushing backlog of internal affairs cases.

Thomas Galvin, chairman of the county’s governing board, said the spending is “staggering” and has vowed to find a way to end the court supervision.

“I believe at some point someone has to ask: Can we just keep doing this?” Galvin said. “Why do we have to keep doing this?”

Critics of the sheriff’s office have questioned why the county wanted to back out of the case now that taxpayers are finally beginning to see changes at the sheriff’s office.

Profiling verdict

Nearly 12 years ago, a federal judge concluded Arpaio’s officers had racially profiled Latinos in his traffic patrols that targeted immigrants.

The patrols, known as “sweeps,” involved large numbers of sheriff’s deputies flooding an area of metro Phoenix — including some Latino neighborhoods — over several days to stop traffic violators and arrest other offenders.

The verdict led the judge to order an overhaul of the traffic patrol operations that included retraining officers on making constitutional stops, establishing an alert system to spot problematic behavior by officers and equipping deputies with body cameras.

Arpaio was later convicted of criminal contempt of court for disobeying the judge’s 2011 order to stop the patrols. He was spared a possible jail sentence when his misdemeanor conviction was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2017.

Several traffic-stop studies conducted after the profiling verdict showed deputies had often treated Hispanic and Black drivers differently than other drivers, though the reports stop short of saying Hispanics were still being profiled.

The latest report, covering stops in 2023, painted a more favorable picture, saying there’s no evidence of disparities in the length of stops or rates of arrests and searches for Hispanic drivers when compared to white drivers. But when drivers from all racial minorities were grouped together for analysis purposes, the study said they faced stops that were 19 seconds longer than white drivers.

While the case focused on traffic patrols, the judge later ordered changes to the sheriff’s internal affairs operation, which critics alleged was biased in its decision-making under Arpaio and shielded sheriff’s officials from accountability.

The agency has faced criticism for a yearslong backlog of internal affairs cases, which in 2022 stood around 2,100 and was reduced to 939 as of last month.

Taxpayers pick up the bill

By midsummer 2026, taxpayers are projected to pay $289 million in compliance costs for the sheriff’s office alone, plus another $23 million on legal costs and $36 million for a staff of policing professionals who monitor the agency’s progress in complying with the overhauls.

Galvin has criticized the money spent on monitoring and has questioned whether it has made anyone safer.

Raul Piña, a longtime member of a community advisory board created to help improve trust in the sheriff’s office, said the court supervision should continue because county taxpayers are finally seeing improvements. Piña believes Galvin’s criticism of the court oversight is politically driven.

“They just wrote blank checks for years, and now it makes sense to pitch a fit about it being super expensive?” Piña said.

Ending court supervision

Christine Wee, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the sheriff’s office isn’t ready to be released from court supervision.

Wee said the plaintiffs have questions about the traffic-stop data and believe the internal affairs backlog has to be cleared and the quality of investigations needs to be high. “The question of getting out from under the court is premature,” Wee said.

The current sheriff, Jerry Sheridan, said he sees himself asking the court during his term in office to end its supervision of the sheriff’s office. “I would like to completely satisfy the court orders within the next two years,” Sheridan said.

But ending court supervision would not necessarily stop all the spending, the sheriff’s office has said in court records.

Its lawyers said the costs “will likely continue to be necessary even after judicial oversight ends to sustain the reforms that have been implemented.”

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration appears to have begun deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan despite a court order restricting removals to other countries, attorneys for the migrants said in court documents.

Immigration authorities may have sent up to a dozen people from several countries to Africa, they told a judge.

Those removals would violate a court order saying people must get a “meaningful opportunity” to argue that sending them to a country outside their homeland would threaten their safety, attorneys said.

The apparent removal of one man from Myanmar was confirmed in an email from an immigration official in Texas, according to court documents. He was informed only in English, a language he does not speak well, and his attorneys learned of the plan hours before his deportation flight, they said.

A woman also reported that her husband from Vietnam and up to 10 other people were flown to Africa Tuesday morning, attorneys from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance wrote.

They asked Judge Brian E. Murphy for an emergency court order to prevent the deportations. Murphy, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, previously found that any plans to deport people to Libya without notice would “clearly” violate his ruling, which also applies to people who have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals. A hearing in the case is set for Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Some countries do not accept deportations from the United States, which has led the Trump administration to strike agreements with other countries, including Panama, to house them. The Trump administration has sent Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law hotly contested in the courts.

South Sudan has suffered repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011 amid hopes it could use its large oil reserves to bring prosperity to a region long battered by poverty. Just weeks ago, the country’s top U.N. official warned that fighting between forces loyal to the president and a vice president threatened to spiral again into full-scale civil war.

The situation is “darkly reminiscent of the 2013 and 2016 conflicts, which took over 400,000 lives,” Nicholas Haysom, head of the almost 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The U.S. State Department’s annual report on South Sudan, published in April 2024, says “significant human rights issues” include arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture or inhumane treatment by security forces and extensive violence based on gender and sexual identity.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department has given Temporary Protected Status to a small number of South Sudanese already living in the United States since the country was founded in 2011, shielding them from deportation because conditions were deemed unsafe for return. Secretary Kristi Noem recently extended those protections to November to allow for a more thorough review.

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Tim Sullivan and Elliot Spagat contributed to this report.

The post Listen live: NPR coverage of Supreme Court arguments in challenge to birthright citizenship appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

The Michigan Global Talent Initiative released a report saying Michigan is on track to add 125,000 college-educated immigrants to the state’s job market as part of the state’s Sixty by 30 goal.

The goal aims to have 60% of Michigan’s workforce to obtain a post-secondary degree or professional credential by 2030.

Steve Tobocman, executive director at Global Detroit, says the state has added nearly 55,000 new college educated foreign born individuals, or immigrants, to the job market since 2019.

“We created an ambitious plan with business and state government and local Chambers of Commerce to almost double that and raise the number of high-skilled immigrants joining the Michigan economy to 120,000 to 125,000 by the year 2030,” he said.

Tobocman says Michigan is also the first state to develop a comprehensive immigrant inclusion strategy to help the group reach its goals.

“If we had done nothing, had no strategy around immigrant talent, we probably would have added 65,000 college-educated immigrant workers to the workforce by 2030, which would roughly mean about 12% of the overall goal,” he said,

Tobocman says Michigan has over 38,000 international students who account for 70% of the graduate school students in advanced STEM fields. However, students need support to integrate into jobs and stay in Michigan post-graduation.

“While the nation is having its own debates about border security and the right frame of immigration, this kind of talent initiative is one that has received bipartisan support, that the first appropriations happened under the Republican legislature,” he said.

Still, he says, the initiative is seeking funding to continue these programs.

From May 20-22, Global Detroit and the city of Detroit will co-host “Welcoming Interactive,” gathering leaders to welcome immigrants and provide resources.

Tobocman’s conversation with WDET’s Nargis Rahman was featured on The Metro this week. Take a listen below.

More stories from The Metro on Wednesday, May 7, 2025:

• Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson explains her ‘purposeful’ battle in new book
• Detroit’s investments in affordable housing
• Breaking down Detroit’s mayoral race

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

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The post Global Detroit leader on how to expand immigrant talent in Michigan appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.