The Forum Daily | Tuesday, March 18, 2025https://immigrationforum.org/

**THE FORUM DAILY**The legality of deportations that occurred this weekend following the president's enactment of the Alien Enemies Act is being questioned by lawyers representing the deportees, reports Bart Jansen of USA Today [link removed].  

In a hearing held Monday, government lawyers and legal representatives of the deportees presented their arguments on whether the flights had already crossed into international waters when a judge’s order was issued this past weekend, report Katherine Faulders, Laura Romero, and Peter Charalambous of ABC News [link removed]. 

Amid this and other court battles, the Trump administration is reaching a critical moment in their stance on immigration policy, reports Myah Ward of Politico [link removed].  

The administration’s initial messaging was that only criminals would be targeted in their deportation efforts. However, a string of detentions and deportations of individuals with legal paperwork allowing them in the United States is catching public attention and setting off alarm bells for many, Ward reports. 

"We can all get behind deporting violent criminals, but there’s a lot of moderate Republicans that are concerned that they may be jumping the shark, as they say — they may be going a little too far on some of these things," said Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York).  

Public opinion surveys, including the Forum’s most recent polling [link removed], show that while most Americans do support the deportation of dangerous criminals, those numbers go down when asked about immigrants who have been in the country for more than a decade and are contributing to our communities.  

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of The Forum Daily.  I’m Clara Villatoro, the Forum’s assistant VP of strategic communications, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Soledad Gassó Parker, Dan Gordon, Broc Murphy and Becka Wall. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]  mailto:[email protected].   

**UNEXPECTED** — A couple in Wisconsin is facing the impacts of recent deportation efforts, reports Lauren Villagran of USA Today [link removed]. Bradley Bartell and Camila Muñoz, a Peruvian immigrant, were coming back from their honeymoon when Muñoz was detained. Bartell, a Trump voter, didn’t think immigration enforcement would target someone like his wife who is in process to get her green card, reports Villagran. Separately, in a piece for the Los Angeles Times [link removed], Tom Chavez reflects on his family's own trials with complicated immigration policies as legal residents during "Operation Wetback."  

**WARSHIP** — A Navy warship is being deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border, report Rebecca Falconer and Russell Contreras of Axios [link removed].  According to an official statement [link removed], the USS Gravely is contributing "to a coordinated and robust response to combating maritime related terrorism, weapons proliferation, transnational crime, piracy, environmental destruction, and illegal seaborne immigration." 

**‘DISAPPEARED’** — A complaint [link removed] filed Sunday by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico alleges that U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) "disappeared" 48 individuals during raids in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Roswell, reports Austin Fisher of Source NM [link removed]. According to the complaint, ICE has not identified the 48 individuals, nor have they said where they are being held or under what conditions. In a statement by ICE, the agency confirmed that these community members were not arrested due to criminal charges but due to violation of civil immigration law.  

**COMMUNITY** — Haitian families in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, have become a guiding force for the community’s churches, but since the executive decision to end their temporary protected status, faith leaders have been speaking out, reports Oliver Morrison of WESA [link removed]. "The future of this church, if it survives, will be because of immigrant population," said Pastor Randy Ord. Separately, Louis Finley of Spectrum News NY1 [link removed] covers a community gathering supporting Haitians outside St. Jerome Church in Brooklyn, New York. 

Thanks for reading,  

Clara 

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