The Forum Daily | Wednesday, December 17, 2025https://www.forumtogether.org

If you appreciate this daily summary of key immigration news, please consider including the Forum in your year-end donations [link removed]. Thanks in advance!

The administration is adding to its list of countries with travel restrictions, reports Josh Wingrove of Bloomberg [link removed].

According to a White House fact sheet, the expansion applies to individuals from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria, as well as "individuals holding Palestinian-Authority-issued travel documents." People from Laos and Sierra Leone will be moved from partial restrictions to full bans, and those from 15 additional countries now will face partial restrictions, Wingrove reports.

Separately, a recent analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions shows that at least 3,800 children under age 18, including 20 infants, have been taken into agency custody since President Trump took office, report Anna Flagg and Shannon Heffernan of The Marshall Project [link removed].

Among them, more than 1,300 children were held for longer than 20 days, going against a 1997 settlement agreement [link removed].

"They want to be able to hold families indefinitely, and remove them or pressure them to give up," said Scott Shuchart, former head of policy at ICE.

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s VP of Strategic Communications, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Nicci Mattey and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].

**DEPARTURE DETENTIONS** — Per a memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the administration plans to send agents to the U.S.-Mexico border to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants voluntarily returning home for the holidays, reports Stephania Corpi of Texas Public Radio [link removed]. (Think about that.) Officers would stop people who were leaving to place them in detention and formal deportation procedures. The plan also would increase deportation statistics, Corpi reports.

**AN ATTORNEY’S DAY** — Isabeau Doucet and photographer Ximena Natera of The Guardian [link removed] follow a day in the life of immigration attorney Milli Atkinson, who leads programs offering immigrants free legal advice and rapid-response legal representation. In San Francisco immigration courts this year, at least 88 people seeking asylum have been arrested at their hearings and more than half of court’s immigration judges have been fired, Doucet notes. Stay for the hopeful notes at the end.

**COMMUNITY HARM** — Recent immigration policy shifts from the administration have sent some Texas families into hiding, reports Carlos Nogueras Ramos and Colleen DeGuzman of The Texas Tribune [link removed]. "The pervasive fear can create a ‘shelter in place’ mentality, causing individuals to neglect basic needs necessary for maintaining a healthy life," said Joe Morales, a Texas resident who has helped undocumented people with immigration-related petitions for more than two decades.

For more on community impacts:

* Immigrants in Louisiana are choosing to forgo necessary health rather than risk getting caught in immigration enforcement efforts. (Halle Parker, Verite News [link removed])

* A community reacts to the detention of a local father and business owner in New York state. (Evan Dawson, Megan Mack and Julie Williams, WXXI News [link removed])

* While a generation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients faces uncertainty, the following one is left ineligible. (Itzel Luna, Los Angeles Times [link removed])

**MORAL RECKONING** — "The deployment of ICE agents across America has religious leaders, in particular, wrestling anew with questions like how we are to treat a stranger, to whom we are obligated and what constitutes human dignity," Lauren Jackson of The New York Times [link removed] writes. Separately, a group of residents in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is taking the time to deliver groceries to Latino families in the area as the fear of immigration enforcement persists, Alex Cox of WRKF reports on NPR’s Morning Edition [link removed].

Thanks for reading,

Dan

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