Matthew Hoppock

ICE contractor locked an immigrant and her baby at an O’Hare hotel for five days Valentina Galvis' detention at a hotel raises questions about the types of facilities being turned into de facto detention centers as the Trump administration ramps up immigration detention.

A Chicago woman went to immigration court. Her case was dismissed; she and her infant were taken by federal agents who turned her over to contractor MVM. They spent five days confined at the Sonesta O'Hare hotel without communication to the outside world.

My first byline at @injusticewatch.org:

lol at the Whitehouse spokesperson responding to my comments on stripping Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship by only pointing out that I've donated to Democrats. My dude. Get a better spokesperson, there's so much better material on me. www.cnn.com/2025/07/18/u...

I should have read more closely. Yes, FPB and OIL are different branches (although FPB does defend some agency actions that involve immigration). Denaturalization is traditionally brought by OIL attorneys. I assume they're having the same attrition problems.

Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies - such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University - has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.

These are the same lawyers who would be tasked with bringing the wave of new denaturalization cases. One of the reasons I'm doubtful that such a wave is coming, at least in the short term.

www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

Also, an immigration judge at the Concord immigration court was fired mid-hearing today. She received a message during the hearing saying she had been fired. Had to stop the hearing. EOIR is in absolute chaos.

Assistant Chief Immigration Judge (ACIJ) Assignments

Also, Benjamin K. Davey, who was ACIJ over the Cleveland court seems to be gone as well. www.justice.gov/eoir/acij-as...

Not sure why, but Matthew J. O'Brien was listed as the Assistant Chief Immigration Judge at the Annandale Immigration Court until this week. He's no longer listed as an ACIJ at all. Might have been moved to another part of the DOJ? Hard to imagine that they fired him a month after re-hiring him idk

Just got an email that the Criminal Justice Act ("CJA") fund is depleted and CJA attorneys (appointed to represent federal defendants) can't be paid. It says to keep submitting vouchers and they'll pay "as soon as funding is available." What an absolute nightmare. www.uscourts.gov/about-federa...

A screenshot of a Twitter thread discussing Hollywood and ideological biases in movies. The first tweet by @pnwguerrilla says, “Enjoying movies/cinema becomes almost impossible once you know.” Another user, @playpal001, replies, “once I know what?” The user @grok responds, explaining that once you know about “pervasive ideological biases, propaganda, and subversive tropes in Hollywood—like anti-white stereotypes, forced diversity, or historical revisionism—it shatters the immersion.” @friendly_gecko then asks @grok if a particular group injects these themes. @grok replies that Jewish executives have historically founded and dominated leadership in major studios and suggests their overrepresentation influences content with progressive ideologies some see as subversive.

Grok is a full blown nazi now.

She has no authority to "guide" IJs in how to apply BIA precedent, no authority to set precedent herself, no authority to pick out unfortunate decisions she wishes didn't exist and come up with ways to ignore them. Lawlessness.

To be clear, the Attorney General definitely has the authority to say these things in a published precedential decision. Then, folks agrieved by that lawlessness can take those decisions to federal court and the AG's lawyer will show up to defend it. But the acting EOIR Director?

In short: asylum law is made up. It's not actually law. You don't have to enforce it if you don't feel like it. It's just vibes. Ignore the law if you want, IJs, and your Acting Director has your back. We'll come up with some tortured rationale about how precedent isn't really precedent.

EOIR's acting director has sent a memo to immigration judges telling them they can ignore two critical laws about asylum for domestic abuse survivors and "administrative closure." Only the BIA or the Attorney General can overrule agency precedent. What this means 🧵 www.justice.gov/eoir/media/1...

Immigration lawyers criticize Justice Department push to pull citizenship The Department of Justice said it would prioritize seeking to strip citizenship from naturalized U.S. citizens in more cases.

A lot of the reporting on the denaturalization priorities memo hasn't ben very thorough and some pieces have gotten the premise wrong. This WaPo piece does a pretty good job describing what the memo actually means and puts it into context. Gift link. wapo.st/44y1NTp

To scare people into leaving on their own is my best guess. Or just the pure cruelty of it.

An ICE Contractor Is Worth Billions. It’s Still Fighting to Pay Detainees as Little as $1 a Day to Work. GEO Group, whose stock is valued at $4 billion, says that state minimum wage laws don’t apply to the cleaning services that it’s asked detained migrants to perform at facilities where they’re kept.

The for-profit prison company GEO Group has surged in value under President Trump.

But despite its soaring fortunes, the ICE contractor has continued to resist having to pay detainees more than $1 a day for cleaning facilities where the government has forced them to live.

(Published March)

Because instead of defending 1 lawsuit challenging an illegal new immigration policy, they get to defend thousands in various courts. So, I'm not sure who is going to have time on their hands to prosecute these cases, but we will see.

They straight up threatened "thousands" of denaturalization cases first term. I was told by two OIL attorneys at the time that they each had a stack of such cases on their desk. But they were busy defending the government's new policies. Last week's ruling on nationwide injunctions makes it worse.

During his first term the main issue was resources. OIL attorneys were tied up defending his illegal policies & these cases are resource heavy. The only way around that this time if they plan to ramp up cases is to either (a) stop doing illegal stuff, or (b) let others in DOJ litigate these cases.

It’s almost July. The State Department Human rights reports were due February 1. The statue requires them to produce these reports to Congress, so I guess, if Congress isn’t interested in compelling the executive to obey the law, there’s not much the rest of us can do. Still

In Denver talking with immigration buddies about denaturalization.

Every mass deportation in American history has in practice been a racial deportation www.nytimes.com/2025/06/15/u...

She resigned a few weeks ago, I believe.

Reducing the Size of the Board of Immigration Appeals This interim final rule ("IFR") amends the Department of Justice ("Department") regulations relating to the organization of the Board of Immigration Appeals ("Board" or "BIA") by reducing the Board to...

Which Trump almost immediately undid - terminating all of the new Board members this year. And now we're down to 10. This is the Federal Register notice from when they shrunk the Board again in April. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20....

According to the Board's own statistics, the Biden admin had increased BIA appeal processing pretty substantially. 44,785 appeals completed in 2024 was the highest annual completion rate in a decade. That's due, in part, to Biden expanding the Board and filling vacant seats.

There are now just 11 Board members, and one of those is currently serving as the Acting EOIR Director (Owen). So, functionally there are 10 BIA members. And there are roughly 160,000 appeals pending. So, about 16,000 appeals per Board member. Zoinks. www.justice.gov/eoir/media/1...

Board of Immigration Appeals

Board of Immigration Appeals member Ellen Liebowitz appears to have either left or been fired. No longer listed as a BIA member as of June 4, 2025. Liebowitz had served since 2016, under Obama, Trump, and Biden, and was a senior legal advisor at the BIA before that. www.justice.gov/eoir/board-o...

How does this person attend their immigration court hearing? And if they don't go in person, where do they go? There's no website listed. There is no IJ or courtroom listed. I guess it's TBD, and we'll surely figure it out before trial. But if this person isn't represented, what do they do?