“Ronaldo and Lorenzo Jr. were born U.S. citizens, and feel a sense of responsibility to use their voices to call for change”

TIME is honoring the sons of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Houston dad who was brutally shot and killed by ICE while on his way to work this past summer. The prestigious magazine named Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Jr. and Ronaldo Salgado to its Latino Leaders 2026 list for their ongoing efforts to not only win justice and accountability for their late father, but to also protect all immigrant families amid the Trump administration’s unsparing mass deportation agenda.

“Often, family members of those detained, injured, or killed by ICE are limited in how much they can speak out, for fear of having their own immigration status examined. Ronaldo and Lorenzo Jr. were born U.S. citizens, and feel a sense of responsibility to use their voices to call for change,” TIME reports. “Ronaldo has spoken at press conferences beside politicians; he and Lorenzo Jr. have appeared on broadcast news and testified at a congressional forum. Ronaldo wants to work on state legislation that will protect immigrant communities.”

“I’m trying to use that anger and channel it in a more positive way,” Ronaldo told the outlet. “I feel right now that I can’t slow down, that I have to continue taking on these meetings, doing these interviews, doing anything I can just to get my dad’s name out there, to shine a light as to what happened, to who my dad was, and the injustices that my dad experienced—that we’re still experiencing to this day.” 

For Ronaldo and his brother, this has included following the grand jury process related to their dad’s case and, more publicly, testifying in Congressional hearings about ICE’s now-routine abuses, which have included intentional medical negligence and record in-custody deaths, dreaded Kavanaugh stops that have targeted U.S. citizens due to the color of their skin, and dozens upon dozens of court order violations.

“We still have so many questions,” Lorenzo Jr. said during a Sept. 22 hearing. “What are the names of the ICE agents who killed our dad? Why do they get to be protected behind anonymity while my brother and I stand before cameras showing our faces, proudly saying our first and last names.” Ronaldo feels it’s important to let the world know that his dad’s life mattered. “Our dad was not a criminal,” he told lawmakers. “He was just a man who loved his family and woke up before the rest of the world did to put an honest day’s work.” Listen to their full remarks here:

 

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“Salgado Araujo had the equivalent of a middle school education when he came to the U.S.,” TIME continued. “His sons say his greatest pride was their commitment to education. Ronaldo, a high school geography and history teacher, was set to move to Dallas for a ‘dream job’ on Aug. 1.” KHOU reports that Ronaldo has since resigned that dream job in order to focus on efforts bringing justice to his dad. Ronaldo “was the last son still living at home with his parents, and he looked to the examples of his brothers—Lorenzo working as an engineer in D.C., their younger brother in college in Pennsylvania—and wanted to start a life in a new city like they did.”

It was Mr. Salgado Araujo who planted the seed of the American Dream in his children, and he had accomplishments of his own that are also deserving of recognition. He started his own construction business, hired his own dedicated work crew, and played an integral economic role in Houston, where more than half of all workers in construction are foreign-born. He was, according to his own workers, a dedicated employer who watched out for the crew that sustained his business. Mr. Salgado Araujo was actually driving some of his workers to a jobsite when ICE wrongfully targeted him. 

“I want justice for Lorenzo Salgado,” said employee Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego, one of three witnesses to his killing. “My boss was a good boss.” In a video released by members of the House Oversight, Ronaldo said “this cannot continue to happen.” 

TIME reports that Ronaldo regularly visits the site where his father was shot and killed, and sometimes meets travelers from all over the country who wish to pay their respects to his dad. This has included visitors from Minnesota, where masked agents have also used their government-issued guns to steal the lives of community members. “They tell Ronaldo their immigration stories and about the loved ones they’ve lost, they say that he and his brothers remind them of their own kids, or that Lorenzo Sr. reminds them of their own fathers,” TIME continued. 

Meanwhile, neighbors gently tend to the memorial, ensuring the beloved dad’s memory lives on and communities continue to have a place to grieve – and work together for a better tomorrow.

The TIME honor comes as Latino communities all over the country are marking Hispanic Heritage Month and making clear that they belong. In Minnesota, the state’s residents received the Hispanic Heritage Foundation’s Hispanic Heritage Award for their efforts coming together to protect their communities against last winter’s chaotic, deadly Operation Metro Surge. “Latino businesses offer free delivery for residents too fearful to leave home amid immigration operation,” as one Dec. 2025 headline read.

“We can’t ever allow a feeling of helplessness to become a feeling of hopelessness. And Minnesotanos are neither helpless nor hopeless,” said Hispanic Heritage Foundation president Antonio Tijerino. “They are an embodiment of solidarity, unity, resourcefulness, strength, brilliance, faith, bravery and ganas. And that’s why we’re here.” 

The post TIME Names Houston Dad Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s Sons To Latino Leaders 2026 List appeared first on America's Voice.

A escasas cuatro semanas de las elecciones intermedias que decidirán el control de Congreso, el presidente Donald Trump recibió un espaldarazo de la Corte Suprema al permitirle utilizar un sistema SAVE revisado para “verificar” la ciudadanía de votantes en listas electorales empleando bancos de datos del gobierno que pueden estar desactualizados o llenos de errores.

Esto puede privar de su derecho al voto a personas perfectamente elegibles para ejercerlo. Pero es parte de los esfuerzos de Trump de poner en duda la credibilidad del sistema electoral echando mano de la falsa noción de que personas sin ciudadanía votan de manera fraudulenta ante la amenaza de que el Partido Republicano pierda el control de una o de ambas cámaras del Congreso.

De momento, todo apunta a que los republicanos están en aprietos electorales y el manejo de Trump del tema migratorio, con violentas redadas y detenciones indiscriminadas que afectan a las familias y la economía, es uno de los factores para el descontento de los votantes que tildan de “excesiva” su política migratoria.

Pero Trump inyecta el tema migratorio a la elección en el contexto de un “fraude” generalizado de parte de no ciudadanos que ha invocado en elecciones previas pero esta vez toma acciones concretas, como usar el sistema SAVE o como tratar de intimidar votantes, sobre todo de minorías, amenazando con la presencia de agentes federales en los centros de votación o áreas circundantes a pesar de que es ilegal hacerlo.

Y aunque el presidente no tiene el poder de frenar, cancelar, posponer o nacionalizar las elecciones, Trump ha demostrado que es capaz de lo que sea aunque al final los tribunales lo frenen. Reportes de prensa señalan que entre su círculo hay figuras que lo han instado a declarar ley marcial porque el proyecto de ley SAVE Act, que busca restringir el voto de millones de estadounidenses, no se convirtió en ley y esto, según ellos, supone que los resultados de las elecciones ya están viciados.

Estos son los mismos personajes que siguen diciendo que a Trump le “robaron” la elección de 2020 que perdió legítimamente ante el demócrata Joe Biden y que lo llevó a encabezar un violento y sangriento motín en el Capitolio federal el 6 de enero de 2021 para evitar la certificación del triunfo de Biden.

La Corte Suprema a veces frena algunos de los orquestados y múltiples esfuerzos de la administración para interferir en la elección del 3 de noviembre. Por ejemplo, el máximo tribunal frenó los intentos de Trump de entorpecer el voto por correo.

Pero lo favorece en otras, como en el caso de emplear un SAVE revisado para cotejar la ciudadanía de los electores. Este sistema se usa para determinar la situación migratoria de personas y su elegibilidad para beneficios federales.

El gobierno de Trump lo amplió para determinar si los votantes registrados verdaderamente son ciudadanos. Y lo hace agregando información como números de Seguro Social a bancos de datos del gobierno que según los críticos están plagados de errores y pueden privar a muchos de su derecho al voto.

“Las organizaciones de defensa que interpusieron una demanda para bloquear el sistema SAVE revisado afirmaron que el nuevo enfoque ha provocado que personas identificadas erróneamente como no ciudadanos hayan sido eliminadas de las listas electorales. Han argumentado que el sistema SAVE puede estar desactualizado, lo que significa que los inmigrantes que se han naturalizado como ciudadanos estadounidenses —y que, por lo tanto, tienen derecho a votar— a veces son catalogados como no ciudadanos”, reportó la agencia de noticias Reuters.

“En su escrito presentado ante la Corte Suprema las organizaciones defensoras citaron a un funcionario electoral del condado de Travis (Texas), quien afirmó que el 25% de las coincidencias del sistema con personas no ciudadanas en esa zona correspondían a personas que ya habían demostrado su ciudadanía estadounidense, así como a informes periodísticos que revelaban que al menos el 81% de las respuestas del sistema en el condado de San Luis (Misuri) eran erróneas”, agregó la agencia.

“Basándose en el mito desacreditado del fraude electoral generalizado, el plan de múltiples frentes del gobierno incluye 15 tácticas interrelacionadas diseñadas para dificultar que los estadounidenses elegibles para votar ejerzan su derecho al voto”, indicó un reporte de agosto del Center for American Progress (CAP).

“La Administración Trump está llevando a cabo un plan para socavar las elecciones intermedias de 2026 con el objetivo de afianzar su poder y eludir la rendición de cuentas ante los votantes”, concluyó CAP.

La interrogante es si lo conseguirá o si la ofensiva coordinada de organizaciones cívicas y la valiente participación de los propios votantes echarán por tierra sus planes.

The post ¿Logrará Trump intervenir en las elecciones intermedias? appeared first on America's Voice.

The Twin Cities know first hand the pain and violence of ICE raids. Another casualty is their economy

Minnesotans are all too familiar with the pain and violence of the Trump administration’s unsparing mass deportation agenda. This past January, Minneapolis mom Renée Nicole Good had just finished dropping off one of her children at school when she was shot and killed by a mass deportation agent. Just a few weeks later, VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti was attempting to tend to a demonstrator who’d been shoved by mass deportation agents when he was shot point-blank in the head.  

This bloody agenda reverberated far beyond the peaceful neighborhoods where Good and Pretti violently lost their lives. Under the administration’s Operation Metro Surge, this unprecedented surge of thousands of masked, armed federal agents resulted in what human rights experts have described as a campaign of “racial profiling, harassment, and surveillance.” This wave of violence stomped on personal freedoms, deprived residents of the ability to go to work, visit the doctor’s office and attend school. And, it cost the local economy millions.

TERRORIZE THE PEOPLE, RUIN THE ECONOMY

This “ICE Tax” has carried a steep price for working people all over the country – and the Twin Cities rank among the metro areas hardest hit by the enforcement surge. 

• In 2025, ICE arrests in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metro area jumped 679 percent, from an average of 60 arrests per month in 2024 to 467 per month after the surge began, according to Brookings’ analysis of Deportation Data Project records. This represents one of the largest increases among the 86 U.S. metro areas Brookings identified as 2025 “surge cities.”
• Nationwide, the 2025 ICE surge eliminated an estimated 668,000 jobs, including some estimates as high as 297,000 jobs held by U.S.-born workers. Applying the surge’s national job losses to the Twin Cities’ 2024 employment base suggests an estimated 14,200 jobs lost in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metro area alone. Labor market data reveals that the leisure and hospitality industries were hit hardest, losing 4,000 jobs in January 2026 alone. “Excluding the pandemic, these are the largest employment declines Minnesota has seen in both leisure and hospitality and accommodation and food services since 2007,” according to North Star Policy Action.
• Local reporting confirms these findings on the ground: Minneapolis businesses lost an estimated $10 million to $20 million in sales each week during the operation while some immigrant-owned businesses lost up to 100% of revenue, according to city estimates. Dan Swenson-Klatt had to close his 20-year-old cafe after enforcement drove away many of his Latino and Somali customers, saying: “We don’t have the resources to maintain this.” Russ Adams, manager for corridor recovery initiatives, called it “an economic crisis of catastrophic proportions.” Read the full Minnesota fact sheet here.

THE ECONOMIC DESTRUCTION GOES BEYOND MINNESOTA

During a Capitol Hill press conference held in conjunction with America’s Voice this month, Congressional Hispanic Caucus members shared how this ICE Tax has been devastating their local communities in ways that impact all working Americans no matter their legal immigration status.

“Every week in San Antonio, there are restaurants announcing they’re closing, that they can no longer keep their doors open,” Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro said during the event. The San Antonio Express-News said that the Texas Restaurant Association “reported that 36% of surveyed operators have lost employees, and 28% saw fewer applicants or fewer offers accepted because of immigration enforcement.” Blanca Aldaco, owner of Aldaco’s Mexican Cuisine, told the outlet that many workers “are afraid to go out to work and afraid to go out and support the business. The fear of ICE has affected every industry, and we are feeling it all the way from the landscaper to the kitchen crew.”

This trend from Minnesota and Texas is happening all over the nation, as Rep. Castro noted in his remarks. “There are shops in towns across America who either can’t find the labor employees to keep them open, or they can’t find the buyers to keep them going.” 

 

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ELECTED LEADERS WHO ENABLED THIS TO HAPPEN MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

 “Minnesota families have already paid a painful price for this administration’s mass deportation agenda that resulted in unprecedented violence, unchecked lawlessness, and total chaos,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “Now we have the receipts on the economic damage too: ICE arrests in the Twin Cities surged nearly sevenfold, and the toll shows up in lost jobs, shuttered storefronts, and higher prices for every family in this state, whether they wanted this fight or not.”

“Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda – supported by his allies in Congress – has cost Minnesota dearly,” Cárdenas continued. “It’s time to end it, and end the ICE tax with it.”

The post The ICE Tax Imposes Yet Another Heavy Price All Minnesotans Must Pay appeared first on America's Voice.

Washington, DC – Two industries central to the American economy – cattle groups and homebuilders – are sounding the alarm on Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s mass deportation campaign. 

Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, issued the following statement:

“Donald Trump’s mass deportation ICE machine is feeling the heat from cattle, construction and other industry leaders concerned about soaring prices and an increasingly unstable workforce. Trump promised to lower costs, but his mass deportation machine is driving up the price of everything from a hamburger to a home. Ranchers and home builders across the country are delivering the same clear warning, yet the administration refuses to listen. Trump and his allies have sent armed and masked agents after the workers who feed and house this country, leaving families at the grocery checkout and families priced out of the housing market to foot the bill. Chaos has a price, and American families are paying it. Lawmakers who voted to bankroll this machine cannot pretend to be surprised by the damage. Congress must rein in ICE and deliver real solutions for essential workers and the industries that depend on them.”

Last week, cattle groups in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma warned that ICE operations are having a “massive chilling effect” on the workers who keep the beef supply chain running. Thousands of cattle bound for processors have been left in limbo by delays in shipping costing the industry millions in lost revenue, with beef prices already at record highs. 

According to the Kansas Livestock Association, some meatpacking plants in Dodge City, Liberal, and Garden City temporarily shut down and returned cattle to feedlots. “We urge federal officials to conduct enforcement actions in a lawful, orderly, and transparent manner; respect due process; and communicate clearly with affected employers and communities,” the organizations said in their statement.  

Home builders face the same damage. Immigrants make up more than a quarter of the construction workforce, and the industry is already facing a deficit of roughly 300,000 workers. According to the National Association of Home Builders, immigration enforcement is keeping crews off job sites, delaying builds, and raising costs amid an existing national shortage of roughly 1.2 million homes. In a recent amicus brief, NAHB argued that the administration’s mandatory detention policy is forcing project cancellations and further shrinking the inventory of available homes. America’s Voice’s End the ICE Tax report found the same pattern: in the five states most reliant on immigrant labor, construction employment fell 1.3 percent while it grew 3.3 percent in the rest of the country, and new-home prices in the Northeast climbed 15.4 percent.

The fallout is so severe that even Republican lawmakers who voted to pour billions into ICE are now demanding the agency coordinate with local law enforcement in Kansas, with one acknowledging that ICE’s operations there caused “mass disruptions to local communities and businesses.” From feedyards to job sites, American businesses, workers, and consumers are feeling the strain of the administration’s deportation agenda.

To learn more about the economic harms of mass deportation, read our End the ICE Tax report.

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The Trump administration’s attacks threaten children’s safety – and legal ethics

This is a guest post by Shannon Fyfe, Ph.D, J.D., Associate Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University.

Unaccompanied migrant children arrive at our border alone, fleeing dangerous situations, and remain one of the most isolated and vulnerable groups of people in this country. The Trump administration has decided to exploit their position by threatening their access to legal representation and making it impossible for their attorneys to act in their interests. We should be very worried about these children, and about what this means for the U.S. legal profession’s ideals of public service and zealous representation of clients.

For eight months, Trump directed his Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under Health and Human Services (HHS) to withhold $65 million in completed legal services for these children until a court order recently forced them to issue payments. He held the funds hostage hoping to barter for confidential information about the vulnerable clients represented by Acacia Center for Justice and its network of nearly 100 legal service providers across the country.

This demand for confidential information is illegal, asks attorneys to violate their most fundamental ethical duties, and puts children at risk of being trafficked, abused, and exploited by our very government. The network’s spine to stand up to Trump cost them as some offices had to close their doors entirely.

Serving vulnerable children, protecting them from dangers, and acting in their best interest, is nothing new to the American people. Under Section 235(c) of the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Act and Section 462(b) of the 2002 Homeland Security Act, ORR is required to provide legal representation to unaccompanied kids “to the greatest extent practicable.” For nearly two decades, through both Republican and Democrat administrations, Congress fulfilled these obligations to protect these vulnerable children, and funded legal representation for unaccompanied migrant children, including through Acacia.

For five-and-a-half years, Acacia submitted their invoices to ORR with copious cost documentation and receipts, with all identifying case information and personally identifiable information redacted. ORR did not require any details on children’s individual legal eligibility, case postures, or legal case summaries to fund representation for unaccompanied children. Suddenly, that wasn’t enough.

In the final months of the latest contract with Acacia, ORR began demanding case-specific information for payment, months after the work had already been completed. This included receipts with identifying client information as to claim types sought, identification of the representing attorney not otherwise known to ORR, cost types specific to a case that might prejudice a client’s case if revealed, and unredacted mental and medical health evaluations relevant to children’s cases.

The attorneys representing unaccompanied migrant children have no legal authority to disclose this information to ORR, more importantly they are ethically obligated to keep such client information confidential. Under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (MRPC), promulgated by the American Bar Association and adopted in some form by every state bar association in the U.S., an attorney “shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is implicitly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted [under a list of specific circumstances].”

Additionally, children constitute clients with “decision-making limitations,” and attorneys have a special duty of care to support such clients’ decision-making abilities within the attorney-client relationship. ORR’s demand for confidential information thus creates an untenable conflict for attorneys: lose funding for an ongoing or former representation of a client, or risk harming the client’s autonomy and/or interests. Choosing the latter option would also put attorneys at risk of sanctions from their respective state bar associations.

It isn’t difficult to connect the dots between this new demand for confidential information about children and Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Already, kid clients, close to obtaining temporary status such as Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Trafficking Visas, and U visas for crime victims; were being fast tracked through immigration court dockets for deportation. Then, as Acacia continued to zealously defend its child clients, and uphold its legal ethics to protect their confidential information, Trump decided to not renew the contract and instead hand it over to an inexperienced and understaffed law firm and dubious anti-trafficking organization with no legal services expertise. The dismantling of protections for children, disruption in their experienced legal representation, and rogue attempt to contradict legal ethics, will ultimately result in vulnerable children being further harmed.

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Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:

As the November 3 midterm elections approach, Donald Trump’s excesses are intensifying in his crude attempt to distract voters from the economic disaster his policies and decisions have caused. It’s no wonder his approval rating stands at 32 percent—the lowest of his political career—according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll.

Support for Trump is also eroding among Hispanic voters in districts and states that will be decisive for a likely change in control of Congress.

Trump is threatening to tear down the Kennedy Center because he has failed to have his name added to the historic facility. He is revoking White House press credentials for journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO because he dislikes how they cover his presidency. He accuses them of reporting “fake” news—even though he himself is the king of falsehoods, such as claiming that there is a widespread problem of non-citizens voting fraudulently.

And even though poll after poll shows voters disapprove of the excesses of his immigration policy, over the weekend, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were involved in several violent incidents.

In Austin, Texas, ICE agents shot a DoorDash delivery driver, 28-year-old Venezuelan Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez. The young man claims that a van struck his car twice and that he did not realize they were agents until they turned on their lights and sirens, which is why he proceeded to pull over to a safer location.

DHS claims there was a chase, but regardless of the circumstances, Garcés was shot near his spine, is being held by ICE, and the bullet has not yet been removed.

“He is being held in Pearsall for questioning and still has the bullet lodged in his body. He has not received any pain medication and has had to sleep on the floor,” his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, wrote on X.

This is the third Latino to be shot by ICE in recent months. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo died in Houston on July 7 during a traffic stop. Salgado Araujo was in the process of regularizing his immigration status. On July 13, an ICE agent killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. The 25-year-old Colombian immigrant had a work permit.

In another incident in Evanston, Illinois, ICE agents who were allegedly searching for a fugitive beat a man who turned out to be a U.S. citizen and was not the fugitive they were looking for. They left him on the ground with injuries to his neck, head, and teeth. The agents fled, and it was residents who took him to the hospital.

This is the same ICE that shot and killed U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti in separate incidents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, earlier this year.

Then DHS blames the victims, and impunity prevails.

However, polls and protests across the country reflect the discontent and frustration of an electorate whose promises were not kept. Trump promised to lower the cost of living and fix the immigration system by removing “the worst of the worst” from the country.

But what he did was fund a detention and deportation machine targeting people with no criminal history. In the process, he has torn families apart, left behind family members—including citizen children—economically destitute, and depleted the workforce in key industries of our economy such as agriculture, construction, restaurants, hotels, and hospitals.

A cruel and violent system that continues to claim lives during raids and in detention centers that receive billions of dollars yet provide neither food nor adequate medical care, and where abuse and mistreatment are the order of the day.

But that’s not all—his immigration policy raises prices for Americans through the ICE Tax. 

To complete the picture, his war in Iran has sent fuel prices skyrocketing, and while he squanders billions on the armed conflict and his army of detentions and deportations, he is cutting benefits from social programs like Medicaid and leaving millions of Americans without health insurance.

Trump himself has created a perfect storm for change to take hold in November. If Americans channel their anger and frustration into votes, and if, of course, the president doesn’t pull some “crisis” out of thin air to interfere in the election.

The original Spanish version is here.

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Donald Trump and his allies have built a mass deportation machine that runs on violence and disorder, and Americans are living with the fallout: chaos, fear, and cruelty tearing through their neighborhoods, hitting them at the register and on their block.

Last weekend in Austin, an ICE agent shot a Venezuelan delivery driver during a pursuit, leaving him seriously wounded, with a bullet still in his back. It’s the kind of encounter now playing out in schools, workplaces, and homes across the country, with no regard for who gets caught in the middle, and courts are already stepping in to stop some of these tactics. Trump, Stephen Miller, and their allies in Congress have flooded the agency with cash, deployed it with impunity, and pushed agents to hit arrest quotas at any cost. The result is the same dangerous chaos, over and over, in every part of the country.

Here’s what the record shows:

The Scale of the Crackdown

• ICE has arrested more than 253,000 people nationwide this year, according to an ABC News Data Team analysis of Deportation Data Project figures.
• At least 36 people have died in ICE detention in 2026, including Edwin Lopez Cornejo and Lianyong Wei – both within the last two months.
• The White House claims it has deported more than 605,000 people since Trump returned to office, but the most rigorous independent tracker, Syracuse University’s TRAC project, counts just 290,603 verified ICE removals, despite a massive surge in spending and personnel.
• Congress has handed DHS nearly $261 billion for immigration enforcement in under a year – $191 billion from the 2025 reconciliation bill and another $69.5 billion from the June 2026 Secure America Act. DHS says it’s on track to spend 75% of the first pot by the end of this month, even as no comprehensive public accounting exists of how it’s actually being used.

Children Are Being Detained, Deported, and Left Behind

• A Marshall Project and MSNow investigation found ICE detained more than 500 children age 3 and younger between January 2025 and March 2026, with roughly 25 babies and toddlers held on an average day.
• Stephen Miller is personally directing a whole-of-government push across at least five federal departments to speed up the removal of undocumented children. Nearly 200,000 children have been ordered removed by immigration judges since Trump returned to office, double the rate from before his term.
• Two Fort Worth teenagers, both U.S. citizens, spent nearly a year on their own after ICE arrested and deported their parents in August 2025. Nineteen-year-old Dulce Zepeda has been raising her 13-year-old sister and sold her mother’s jewelry to pay the bills.
• Earlier this month, ICE agents detained the parents of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old minutes after school drop-off near John Marshall Elementary in San Diego – one of at least four ICE arrests near San Diego schools in a two-week span.
• Two 17-year-old U.S. citizens were pepper-sprayed and beaten by ICE agents in Alamo, Texas, with video showing an agent striking one teen repeatedly while he was on the ground. The pair had been on their way to enlist in the Marine Corps. A mother of one of the teens who spoke out about what happened to her son was summarily deported a week later.

Military Families Are Not Off Limits

• An Associated Press investigation released in August 2026 found the administration has detained more than 50 spouses and parents of active-duty troops, with at least six deported. DHS separately told Senate Democrats it detained 125 military veterans and arrested more than 150 immediate family members of service members in just over a year.
• Border Patrol arrested Luis Manuel Aviles, father of Navy sailor Joshua Aviles, in Key West while his son was nine months into deployment aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. “This is heartbreaking for me. I don’t know how I can mentally continue working 12+ hour days knowing that my dad is somewhere, possibly treated like a criminal,” Joshua wrote after learning of the arrest.
• Retired Staff Sgt. Wilmer Trujillo, a 20-year Army and Texas National Guard veteran who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, is fighting to bring home his wife, Arelys Barahona-Martinez. She has no criminal record but was detained during a routine ICE check-in. Their American son depends on her care for a serious medical condition.
• Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez’s wife was detained by ICE outside a Walmart in El Paso in front of their 6-year-old daughter and later deported to Honduras.
• Army Spc. Jasmine Hernandez enlisted in part to protect her undocumented father, but ICE detained him anyway. He remains at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona.

U.S. Citizens And Lawful Permanent Residents Are Being Wrongfully Targeted, Beaten, and Detained

• A federal judge in Alabama temporarily blocked ICE from conducting warrantless raids on construction sites after ruling agents likely violated the Fourth Amendment when they tackled U.S. citizen Leo Garcia Venegas, rejected his valid REAL ID, and held him anyway – three separate times.
• ICE detained Venkata Vasamsetty, a North Carolina special-needs teacher who’d held a green card for 13 years, even after a judge dismissed the government’s case against her months earlier. Her legal team says she’s insulin-dependent and didn’t receive proper diabetic care while detained.
• ICE agents tackled and struck an Evanston, Illinois man after mistaking him for someone else, leaving him with head, neck, and dental injuries. Agents released him once they confirmed he was a U.S. citizen.
• An 18-year-old Norfolk woman says agents handcuffed and detained her in front of her 4-year-old sister after claiming her valid Virginia ID was fake – even after her 15-year-old sister rushed over with her birth certificate.
• A 19-year-old Boise resident and U.S. citizen says ICE detained him and used him as bait to lure his father after he stopped to record an enforcement operation.
• ICE agents pinned a U.S. citizen Georgia man against a jet bridge wall and handcuffed him at the Atlanta airport – after he’d already passed through TSA and facial recognition. The detention was a case of mistaken identity based on a shared name and birthdate.
• During “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota, ICE arrested 131 U.S. citizens on allegations of assaulting federal officers, though the vast majority of those cases ultimately collapsed in court, according to the agency’s own acting director.

The bottom line: This is what a deportation system without guardrails looks like: children detained, military families torn apart, and people gunned down on their own streets. No agency tasked with public safety should operate this way. Congress and the administration must rein in ICE’s tactics, restore oversight and accountability, and build an immigration system that treats people with basic humanity.

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Al aproximarse las elecciones intermedias del 3 de noviembre, más se intensifican los excesos de Donald Trump en su burdo intento de distraer a los electores del desastre económico que sus políticas y decisiones han generado. No por nada su índice de aprobación se ubica en 32%, el más bajo de su carrera política, según una encuesta de Reuters-Ipsos.

La erosión del apoyo a Trump se está dando también entre votantes hispanos en distritos y estados definitorios para un probable cambio de mando en el Congreso.

Trump amenaza con demoler el Kennedy Center porque no ha logrado agregar su nombre a la histórica instalación. Revoca las credenciales de Casa Blanca de periodistas de CNN, MS NOW y POLITICO porque no le gusta cómo cubren su presidencia y los acusa de dar noticias “falsas” aunque él sea el rey de las falsedades. Como proclamar que existe un problema generalizado de no ciudadanos votando fraudulentamente.

Y a pesar de que en sondeo tras sondeo los votantes le señalan que no aprueban los excesos de su política migratoria, durante el fin de semana agentes del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE) protagonizaron varios incidentes violentos.

En Austin, Texas, los agentes de ICE tirotearon a un repartidor de DoorDash, el venezolano Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, de 28 años de edad. El joven alega que una camioneta golpeó su auto en dos ocasiones y que él no supo que eran agentes hasta que encendieron luces y sirenas y que por eso procedió para detenerse en un lugar más seguro.

El DHS alega que hubo una persecución, pero, sea cual sea el caso, Garcés terminó con una bala cerca de la columna vertebral, está detenido por ICE, y todavía no le remueven el proyectil.

“Está retenido en Pearsall para ser interrogado y todavía tiene la bala alojada en el cuerpo. No ha recibido analgésicos y ha tenido que dormir en el suelo”, escribió en X su abogada Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch.

Este es el tercer latino en ser baleado por ICE en los últimos meses. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo murió en Houston el 7 de julio en una intervención de tránsito. Salgado Araujo estaba en proceso de regularizar su situación migratoria. Y el 13 de julio, un agente de ICE mató a Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, en Maine. El inmigrante colombiano de 25 años de edad tenía permiso de trabajo.

En otro incidente en Evanston, Illinois, agentes de ICE que presuntamente buscaban a un fugitivo golpearon a un hombre que resultó ser ciudadano estadounidense y tampoco era el fugitivo buscado. Lo dejaron en el suelo con lesiones en el cuello, la cabeza y los dientes. Los agentes huyeron y fueron vecinos del lugar quienes lo trasladaron al hospital.

Este es el mismo ICE que mató a tiros a los ciudadanos estadounidenses Renée Good y Alex Pretti en hechos separados en Minneapolis, Minnesota, a principios de este año.

Luego el DHS culpa a las víctimas y prevalece la impunidad.

Sin embargo, los sondeos y las manifestaciones a través del país reflejan el descontento y el hartazgo de un electorado al que no le cumplieron las promesas. Trump prometió bajar el costo de vida y componer el sistema migratorio sacando del país a “lo peor de lo peor”.

Pero lo que hizo fue financiar una maquinaria de detenciones y deportaciones centrada en personas sin historial delictivo y en el proceso ha dividido familias, ha dejado desprovistos económicamente a los familiares que quedan atrás, incluidos niños ciudadanos, ha eliminado mano de obra en industrias centrales de nuestra economía como la agricultura, la construcción, restaurantes, hoteles, hospitales.

Una maquinaria cruel y violenta que sigue cobrando vidas en intervenciones y en unos centros de detención que reciben miles de millones de dólares pero no ofrecen ni alimentos, ni cuidados médicos adecuados, y donde los abusos y maltratos son la orden del día.

Pero no solo eso, su política migratoria se traduce en alzas de precios de bienes y servicios para los estadounidenses, mediante el impuesto de ICE.

Para completar el cuadro, su guerra en Irán disparó los precios del combustible y mientras despilfarra miles de millones en el conflicto armado y en su ejército de detenciones y deportaciones, reduce los beneficios de programas sociales como Medicaid y deja sin seguro médico a millones de estadounidenses.

El propio Trump ha creado una tormenta perfecta para que se concrete un cambio en noviembre, si los estadounidenses traducen su coraje y frustración en votos, y si, claro está, el presidente no se saca de la manga alguna “crisis” para intervenir en la elección.

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Congressional Hispanic Caucus members joined America’s Voice to call for an end to the ICE Tax that’s making the lives of all working families more expensive’

The Trump administration’s mass purge of immigrant communities is inflicting violence and creating havoc – and ripping away essential workers and raising the costs of everyday necessities from groceries to housing – and American families are paying for it all, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) said during a Capitol Hill event demanding an end to the ICE Tax.

ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES AND AMERICANS ARE PAYING THE PRICE

“ICE is not just busting the budget, it’s wrecking our economy,” CHC Chair Adriano Espaillat said during the Sept. 17 press conference, which was held alongside America’s Voice. “When food prices go up because farm workers go missing, that’s the ICE Tax. When construction grinds to a halt because no one is left to build homes, that’s the ICE Tax. When our elders can’t get the care they deserve because their caretakers and nurses are gone, that’s the ICE Tax. Americans have lost their patience with the ICE Tax.”

Under the administration’s anti-immigrant obsession, the abduction and deportation of the skilled farmworkers who feed us, the expert laborers who build our homes, and the essential healthcare professionals who heal us is resulting in entirely predictable results: higher food costs, a sharp decline in housing permits and healthcare that that’s now even more out of reach. The mass targeting of Haitian health workers alone will have “a catastrophic impact on the nationwide healthcare workforce crisis,” as NPR recently noted.

In their remarks during the Washington, D.C. press conference, lawmakers spanning regions across the country shared how the ICE Tax has been impacting their local communities in ways that impact all working Americans no matter their legal immigration status.

“Every week in San Antonio, there are restaurants announcing they’re closing, that they can no longer keep their doors open,” said Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro. “There are shops in towns across America who either can’t find the labor employees to keep them open, or they can’t find the buyers to keep them going.” 

We’ve previously noted that in Orlando, Florida, some restaurants have lost an estimated 40% of revenue as immigrant staff members quit. ICE arrests have in fact been so aggressive in the state that one of the administration’s political allies, Miami-Dade Rep. María Elvira Salazar, released a video purporting to push back on its mass deportation efforts. Too little, too late: Rep. Salazar repeatedly voted to fund this agenda.

NO SURPRISE: THROW OUT IMMIGRANTS, PRICES SURGE

“Lettuce is up 32.1%, home healthcare is up 10.7%, landscaping is up 10.8%,” said New Jersey Rep. Analilia Mejia. “Ask yourself, why is this? What do these industries, these products, have in common? Well, immigrant labor.” When it comes to agriculture alone, 68% of the industry’s workers are foreign-born, and 42% of those laborers lack legal immigration status. But ICE made clear even before Trump retook power that these essential workers would not be off-limits, conducting outrageous raids that shook the farmworking communities days before his second inauguration.  

In the ensuing arrests since then – including this summer’s record abductions – the fruits, vegetables, and dairy products “most produced in the United States by these workers have seen price increases substantially above the 2.6 percent core inflation rate,” as America’s Voice noted in the “End the ICE Tax” report. “If we seek to lower costs and put more money in people’s pockets, then the American people must demand that we eliminate this ICE Tax,” Rep. Mejia continued in her remarks.

This week, I joined my colleagues in the @hispaniccaucus.bsky.social to condemn the Trump administration’s costly mass deportation campaign. ICE is straining our workforce and hurting our local economies. The American people shouldn’t be paying the price for this administration’s cruelty.

— Rep. Gil Cisneros (@cisneros.house.gov) 2026-09-18T16:01:22.305Z

It’s time to end the ICE tax.

— Rep. Gil Cisneros (@cisneros.house.gov) 2026-09-18T16:01:22.306Z

AMERICANS REJECT EVERY ASPECT OF TRUMP AND ALLIES BLOODY AGENDA

The press event came as a slew of recent polls show that Americans are rejecting this expensive, bloody agenda, with one survey from Morris Predictive Insights/Verasight finding that 68% of respondents agree that the administration has been too obsessed with deportations and not obsessed enough with making everyday life more affordable. In another notable poll, a PBS/NPR/Marist survey finds that by a 62-37% margin, Americans say ICE’s actions are making the country less safe – including half who say “much less safe.”

Not so easily calculable are the human costs of mass deportations. In just this past month alone, yet another in-custody ICE death and a series of brutal, public arrests targeting U.S. citizens and immigrant community members alike have continued to spark outrage. 

At the privately-operated Winnfield Correctional Center in Louisiana, Costa Rican immigrant Carlos Josué Marchena has become the 25th human being to die in ICE custody this year. In Texas, Venezuelan immigrant Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez is being forced to languish at the South Texas ICE Processing Center, another privately-operated facility, despite still having a bullet in his back after being shot by mass deportation agents over the weekend. The DoorDash has since been experiencing paralysis on one side, The Washington Post reports.

“Wilber came to the United States legally,” Rep. Castro said. “He had work permits and was an asylum seeker. None of this should have ever happened.”

LEGISLATORS WHO ENABLED TRUMP’S AGENDA WILL FACE THE CONSEQUENCES

“This is the ICE Tax. It’s not a line item anyone voted on, but it’s real, and it shows up everywhere,” America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas said during the Capitol Hill press event. “When this administration chooses mass deportation over people’s wallets, families pay the price. This is not what we signed up for. It’s time to end mass deportations and end the ICE Tax.”

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“Donald Trump and his allies have built a mass deportation machine that treats every driver, every neighbor, and every bystander as expendable”

The Trump administration’s chaotic, unsparing and bloody mass deportation agenda has been on full display in recent days, following yet another reported in-custody ICE death and a series of brutal, public arrests targeting U.S. citizens and immigrant community members alike.

ICE’S DEATH TOLL CONTINUES

Syracuse University’s Austin Kocher writes that late last week, Carlos Josué Marchena, a 37-year-old Costa Rican immigrant who had been in ICE custody since January, reportedly died while locked up in a LaSalle Corrections-operated camp in Louisiana. If confirmed, it would make him the 25th individual to die while in ICE detention since the beginning of the year, and the third to die at Winn Correctional Center since January 2025, Kocher said.

“ICE has not yet confirmed this death publicly and English language media has been slow to pick up the story, but online reports from Spanish language outlets such as Conexión Migrant, Teletica, and others have been reporting on the story since Friday,” he wrote. Telemundo’s Spanish-language report below: 

A BULLET STILL LODGED IN HIS BACK

Then over the weekend, an ICE agent shot and seriously injured a DoorDash driver while he was on the job in Austin, Texas, CNN reports. Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said 28-year-old Venezuelan immigrant Wilber Rafael Garces Perez had called his wife to tell her he’d been shot and “was yelling in pain,” NPR reported. CNN described “a gaping gunshot wound in his back.” 

But Lincoln-Goldfinch said that when she and others went to the hospital, they were reportedly run off the property and kept out of the loop on his whereabouts until Monday morning.

Subsequent reporting has since revealed that Garces Perez, who has no criminal record and entered the U.S. legally, has not been permitted to recuperate in a hospital and was instead being interrogated in ICE detention “while a bullet remained in his back,” the AP reports. “Perez also said he had no pain medication,” the report continued. Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) said ICE is currently attempting to deport the injured man in order to escape accountability:

ICE wants to deport Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a DoorDash driver who they just shot in Austin yesterday. The federal government can't shoot someone and then try to make them disappear to escape scrutiny.Wilber Rafael Garces Perez needs a doctor right now, not a deportation.

— Congressman Greg Casar (@repcasar.bsky.social) 2026-09-21T13:31:26.657Z

“I’m very angry about this,” responded Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. “I’m extremely unhappy. A person being shot on the streets of Austin by someone purporting to be law enforcement, particularly when it’s ICE, is something that causes me to be unhappy and angry about it.”

“And while I’m unhappy and I’m angry about it, I’m not surprised at all,” Mayor Watson continued. “It’s happened in other cities with the nature of ICE and the way ICE is doing its business these days and the chaos that we see it performing and fomenting. There’s no reason for us to be surprised by it.”

KAVANAUGH STOPS REMAIN A THREAT TO US ALL

The very same day that Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was left with a gaping wound in his back, a vicious Kavanaugh stop in the Chicago suburb of Evanston was the latest example of why the administration’s mass purging of immigrants represents a threat to all communities. The unnamed U.S. citizen’s crime? 

Simply looking like another person that ICE agents were allegedly seeking.

“A video posted to Facebook on Sunday shows the end of the incident as agents drove off near El Pueblito Mexican Grill on Howard Street, including a man lying near the curb with at least two agents near him,” Evanston Now reports. Responding Evanston police said that an agent “told the officer that agents had attempted to identify an individual who resembled a person they were seeking … Agents later determined he was not the person they were seeking and learned that he was a U.S. citizen. He was released.” 

Or, more accurately, abandoned on a street with injuries to his head, neck, and teeth:

Video of this incident shared on FacebookThis appears to be the end of the incident. I'm told Evanston police responded and the man was a U.S. citizen and was taken to a local hospitalPolice made contact with the agents near Dodge/BrummelStory with more info TK momentarily

— Matthew Eadie (@mattheweadie.bsky.social) 2026-09-21T00:36:15.366Z

The brutal assault and wrongful detention of Americans by their own government continues to be the predictable result of Kavanaugh stops, a government-sanctioned racial profiling policy that has targeted U.S. citizens at home, on the way to a medical appointment and after leaving the hospital, walking through a park, walking to the bus stop, at the airport, and, in the case of one Alabaman, while at work in May 2025 and again three weeks later.

Construction worker Leo Garcia Venegas was then detained for a third time outside his home. This week, he won a major victory in his ongoing case against the federal government.

Are these the “minor inconveniences” Justice Brett Kavanaugh was mentioning when he said race can be a factor in immigration enforcement? 

‘YOUR PARENTS CAN’T HELP YOU NOW’

This anti-immigrant purge does not spare American children, either. Earlier this month, two U.S. citizen teens had plans to drive to a recruiting office to sign up to serve their country as Marines. But their country violently attacked them instead.

“The two teens said they were filming an ICE-involved incident happening at a nearby elementary school in Alamo, Texas, last week,” The Daily Beast reported Sept. 14. “It was then that federal agents used force and pepper-sprayed the pair.” Video captured by a bystander showed a team of agents repeatedly punching one boy while a second rubs at his face and flails in distress. “The person filming the scene appears to repeatedly yell at the agents that the boys are minors,” the report continues.

The San Antonio Express-News reported that ICE violently detained the second boy, 17-year-old Luis Ochoa, in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. But Ochoa said that when he tried to tell the agents that he and his friend are American citizens, he was reportedly told, “I don’t give a damn … Your parents can’t help you now.” Luis and his friend – again, both U.S. citizens and minors – would eventually eight hours in detention. 

In an interview with Telemundo, Luis’ mom, Teresa Ochoa, “said the moment her son was detained was one of the most agonizing moments of her life, as she feared that they would take him to Mexico,” The Daily Beast continued. “How are they supposed to serve a country that doesn’t even uphold their basic rights?” she asked.

“He is a minor; it’s traumatic enough for an adult — for something like this to happen to him is really tough,” she continued. “It was eight hours without hearing from him; they wouldn’t give me any information — they behaved very badly.”

SALAZAR CONDEMNS ICE RAIDS SHE FUNDED

So very badly that one of the administration’s allies has cut a video purporting to push back on some of Trump’s mass deportation efforts, The Guardian reported. “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar claimed in the clip. “In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy.”

But what Rep. Salazar doesn’t say in the ad is that she’s repeatedly voted to fund DHS, to the tune of $240 billion since the start of the Trump administration – and with no safeguards attached. Last year, she touted her vote for the Big, Ugly Budget bill, which gave ICE and CBP a massive infusion of $170 billion. “More jobs. More freedom. More money in your pocket,” she said at the time. Wrong, wrong, so very wrong. 

Then this year, she again voted to give ICE and CBP another massive infusion of funds. Like the earlier funding, this $70 billion in taxpayer dollars came with no strings attached.

ACCOUNTABILITY IS COMING

“These violent encounters reflect the reckless pressure of administration-imposed arrest quotas during a summer surge that saw ICE record more than 50,000 arrests in a single month for the first time in history,” America’s Voice said in a statement on Monday. “That same surge has already claimed the lives of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas, Johan Sebastián in Maine, and Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.” 

But Americans have been watching this cruelty against their neighbors and are repelled, with ICE collapsing into one of the least trusted federal offices in the nation. That includes caving favorability numbers across every partisan group. “Voters have made it clear that enough is enough and this November, will hold those responsible for funding this machine of terror accountable,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas.

“Whether it is an agent shooting yet another Latino man or federal agents assaulting yet another  U.S. citizen Donald Trump’s mass deportation obsession is making us all poorer and less safe,” Cárdenas said. “It doesn’t matter who ICE thought either of them was. No family should have to wonder whether a traffic stop or a case of mistaken identity will leave someone they love bleeding in the street. Donald Trump and his allies have built a mass deportation machine that treats every driver, every neighbor, and every bystander as expendable. The country is paying for it in blood, in fear, and at the well being of our economy and security.”

The post The Rampage Continues: Another In-Custody Death, Trump’s ICE Shoots a DoorDash Delivery Man, Beats U.S. Citizens Including Teens appeared first on America's Voice.