More Deportable News (Pt 1 of 2) - and a big warning – as Trump expands detentions and new details emerge about ICE conditions and recent detainee deaths. Plus: Cory Booker makes history.

ICE has expanded detentions to non-protesting students, families with children, and moved to cancel visas for political critics. But the resistance is only growing.

NYC protesters denounce ICE, Trump policies, and Mayor Eric Adams’ complicity, Feb 13.

Photo by Lloyd Mitchell

Part One of Two (for details on detainee deaths, see Part 2)

What’s in this issue:

• Expanding the Deportables: Trump Looks Beyond Gaza for New Targets

• Momodou Self-Deports

• Canadian Self-Deportee Seeks to Return: Ranjani Srinivasan

• Non-protesters students arrested: Duguka Gunaydin

• Leqaa Kordia:

• Second Minnesotan detained by ICE

• Family detentions are on the rise

• Canadian border detentions of parents and children

• Krome detention abuses

• Disappeared: an FBI case targets an Indiana U cybersecurity scientist and his spouse, a systems analyst

• “Accidental” Deportation of a Maryland Father to El Salvador

• Trump’s Political Enemies: Other (Ex-) Heads of State

• “This is a moral moment” – Cory Booker makes history

  (See link to Part Two at end of newsletter)

Expanding The Deportables: Trump Looks Beyond Gaza for New Targets

Days ago, I published an updated list of The Deportables – individuals deemed “deportable” in the words of US officials who are expanding their efforts to arrest, detain and deport foreign students, now moving beyond pro-Palestinian protesters. Below are updates on the past weekend’s The Overnight Illegals: new ICE arrests, detentions, new disappearances, and details of what led to three deaths of recent detainees in two ICE facilities. I’ll lead with the case of Momodou Taal, then the newly disappeared, and the tragic cases of deaths in ICE facilities.

In response, lawyers and detention watch groups here and abroad are loudly advocating on behalf of the growing roster of individuals and their families, including US asylees now in fresh limbo in Costa Rica. That has led Trump to wage a fresh war on immigration attorneys, via a presidential memorandum that directs the the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security to take disciplinary action against attorneys who challenging the administration – a chilling autocracy move.

Across the US, more Americans have taking to the streets to protest Trump’s move on myriad fronts. A nationwide call to action April 5 will provide a fresh public marker of how strong and broad US resistance has become. – AC

UNC students demanding an end to ICE detention of students

Detention updates

Momodou Self-Deports:

British-Gambian Cornell student Momodou Taal elected to voluntarily leave the US after losing his proactive lawsuit to prevent ICE from arresting, detaining and deporting him. US District Court Judge Elizabeth Coombs ruled against his lawsuit, which was dismissed Monday evening after Taal informed the court he would self-deport. Three other plaintiffs had joined his lawsuit. Taal initially filed it after his name publicly appeared on blacklists of international students to be arrested based on their participation in pro-Palestinian campus solidarity protests. Pro-Zionist groups including Betar and Canary Mission, and Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism have surveilled students and sent these lists and information to ICE and Trump officials.

“I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted. Weighing up these options, I took the decision to leave on my own terms,” Taal posted on X, stating that he remains strongly supportive of the Palestinian right cause. He also accused the Trump administration of lacking “respect for the judiciary or the rule of law.” He has posted news of his arrival in an undisclosed location outside the US.

Canadian self-deportee seeks to return

Ranjani Srinivasan, a Columbia University scholar from India who fled to Canada recently to avoid ICE arrest and detention, now hopes to clear her name and return to complete her PhD program. “I’m not a terrorist sympathizer,” she told CNN. “I’m literally a random student.”

Leqaa Kordia:

Kordia is a Columbia University doctoral student in Planning and a Palestinian from the West Bank living in Newark, NJ, who was arrested March 14th by ICE HIS Newark officers. She was arrested last April 2024 in a Columbia campus pro-Palestinian protest, per DHS. Kordia’s student visa was reportedly terminated for “lack of attendance” in January 2022, and just recently revoked on March 5th. She was transferred to the ICE Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, about 40 minutes southwest of Dallas, where another recent detainee, Bhadar Kahn Suri, is also being held (see 3.28 Deportables list).

Prairieland is among the privately-managed ICE facilities that make up ICE’s “detention alley and include prisons and facilities in Texas, Arizona, Louisiana, Colorado, California, New Mexico, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. ICE reported holding 46,269 people in custody in its facilities in mid-March – far more than its capacity of 41,500 beds. It has deported some individuals to prisons such as the CECOT maximum prison in El Salvador, while Trump’s team is actively seeking outsourcing detention deals with other countries.

The latest US detention statistics show more people are being detained within the interior of the US than by border agents, as reported by Austin Kocher, whose Substack tracks immigration. Nearly 50,000 people are being detained by ICE, up 10,000 from the end of Biden’s term. Trump is now hoping to add thousands to be houses in the military and foreign facilities to meet his goal of 1 million deportees, though he is far below that mark. Judges also continue to block his deportation moves with temporary restraining orders, including challenges to the legality of the Alien Enemies Act being used by Trump to mass deportations.

University of Minnesota students and union leaders rally April 1 to denounce ICE arrests

Photo: Pooja Singh

Non-protesters students arrested:

Duguka Gunaydin

Gunaydin is a University of Minnesota graduate student from Turkey studying for a business degree who was recently detained by ICE agents last Thursday when he stepped outside his home in St. Paul, MN, as he was headed to class. He had not participated in any campus activism, he said in a lawsuit he quickly filed via a lawyer to protest his detention. His student visa was also revoked, though it was still showing up on the SEVIS international student database at the time of his arrest. It appears Gunyadin was picked up on the basis of an old DUI incident in 2023. The State Department issuing a statement about his case, merely confirming, “This is not related to the student protests.”’

Gunyadin was taken to the Sherburne County hail, about 35 miles from downtown Minneapolis, and was given an immigration hearing date of April 8^th. Regarding the DUI, he pleased guilty to driving while impaired last March – a misdemeanor, court records show. He then completed a mandated community service sentence, attended a DUI clinic, and agreed to refrain from future traffic violations.

His arrest sent a fresh shockwave, signaling that ICE is not limiting its dragnet to campus protesters, but is combing student records and social media, seeking to identify even misdemeanors as possible legal grounds for deportation. That strategy is noted in Project 2025.

His case and others, below, have renewed growing global fears that international students are not safe on US campuses, regardless of political beliefs.

Second Minnesotan detained by ICE

On April 1, the President of Minnesota State University – Mankato, Edward Inch, issued a campus-wide email to faculty and students there revealing that a second student there was detained by ICE the day after Gunyadin’s detention. Agents arrested the student at an off-campus site and they are in now in jail in Albert Lea, a facility partnered with ICE. Inch did not disclose the student’s name, due to university privacy rules. The university was never in contact with ICE; nor had the agency ever requested any information, nor had it contacted them after the arrest, he stated. MSU-M faculty and student leaders immediately began mobilizing to demand the student be released.

“This action hurts what we try to accomplish as a university — supporting all learners to receive the education they desire to make the impact they want in their communities,” Inch said in an email to MPR News on March 31^st. MSU-M has over 1,000 international students from over 100 countries.

An MSU-M junior, Cole Koets, told CBS News that he's drafting resolutions for the student government and organizing a campaign to make MSU students aware of their constitutional rights. He anticipated campus protests at MSU-Mankato as soon as Tuesday. Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has publicly weighed in on the Minnesota student detainees: “A deep concern is, here, that no matter what the situation was, in this country, everyone has due process rights and our concern is whether those due process rights are being followed.”

The sign welcoming visitors to Barnes City, near a growing ICE family detention facility

Photo: Salgu Wissmath for The Texas Newsroom

Family detentions are on the rise:

On March 27, a woman and her three children were arrested at a dairy farm in Sackets Harbor, NY -- a town in Jefferson Country where US border czar Tom Homan lives -- and then taken to the Karnes County Detention Facility in Texas, 1800+ miles away. It is one of about 50 miles southeast of San Antonio and run by the private contractor, The Geo Group. The children – grades 3, 10 and 11 -- are being detained along with their mother – a move being protested by Sackets Harbor community residents, local school leaders there, an attorney from the New York Immigration Coalition – and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who expressed shock and alarm at the family’s detention. On March 27^th, the Democratic Committee of Jefferson County held a rally in Sackets Harbor to demand their release and raise public awareness.

Early reports suggest the family was apprehended partly by chance, after DHS agents went to the farm to arrest a 43-year-old South African national, Marshall Meyer, for alleged distribution of child pornography in an internet sting operation. Seven other people were found at the farm, including the family with children, and were all arrested as illegal aliens, per a local WPTZ station report.

Canadian border detentions of parents and children:

The report comes amid other news that US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) have detained families with young children for as long as two weeks in cells at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, and the Lewiston-Queenston bridges -- official ports of entry along the Canadian-US border, per an Investigative Post report on April 1.

Under Biden, such detentions were for 48 hours, then people were transferred to ICE or an immigrant detention facility. In another March case, a Detroit mother and her children were detained at the Ambassador Bridge and held five days, a case described as “a kidnapping” after the woman accidentally crossed the bridge from Canada and turned around, where the family was detained. To date, CBP officials have denied the longer detentions. It’s also unclear how many adults and children are, or have been, detained and where have been sent after detention.

Trump has made no secret of his plans to open more facilities for detaining families in Texas including facility in Dilley for up to 2,400 people. An ACLU lawsuit revealed that ICE hopes to expand detention facilities in Laredo and Henderson, near the Louisiana border. Trump also hopes to detain immigrants at military bases including Fort Bliss and Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico, and advocates believe families may be held there, a plan vocally opposed by New Mexico’s all-Democratic congressional delegation.

Pedestrian entrance to Rainbow Bridge Customs station.

Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker | Investigative Post

Krome Detention Abuses:

On March 23, USA Today report by Lauren Villagron spotlighted the “hell on earth” inhumane conditions at the long-overcrowded Krome North Processing Detention Center in Miami designed for male detainees where women and men are now stuffed like sardines. Krome was built to house 500 men. Four women detainees held there in mid-February recently testified to a reporter that they were picked up for immigration violations and bused to Krome while chained at the waist, chest and wrist. Some were held hours in transit. They spent three to four days there with limited to no access to food, water or a toilet. One woman had nothing to eat for 36 hours. They had to bank on windows to access a paper cone of water from a jug in the hallway.

The women said 27 people were packed into small holding cells where they slept on concrete and were forced to defecate or urinate in the cells. Each was provided a single three-minute shower during their time in custody. They were provided with a single jacket or blanket to sleep on or under. A camera pointed at the cell, prevention any privacy. They also said at least four women were also placed into cells for men (it’s unclear if these were or are transwomen but a new Trump policy is placing transwomen into male-facilities, and transmen into female facilities).

The women’s testimonies also follow the death of three men in ICE custody between January 23rd and Mid-March (see Died in Detention). One detailed instances of detainees being denied timely access to medicine for allergies and sanitary napkins. In one case when guards did response, a woman suffering from a seizure collapsed in her cell. “Nobody cares,” said one former detainee. “Everyone acts like we’re animals of something.”

Krome is one of 130 ICE detention centers in the US and is run by the private contractor Akima Infrastructure Protection, under a $685 million contract. In mid-February, 561 men, over two thirds with criminal records, were held there; by mid-March, the number was up to 604 and most also had criminal records. Even guards admit they are overwhelmed and lack resources to do their jobs properly. The women testified via audio and video recordings, backed by interviews with their attorneys and family members. None had criminal backgrounds, and were being held for alleged immigration violations, per USA Today. The testimonies that mirror those of other detainees picked up and transferred between ICE facilities in chains.

Their experiences are backed up by male detainees who also spoke to media and portray the situation inside Krome as a “humanitarian disaster.” Some male detainees told the Miami New Times that they had been essentially kidnapped and held in the facility three week, without any outside communication. One released a TikTok post pleading to anyone listening, “Please help us;” one of four videos filmed inside Krome and shared with attorneys. One young man, age 26, told a reporter he’d been taken to Krome last summer and only processed out in March. He confirmed the lack of beds, sleeping on concrete or benches without blankets, extremely cramped inside cells, with conditions so fetid they also led to fights. He knew one of the men who had fallen ill at Krome and died, Maksym Chernyak (see Part 2 of this report).

Video Grab of Search of Wang Home, March 28

Source: 13WTHR NBC Affiliate

Disappeared: an FBI case targets an Indiana U cybersecurity scientist and his spouse, a systems analyst

As of March 28, a prominent and tenured Indiana University computer scientist, Xiaofeng Wang, and his wife, Nianli Ma, a systems analyst at the university, were arrested at around 8 a.m. and taken away after nine unmarked cars driven by government agents, including the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), arrived at the couple’s house on Xavier Court in Bloomington, IN. The agents arrived with weapons drawn, per neighbor eye-witness accounts. It is not clear if these arrests are related to an immigration issue, political issue, or criminal charges. The FBI declined to comment to reporters on the scene.

The arrest was first reported by The Bloomingtonian on Friday afternoon; the paper confirmed FBI agents remained on scene after the arrest. A neighbor had observed the arriving cars with license plates registered in Mariam County (Code 49), but no specific agency markings. At least three plainclothes officials were on hand at the arrest, and a Bloomington police officer.

Wang was associate dean of research at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, and a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He spent 20 years building a prestigious career, winning many accolades during his time at the university. He is a crypto security and data privacy specialist, among his expertise. A university source told reporters that Wang had been quietly fired in March (2025). His and email account, phone number and profile page at the Luddy school were also quietly erased by his employer, while the university also removed the profile for his wife Ma, listed as a Lead System Analyst and Programmer at its Library Technologies division.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Courtesy of Abrego Garcia family

“Accidental” Deportation of a Maryland Father to El Salvador

A Salvadoran father living in Maryland, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, was mistakenly “accidentally” deported on March 15th to the maximum prison facility, CECOT, in El Salvador, due to an administrative error. Abrego Garcia fled gang violence in El Salvador as a teenager and had earned legal protected status in the States. He was picked up on March 12^th by US officials in Texas who told him his immigration status had changed – this was not true. They accused of possible links to gangs, which he denied. Abrego Garcia was one of the 137 individuals on three hastily-flown ICE flights to CECOT early on March 15th, just as a US federal judge was issuing orders to stop the deportations. The judge ordered the planes to turn back, but they flew on.

ICE officials initially said all aboard were suspected members of the Salvadoran MS-13 or Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gangs– a charge since proved false. Many have no criminal records or gang affiliation, per the ACLU, attorneys for the deportees, and Venezuelan officials.

Abrego Garcia's wife only learned of his deportation after seeing photos released by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, where she spotted her husband's tattoos and head scars in one. She hadn’t spoken to him as of April 1.

Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, quickly asked the judge to order client to be returned to the US. ICE officials admitted their error but said they had no means to bring Garcia back, since he is now in Salvadoran custody. His lawyer refutes that: "[Trump officials] claim that the court is powerless to order any relief. If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless — all of them — because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done," Sandoval-Moshenberg told The Atlantic.

Trump’s Political Enemies: Other (Ex-) Heads of State

On April 2, former Nobel laureate and ex-Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez informed the world that Trump had revoked his visa to enter the US, without any reason provided. Arias as long been a vocal critic of the Trump administration, using his social media platform to compare Trump to Nero, the Roman emperor, “telling the rest of the world what to do.”

The move also follows a 1700-word March 25 cable sent to overseas missions by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that demands Trump diplomats now scour the social media posts of some visa applicants. That story was broken by independent journalist Marisa Kabas on March 26^th, via her newsletter The Handbasket, and then picked up by The New York Times.

Who fits that screening profile? Students and others suspected of having terrorist ties or sympathies (read Palestine), or who had a student or exchange visa between October 7, 2023 – when Hamas attacked Israel – and August 31, 2024 -- or who had their visa terminated since the Hamas attack, the cable explained. Or maybe someone whose actions suggest they bear “a hostile attitude toward US citizens or US culture (including government institutions, or founding principles.” The cable seeks to force compliance with two Trump executive orders, (EO 14161, EO 14188), the first focused on protecting against terrorism and national security threats, the second on measures to combat antisemitism – the pretext being used by Trump to justify his crackdown on campus protesters.

Booker with his hero and mentor John Lewis

Photo: Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)

“This is a moral moment” – Cory Booker makes history

I have to note – and celebrate -- the historic 25-hour-and-four-minute speech by New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker that now stands as the longest speech ever made in the US Senate. It surpassed the prior record held by segregationist Strom Thurmond of 24 hours and 18 minutes, to block civil rights legislation. It was not a filibuster, technically, but a sustained, passionate take-down of Trump’s policies, and a fiery call to action. It also surpassed the prior 21-hour filibuster set by Ted Cruz (R-Tx) against Obamacare in 2021. Booker’s marathon action captured global media attention, and drew 350 million likes on Booker’s TikTok livestream, plus over 28,000 voices mails of support to his office phone line.

His grand speech began Monday night, March 31, at 7 pm local time, and ended Tuesday evening at 10:06 pm when he passed the proverbial baton to the American public to take up and continue the fight. He opened it with an homage to a mentor, the great John Lewis, a civil rights pioneer from Georgia who spent three decades in Congress. Booker came prepared with 1,164 pages of material to read, including letters from constituents and poetry, and he also took questions from colleagues. He also fasted, fully aware of the physical rigors of such a marathon feat. An African-America, he also talked about his dual heritage as a descendant of slave owners and slaves, which offered a pointed rebuttal to Thurmond’s actions.

He repeatedly pointed out “This is a moral moment,” one demanding we all step forward to defend out embattled democracy. His talked about Trump’s gutting of health care, education, medical research, and how these changes were impacting – and badly hurting – his constituents.

The speech prevented any Senate legislation from happening in the GOP-dominated legislature and drew global plaudits for Booker’s action. Many progressives hailed it as a demonstration of Democratic Party leadership and spirited resistance they desperately longed to see.

“My constituents – the letters, the calls, the demands – were definitely an ignition point for me,” Booker said of why felt compelled to speak as he did. “But we have got to continue to ignite this movement.”

His actions have galvanized the Democratic base, as many plan for a nationwide coalition protest on this Saturday, April 5, inspired by Booker and the legacy of civil rights embodied by his friend John Lewis. See you in the streets!

READ Part Two of this 2-part report for a detailed update on The Deportables who recently died in ICE detention and other updates.

A Reminder: don’t forget to check out new materials and resources on fighting back at our Resisting Project 2025 campaign website. And please consider sharing this information by restocking this issue and sharing take-aways on your social media. Knowledge = power. - AC