Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who was pictured in a blue bunny-eared hat being taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, has been released from a Texas immigration facility. But the conditions at Dilley Immigration Processing Center near San Antonio — and the health of the hundreds of children, including infants, being detained there — […]
Category: Immigration
The Barbed Wire immigration coverage
Posted inImmigration
Texas Democrats Demand Release of ‘Political Prisoner’ Leqaa Kordia, Compare ICE Facility to ‘Internment Camps’
Texas Democrats are accusing President Donald Trump of holding 33-year-old Columbia University protester Leqaa Kordia as a political prisoner, and on Friday called for her release in a frigid press conference outside of Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas. Kordia, a Palestinian Muslim woman who had lived in Paterson, New Jersey since 2016, has been […]
Posted inImmigration
Even Texas Republicans Are Starting to Turn on ICE After Alex Pretti’s Killing
As a rare storm blanketed the Texas state capital in picturesque frost on Monday, Texas Republicans joined a chorus of criticisms against the Department of Homeland Security, its Secretary Kristi Noem, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency terrorizing American cities in President Donald Trump’s second term. In short, Hell has frozen over. This past […]
Posted inOpinion
A 5-Year-Old Disappeared in Austin. A Mom Shot Dead in Minneapolis. How Much More Violence Will It Take to ‘Abolish ICE’?
In a viral post on Instagram, 5-year-old Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos smiles brightly in front of iconic Austin street art. She’s wearing purple sneakers with pink laces. In big yellow lettering, the post reads: “URGENT: 5-YEAR-OLD US CITIZEN DISAPPEARED BY ICE.” Before dawn on Jan. 5, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Génesis and […]
Posted inInvestigations
RAICES Raised Millions to Protect Minors from Deportation. Then It Dropped Them ‘Like It Was Nothing,’ Ex Staffers Claim.
EXCLUSIVE Yamirla Chavez’s last two months at the Refugee & Immigrant Center for Education & Legal Services, or RAICES, are a blur to her now. She’d been a senior staff attorney for the nonprofit organization’s Unaccompanied Children’s Program, fighting in court on behalf of children who fled violence and poverty in other countries to start […]
Posted inNews
Mexico Publicized a New Strategy to ‘Embrace’ Deportees. Instead, Many Have Found Danger and Unemployment.
Luis Valentan spent more than three decades in the United States. He arrived as a young man from México in the 1990s and worked in construction and landscaping as a day laborer for years before becoming a host for Radio Jornalera, a show on the National Day Laborer Organizing Network that advocates for the rights […]
Posted inNews
A Disabled Child’s Mom Reported Him Missing. He Was Locked Away by Federal Immigration Authorities for 48 Days.
This article was published in partnership with The 19th* News. Maria Garcia couldn’t bear to attend the nightly meals near Triangle Lake, where for several weeks, the smell of pinto beans, turkey necks, and other soul food staples filled the air outside a federal children’s detention facility in southeast Houston. The Southern home-cooked meals had […]
Posted inOpinion
When Storytelling Is Called ‘Terrorism’: How My Friend and Fellow Journalist Was Targeted by ICE
I remember meeting Ya’akub Vijandre a little more than two years ago. We were at the first Dallas protest held in the aftermath of Israel’s bloody siege of Gaza following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. This was back when I was still working with Dallas Weekly and Ya’akub was gathering content for his […]
Posted inNews
After 220 Days, Leqaa Kordia Is the Last Columbia Protester in ICE Detention. She’s Still Fighting for Freedom.
Leqaa Kordia, 32, attended her asylum hearing via webcam on Thursday, Oct. 23. The blue light of the monitor displayed multiple windows framing her lawyer, the judge, and the government prosecutor. Her team laid out an argument it had made multiple times already: If Kordia, who is Palestinian, is deported to Israel, she will be […]
Posted inNews
‘None of It Makes Any Sense’: New Details in the July 4 ICE Attack Show Holes in Feds’ Case
On July 12, Amber Lowrey arrived at her sister’s apartment in Fort Worth. The FBI had raided it days earlier, Lowrey said, and she surveyed the wreckage: shattered windows, broken doors, damaged floorboards from a flash bang. Agents seized four “pages of map documents,” according to a property receipt reviewed by The Barbed Wire. Lowrey’s […]