Although many attorneys believe the DHS H-1B lottery rule is unlawful, no company or business group filed a lawsuit against it. Likely reasons: Fear of retaliation & saving resources to battle other restrictive H-1B/student rules. @mclem.org @douglasrivlin.bsky.social
www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
A new national survey finds 70% of Americans think the Trump administration is too focused on deportations. Immigration enforcement ranks as a top driver of defection among Trump's own 2024 voters.
austinkocher.substack.com/p/new-pollin...
Mr. Schwank was hired as an ICE lawyer in 2021 and became an instructor last year at the federal government’s law enforcement training academy in Georgia, where he taught courses on the law. He resigned on Feb. 13 after he and another publicly unidentified person submitted a confidential whistle-blower complaint on a separate matter that has raised constitutional questions: a new ICE policy allowing deportation officers to enter homes and arrest people without a judicial warrant. “ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution,” he said on Monday at the event with congressional Democrats.
Feel like it should be a big deal that the part of the government that is growing most quickly is teaching its new hires to violate the constitution.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/u...
Deep breath.
I'm honored and excited to join the faculty of America's oldest research university, Johns Hopkins.
I'll start this summer as a full professor, one of the founding faculty at the brand-new School of Government and Policy.
We're building something unique & important, even historic.
Spent half an hour talking with Tommy Tucker of WWL First News about the 4th anniversary of the Russo-Ukraine War, where things stand, how Putin stays in power, and more. Had enough of a conversation that I got to break down "collective action problems" and "personalist dictatorship" along the way.
“New studies have concluded the U.S. would prosper by welcoming more immigrants rather than reducing their entry and engaging in mass deportation. U.S.-born workers did not benefit from a decline in foreign-born workers in 2025.” @mclem.org @douglasrivlin.bsky.social
www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
UT System votes to limit 'controversial topics' in class, raising concerns about academic freedom www.kut.org/education/20...
U.S. investors are pulling money out of their own stock market at the fastest pace in at least 16 years as Big Tech returns fade and better-performing overseas markets look more attractive.
www.reuters.com/business/buy...
A MN protester accused of assaulting ICE officer had case dropped after vids showed no assault.
LA protester accused of assaulting ICE w/ “hat” had case dropped; judge said govt acted in “bad faith”
In Chicago, 92 ppl were arrested for assault/impeding ICE; 0 convicted
DOJ keeps lying and losing:
You know this is a completely deliberate choice that is not required, because there was JUST another shutdown and they didn’t do it then.
Anyway, not good that the admin is deliberately making air travel more annoying to try to win a political fight. Lot of people will miss flights.
I wrote a short piece on DHS's new refugee detention policy. For a fuller discussion with immigration attorneys and policy experts, register for AfghanEvac's briefing on Monday. austinkocher.substack.com/p/register-f...
Federal Judge Joseph Goodwin (West Virginia), on the reign of terror by “agents of the federal government—masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons … It is an assault on the constitutional order. It is what the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent.”
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
To defend ICE’s tactic of profiling and demanding documents from anyone they encounter, DHS argues that other governments, including dictatorial regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, do the same. @mclem.org @douglasrivlin.bsky.social @adamkinzinger.bsky.social
www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
“The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights.“
Most US adults believe President Trump has overreached in his use of federal immigration forces
apnews.com/article/trum...
The Tribune has obtained evidence from the case of a Chicago woman shot by Border Patrol that offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look at one of the highest-profile investigations of Operation Midway Blitz.
UPDATED STORY here with video and texts between agents
www.chicagotribune.com/2026/02/10/m...
The US Administration ordered her to seized off the street by masked agents, imprisoned incognito for weeks, all for thoughtfully expressing an opinion with zero advocacy of violence or harm to anyone.
Sickening, anti-Conservative, anti-constitutional, anti-American.
We are far better than this.
In this week's Receipts, I wrote about "Coalie," the Trump admin's anime-like new mascot for coal; and other failing efforts to revive manly sectors like mining and manufacturing. www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-tru...
NEW: Records reviewed by WIRED show DHS’s facial recognition app (Mobile Fortify) isn’t designed to actually "verify" identity—despite DHS claims and its agents relying on its matches to support probable cause in the field.
"Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned." Judge Fred Biery
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Trump administration has shrunk the number of locations for this year’s 2030 census field test, and added plans to test replacing temporary census workers with US Postal Service workers, raising concerns about the U.S. Census Bureau’s ability to produce a reliable national head count
Immigration policy is unlikely to change so long as Stephen Miller and the goal of mass deportation remain. GOP Sen. Thom Tillis compared Miller to the Lord of the Rings villain Grima Wormtongue, the advisor to King Theoden. @mclem.org @douglasrivlin.bsky.social
www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
My take on Kevin Warsh: Markets have breathed a sigh of relief that Trump isn't trying to install Hassett as Fed chair. But Warsh is also a political animal; he just hides it better.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/o...
The White House could not be clearer here.
It opposes immigration, period.
It is radically, ideologically, categorically dead-set against immigration itself—against “all visas”.
Against the very same immigration that brought Miller’s refugee ancestors to the United States.
For decades, nativists have said that mass deportation was about "the rule of law." Now we can see that they never cared about the rule of law at all. The Administration Misleads & Ignores Courts Most Often in Immigration Cases www.cato.org/blog/admin-m...
Latinas for Trump cofounder "worried for the first time that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents might stop her son, a young adult, because he looks Hispanic"
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...
JUST IN: In a new lawsuit, Minnesota officials say DHS mishandled evidence from today's crime scene and made "astonishing" law enforcement decisions. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Immigrants save lives too
New research concludes the Trump administration’s policies will reduce **legal** immigration to the United States by 33% to 50% over four years.
www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
