“Where Is Due Process? Where Is Democracy? Who Is Standing Up?” Immigration Policy In Trump's America

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, immigration policy in the United States has undergone profound changes. Masked, anonymous agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), both operating under the purview of the United States Department of Homeland Security, have roamed U.S. cities and towns, shattering car windows and dragging people from their vehicles, seizing high school students, chasing terrified U.S. citizens into their homes and stalking courthouse halls where immigrants are reporting for hearings in New York, Miami and elsewhere. The past January, in Minneapolis, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross gunned down poet and mother Renée Good and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez murdered nurse Alex Pretti. As more and more people disappeared into the maw of a detention regime spanning from Florida to Louisiana to Texas, cases such as that of Emmanuel Damas became ever-more coming. Damas, a 56 year-old, had a pending asylum claim, and entered the U.S. from Haiti via the Biden-era humanitarian parole program but was taken into ICE custody in Boston in September 2025 and died this past March while in custody in Arizona due to complications from an infected tooth. He was one of at least 17 people in ICE custody, who, according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle, died after medical staff delayed or failed to provide critical medical care that might have saved their lives. To discuss the U.S. government’s current immigration policies and the conditions those detained under them are currently living under, we are joined on Notes from the World by three guests today: Ruby Powers, a Houston-based attorney who has represented clients detained at Camp East Montana, an immigrant detention facility located on the Fort Bliss U.S. Army base in El Paso, Texas; Lomi Kriel, a statewide investigative reporter for the Texas Tribune who has extensively reported on both Camp East Montana and the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Frio County in South Texas; and Abigail Philips, a Miami-based attorney who has represented clients detained at the South Florida Detention Facility, the immigration detention facility located inside Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve and better known as Alligator Alcatraz.