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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
@ReichlinMelnick
Senior Fellow @immcouncil. Tweeting on immigration policy and data. Formerly immigration lawyer with @IJCorps. Views my own, retweets =/= endorsements.
14 subscribers
Jun 13 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
This funding would make ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the history of the United States, with greater detention capacity than the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons.

It would reshape society, making federal arrests a daily fact of life in every single community. Image
Jun 7 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The U.S. government is “demanding” that people stop using certain political rhetoric.

That is appalling. The government cannot order people not to speak in ways they don’t like. Exactly. Threats against judges are up dramatically, and come after DHS and ICE itself have made appalling and prejudicial comments about judges.
Jun 1 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
What infuriates me so much about this operation is that it is literally punishing people for following the rules and showing up to their court hearings. It is so toxic to the basic concept of following the rules. ICE itself is effectively encouraging people to violate the law. Exactly. People can understand intuitively why this is wrong.

It also literally erases a fair day in court. That’s the entire point of the operation.
May 22 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
🚨ICE arrests continued today at immigration courts nationwide. People showing up for court are being handcuffed in the hallways by ICE officers with lists of names, after ICE prosecutors move to dismiss the case.

Here's what those officers looked in Seattle as they, per @KUOW. Image Stories are coming in from around the country about these arrests, which have occurred in LA, Miami, SF, Phoenix, Seattle, NYC, Chicago, and other places with immigration courts.

The goal of the Trump admin's efforts are to erase the right to see a judge.
kuow.org/stories/ice-ag…
May 21 • 21 tweets • 6 min read
NEW: ICE confirms that it is deporting someone to South Sudan, putting a link to an upcoming press conference on YouTube.

A hearing in Massachusetts begins in an hour. The judge ordered ICE not to transfer custody of a Vietnamese man believed to be on that flight to South Sudan. Image The link is here. Chief DHS propagandist Tricia McLaughlin is talking now, beginning by emphasizing the serious criminal conduct of the people it has reportedly sent to South Sudan (murder and rape). She says South Sudan agreed to take them. youtube.com/live/p2U8Eh1VF…
May 21 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
🚨UPDATE: In a late-night court hearing, the Trump admin says that it deported the Burmese man to Burma, but is REFUSING to say where they deported the Vietnamese man, claiming it’s classified!

The judge ordered ICE to tell everyone involved they may face criminal contempt. Image
Image The @nytimes has more details, as they apparently got a reporter in the hearing.

There is reportedly another hearing scheduled for tomorrow morning at 11:00 as a continuation. It seems unlikely Judge Murphy will rule tonight.

nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/…
May 20 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
🚨According to litigators, ICE just put a dozen men on a flight to SOUTH SUDAN, a country which is on the brink of civil war, in direct defiance of a court order requiring ICE to give people an opportunity to raise objections before being sent to a country not their own. Image Litigators filed an emergency request for a restraining order to halt the flight from taking off or, if it's already in the air, to turn it around.

Citing the Supreme Court's decision on the Alien Enemies Act, they emphasize that people on the flight were denied due process. Image
May 18 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The Director of the FBI is openly lying to the American public about Canada being a major source of fentanyl.

In the first three months of 2025, a grand total of 1.35 lbs of fentanyl was seized by border officials at our border with Canada — 0.06% of total seizures. In the last 39 months, Customs and Border Protection seized 71,313 pounds of fentanyl. Of that amount:

- 69,373 lbs were seized near the Mexican border.
- 1,864 lbs were seized in an interior area (at a port or airport).
- 85 lbs were seized near the Canadian border.
May 16 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
🚨🚨Supreme Court rebukes Trump admin for shoving Venezuelans onto planes with little notice: "Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster." Image The Supreme Court also rebukes the Fifth Circuit for refusing to act on the ACLU's emergency request, emphasizing that the facts on the ground showed that planes were set to take off -- thus making Judge Hendrix' failure to act at the District Court level an appealable order. Image
May 12 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
NEW: As the Trump admin is flying Afrikaners here today to be resettled as "refugees," @Sec_Noem is terminating Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan — meaning they may start deporting women and allies who protected our troops to the Taliban to be persecuted or killed! Image If @Sec_Noem were to visit Afghanistan, she would be banned from even SPEAKING IN PUBLIC, and yet today she declares that deporting people to the Taliban is actually completely fine — while Trump welcomes a planeload of Afrikaners allegedly facing "persecution." Image
May 9 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
UPDATE: The judge's decision on this came out last night, and it's a DOOZY.

It exposes how the Trump admin stripped a guy of a student visa because Betar tweeted about him, then issued an ICE arrest warrant for him based on an outright lie just 48 hours after Betar's tweet. Image Judge Kelly found that ICE's arrest of Mr. Ercelik was intended to punish him for pro-Palestinian advocacy.

The DHS warrant issued 48 hours after Betar's tweet said it was because he had been placed into removal proceedings. That was a lie. It didn't happen until 15 days later. Image
May 7 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
WHOA. This case wasn’t even on my radar. So this guy had to go to court to get ICE not to arrest and detain him on the way to the airport where he’s planning on leaving the country?!

@johnhawkinson reports that the judge just granted a habeas petition — required so he can leave! Image The Trump admin’s position here is that they want a judge to halt her order granting a guy the right to self-deport — because they want to instead detain him, keep him in custody for weeks/months, and THEN deport him.

She ruled that ICE is trying to punish him, not deport him. Image
May 7 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
HOLY CRAP. The D.V.D. litigators say the Trump administration’s planned flight to Libya is going to be for ASIAN nationals, including Cambodians, Filipinos, and Vietnamese people — and that say that ICE is throwing people into solitary for refusing to agree to be sent to Libya! Image According to litigators, on Tuesday, at one detention center in Texas, ICE gathered together 1 Vietnamese, 1 Lao, and 4 other people in detention and ordered them to sign paperwork agreeing to be sent to Libya.

All 6 refused, so ICE handcuffed them and threw them into solitary. Image
May 1 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
Here's a quick 🧵 on WHY this Trump-appointed judge ruled the way he did.

First, look at the actual text of the Alien Enemies Act itself. It can only be used during a "declared war" or any "invasion or predatory incursion" by a foreign nation or government against the U.S.

1/4 Image Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act claimed that (1) Tren de Aragua is a "foreign nation or government" because it's controlled by Venezuela, and (2) that the gang was "perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion" against the US with its criminal acts.

2/4 Image
Apr 30 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
NEW! Two weeks ago Trump was stopped from sending more people to be imprisoned in El Salvador. Now we're learning who they were — and the stories are OUTRAGEOUS.

One guy was accused of being in TdA because of his tattoos, which include Pikachu, Toad, and Patrick from SpongeBob! Image Another man facing imminent risk of being imprisoned in El Salvador potentially for life is a guy working at H-E-B- and doing Doordash on the side.

His tattoos? A pocket watch with the date his father passed away, and roses to honor his family. ICE said they were gang tattoos! Image
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Apr 28 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
BUT THERE'S MORE: the House GOP reconciliation package would ALSO supersize immigration enforcement through vast sums of money.

The biggest item is $45 BILLION for ICE detention through FY2029, which would be a 364% annual increase to the current $3.4 billion detention budget! Image Another HUGE increase would occur with ICE's Transportation and Removal Operations line item, which would get $14.4 BILLION dollars through FY2029 -- an increase of 400% over the current $721 million budget for the ICE component which is responsible for deportation flights. Image
Apr 28 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: The House GOP's reconciliation package would DRAMATICALLY reshape immigration via fees, and mostly end asylum for the poor.

The bill imposes a $1,000 unwaivable fee to apply for asylum, plus $550 every 6 months for work permits and $100 for every year the case drags on.

🧵 Image The reconciliation package would also charge anyone sponsoring an unaccompanied child out of an ORR shelter $8,500(!), of which $5,000 would be reimbursable if the child was not ordered deported "in absentia" for missing court.

That's a price that would stop nearly all sponsors. Image
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Apr 26 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
NEW: In a SCATHING decision, Judge Briones in El Paso absolutely SAVAGED the government over this case, tearing to shreds ICE’s hearsay “evidence” that this husband and wife were in Tren de Aragua as “completely and wholly unsubstantiated” — and ordered their immediate release! CONCLUSION For the reasons stated above, this Court determines it has jurisdiction over the instant matter and Respondents have not demonstrated they have any lawful basis to continue detaining Petitioners Julio Cesar Sanchez Puentes and Luddis Norelia Sanchez Garcia in federal immigration custody. Respondents concede they are not detaining Petitioners under any authority in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Further, Respondents have not set forth sufficient nor adequate evidence that Petitioners are in fact members of Tren de Aragua to warrant an alien enemy designation under the TdA Pr... This is the first case testing ICE’s allegations that someone was in Tren de Aragua and thus subject to the Alien Enemies Act — and ICE utterly failed the test!

“This Court takes clear offense to Respondents wasting judicial resources to admit to the Court it has no evidence” This Court takes clear offense to Respondents wasting judicial resources to admit to the Court it has no evidence, yet seek to have this Court determine Petitioner Sanchez Puentes is "guilty by association." This Court found no need to even allow closing arguments as to Petitioner Sanchez Puentes at the April 23, 2025 Habeas Corpus Hearing. It is clear as day that Respondents have not demonstrated to this Court by a "preponderance of the evidence", let alone the required "clear, unequivocal, and convincing" evidence that Petitioner Sanchez Puentes is a member o...
Apr 22 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: Judge Xinis largely rejects DOJ's opposition to discovery requests in the Abrego Garcia case, accusing the Trump admin of "a willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations," citing their continued denial to acknowledge what the Supreme Court ordered. Image Judge Xinis also denies the government's invocation of various privileges, saying the DOJ has "stubbornly refuse[d] to provide any basis" for the invocation of privilege, and says the DOJ has lost the presumption of good faith due to "repeated refusals to meet and confer." Image
Apr 21 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Occam's Razor suggests the Border Patrol agent lied. That's backed up by the fact that one claim made by the agent is provably false; that he was arrested near Nogales. That lie matters because this sworn statement claims he entered the day before, and Nogales is 70 miles south. Border Patrol's clear lie on a sworn statement that the man was arrested "at or near Nogales, AZ" makes every part of the documentation of his arrest suspect.

In fact, if you read the whole sworn statement, much of it appears to be based off of that lie. Image
Apr 18 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
🚨UPDATE: New evidence filed by the ACLU last night shows that the Trump administration is going forward with more Alien Enemies Act deportations in seeming violation of the Supreme Court's clear command that people be provided a "meaningful" opportunity to seek judicial review. Image Last night multiple people detained at the Bluebonnet ICE detention center in Texas were handed sheets of paper IN ENGLISH and told by ICE officers that they were required to sign the paper (even if they only spoke Spanish).

These were reportedly "Alien Enemies Act" notices. Image
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